GF365 Mailbag: Elden Ring, It Takes Two, American McGee’s Alice, and more
Greetings, readers! This is your friendly neighborhood Mailbag Man at the GF365 Department of Fan Mail. From time to time, we get emails and messages from fans on social media. So we thought: why not put together a feature with some of the more interesting questions and comments?
Anyway, the Department of Fan Mail doesn’t run itself. So let’s get to the first message!
–Mailbag Man
In your article reporting that It Takes Two sold 5 million copies, you said that “we’re talking about a game that has been played by over 10 million people.” So is it 5 million or 10 million?
According to developer Hazelight Studios, the game sold over 5 million copies. The 10 million comes from the fact that the game requires you to play co-op. Of course, not everyone who bought the game played the game. But these sales numbers also do not include Xbox Game Pass subscribers who played the game for free. So undoubtedly more than 10 million people have played it.
American McGee’s Alice has a lot of potential as a TV show. It captures the imagination in a darker way that is almost Tim Burton-esque. Is he involved in the project?
For readers who aren’t aware, a new TV series based on American McGee’s Alice was announced. It’s based on the game that was released on PC in 2000. The game also has a well-received sequel, Alice: Madness Returns. David Hayter is working on the new TV show.
We don’t have any indication that Tim Burton is involved in any way, but he did direct Disney’s 2010 live-action film Alice in Wonderland. So he does have a strong connection to the material. We’d certainly welcome his involvement.
Elden Ring is receiving perfect or near-perfect scores on other sites. Have you ever given a game a perfect score?
In prior iterations of Game Freaks 365, we used a 10-point scale. In fact, that system was in place from 2003 until 2019. Since we have switched to a new system, we have yet to give out a perfect score. We have previously explained why we moved to a five-point scale.
Drew debated giving Elden Ring a 5 but ultimately settled on a 4.5 out of 5. “While I don’t think it’s a perfect game, Elden Ring is in the upper echelon of FromSoftware games,” he wrote in his review.
The score is 8.5 out of 5? Is Lost Odyssey that good?
Speaking of reviews, we got another question related to our review of Lost Odyssey. The page – which has since been updated – had the score listed as 8.5 out of 5. That would indeed be an impressive score, but it is an error. As mentioned above, the site moved to a five-point scale in 2019. Some of our older reviews did not get their scores updated to the new scale. Oops!
Just finished Dishonored….might be a 10/10 for me tbh. I guess the ending was slightly underwhelming, and the AI wasn’t that smart, but these are super small nitpicks that don’t really take away from the overall fantastic experience.
Dishonored holds up well all of these years later. It’s one of our favorite games in Bethesda’s large catalog of franchises. Microsoft was smart to snatch them up.
As a Beta player in Destiny 1, this is the most complete the game has ever felt. Only missing better paths for leveling to end game entirely solo. Also PvP and Gambit need to be addressed although admittedly, I do not play them unless I have to, but that part of the Destiny community needs something to do.
We tip our hat to the fine folks at Bungie for sticking with Destiny 2 this long. It has had staying power much longer than expected.
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