Gaming hot takes?
Gaming hot takes?
Any weird/controversial opinions? I'll start. Before the remake, the best version of Resident Evil 4 was the Wii version. The Wiimote controls old Resi's tank controls better than any other controller at the time. The PC version had a bunch of little bugs and detractors that the Wii version just doesn't have.
I'll extend this by saying that the Wiimote is actually pretty damn good for shooters, and particularly good for accessibility. Not having to cramp up my hands to press buttons is awesome for having arthritis. Aiming with the Wiimote and moving with the nunchuck just feel really natural, you barely have to move your fingers for anything.
Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t a good game. Everything is ridiculously time consuming, buggy, and slow for no reason. Painstaking attention to detail on insane things nobody will ever see or care to look at (like horse balls shrinking in cold weather) is not a good enough reason to be considered a good game.
This is a good one, I salute you! RDR2 is one of my favorite games of all time, I had to clutch my pearls for a minute there!
Great world, terrible game.
This is the perfect take. As soon as I unlocked the open world, I hunted all the legendary animals, got all the cool gear, upgraded my weapons, and that was pretty much the end of it. I played like 3 more missions and they were all boring time consuming garbage.
I feel like modding is sometimes a good answer to situations where a developer has spent a lot of money creating assets, but the gameplay that they made with those assets is limited.
I wonder if there's potential for ways to try to take commercial advantage of that, like have another developer basically bulk-license the assets from an existing game and then just produce new gameplay. I can't really think of many examples off the top of my head. Some commercial FPS mods, but usually they make larger changes than to just gameplay.
I feel dirty for upvoting your objectively wrong opinion, but you earned it!
I always hated complex combo systems in fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter. Fighting games shouldn't be about being able to input 50 super precise key combinations in the span of 1.5 seconds. It should be about positioning, timing, improvisation... Guilty gear strive and super smash bros is proof of this. Every game that gatekeeps new players for not memorizing the built-in combo that takes 60% of your opponent's HP feels like it's still stuck in the 90's arcade game era. Most fighting game series refuse to move forward. There, I've said it.
This is why Smash Bros is the goat.
Low barrier for entry but super high skill ceiling.
I've always wanted to get into fighting games but I never really have because of this exactly. It feels like a chore to learn all the combos and the fighting feels weird and stiff to me because of them.
I think the combos in Street Fighter are already too much.
How should I twist the stick to make the special attack for this character? Hold on, pause the game so I can look up. Oh, I filled up the ultra attack meter, let me check how to perform it for this character.
They should just adopt the control scheme they implemented for Ryu in Smash Bros. Forward + B for Hadouken, Up + B for Shuriyuken, etc.
I loved Final Fantasy Dissidia for this. Every character has the same basic controls, and the abilities are totally customizable. So I'd make general schemes the same across everyone.
Guilty Gear Strive and smash have these combos though, and just like street fighter they aren't required to do well at beginner levels(even at higher levels you can get by with basic bnb combos).
The main thing fighting games need to do better is teach new players, as it isn't clear what you should be learning as a beginner. That's probably why so many people think its combos they have to learn.
Fighting games should not be QTE
The other things you mentioned, “positioning, timing and improvisation” are all infinitely more important in every fighting game when compared to combos. Long complex combos don’t matter if you can’t land a hit.
If the only combo you know is a 3-hit combo that does 20% HP, and your opponent has a 15-hit combo that does 70% HP, then you just need to hit the opponent 5 times while avoiding getting hit 2 times. If your spacing, reactions, and adaptation are much better than your opponent’s, you can win consistently.
Of course there’s always gonna be different variables when it comes to stuff like specific game knowledge, but that’s usually not as much a skill issue as it is a knowledge check. In the end, stronger fundamentals will always reward you more in the long-run.
@simple @LeylaaLovee I think where we are now with fighting games is exactly where it should stay. Auto combos and modern controls make it so the bar to entry is super low, but they need to be scaled down so that they do less damage and the incentive should always be learn pure combos to get better. At the end of the day there's no interesting high level play if you can press a button three times and do 30% damage.
Paradox Interactive is eventually going to release so many DLC that they eventually collapse inward from their own gravity and implode, taking the company's future with them.
They're basically in an arms race against The Sims
And now they'll have their own Sims game, so they'll be going into overdrive.
That isn't a hot take though, everyone and their mother makes jokes about how many DLC there is for Paradox Interactive games.
