New Game+ or End Game Content?

[HoosierMarineMAK TTV]

So I have yet to give a full review of the game. After finishing my first play through I have a few good and just as many bad things to say. But ultimately I enjoyed the experience. I am curious though, there doesnt seem to be anything left to do in game aside from switching difficulties... but you can only change it so many times before that option is gone.

After spending 50 hours on my first play through, gathering all the collectibles and exploring the levels, leveling up Marines and customizing them (mostly) to my liking, I am confused on whether or not I should even have put so much effort into all of it. Also keep in mind that during that 50 hours I didnt even have a chance to read the datapad notes throughout my playthrough... only now that I have completed the game there is no way to check the datapad content without loading into a previous load file. Would be nice to have a separate menu for the extra content.

Being that there doesnt seem to be a New Game+ feature, it seems to me that all of the end game items and the grindy nature of the game has no long term benefits. I believe there are only 2 full length missions that allow you to have a 5 man squad from start to finish with the new APC. You practically rush through everything, get yelled at about picnics and camping the whole time, meanwhile your trying to weld a shelter door just for it to not become a safezone and it uses your tools anyway. The countless hours of constant roaming alien and cultist patrols was annoying. Hearing the soothing sound of your motion sensor beeping while the guy in the APC yells every 2 minutes that you have to get moving... You put up with all of that for how many hours just so none of your effort is rewarded. I'd rather have gotten nuked.

I probably shouldve done my review prior to this just so I can vent some of this frustration and refine my talking point a little bit... but lucky you get to read through this mess and deal with my issues too.

But yeah, there is very little to do with the game upon completing it. The fact that it's a story driven game I dont see it suddenly changing script just because of an increased difficulty. I mean sure, if you enjoy the story enough go ahead and play it on repeat. Not everyone is going to react that way and ultimately this will be a one and done deal. It's just long enough of a story that there is no way someone could play it and then return it on Steam. I'm hoping that further content may present itself in the future, but I dont think it's likely. NewGame+ alone would give the game a longer life cycle in my opinion...

Maybe there is a NewGame+ feature that I may not see. From what I can tell, there is nothing and you basically just go back to main menu and play the game again... I think all the difficulties are available from the start without having to complete the prior difficulty to unlock, so even if you're just in it the achievement just go to the hardest difficulty on your first playthrough, get all your quests done, and never play the game again... It's a shame because it is a really awesome game minus the other minor flaws.

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

50 hours does seem excessive, but I took twice as long to beat Elden Ring as the average person did my first time through due to excessively taking my time so I understand that.

As far as "long-term benefits" go, that's not the kind of game this is.

The point of this game is to go through a story while enjoying the tactical gameplay and management between missions. 100% exploring things is only useful to get additional lore tidbits and the like, most of which I don't even bother to read myself, and so should only be done by anyone if they feel satisfaction in completing a game thoroughly regardless of "benefit."

Ultimately there's no intrinsic benefit to beating any game 100% through, frankly.

There being a New Game+ feature or anything else doesn't matter once you put it down.

Though I do think calling the game "grindy" is a bit odd. When have you needed to "grind" in this game? I haven't had to grind at all, and have just normally explored and fought through objectives while picking things up along the way. You can unlock all of the weapons and upgrades without needing to 100% explore everything - I had every weapon unlocked by the time I got through Atmospheric Processing more or less.

As far as the hours of roaming patrols being "annoying" is concerned, dealing with them is a core part of the game mechanics. If you didn't enjoy the core game mechanics, and spent twice as long playing through the game as the average person would, I think that the game might not have been for you.

What kind of "reward" are you looking for in a single-player story-driven video game, exactly? New Game+ isn't a "reward," it's just more opportunity to enjoy the same game you already have enjoyed (perhaps with slight changes). I would enjoy a New Game+ mode in this game that switches up some objectives and item locations and such, but it isn't at all necessary for my core enjoyment of the game.

Why play the game for 50 hours if you aren't enjoying it for its own sake?

Edit: I agree with you that the game doesn't have replayability, but I don't feel like that's really an inherent flaw with this kind of game. I would rather have an enjoyable and memorable focused story than for developers to try to add replayability that cuts a lot of corners, and frankly they need to fix bugs and add some quality of life features before I want them to even think about adding more content. I do think that a New Game + option would be nice of course, but I don't see why the lack of one is such a big issue when the game itself can give you 25+ hours of enjoyment.

