QC Done

Author: A.K.H.

  • Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess – Review

    This week, I was originally planning to do a 15-minute rant about subscription price hikes, but that felt boring even as I was writing the script. Then, I kept seeing a lot of praise online for this new title on xbox game pass called Kunitsu-Gami Spirit of the goddess. Developed by Capcom, it is an Action Strategy game, and it can even be called a tower defense game, except instead of a tower, you are defending a Maiden. That’s what the game’s description calls her by the way.

    As usual, here’s a summary if you’re not going to watch the video: Path of the Goddess is a must-play if you’re the sort of gamer who wishes we ought to see new ideas in the market. Well, here’s one of the industry giants experimenting with a new-ish idea, with a heavy dosage of Japanese culture and some really well-designed, action-packed levels. It’s a visual feast, and the strategy part of the game is kept simple enough to appeal to a wider audience. The game definitely struggles to maintain the pace towards the end, and involves a lot of backtracking in order to progress efficiently, but overall it is a quite excellent title that is one of the more interesting releases in 2024 so far.

  • Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn – Review

    If you’re not going to watch the entire video, here’s the summary: Flintlock The Siege of Dawn is the perfect 7 out of 10 game to play on Xbox game pass. The story is forgettable, and exists only to lead you from one boss fight to the next. The gameplay loop is a bit of an interesting mix between melee and ranged combat which you may or may not like. Everything else about the game is really average, but since it is quite short, you might consider investing some time in this if you don’t have anything else to play at the moment. Now on to the full review.

    This was originally going to be an early impressions video for Flintlock the siege of dawn, similar to videos I’ve done for The First Descendant and Zenless Zone Zero earlier this month. I only made early impressions videos for those two previous games because I wasn’t too interested to finish them. But halfway through my playthrough of Flintlock, I realised that I was actually interested to finish the game, and that’s what I did. It helped that the game is quite short, and I was able to finish it in a little over 7 hours. And these days, if I’m able to finish a game, I consider it to be at least a decent game. That’s what Flintlock is – a really decent game, which has a few moments of fun, but is wrapped in such a mediocre package that the 7 out of 10 scores that it is getting seem justified. Before we get into the details, here’s a warning that this review will include some spoilers from the game, and while I don’t show any footage from the later stages of the game, I do talk a little about the final boss, without going into too many details.

  • Battle Passes: A Deep Dive

    Earlier this month, the developers of the popular Battle Royale game, Apex Legends announced that they would make significant changes to its battle pass model starting in the game’s upcoming season 22. In short, they are going to remove the ability for players to purchase a battle pass using in-game currency, and they are going to introduce two battle passes per season, each costing $10 USD.

    At the time of recording this, neither EA or Respawn have commented on the community backlash, but a lot of people expect one of two things to happen. One, the developers will come back with an apology and announce a slightly better plan, which was supposed to be the original plan all along, and this controversial plan which no one likes was only meant to make the original plan feel better. We have seen this happen many times before. Or two, the controversial plan will actually be implemented, because the developers know that the people complaining online are only a vocal minority, and the majority of the player base will continue playing the game and maybe even buy a lot of these new battle passes.

    Either way, it’s not really a good time to be playing Apex Legends as your main game. A lot has already been said about this controversial update and I don’t really want to to discuss more about that in particular. Moving on from that controversy, this made me think a lot about battle passes as a whole. Battle passes as a business model in video games have become so common that we are no longer surprised to see them in most new games these days. They started gaining popularity because they offered what we thought was a good alternative to lootboxes, because you always knew what you were buying with your money, unlike lootboxes where you paid money without knowing what you would get in return.

    But little did we know that the battle pass system would bring problems of its own, and the sad thing is, we currently don’t have a replacement system in sight. In this video, let’s spend a little time looking into the origins of this monetisation model, why publishers and developers are so reliant on it, and how it hurts the consumers in the long term.

  • Zenless Zone Zero Early Impressions

    Zenless Zone Zero is the latest major release by the well-known Chinese game developer and publisher, MiHoYo. The company gained worldwide fame through their breakout hit Genshin Impact, and followed it up with Honkai: Star Rail, which was also a huge hit, although probably not on the same scale as Genshin Impact. Now ZZZ has managed to score over 50 million global downloads in less than a week after its launch. So the game is certainly off to a great start, but what awaits players behind all the hype?