Here's the real hot take -> I don't mind the amount of DLC on Paradox Interactive games. Every game of their I've played was really good on its own, and I only buy any DLC after I've poured tens of hours into the main game, usually not because I feel like anything was lacking from the main game, but just because I want an excuse to keep playing it. So for all I care, they can keep making all the DLC they want if the base games keep being this good.
Honestly whenever I see a game on sale for <$20 and I open it only to see 5+ DLCs that increase the price, I just close the page and move on without even bothering to research whether or not I should buy the DLCs. Fuck that mess.
Perhaps Steam could use a "price of game+aggregate DLC" sorting/filtering option.
People who get video game burnout or say gaming is dead or whatever are victims of AAA marketing.
Most of the time I see posts like this they complain that they bought all the newest games with great reviews and aren't having any fun. Normally it's Sony games and other cinematic experience kind of games. Or they are games that they put 100's of hours into. They are doing the same stuff over and over and getting bored.
Unfortunately critics care more about production values and polish than novel game mechanics. Plenty of interesting games get overlooked due to being a little weird or not fitting in modern game conventions. If you only play the big budget AAA stuff you are going to get burnt out because they all copy each other trying to be the next "big game". If you play games that get bad reviews, have weird mechanics, or do something different you won't get burnt out. I like to recommend the Gravity Rush games to people who have a playstation and are burnt out on the "cinematic" games. They typically have never heard of it and end up having a blast with them. Makes me sad when I see people still buying games based on metacrtic scores. They miss out on so much.
I know this post is about games specifically, but this is so true about all media. It's wild how many people bemoan how "bad" movies/tv/music/etc is, when it's super obvious their only frame of reference is mainstream media that's mostly doing the same thing all the time. If they took a look just once at indie content creation, they'd see there's so much cool stuff out there. But their so locked into the "right" media that they don't consider anything else.
Getting back to games, I rarely ever buy AAA games anymore. There's so much cool indie stuff being released all the time, it's simply not worth it to me to deal with all the downsides that come along with AAA games.
I definitely agree it applies to all media. There's always something good to find but you need to dig sometimes. A great AAA game is normally well made and can be a lot of fun but rarely are they unique or surprising.
Ugh you’re not joking. Many of my friends that game complain about the same thing, yet getting them to try any new game that isn’t League of Legends, Apex, Dead by Daylight or Destiny is like pulling teeth.
The worst part is that most of those games have an endless grind or some sort of FOMO mechanics that encourage people to keep playing even though they’re having an awful time.
Perhaps they're the kind of people who see anything that doesn't require at least 100 hours per month to progress as a waste of time. I used to play that often until I found a job. Went from 5+ matches of league daily to maybe 2 per week.
There's legitimately 0 purpose to playing a bit of a game when it won't change the status quo of your life.
All we want is a game that's worth wasting our life on.
I guess that is how people in monogamous relationships see polyamory...
Completely agreed. Seriously, if anyone genuinely feels like gaming has become stale, go play Hi-Fi Rush and Pizza Tower (both having come out this year).
AAA games are more interested in keeping you on a virtual engagement treadmill than simply being fun.
I've never played a military shooter, but Battle Bit is piquing my interest.
I still don't know how to go about finding these. I've had so many bad experiences I hardly know what I like anymore. All I "know" is I'm not big on FPS games. But at the same time I loves The Last of Us.
It's hard to find something unique but I've found some of my favorite games by taking a gamble and playing a game I don't know much about. If the box art looks cool or I like the trailer I give it a try. Game critics don't help much as they only like specific kinds of games so I can't rely on them too much.
It's not a super-hot take, but art style >>>>> graphics when it comes to "beautiful" looking games. There are games coming out today that can run on a toaster that look far better than many AAA titles with all the fancy lighting effects and ray tracing that require you to dump 4-digit sums into a monster gaming PC to fully enjoy, all due to how the smaller games masterfully handle their art design.
What about simple graphics that still need a server farm to run correctly, or intricate graphics on a potato PC? Would you still say art style >> graphics?
I think this take got ice-cold shortly after Windwaker released.
The issue is that game developers have been using this as a crutch to do less and still charge full-price. Even with Windwaker, I always found the art style was inappropriate for the tone the rest of the game tried to set. It really felt more like they were trying to save time and money than actually having something that serves that art. That style worked pretty well in the handheld games, but I just don't think it holds up as well as Twilight Princess on a big screen.
