Soapbox: We Need More Light-Hearted Spin-Offs Like Immortals Fenyx Rising

Yes we absolutely need more games like this! It’s a terrific adventure that’s wonderful to look at and explore, and has just enough silliness to keep it kinda light. Awesome game.

It must have passed me by this one but going to play it on gamepass.

Play a scream slasher with its signature humour?... Talk about 'one and done' games.
Maybe I'd play it to unlock Courtney Cox's scream 3 fringe skin

I’ll be controversial and say I enjoyed Fenyx more than BOTW, I just found it fantastic. It looks gorgeous, the combat was on point and I loved the puzzles, even the story was fun. I thought I’d find it annoying but it was actually quite charming I found.

We definitely need more spins offs like that, instead of remakes and the 15th game in a series.

It was super fun! The first DLC I was into but the rest, meh, all good though. Waiting for the sequel

Glad that other people liked it, but I found the humor to be incredibly not funny to the point that it made the game substantially worse.

Great topic!

In a wider sense, I would love to see more light-hearted art (movies, games, books, etc).

In gaming, I see many, many games that are "trying a little bit too hard" (yes, TLoU, I am looking at you!).

Immortals was a breath of fresh air, even if the humour isn't everybody's cup of tea. But the effort, especially coming from Ubi, was very much welcomed and it showed that the developer still doesn't run out of ideas.

I certainly would love to see a sequel and I hope all the troubles within Ubi do not affect the development of new IP's.

Top 3 game for me that year. Hope they make a second one.

@Hutchieace
It's one sexy game and all the dlc too

@J_Mo_Money they are 👌🏻

@Fenbops I found botw totally boring and most of the time aimless wandering around doing boring dungeons

@HarmanSmith At least in the movie business, almost half the blockbuster movie industry is Marvel now and it is consistently light-hearted.

Totally agree. Gaming, since Western gaming took over the scene, has become one giant grimdark disaster porn experience where gamers seem to love nothing more than embracing despair at all times. Even the PS360 era's "serious" games were more 'action flick" than "arthouse depression-causing nightmare" other than anything Final Fantasy. But the tone of modern gaming has become that if it doesn't make you feel miserable by the time you're done, it's not a serious adult game. (I say this as I play Xenoblade that's sole purpose is to shatter your ability to feel, mattering not at all what friendpon say.)

Fenyx was my favorite game of Winter 2021, and one of my favorite games of the decade. It was just a fun, enjoyable, light, cometic thrill with beautiful scenery and fun gameplay.

To be honest, I'm not always a fan of Nintendo-ish games. Not in the sense of similar to BOTW like some people call this one, but I mean way too happy and innocent.

Having said that, I had this one on my list for a long time. Say what you want, but I love Ubisoft open-world games. And this one looks fun to me.
I'm super happy it's coming to Game Pass.
Blood Dragon was fun from beginning to end.

Breath of the Wild is the most overrated game in history and also the worst The Legend of Zelda 3D game.

I played this on XSX shortly after getting the console (2020) but just like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, had that annoying save game sync issue and random crashes. Hope they've fixed it now. Ubi has a tendency to stop support real quick with their games.

One of my favorite game of last year , played on the switch and will surely double dip on my series s when it comes to gamepass.

The base game was pretty fun. The humor was great (but i get it, it's not for everyone) and the gameplay was extremely fun. I didn't like the DLC that much. I agree we need more of these kind of games. So i hope Ubisoft will keep more of these kind of games, i generally like their games.

One of the reasons I've been loving a lot of indie games over the last few years is for this very reason. They actually seem to have a sense of humour. Devolver Digital published games especially.

Definitely a game I'd be interested in trying on Game Pass as it didn't do 'enough' for me to consider a Purchase at launch. In fact, its got to the point now where a game has to do a LOT more now to convince me to purchase at/near launch than ever before - not because of Game Pass, but because of price increases, state of games at launch and even the 'artstyle' can look 'cheap' too.