    If you are not going to watch the video, here’s the summary: ZZZ is a stylish action game that is designed to be played in short bursts. The game has got excellent production values, and a decent gameplay loop, but the outdated gacha monetisation model will feel tedious to anyone who has not played similar games in the past, or prefers the more modern approach of simply buying what you want without having to depend on RNG.

  • The First Descendant Early Impressions

    The best thing about free to play games is that you don’t really need to watch or read a review. You can go try it out yourself, because they are free. But even free to play games ask you to invest something far more valuable than money to play them, and that is your time. So it might still be worth it to look at the reception to a game before you decide to invest time in it, especially in a long-term title like the first descendant.

    Initially, I was going to play this for a good 3-4 hours and then put up an early impressions video, but I barely made it past one hour before realising that this game isn’t really for me. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game of course, it just means I’m not part of the game’s target audience.

    If you’re not going to watch the video, here’s a summary: the game is technically a really good product, it looks great, all the systems work well with each other, and there is enough depth to keep you playing for a long time. But what may turn you off, like it did in my case, is the mediocre gameplay, heavy focus on monetisation, and most important of all, the mere thought of investing multiple years in a new live service title seems exhausting. If you’re someone who is eager to find a game to adopt as your main game for several years, then sure, this title may be worth a look. Even then, I would suggest to be a bit cautious, because free to play projects are more likely to be shut down if they don’t get a good reception in their first few months on the market.

  • World 4-1: Channel Update

    World 4-1: Channel Update

    Welcome to the fourth season of QC Done. At the beginning of the previous season, I said I wanted to answer the question, what can I do to make the videos useful to a broader audience? The generic answer to this is simple: make videos that people want to watch, and your channel will get lots of views. This is an open secret. But…I chose the harder way of first making videos that I like, and then try to match them with people who would also like to watch those kinds of videos. Most of the time, such an approach will be very slow to show results. But eventually, it does show results.

    I’m happy to report that in the previous season, this channel got its first batch of small scale hits. Four videos got more than a hundred views, with two of them crossing five hundred views. That’s huge for this channel, because as you can see, the rest of the top ten videos in the same time period got less than 20 views. The four hits gave me enough data to answer the question, what can I do to make the videos useful to a broader audience, while continuing to make videos that I like?

    And the answer is that I can continue making videos about games or topics that I like, and some of them will definitely match up with games or topics that people are searching for on YouTube. But there are also clearly a lot of other games or topics that I make videos on, which no one really cares about; so the best thing I can do is to only publish videos when I’m confident that the video’s subject has some public appeal. More details in the video.

  • Warframe: Jade Shadows – Casual Impressions

    I have been playing Warframe on and off again since 2017. Usually, I return whenever there is a major update and see what’s changed. This time, the update wasn’t really a major one, considering that the main quest associated with it was just 30 minutes long, but that quest involved playing as the Stalker, an interesting character tormenting us for a long time. So I was quite eager to check out Jade Shadows, which is the 36th mainline update for Warframe.

  • Looking Back At Q2-2024

    Another three months have rolled by, and we are already nearing the end of Q2-2024. Let’s have a look at what happened in the past three months in the gaming industry.

  • Are Netflix Games Any Good?

    Netflix has games? Not a lot of people seem to know this, but the subscription service now has close to a hundred games to download and play on mobile and tablet devices. Even multiplatform games like GTA San Andreas and Hades are now included as part of this catalogue, further blurring the line between mobile and PC/Console games. Studios like Ubisoft are even developing games exclusively to be added as part of Netflix’s catalogue. So in this video, I try five games chosen randomly from the Netflix games catalogue, to see whether the service is actually worth the price of admission.

  • Long Lasting Live-Service Games

    Recently, Destiny 2 wrapped up a major storyline that started with the release of Destiny 1 all the way back in 2014. The series doesn’t celebrate its tenth anniversary until September 2024, but for the sake of this video, let’s just say Destiny has been around for ten years. It’s a long time to remain invested in one franchise, and understandably, a lot of community members are feeling emotional about the last ten years. Whether it is the fond memories of playing the two games in the franchise, or just regret over the all the time wasted playing the games, emotions are running high right now.

    That got me wondering – what other live service games are out there which have been around for such a long time, and are still receiving frequent updates today? So it’s time for another list.