I enjoy the occasional 16-bit style indie game, but I'm not paying $60 or $70 for that. I love Supergiant games, and they all look amazing, but even they know that art style can only push the price so far. There's also value in a game that is realistic and not stylized, especially in military shooters and racing games.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have AAA games from big studios selling for full-price that have neither. Look at GameFreak's Switch games: terrible quality textures, uninspired lighting, bad draw distance, terrible FPS, and they literally cut to a black screen describing what your character does instead of animating anything. And the art style is just the most generic anime-style imaginable. It looks like Nintendo too the Mii system and just made some minor updates and used that to make human models. This may be a hot take, but I think the models in TotK and BotW are the same. The devs create some fancy clothes, hair, and accessories, but the actual models are bland. It's essentially the Mii system.
Graphics and art style are not mutually exclusive. It's fair to ask for both in a full-price game.
The sentence "I lost my gear / They took my gear" has never been followed by a fun part in any videogame, ever
That island in Breath of the Wild though
Based on the sentiment I see online, my hot take is that Deep Rock Galactic is way over-hyped and is actually pretty shallow. It's a fine turn your brain off game, but I don't think it's as great as people make it out to be.
Damn, you can voice unpopular opinions on Lemmy and be upvoted for contributing to the discussion. What a wild place this is!
I couldn’t get into DRG, but I’m willing to give it another try.
That is honestly like 90% of the reason I have stuck around, the community here is reminiscent of early reddit (or rather when I joined circa like 2011). But, yeah I totally appreciate that people enjoy it and I'm happy they do, I just really don't agree with most their points.
Totally off topic, but with the third party client I’m using I forgot I was even using lemmy until I saw your comment.
Holy hell do I disagree with this but I will kill every elf in this thread to defend your right to say it. Rock and stone.
thanks brother, I don't really try to not like it, it's just not my cup of tea. I grew up playing L4D 1 and 2 a lot and I think thats all I'll ever really enjoy from that genre. There are other similar games I'm not a huge fan of either.
*angry dwarf noises*
Despite my opinion I will still constantly quote "I KNOW THE WAY."
Honestly, I think the hype is more for having one of the least toxic online communities.
yea thats a respectable reason, it's a rarity.
Removes mask They were a glyphid all along!
I very highly disagree but to each their own, of course.
Wow, I really disagree with you, but upvoted since that's the point of this thread. I love DRG, however I didn't love it the first time I played it. I had the same problem, I felt it was sort of shallow and I got lost, both literally in the maps and figuratively since I felt I had no goals and it felt repetitive.
When I tried the game again a year or so later it just clicked. I love the end game of getting overclock mods and trying new weapon builds. I love that each class is fun to play and I don't mind playing any of them. I love that I can relax with a lower hazard level mission or challenge myself with a higher hazard, but I don't feel forced to play either since I'm rewarded regardless. I love that the developer that respects their player base and doesn't have awful microtransactions.
And like others have mentioned I think having such a positive and non competitive community helps a lot. ROCK AND STONE
getting overclock mods and trying new weapon builds
I'm not sure I got to this point, and tbh everytime I've played I've felt like I'm missing something, so my opinion might not be well grounded. But, I've given it quite a few tries and just never get to this point. I'll give it another go though :)
Same, couldn't find the fun in it
I think a big part of the hype is how in-tune with the fan base the devs are. It's just refreshing to feel like the devs are on your side. Rock and Stone.
Games are for fun. If you're not having fun, stop playing. Don't spend effort on griping about the game; just stop playing and do something else. Do not go on the game forum and spend hours arguing about whether the game started sucking with the last release or two years ago. Just stop playing and do something else with your time & energy. Stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.
Software quality varies widely in online games; even for "simple" games such as abstract strategy board games. One of the highest-quality pieces of game software is lichess. Most board-game software, even for other abstract strategy games like Go, absolutely sucks compared to lichess. The best Go client is KGS; it's pretty good, but it's no lichess.
Regarding CCGs: Hearthstone is terrible. Magic Arena is okay. Eternal is fine but I stopped playing it when Magic Arena released for Android. Mythgard is pretty neat. Runeterra is probably okay if you're already into the League/Arcane characters.
Paying for games is fine, but consider your opportunity cost in both money and time. ("Opportunity cost" is an economist's way of asking, "What else could you be doing with this money and time?") Maybe you just want to go see a movie instead. Or go stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection is an astonishingly good collection of puzzle games that runs on pretty much any computer or device you use. You can install it for free on your phone. It's all open source, no ads, no bullshit, just puzzle games.
If the game you're paying for is pissing you off, consider whether you're paying for the service of being pissed off. Maybe just stop doing that?
Simon Tatham's puzzles are goated indeed
Bumped for Simon tathams puzzle pack.
