2024 is a weird year for gaming. We've had surges of positive player feedback from developers and publishers who made amazing games like Warhammer: Space Marine 2 and Black Myth: Wukong.
There have been games that started strong, like Helldivers 2, and some dominated their platforms, like Astro Bot. Then there are games such as Concord and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, which failed to meet player expectations and fell hard.
Unfortunately, Unknown 9: Awakening belongs to the second group, with a low user score of 1.8 on Metacritic. It seems similar to recent gaming flops: modern graphics with mediocre mechanics and abysmal storytelling. While Unknown 9: Awakening is similar to some modern games, it is also the perfect example of what Final Fantasy did wrong over twenty years ago.
Related: The Nintendo Switch Playtest Program Got Leaked Because of Course It Did
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a CGI film released in 2001. Spearheaded by Square Pictures, the film used the most advanced graphics rendering systems at the time and had almost 1000 workstations rendering all of the film frames.
The movie was a huge feat in graphics and visuals, considering that the tech from 20 years ago is so far from what is available to everyone nowadays. The Spirits Within had a budget of $137 million and became a box-office bomb, grossing only $85.1 million. It's all bells and whistles, with nothing substantial regarding the story and plot.
Unknown 9: Awakening's total budget isn't yet confirmed, but using the latest Unreal Engine 5 is one of the game's most prominent features. Similar to The Spirits Within, having all the latest raytracing and visuals that tech can offer does not make a good product.
The game was so poorly received that one Reddit comment mentioned that it is "horrible garbage beyond comprehension." Some have started comparing the game to Concord and using Concord as a unit of measure to rate terribly-made games, with one Steam player saying it is a "Concord-class catastrophe."
As I started writing this article, Unknown 9: Awakening had a 1.9 user score on Metacritic, which dropped to 1.8 before I finished. It is terrible to see a game's Metacritic score drop lower in real time.
Unknown 9: Awakening's 285 players at launch showcase that many players are unaware of the title and will spend no time exploring the game if the mechanics and narrative are not what they want to see and play.
With thousands of other better games, modern gamers will always have a choice and will undoubtedly play games with better storytelling and mechanics. 2D games such as Stardew Valley and Balatro do not have these amazing 3D graphics but manage to charm the gaming community. Minecraft uses hundreds of basic-looking blocks, yet it continues to thrive.
Unknown 9: Awakening suffered a terrible launch, and based on the current SteamDB charts showing less than 100 concurrent users, it would appear that it will stay that way.
Gaming in 2024 is a testament to history repeating itself. Whether it's hollow products that look nice on the outside or unexpected titles that became popular due to their quality, modern gamers have seen almost everything.
Gameplay over graphics should be developers' mantra heading into 2025.
With the 2024 Golden Joystick Awards already on the horizon, it is up to the gaming community to decide which games of 2024 are worthy to be played.
READ MORE: All the Golden Joystick Award 2024 Nominees
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