I love Indie premium games like Unpossible, Star Horizon, Wayward Souls, Suited Up, David, Bezircle, Third Eye Crime, Kelly, Angerforce, Plax, and maybe one of the best Botanicula. Gameloft games are alright too, but forget the always online and high inapp structure, they were better before.
I think only the odd recent game has that annoying 'always online' issue though doesnt it ? Looking at their list of games from the app store... Asphalt - Loved the last couple, havent had to buy any IAP's, very polished Brothers in Arms - Love call of duty games Six Guns - Could have been so good but very heavy IAP based, dont mind IAP's but the balance of what you get for completing missions compared to guns/extras/bullets is very unbalanced Gangstar - Prefer GTA. Plus the last Gangstar game seemed very heavy with IAPs Sacred Odyssey - Great old RPG type of game Order & Chaos - Incredible online RPG, used to play it tons, actually stopped because i wasnt playing any of my other apps. Wish somehow they could do an offline single player one though Modern Combat - Again a great series NOVA - Loved 1 and 2, never got into 3 that much Backstab - Really enjoyed it 9mm - Great game, played through till the end Starfront - Nice Rogue Squadron type of game Shadow Guardian - Again a very good old game I'm a huge NFL fan and was happy to see Gameloft do an NFL game but that was freemium hell. Why oh why isnt there a decent NFL game out there ! So looking at the list above i've thought the last few Asphalt games have been exceptional. Enjoy the 'call of duty' type games but most of the newer games have always been film tie-ins and i think in my view poor ones. It was the same in the 80's, so many film tie-ins and so many poor/average ones. I enjoy a lot of their old catalogue, thought those games were great and i'll probably play them more due to this thread. Order & Chaos was amazing, would LOVE an offline single player type of version though
Notice how asphalt 8 is the only game on that list that was released in the past year and a half,Rest are all from 2010 to 2012.
I know, i'm not anti-Gameloft or that just whenever i've seen a new gameloft game i just dont seem to like it. Perhaps other people are the opposite and like their new games and dislike their older ones. I'll always check out a new Gameloft game with various reviews/youtube videos etc but sadly i havent found one recently for me personally.
The reason why i put Glu in the last sentence is that i wasnt trying to compare them. I merely pointed out that Glu has been successful with the pay model, even though their games lack the balance that GL "tries" to incorporate in their games.
Yup... I guess everyone here agrees that Gameloft lost their magic. For their later releases, I really enjoyed Minion Rush and Iron Man 3, but dood the grinding is getting ridic. Asphalt 8 is fantastic. I even spent some $10 or so on it to support the game, coz quality at that point needs to be supported, while giving me a decent boost of progress into the game as well. Captain America The Winter Soldier was a pretty good game for me, until i got to a point where i cant progress farther. Maybe i just suck at the game though. But it just got deleted.
While they arnt super original they really helped the iPhone become a true gaming system. They pretty much brought clones of all the best games that everyone wanted. I'm usually not a fan of big companies just ushering out money makers to gamers but they managed to clone and push the limits of iPhone gaming at the same time. Overall I'm happy with them
My issue with Gameloft isn't really that they make clones, although that is a problem. It isn't really that they went completely freemium, though I feel that did hurt some of their games (I loved Dungeon Hunter 1 and 2). No, Gameloft's real problem is that they make by-the-numbers games without any love, polish, care. Developers who really care about gaming sweat over those things night after night, spending hours just making sure the littlest things feel right. Gameloft just ignores that stuff completely and squeezes out games that hit a few bullet points about whatever the hot genre is, then calls it a day. Oceanhorn has been mentioned a few times, but it really does sum up so much of what's wrong with Gameloft. Oceanhorn is a "gameloft-esque" clone of an existing game series. But just playing it a few minutes, you can feel that while the creators may have started with Zelda, they took it into their own direction. And they polished the heck out of it. You can feel that in every crack of that game. The graphics, framerate, music, sound, level design - all first rate. All manage to turn the game into something far, far greater than a Zelda clone. Gameloft has never put anywhere close to that level of care into anything they've ever made. And in my opinion, it shows. Constantly.
I don't think they really care about the quality of their games... especially the older ones. Older Gameloft games have so many bugs, they seem like a bad joke. The sound doesn't even work in half of them, the rest either have repeating sound effects or don't work at all. I remember not even being able to finish Sacred Odyssey thanks to a game-breaking bug. This was when it was first released, and the bug was never fixed. Aside from this, I really don't think they respect your intelligence either. Almost all their games spelled out EXACTLY where you need to go, and don't even let you think for yourself. Shadow Guardian actually tells you which ledges to climb up! Asphalt 8 shows that they're more than capable of making great games. I wish some of that greatness would spill into making their older games... functional.
I'm surprised at all of there Asphalt 8 love. The game isn't bad, but I found it to be pale shadow of Need for Speed: Most Wanted in both graphics and particularly physical. Maybe I'll give it another try when I eventually upgrade from my cramped 64gb iPad 3 to a spacious 128gb (or more?) iPad Air 2 or whatever it's called. Oh an in my post further up when I said there is a place for their kind of developer... I take that all back if all of their future games are online only.
Well forced Updates are the true necessity then, isn't it? Apple's policy should be Compatibility or App Removal.
Thanks I'd argue that broken apps are another example of Gameloft's indifference to actually making good games. Developers who care about their games would update them. They'd consider it embarrassing not to - they'd take it as a negative reflection of their own abilities, because they'd take pride in the things they create. Gameloft doesn't care. Thus, they are indifferent to having broken apps out.
I would agree with that,but I would say it's 70-30 as far as blame goes between apple and devs(not just GL).