[Fannidan13]

I see indicators that there may be work done to add to the game. For example, the xeno research when maxed out still had two empty slots in the deployment menu and there were some elevators (or something that looked an awful lot like one) that didn't go anywhere. So the potential is there but the game has hardly been out a week, so it's unrealistic to expect a content drop or DLC within the immediate future IMO.

Also, you have to elaborate on what a new game + looks like because many games do it differently. Carry over 4 Marines between games? Start with the APC? Raise the infestation level cap? Because if you keep everything, then eventually you'd accumulate 20+ medics to just immediatly patch everyone up, everyday. That'd drastically take away from the tactical strategy of time management and forcing you to use other Marines. If you remove all the risk then the game loses a lot of its appeal IMO.

[bobisbob927]

Bro. You beat the game. Not every game need to have a bunch of time wasting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or new game+. Move on to the next game.

[HoosierMarineMAK TTV]

The "that's not the kind of game this is" comment rubbed me the wrong way honestly. I just think that's a cop-out and undermines any further meaningful discussion. Maybe my original post was poorly worded but I think my ultimate concern is the lack of replay power this game has currently. The game really just needs more content for the price.

I'll be honest I spent a majority of that time trying to take in the environments and appreciate the level designs. It's honestly a really impressive atmosphere. But I was also spending a good amount of time dealing with some really strange bugs in the game. A lot of sequences wouldnt initiate and would only work after reverting to previous load points which unfortunately were at times more than 30 minutes to an hour back in progress. It happened with nearly every mission multiple times. Quite frustrating but like I said, I havent made a full review yet so I just brushed over certain points here.

In my opinion it is in fact extremely grindy. Most of the on-ship menu options dont become available to use until much much later into the story and have a very short time to be used. Many of these options are tied to the development of your squads and their healing ability. I didnt get the training center or the ability to put troops into therapy until halfway through my playthrough. It takes so much time just have an able bodied squad with a relatively formidable armament. But the story is supposed to matter. Like without completely ruining the immersion of the story, what would a reasonable timeline of events be to complete the story in game? I just dont see a way to play this game that isnt grindy, the marines are always injured and tired so they have to heal. The only factor that even remotely keeps the timeline in perspective is the nuclear countdown clock... which I'd be curious to know if that even matters.

Just a thought now, I just think they tried to put too much emphasis of systems that are ultimately unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The marines are just one of many talking points where this is relevant. I feel that all the effort involved in the development of the marines should matter and the rewards should be substantial enough so that if they do die it's a huge loss but manageable... I mean the way the game is now, if they die you're going to be set back so far that you cant feasibly complete the game so you're gonna either revert to previous load and bypass all the frustration or just restart the campaign from start.

The reward I'm talking about is for replay-ability's sake. I only mention NewGame+ because it would help round out that long grind and make the game content more digestible. If you could start with some seasoned troops instead of always having rookies with terrible traits and inability to use good weaponry or skills... like realistically most of the late game content was underwhelming or wasnt seeing enough opportunities to be utilized. NewGame+ is just one way of making the game more dynamic and replayable.

NewGame+ wasnt my only talking point. There is nothing to do once you've beaten the game, lack of end content is absurd. Why are people even going out and buying the games when there is nothing to build off of? They could just watch a playthrough on Youtube and get the same experience for free.

I played the game for 50 hours because I do appreciate the game, I did enjoy it. This game has a lot of cool things going for it but I also would like to see improvements. It may not mean much to certain people, but $40 used to be a lot. For that price I'd personally expect to have something to look forward to after playing the game one whole time. I dont know if I stated it before, but even the difficulties are all available out the gates so there is no need to play the previous one to unlock the new challenge on the same story. I mean even DLC or something would be better than this endstate. Because ultimately now that it's done, there is nothing.

But circling back again... Not the game for me? Well I'm a Alien fan, horror sci-fi film lover, a military veteran, and a Marine at that. Who is this game made for? How is it supposed to be played? I appreciate as much as I can with what they gave us, but there is not much here after fully playing once. Not even the ability to go back and play select missions.
Ah dude, I honestly havent been in the best of health lately anyways. I should stop giving so much of myself to these damn games that wont matter when I'm gone anyway.

