Scalebound Deserves A Second Chance

thegamer.com:

For years, Scalebound was one of the few reasons many owned an Xbox One. Sunset Overdrive had provided temporary respite during the exclusive drought, while others clung onto the hope that 343 Industries would finally deliver with Halo 5: Guardians. But above all the timed exclusives, car games, and gruff space marines, one title from PlatinumGames promised to turn the tides, to provide a game so good that we couldn’t play anywhere else. Scalebound could have commanded the world, but then it was cancelled.

It’s a shock that Microsoft is still dragged for on a regular basis, despite Platinum coming out and declaring that there was blame on both sides, and the complications that came with collaborating with a company such as Microsoft lead the project to balloon in ambition before eventually falling victim to such intentions. It was a game that wanted to be everything, with many of its core mechanics reflecting trends at the time it didn’t have a chance at fulfilling. Four-player co-op, an open world, plenty of loot, tablet functionality, and more were touted as features that would make Scalebound superior to any game that came before it. With Hideki Kamiya at the helm, we were silly to deny that this couldn’t become a reality.

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I still remember the infamously messy live demo at E3 2016 that saw four players taking on a huge spider-like creature with movement that felt slow and clumsy, while combat failed to express the level of finesse we’d come to expect from games like Vanquish or Bayonetta. Compared to the last showcase, which saw our protagonist exploring an open world with a dragon by his side, this instance of the game looked very rough. It felt like