Half the games in there I've marked as favorite. There's barely any better way to unwind after a day than a 60 point 'untangle' puzzle.
The Minesweeper implementation included in that is also miles ahead of the standard Microsoft one because instead of generating the grid randomly, it generates it in a way that guarantees you can always solve it without guessing, making it a pure logic puzzle.
Exactly, the same goes for movies and tv and even books.
Don't like it? Stop. Move on to something else.
I started playing ac: origins last year, and as soon as I got the "Kill Animal" side missions I knew I wouldn't like the game. I made it to the second city and haven't played since
Developers who lock the FOV of their games have no idea what they're doing.
Looking at you sea of theives...
Just as a wild guess, it might be related to performance tuning on consoles. If you increase the width of the view frustrum, you're throwing more stuff on the screen.
I'm currently playing through Breath of the Wild for the first time and I don't think it's an amazing game. I think it's decent and fun enough, but it has a lot of grindy BS and aimless wandering, plus a story that is a rehash of literally every Zelda game every made, but now with 100% more open world.
Seriously how many times are we going to beat Ganon? And good God the voice acting is cringe.
Also, I just freed the second divine beast and I still have no idea how to dodge or flurry rush.
I got bored after like 8 hours of looking for things to do before I just said "fuck it, I guess I'm killing Ganon." I don't know when I am meant to go find the Master Sword but I was able to get it without having a quest and just using my knowledge of Hyrule from past games ("sword in forest!") and I activated the 4 ancient machines; but then I couldn't find many side quests that weren't just fetch quests for things I already had in my posession.
TOTK actually has shit to do. I thought BOTW was a bit bare bones before, but given it was Nintendo's first go at it I just thought it was that. But TOTK makes BOTW look like an alpha build of a tech demo for TOTK.
BotW was the first Zelda game for me, and it was such a massive disappointment. It's just open world without any redeeming qualities, with every single mechanic existing just to support open world. Felt more like a sandbox than a game. It's fun for about 2-3 hours, but then I just got really bored
I did finish it, because hey I paid for it, but it was not really something too fun for most of the time
EDIT: And I'm still mildly salty that BotW got GOTY in a year we got Nier Automata and Persona 5
Zelda games straight up have a very mediocre story. And often nothing about their world building makes much sense either. They're definitely a series built only for fun gameplay. Everything else is just glue to hold the gameplay together.
Personally, I love the gameplay and exploration, but you're definitely right about the story and voice acting.
PS: dodging should be the same as jump (x). Lock on with ZL and point the movement stick to the side you wanna dodge to, the jump. If you pull the stick back, you'll do a backflip. Whether you want to jump back or to the side depends on the enemy attack (eg, do they swing horizonal or vertical?). If you dodge juuuust before the enemy attacks, you'll get a slow motion during which you're prompted to spam y to rapidly attack. Especially useful for tough foes like lynels.
There's shrines near the start of the game that teach you to dodge & flurry rush;
While locking onto an enemy, jump while moving to the side or backwards at the last second before an enemy attacks-- if the timing is done correctly, you can flurry rush. The trick is finding the timing for each enemy type, though you start to get a feel for it.
It's a grindy mechanic, but I really enjoyed filling out the compendium once you upgrade your Sheikah Slate-- taking pictures of things became the focus of the game for a while, and I'm glad that TOTK improved upon that.
It's a decent game but once I beat it I'll likely never play it again
And it's so ok that I have a hard time getting back to it after breaking for a few weeks
I killed Ganon and still had no idea how to actually do these things.
Souls-like games aren't difficult, they just show you how impatient the average player is. Very rarely do those games actually challenge your ability or technical skill, and instead they just test your patience with annoyingly-defensive enemy behavior that encourages impatient players into aggressive, risky gameplay.
People spend way to much time complaining about how games are not perfect in their eyes, instead of taking it at face value. They get literally outraged when a game doesn't function exactly how they want, instead of finding a game they actually enjoy.
Back in the day we'd just pick whatever looked cool at the store and hoped it was decent. People have the right to complain, but its gotten out of hand and modern gamers are whiney as all hell.
Edit: just want to clarify, I'm mainly refer to post launch and established games. If a game promises somthing and is released half baked, 100% people are in the right to complain.
My hot take: Skyrim is the most overrated game of all time. Not bad, but overrated. My phone hardcrashed while I typed out the reasons why I think so, so I won‘t anger the gaming gods further this time.
I think if you compare it to games from the last 10 years, then yes.
