4 Games You (Probably) Skipped at Launch That Are Now Worth Playing

Rainbow Six Siege

According to Steam Charts, Rainbow Six Siege had over 116,054 players playing the game this past month, an impressive number considering that the game only averaged around 7,000 players when the game came out back in December 2015. The rocky launch of Rainbow Six Siege may have put off a lot of gamers, but with the continued support from Ubisoft, Rainbow Six Siege became one of gaming’s crazier success stories.

The game has seen plenty of improvements since its lackluster launch. Rainbow Six Siege boast stable servers, new maps, a fun zombie mode, and twice as many operators than it had when it first came out. Ubisoft is currently enjoying a lot of goodwill from its community with an implementation of handing out permanent bans for players who use hate speech on PC. With a long-term focus on gameplay and quality-of-life improvements, now is the perfect time to jump in on Rainbow Six Siege if you didn’t at launch.

This post was originally written by Jose Aranda.

Warframe

Warframe first released way back in 2013, but its fanfare wasn’t as loud as it is now. This free-to-play game launched with around 10,000 players and has steadily increased in size since then. Warframe had its highest player count back in March 2018, with a total of 129,002 players on PC. Warframe has added a substantial amount of content during its four years of live development.

The level progression, movement, and melee mechanics have seen major improvements to the point that this game is nearly unrecognizable to what it was back in 2013. The War Within and Second Dream updates add much-needed story development to Warframe since it was light on the story when it first came out. There is also an open world area called Plains of Eidolon, which allows players to explore its content without having to be on a specific mission.

Street Fighter V

Street Fighter V launched in a really bad state. The online portion of the game had awful connectivity and stability issues, making it unplayable for some players. There was also a lack of single-player modes and a rather small roster of characters. Capcom has since fixed these issues. Street Fighter V is constantly getting a never-ending stream of updates including stages, skins, music, and limited time events and missions.

Survival mode saw the most improvement since launch. Battle Goods can be used to give an advantage or improve the chances of winning the next round. Unlike Battle Supplements, Battle Goods are consumable items, meaning they will disappear once used. Once the player loses during Survival mode, the player would have to start over, but with the recent updates, the player now has a chance to continue after a loss. Fight Money, which is a part of the in-game currency, can be used to save progress to allow the player to resume at a later date. The game is far improved now than what it was at launch, and certainly deserves a second shot.

No Man’s Sky

To say that No Man’s Sky initial launch was a disaster would be an understatement. For a while, after the game came out, there was a lot of talk about how disappointing the game was. It took Sean Murray and his team at Hello Games over two years to finally speak to the media about what happened at launch and the current state of the game. Through a couple of updates, Hello Games managed to win back some of its player base and provide possibly the best redemption story of 2018.

The most recent update for No Man’s Sky, called Next, is a major overhaul adding multiplayer, character customization, command Freighters, and more. Players can now team up with strangers or friends to explore, build bases, and dogfight together. The new character customization allows players to choose different avatars so they can have the appearance that they want. Hello Games has added more story-based content through missions that are used to teach players how to play this new updated version of the game. There’s so much content to dive into now, and the game even looks better visually. Multiplayer adds new depth to the gameplay, and is certainly worth checking out now.