Its a case of being bitten too many times - trusting the marketing, trusting what the devs tell you and trusting the Publisher to release games 'WHEN' they are ready and NOT before. In some cases, you also have to trust that the 'content' you expect and have already paid up front for, will end up matching expectations. Quite a few games now 'promise' content over time and the 'base' content is not worth the admission fee at launch.

None of that really matters with Game Pass. Maybe this was 'worth' the asking price but for whatever reason, it didn't convince me it was. If/when it comes to Game Pass, I won't be looking at it from the perspective of 'I have invested 'X' money into this, it better deliver that 'value' or more to me in return'. I'll be looking at it from the perspective of does it interest me enough to try this 'now' and then let the game dictate how much of my time it occupies - the better, the more engrossed, the more immersed, the more I enjoy, the more 'time' it will fill.

If its 'not great', or it doesn't appeal to me, all I have lost is a bit of time - not time & Money!. This is also why its more important for Game Pass games to have extremely high player engagement - doesn't matter if its not the 'best' looking games - those made to hype you on Visual quality and get you to spend 'Big' money for 'mediocre' game-play. If GP games don't engage their audience, or become pretty but shallow, people will stop Subscribing and go back to 'buying' whatever other games interest them. Its perhaps more important to devs/publishers to ensure their games are 'quality' when they do go into game-pass because if people try and move on quickly, then they won't 'maximise' their return, gamers won't purchase or persuade others to try - easier to convince someone to try a 'free' game than to try something they have to fork out £50 for...

Anyway, as I said, I'll probably try this and make up my own mind about whether its a game 'worth' playing to the end or not but it was a game that didn't do enough to convince me to buy - even at sale prices...

Wholeheartedly agree! Bit of a tangent, but one of the reasons I have such fondness for Nintendo games, apart from what seems to be an ethos of encoding joy into their core gaming experiences, is they seem largely exempt from the data- and money-grabbing most contemporary games are designed around. It's absolutely refreshing to play a title like Kirby which doesn't make you read through 17 pages of privacy waivers, or ask you to create an account, or show you what's new on the store before each play session. A game's lightheartedness is compromised to varying degrees by the extent to which it does this. Immortals Fenyx Rising is a wonderful game, but it's also an Ubisoft game, which means it comes freighted with a fair amount of this transactional, anti-game poppycock (pardon the language). In this era of access to classic games via Nintendo Switch Online, PS Plus and xbox back compat, it's both shocking to see how much better games have gotten, and disheartening to see how much has been sacrificed by exposing games to the corrupting influence of monetization and data-gathering. I do miss the purity of that old feeling of dropping into a game knowing that every trace of the real world has been walled off by this hand-made interactive experience, a space where data-driven engagement metrics and capitalist, transactional progression models have not yet encroached, before every game company had its hands in our pockets while ours were busy with controllers.

@BAMozzy My friend, you may be watchful with your money, but I love how generous you are with those single quotes, and I have come to partake in your 'largesse'...

I find your viewpoint interesting because it runs counter to my experience. I'm a long-time Game Pass subscriber and find it great value for money. But a survey of my gaming history shows that when credits roll on a title, more often than not I have purchased it, rather than accessed it through one of my subscriptions. Perhaps it's just capitalism thoroughly baked into my psyche, but the game ownership dynamic seems to tether me more closely to a title and make it harder for me to move on from. Does that mean I'm having superior gaming experiences? Absolutely not. It could very well imply that I'm spending time on games I otherwise wouldn't simply because I threw some currency at them.

Anyway, I appreciate your perspective and thoroughly agree that substance over style will ultimately determine the success of any game and therefore any subscription service. The only game I've pre-ordered EVER is Horizon Forbidden West, and while I fully believed in the hype of that game because of the studio behind it and my experience playing the original, there was the added incentive of $10 off the launch price due to Sony's botching the PS5 upgrade path. I do love sticking my head out the window of a fast-moving hype train, but healthier by far to ignore the promises of marketing departments and gauge reactions from critics and fellow gamers before opening your wallet.

@Banjo- Breath of the Wild is probably my favorite game of all time? But, like any game, I can see why it's not for everyone. I'm curious... what are your top 5? Just to give your comment some context.