But at the time it was miles ahead of everything else. Most RPG's were incredibly unfriendly to beginners, throwing paragraphs of text to read, spreadsheets of numbers to understand, incredibly unfair mechanics, making the player make decisions without understanding them, and legacy mechanics that traced their routes back to tabletop wargaming. The marketing for RPG's revolved around hyping up bigger numbers of systems, skills, weapons, armor, items, spells, and whatever else you can think of. You can still go back and have fun, but the ethos of a lot of RPG's was quantity over quality. They were very difficult to get into, and most RPG's kind of had the assumption that the player already knew how to play RPG's.
It may seem silly to say that Skyrim was a break from that. After all, it has radiant quests, tons of NPC's, a pretty big map, tons of dungeons, etc. But it streamlined a ton and made it accessible. The quantity of voice lines was incredible for the time, and reducing the reliance on text made couch gaming easier. The leveling system is incredibly intuitive and fun, and IMO the best I've seen before or since. A lot of systems exist to allow customization of either the roleplaying or mechanical experience, but most of those systems are optional. You can just bash through the game with the equipment you get in Helgen if you want.
The game isn't perfect, but when I see criticisms it's usually that people want to add more systems or more complexity. That's the kind of thing that always sounds great in an armchair thinking about it, but when you actually put it in a game the game usually ends up bloated and tedious. It's great to add mods later after a couple playthrough, but it's easy to overwhelm new players with things like a spell creation system.
Whenever I see people talking on the Internet about trying Skyrim for the first time, I see a lot of other players recommending to start with mods. I also see a lot of people saying they bounced off of Skyrim, and I think there's a correlation. I ran into similar experiences with Civ and Cities Skylines: it's tempting to add in tons of stuff to try to get the best experience possible, but sometimes it's better to start simple.
Skyrim has bugs, but most of them are either just visual, hilarious, or can be fixed by re-loading the area or the game.
It's not perfect, but overall I think it's fair to include Skyrim in the conversation for... Idk, top-20 ish games of all time.
Do you enjoy other games in that vein/genre?
Open-world action RPGs? Elden Ring for instance, or modern Zelda games. 3D Soul-likes if you want to stretch the definition. I‘d go as far as to say it’s my favorite genre.
Most AAA games are boring. All the big games from the last few years are just plain boring. They found a formula back in the 2000's that they never expanded upon or really changed in any way shape or form. The focus is on visuals and story (and I gotta say, the stories are pretty fucking cringe a lot of the time unless you're a 13 year old) or skinnerboxes and psycho tricks to keep you addicted and the gameplay remains the same stale shit it's been for over 20 years. I feel like AAA games are games for people who don't play games, because the actual game part is always the worst part about them.
Hideo Kojima's games are bad.
For context, when I was 11 my friend told me that MGS was incredible, so I went to his house to play it. It was fucking tedious. I spent hours shuffling around grey corridors, interspersed with painfully long dialog and cut scenes that were mostly about nothing.
Then, years later I decided to go back to MGS V and give the series another try. I had the exact same reaction to it as the original game. Endless waffle about characters and situations that meant nothing to me, uninspired modern military aesthetics, and boring locations.
They were clearly very well-made games, and I appreciate that people have massive regard for them. I just don't like them at all.
Upvoted for providing one of the few real hot takes in this thread. I'm a huge MGS fan, but I can see why people wouldn't like it. MGS plays with realism a lot, all while also playing with ideas from Hollywood. It makes for a very strange mix.
Now this is a hot take - I tend to agree with you. MGS has always felt like more B-movie than game, featuring a convoluted story that doesn't justify the enormous amount of cutscenes. The stealth gameplay that's there pales in comparison to titles like Splinter Cell too.
Personally, the best Metal Gear game in my mind is Rising: Revengeance, and it's not even close. Highly recommend you play that one if you haven't already.
I mean the b-movie feel is definitely the attractor, not a detractor for fans. I totally understand how thats not everyone's cup of tea tho.
I will say that the stealth sandbox in MGS3 and MGSV rival what other great stealth titles like Splinter Cell, Thief etc have to offer.
Well, the problem is you've played the worst MGS games. 5 is the most realistic, and it's worse for it. It's also fairly early chronologically, so it doesn't do as many interesting things. The best stuff it does are references to great things that come in other games. Open worlds just generally make games worse. They slow everything down because they make you travel across space that does nothing.
4 is probably the most fun game, 3 is probably the best game, and 2 is probably the most interesting game. 3 is getting a remake (it's a fan favorite and chronologically the first game, I'm not sure which is the reason for it being the first remake), but who knows if it'll be good.
