Gareth writes: "So here we are with the penultimate episode in the deeply political and highly intriguing saga which is The Council. The writers and developers have an even trickier job this time round than with the last episode, which was the complicated middle chapter. Here they have to set up most of the exposition and narrative to let the finale fully blossom. So how does it fare? Does it get the taste buds wet with anticipation or is it like a vegan sausage... alright, but a bit of a disappointment?"
Erin McAllister of GameGrin reviews the episodic game The Council, writing: "The Council, an episodic, narrative-focused game from French developer Big Bad Wolf, has exactly what I crave. Set in the late 18th century, The Council follows one Louis De Richet on a quest to find his missing mother, Sarah. On this adventure, he must deal with a mysterious island and the secrets of its owner, one Lord Mortimer, and the various other guests staying there. As you explore the island and its looming manor, you can unravel each character’s motivations as well as find clues as to the truth of Sarah’s whereabouts."
I stumbled upon this game on the store. Tried the free 1st chapter, got hooked ,bought the game. One of the best game with choices I played. It's discounted on the PS4 store, it's a steal
Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines II is still six months away, but a game is already available that might fulfil those cravings.
There's nothing better than getting lost in someone else's world
you can give a BIG thanks to Sony and the PS series for keeping quality single player games alive. special mention goes to ninty too. shame on anyone that says single player games don't have influence like before.
As I get older I prefer games with stories with a little more nutrition. They don't have to be way deep but they beat fun games that are shallow for me personally. There's a space for junk food gaming, don't get me wrong but over the years the games that have stayed in my memories and were good/great experiences tend to have compelling stories.
Prey and Deus Ex HR were awesome. Yes more immersive sims! :)
Why the disagrees :\
right? Ultra linear movie stories are cool and all but nothing beats the illusion of choice. You can do ultra linear narratives in any medium, it's the immersive sims that are unique to games. It's not a narrative that is limited by an open world, it tells the story through open ended atmospheric gameplay. Bioshock 1 is still king of storytelling to me.
This is what I am talking about.
Thank you Ken Kutaragi.
Thank you Yu Suzuki!
Shinji Mikami and H Kamiya.
Thank you Team ICO and Mr. Ueda and Japan Studio for telling stories through real time gameplay.
Thank you H Kojima.
Thank you Naughty Dog.
Thank you Sony Santa Monica.
Thank you Quantic Dreams and Super Massive.
Thank you SIE WW Studios.
The champions of storytelling through gameplay! The true game changers.
Without these guys video games will still be rrlegated and dismissed as a childs plaything... but no more!
Its one thing to design gameplay but to tell a story through gameplay is no easy task and takes alot of creativity, risk, time, effort and costs. Its not your simple kiddie eyecandy games anymore.
And these games geard towards adults are criticized the hardest compared to kiddie games which does not need complex storytelling skills to appeal to kids.
A score of 10 for God of War can not be compared to a 10 for a Pokemon game.
you forgot to thank the coalition, 343, moon studios, comcept and especially nintendo. All of which helped contribute to the single player story driven games of this generation. Cheers all around.
I’m sorry the coalition and 343 have not made a compelling story yet and the only thing they have done is take the game series of other developers and not lived up to the standard of the previous games
Well said, SuperSonic. Sony has really well and truly helped pioneer this concept. Nintendo opened the door, Sony joined. They are the corporations to thank! :)
You are very very welcome. 😁
Sony is making sure SP storytelling games are here to stay and thrive.
They worked very hard during the PS3 era with Uncharted and TLOU, GOW, Gravity Rush, etc now we and they are reaping the benefits.
Forget? I don't think he can name everybody, but Sakaguchi is surely someone to note!
Yoko Taro too. An anomaly under Square Enix, as they seem to have lost the plot. (pun intended)
There will always be single player games because there will always be some demands for it.
But saying it's alive and well is like saying being a singer is a good career choice because Taylor Switf make millions.
"Yet if we harken back to late 2016, both Dishonored 2 and Watch Dogs 2 failed to set registers ringing despite receiving a positive critical reception (here at WellPlayed we gave them a 9 and 8.5 respectively), with critics labelling poor release timing and an underwhelming predecessor (in Watch Dogs’ case) as reasons for a severe dip in game sales.
Fast-forward another twelve months and all of Prey, The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus suffered from underperforming sales despite reviewing well. EA had closed down Visceral Studios, cancelling their highly-anticipated Star Wars game with it because EA believed the game was too linear and wouldn’t reap the profits it would from a season pass and microtransaction-infested multiplayer title."
What has in common Red Dead2, God of War and Spiderman 4?
They had tons of exposure, media articles, hype and publicity
What has in common all the rest?
There are plenty of well reviewed multiplayer only games that have failed too, pointing out examples of SP games that didn't succeed doesn't mean anything.
Then please name some well-received AAA multiplayer game released in 2018 that failed
"Just for your info, crappy Fallout 76 and BF5 are in the top 50 games sold on ps4 in 2018"
Fast forward to now and tell me why most of the game of the years of this gen and last gen were sp games. . . Please don't say flukes. . .
That's not really disproving his point though considering there's been more SP games that have also failed as the OP is saying.
Even the SP games that have been nominated for GOTY is exactly what Onion is saying that they all have in common, huge hype, tons of exposure, big media behind it and lots of publicity. Doesn't leave much room for any other SP game to shine and possibly get that coveted GOTY award.
Your argument is ridiculous because not every single player game is going to succeed just like not every mp game is going to succeed. We have had more single player successes than failures this gen to prove that single player is here to stay. Horizon,Spider-Man,gow,Uc 4,breath of the wild, Mario odyssey all did ten plus million while Detroit,ratchet and clank,bloodborne,infamous second son,killzone shadow fall,witcher 3,ac origins and odyssey,far cry 5 etc have all sold millions of copies too.
Most of my comment came from the article itself mentioning that a lot of single player game suffers from underperforming sales despite reviewing well.
But since single player is so healthy, I'm sure you can answer us why a publisher like Activision went from publishing 10 to 20 titles prior to 2015 to now only 2 in 2018 (COD and Spyro) or why Konami one of last gen Pioneer in single playing game stopped making game (except winning eleven in Japan)?
Maybe they wanted more money and sp games weren't given Activision that. With konami I can only assume bad management. It happens. Again. . Why are most of the goty awards hype related instead of quality related.
You guys are cherry picking the hype metric like multiplayer games have no hype even though they tend to sell more and have loads of hype like pubg or a number of the free to play games that also underperform. Maybe just maybe as the gaming consumers age is on average is getting older, so are their tastes. Games like Detroit, persona 5. Nioh, gravity rush relied on quality driven hype. People knew way less about those games than they did a horizon or God of war. Using hype as your reason doesn't explain why the smaller lesser known titles have been revered. I shouldn't have to disprove a disprove. The article is there to be disproved.
Quality. . Some people prefer one and done more often over seasonal games. There's space for both but it's clear sp and story driven games are just as important as they've ever been. There will be sp games that aren't up to scratch and they can suffer but that isn't unique to sp games.
The answer to your question is because both of those companies are not being run well by leadership. Konami even last gen was mostly known for just mgs and pes and with Kojima gone they don’t know what to do with metal gear so they haven’t been a bastion of single player for a long time. Activision might have had token campaigns for COD until the most recent one but ever since COD hit big they’ve been mostly focused on MP games with throwaway campaigns and token single player games with no effort put into them. Dont you find it funny how much trouble activision is in nowadays because of their business choices? Single player is alive and healthy which dozens upon dozens of games these last two or three years have shown.
