Support NeoGAF

[Toots]

American devs are at an all-time low.

Western society and culture is at an all time low unfortunately.

 

[Schmendrick]

Western society and culture is at an all time low unfortunately.

Get off that social media bubble.
We´re doing fine.

 

[Toots]

Get off that social media bubble.
We´re doing fine.

I work in academia and i can assure you we are doing anything but fine.
There is an huge dumbing down of society as a whole, i regularly receive internship application letters from students from supposedly the best humanities schools in France full of misspelled words and even grammatical errors so stupid it makes me wonder how those students could enter these schools in the first place.

 

[Punished Miku]

Oblivion Remastered $50
Final Fantasy Tactics Remastered $50

Elfstar

$35

Thread 'The Alters - Reviews Thread'

Jun 12, 2025

Game Information

Game Title: The Alters

Platforms:

• PC (Jun 13, 2025)
• PlayStation 5 (Jun 13, 2025)
• Xbox Series X/S (Jun 13, 2025)

Trailer:

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 85 average - 90% recommended
Metacritic - 85 average - Based on 26 reviews (PC version)

Critic Reviews


Atarita - Alparslan Gürlek - Turkish - 82 /...

• adamsapple
• Replies: 75
• Forum: Gaming Discussion

• 
• 

 

[Krathoon]

There is kind of a lack of creativity going on. They are too afraid to try anything new. The same old shit.

 

[Gambit2483]

There is kind of a lack of creativity going on. They are too afraid to try anything new. The same old shit.

Agreed. Damn near everything is a soulslike. Way too much risk aversion going on in the industry

 

[tr1p1ex]

Sadly true. My wife, who is not what you would call a gamer like we all are, plays more "games" and has more game time on her phone than I do on my PC/consoles!

Kitty Letter!

 

[Spooky Scary Skeleton]

The term "Western devs" is misleading in today's world. I could understand back in PS2-4 era when American/Canadian devs dwarfed the number of other European devs, but this is not the case anymore, hence the term "Western devs" applied primarily to strictly NA devs, but considering companies like Larian Studio and CD Projekt Red aren't part of NA (yet, the term still mostly applies to NA devs), people need to start using the term in more specific way.

 

[hussar16]

Every new western made game in the xbox showcase was just the epitome of mediocre filler titles. Generic .. done many times before .. boring looking slop.

There was only one that had any redeemable creative inspiration and that was doublefines new game.

also this has been going on for a while..its not just the xbox showcase but it did hammer it home for me.

i think it has to do with the top companies not carrying the heavy load of new games anymore. the games are o expensive to make and the quality of the developing teams went down because the teams got bigger. ubisoft is best example of this, they made some nice games a decades ago

 

[RetroGamingUK]

The likes of Capcom have enough smart people in the room to shoot down stupid ideas.

 

[powder]

The likes of Capcom have enough smart people in the room to shoot down stupid ideas.

 

[Durin]

We live in a time where the biggest budget western games are reliably getting worse, while other big games break records from other countries, and western devs doing AA down to indie-level scale work are having more success at sustainable budgets. Western development & culture is just getting more fragmented, but you can find good stuff.

The doomer mentality that everything sucks is getting more tedious though, because my take is if one area of an industry gets worse, I go look elsewhere. I'd rather go support the next Timberborn, Core Keeper or Windblown than give a fuck about Bioware/Bethesda/Blizzard sucking now.