Arcane Studios’ long-awaited co-op open-world shooter Redfall has become the most disappointing release of 2023. This is evidenced by both reviews from critics and feedback from players at the venues.

A side note: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom breaks all OpenCritic records

The much-anticipated Redfall officially went on sale at the beginning of May. Given the state the game industry is in right now, and Bethesda’s love of releasing “raw games”, no one really expected miracles from Redfall. And it was the only right decision.

The Gamer notes that Redfall, a few days after its release, is ranked 14th in Steam’s anti-rating of games: as of this writing, the game has only 32% positive reviews out of 1,605, which is a simply disastrous result. Although, it’s also an achievement of sorts…

redfall

The game was criticized simply for the developers’ boorish attitude towards the players, because it was released absolutely not ready: there are multiple bugs, graphical flaws, boring open world, monotonous mission structure, simply boring AI, and most importantly – horrible optimization on next-generation XBOX, where the game can only be launched at 30 FPS. Well, it would have been a great April Fool’s joke, but it’s the middle of May, and there are still no patches that could fix at least some of the problems.

On MetaCritic, the game scored 54 out of 100 – a result that is also extremely modest for a AAA project. It’s very sad to realize and compare all these facts, because in its time Arcane developed Dishonored, which almost immediately became a favourite for both players and critics (97% positive reviews on Steam, 91/100 on MetaCritic).

Phil Spencer, head of XBOX, has taken the blame and assured fans that the developer and publisher will continue to release patches, thus getting rid of the problems that currently exist.

I know that this game is worth $70, and I take full responsibility for the release of this game, which should be great. We let a lot of people down with this release, but we’re not giving up. That is the essence of creativity, we will continue to work on the mistakes.

Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

Now, after such a disappointing release, we can only trust the words of the developers to support and polish the game to a better look, and hope that the other major project from Bethesda, Starfield, release scheduled for September 6, will not disappoint the gaming community as much.

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