@HarmanSmith Ubisoft did seem to have abandoned one of gaming's most absurd and entertaining creations: Rayman. How wonderful it was to see a title like Fenyx emerge from the murderous diamond mine that Ubisoft have become. They were capable of incredible humor and creativity in the past, so it was quite refreshing to see that flame not entirely snuffed out within their stable of studios.

@nofriendo Everyone is an individual with their own unique views, opinions, values etc so things like Subscription vs Purchase will have a different impact to everyone. Some may find that they use Game Pass to 'try before they buy', knowing what they are getting, that they are 'enjoying' what was offered and willing to buy to support the Devs a bit more than Game Pass does and also know that you can 'replay' anytime whether you are still subscribed and /or the game remains in that service or not. Also you may want to 'buy' with the 20% discount when it leaves too as its much, much cheaper by then and you may of invested money in DLC etc too.

There are games that I play through, get to the end and delete having enjoyed my time. But knowing its not something I'm going to play again, not going to buy - but I've still supported the dev as they got money from me playing (maybe more if I finished the game as I hear they also offer a player engagement 'bonus' as one of the options for devs/publishers negotiating terms with MS) and its 'more' money than they would have received had I not played the game at all - because I wasn't going to buy it...

I would never buy games like the Great Escape, the Medium, The Gunk etc so they would of got 'nothing' from me - even in a sale. Now they got money because I played the game to completion on Game Pass. If this comes to Game Pass too, that's some more money coming from me that they wouldn't have received otherwise and it may lead to a purchase - maybe the game and/or DLC too.

I am someone who much prefers to buy Physical - I love opening up a brand new case, looking at the artwork and putting it on my shelf along with all my other discs. I'm someone that would buy a Disc to 'keep' playing over the Digital version too. But with the way gaming is going, it may well be better now to invest in Digital games - especially if BluRay drives become obsolete on new consoles.

Still each to their own - we are all individuals with our own preferences, budgets, circumstances and of course lifestyles (which affects the amount of gaming hours people have too). All of that factors in and why something may impact another differently to yourself...

@nofriendo That will take a long time to figure out but I will list my three favourite The Legend of Zelda games for now: Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess.

@Banjo- Man, I almost agree with you.

I don't know if it's the most overrated (maybe I wouldn't go that far), but everytime I think of BOTW I get a strong sense of discomfort!

I sure see the quality in it, but it just didn't click with me. It felt so obtuse, so "un-Zelda" (even if I respect the effort to try some new ground for the series) that I left it unfinished halfway through.

Of course, I respect everyone who loves BotW so much. But it isn't for me.

@nofriendo I sure miss Rayman.

I can't understand, for the life of me, how the Rabbids (and I have nothing against them, mind you) are still moderately thriving but Rayman got canned almost a decade ago!

Anyway, I hope Immortals gave Ubisoft's creativity a boost and we can see other titles in the same vein.

@HarmanSmith Yep, Rayman Legends is brilliant! In regard to BoTW, I say the most overrated because of reviewers praising things that they wouldn't praise so much if it wasn't a Nintendo game and the delayed Wii U game for the Switch launch. I wrote a lot about it but basically there are many things that are almost broken or missing except the exploration which is fine if you don't mind the emptiness and disappearing deer.

Of course, I respect people that love it but because of so much praise, I feel the urge to say my opinion as well.

@Banjo- Certainly can't argue with that trio. Ocarina of Time... I'll remember what it felt like to play that game for all my living days. I rate Breath of the Wild higher because it is the only other game that's managed to recreate that feeling for me, only stretched out to 550 hours and counting. Is it a much different game? Absolutely. Does it feel like the reincarnation of the soul of Ocarina of Time, just in a different body? It does to this gamer.

@nofriendo I agree with Banjo, OoT and Majora's Mask are great!

But I can't say about Twilight Princess, because that's the only one of the TLoZ 3D games I haven't tried

@nofriendo It's a totally different game but if you enjoyed it, that's what matters 😊.

@HarmanSmith Nice! I hope you play Twilight Princess someday. The Wii U remaster is awesome.