[HoosierMarineMAK TTV]

Originally posted by Fannidan13:

I see indicators that there may be work done to add to the game. For example, the xeno research when maxed out still had two empty slots in the deployment menu and there were some elevators (or something that looked an awful lot like one) that didn't go anywhere. So the potential is there but the game has hardly been out a week, so it's unrealistic to expect a content drop or DLC within the immediate future IMO.

Also, you have to elaborate on what a new game + looks like because many games do it differently. Carry over 4 Marines between games? Start with the APC? Raise the infestation level cap? Because if you keep everything, then eventually you'd accumulate 20+ medics to just immediatly patch everyone up, everyday. That'd drastically take away from the tactical strategy of time management and forcing you to use other Marines. If you remove all the risk then the game loses a lot of its appeal IMO.

Like I guess for me, NewGame+ if it were to be implemented should allow you to have full access to all of the features and weapons on the ship. Since they made a cutscene for the APC I dont see that transitioning over well without breaking immersion. But like I should be able to put marines in therapy and train them while I'm on missions immediately. I wanna say that those features werent available until like the 6th or 7th chapter of the story.
But even having the marines carry over or having physicians for days would be the incentive to replay and replay and replay. Would make it less likely to encourage reverting to a previous save if you knew you could replace your team in a reasonable manner. But Idk maybe there is a fair compromise out there that would be more balanced. Even something like how State of Decay 2 carries over a select few survivors and supplies between locales would work well for this game.
Currently, the cost to use the troops effectively and arm them properly is too high without completely obliterating the timeline of the story. And they already eliminate any risk or thrill in the game because if anything adversely affects your troops or the timeline you just divert to a previous save and redo everything. You can even do that to reroll the Stubborn abilities on marines if you get an unfavorable trait. But really I could care less about having NewGame+, I just really wish they did something to encourage repeat playthroughs. You cant even load older savepoints to select specific chapters in the story. It's either full restart or you load into the final boss running sequence. Idk. They just dropped the game but they should announce plans for future development sooner rather than later. Even the ability to read the datapads from the main menu would appease the lore lovers.

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

Originally posted by HoosierMarineMAK:

The "that's not the kind of game this is" comment rubbed me the wrong way honestly. I just think that's a cop-out and undermines any further meaningful discussion.

I offered plenty of other things in my discussion, but ultimately that seems most important.

You wouldn't expect a Chess game turned digital to have "New Game +," would you?

Do you expect a Sandbox game like Minecraft to need "New Game +"?

Do you expect Story-driven relatively linear games to have "New Game +"? Traditionally they do not, and while such a mode can be useful or nice it isn't remotely necessary.

There are countless games out there, in countless genres and with countless game design choices in play. Asking for a game which is designed to have the primary goal be to go through the story unlocking things as you go, to unlock everything for you from the start - is basically asking for a different game with different design principles.

Originally posted by HoosierMarineMAK:

In my opinion it is in fact extremely grindy. Most of the on-ship menu options dont become available to use until much much later into the story and have a very short time to be used. Many of these options are tied to the development of your squads and their healing ability. I didnt get the training center or the ability to put troops into therapy until halfway through my playthrough.

I don't see how any of that has anything to do with "grind."

Grind means to have to perform repetitive tasks in games in order to gain the resources, experience, or so on in a game just to be able to progress.

Or at least it means doing those tasks for some necessary purpose.

This game has none of that. You can play through levels and their objectives normally and simply grab supplies as you go, and unlock everything in the game before you finish. I played through on Normal difficulty and had no issues in this regard, and for those picking higher difficulty levels obviously they would go into that expecting to need to "grind" more or else face greater challenges.

You unlock things later on in the game because that's how progression works in games. Most story-driven games or games with tactical or even RPG elements don't give you ever single tool in the toolkit from the very start of the game, for good reason.

Originally posted by HoosierMarineMAK:

This game has a lot of cool things going for it but I also would like to see improvements. It may not mean much to certain people, but $40 used to be a lot.

I'm not sure what you mean by "$40 used to be a lot."

In 2006, MMOs like World of Warcraft commonly would charge players $15 a month to play after buying the game outright.

Games like Dead Space were amazing experiences yet only are 11-13 hours long, and yet sold at full price 10-15 years ago without any meaningful "New Game +" features or anything like that.

Over the last decade or more, tons of "AAA" developers sell us $60 piecemeal experiences with $40 of "Season Pass" DLCs and microtransactions to make a game immensely expensive.

What are you using as your metric for "a lot," anyway? Is 50 hours of enjoyment not enough for you? Because games with far less enjoyment were considered acceptable to be sold for more decades ago, and considering inflation that's saying a lot.

You can get thousands of hours of enjoyment and never pay a single dollar if you find the right free to play game you want to play. Or you can spend $60 on Dead Space and enjoy it immensely despite finishing it over a weekend.

$40 seems like a fair amount to me for a ~25 hour long well designed game like this.

[Irish Parker]

Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away? And just tell me one thing.... You're going out there to destroy them, right? Not to study. Not to bring back. But to wipe them out.

[Jack Sparrow]

Originally posted by Ellen Ripley:

Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away? And just tell me one thing.... You're going out there to destroy them, right? Not to study. Not to bring back. But to wipe them out.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ripley, get your ass back in the drop ship! And put some pants on!

[GrittySmitty762]

I can believe people are in here telling you "Not every game need to have a bunch of time wasting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or new game+. Move on to the next game." XD

First off we paid good money to play the game and have every right to want a system that delivers good replayability, this is the kind of game that would benefit greatly from a new game+ and the fact it doesnt have one is a shame (Im sure it will be added post launch assuming they intend to do post launch content). I mean you spend all this time upgrading stuff and by the time your all kitted up and ready for a real war its gg game over. There should be a nightmare new game plus mode that allows you to restart after the prologue with your same setup from the end of the game and attempt to play through the campaign again on an insane difficulty that switches things up and leaves little room for mistakes with squads armed to the teeth with the best gear. And maybe even add some new tech and equipment into the nightmare new game+ mode to work towards.

[Dattaffer]

Bugs that won't let you complete the game:
-Infantry gets stuck in boxes and doesn't move
- In one mission saves in the shelter do not work
- She can randomly crush
-If you do not know in advance that in the last mission a giant xenomorph can be stopped with a shotgun, then he will catch you all the time. In my case, this was the last straw and I deleted the game and watched ending on YouTube.
-The icons on the screen, announcing the objectives of the mission, cover the buttons, the ability to upgrade the marines, .Several times the "Back" button simply disappeared from the screen and I could not get out of the description of the marine. (In the barracks menu)
The games of these companies are now on my black list.
p.s
Oh yeah, no new game plus, so you get a few marines to level 9-10, the rest will be 6-7 and that's it. WHY ARE YOU GIVING LEVEL 1 RECRUITES IN THE LATEST MISSIONS!?!?

Half of the upgrades in the armory and laboratory are useless. More precisely, they are logical and their existence is justified. But they are not useful in practice.

I was hoping for a new game plus to the end, but glitches and flaws just pissed me off. I haven't regretted my wasted time this much in a long time. This game is trash.
Game will choke you, giving hope for interesting gameplay at least at the end, but the end comes faster than the game reveals itself.
I would give her the "Most Misguided Expectations of the Year" award.
p.p.s
Sorry for the emotions, but I really seem to have been deceived for my own money and time.

[Anubis °-^]

A new Game Plus can be very cool.

[MrSelfDestruct20]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. How can anyone be so dismissive of someone expecting an alternate game mode? It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ REAL TIME STRATEGY GAME. Custom skirmish modes are a pretty common feature in RTS games and this one happens to lack it, so I think that it's pretty reasonable to question the absence of one.

[kordelas]

Originally posted by MrSelfDestruct20:

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. How can anyone be so dismissive of someone expecting an alternate game mode? It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ REAL TIME STRATEGY GAME. Custom skirmish modes are a pretty common feature in RTS games and this one happens to lack it, so I think that it's pretty reasonable to question the absence of one.

Expecting something which was not promised is unreasonable regardless what other games have.
But it can be put on some wish list by those who want to have it.