The most fun I ever had with a MGS game was watching someone else play it.
I would probably like the MGS games if they didn’t have 2 hour cutscenes, but I just can’t handle that.
Edit: Also, I probably have permanent damage from how much I rolled my eyes when I saw that PlayStation magazine cover for MGS2 saying “The Greatest Game Ever Made?!”
You can make a porn game thats both a good game and good porn. Its tricky as hell to balance, and you won't attract most players, but its possible.
The real issue is the stigma, which right fully exists. But I still want my triple A porn game.
Mad respect my dude. Got any recommendations? ;D
I'll give my two cents for the classic CoC, and the shockingly good story of The Last Sovereign.
This reminds me of a fake quote attributed to Hideo Kojima:
It says "Try not to cum", but the point of the game is obviously to cum. So yes, I would call that bad game design.
My dream is to make one of those. One day...
Hubie Pop
Weapons, armor, equipment, upgrades, etc. in single-player games that have effects that have tradeoffs or very niche use-cases are unfun. I can understand it in multiplayer competitive games where balance is important, but effects like “provides 20% more defense versus <specific enemy type>” or “increases range, but decreases damage” just deflate me when I get them in games. If I’m spending time playing a game, I want to earn things that make me objectively better as I progress. Developers of modern games seem waaay to preoccupied with holding back and not allowing things to be “broken” in games where it just doesn’t matter.
That is honestly one of my favourite things about Saint Row 3 and 4. If you want to go balls to the wall with an infinite ammo, instant reloaded rocket launcher, while running outside the enemies range. Just get to level 50 and go nuts.
Saints Row is such a fun series because they know exactly what kind of game they are. They're not GTA. They have no business being serious, grounded, or realistic. They embrace the utter bonkers ridiculousness and it works great. I had so much fun in Saints Row 4 with the super powers. And it works great with how the game is written. Utterly hilarious game that I enjoyed every minute of.
Also, killing enemies with a dildo bat never grows old.
This is tangentially related to inventory management, encumbrance, and other mechanics that often come across as tedious. Does it make sense that the character is sitting down and taking a while to decide how much & which stuff to carry, which gems to socket, which items to upgrade? How much is the game supposed to be about resource management vs. about swinging swords at skeletons or solving puzzles?
If you want a game that not only allows you to break it but encourages it and it doesn't ruin the fun, try Noita. Very unforgiving and secretive. It's kinda like a roguelike where the thing you're building up between plays is knowledge of how the game works. Sometimes you'll find an ability combination that makes you a god, other times you'll find one that kills you before you understand the implications of what you're trying to do.
It's fun but just be aware that any specific fun you start to have will be fleeting, but you'll find other kinds of fun while chasing that last one.
I'm okay with those kinda things if they're not limited. Eg, if they're a skill and you can get many skills. But if it's like FFXVI, where you have only 3 accessory slots and most accessories are borderline useless, then I agree that they're just disappointing. I want to feel like equipment (or whatever) is impactful. I want it to be able to wildly change up my strategy.
I love when games have stuff like wildly different weapon types or the likes, such that you can make so many different kinds of builds. Far more fun and replayable than the games where there's basically only one way to play and nothing will significantly change it.
Third-person shooters suck. The character model gets in the way of seeing and I don't need to see the super tacticool costumes. And the more decent third-person shooters switch to first-person for aiming down the sights anyway.
Cards in video games suck. Unless it's simulating a real card game. Otherwise we don't need powerup cards and such, use some other mechanic. My level 89 death knight doesn't need to be pulling cards out of his pockets.
Motion blur, vignetting, depth of field, lens flare, none of these should be the default. Show me the game world clearly.
@LeylaaLovee When you play a long game (i.e. 60+ hours) all the way through, it's hard to tell how much of it was genuine enjoyment over some kind of weird sunk cost situation.
Kind of like watching a show that goes on for a ton of seasons. You get into a habit and despite inconsistent quality, you keep going back and you're not sure why, especially after the really bad parts.
It's why I understand *some* of the 100+ hour playtime negative reviews, & am skeptical of positive ones.
Whenever Soulslike mechanics creep into games in other genres, it makes the game less fun.
What mechanics are you talking about?
Not the op, but one mechanic I dislike is mobs spawn after you rest at a bonfire. If I want to take quit the game for the night, but haven't reach the next bonfire yet, then my choice is to forsake the progress or push forward for the next bonfire.
This mechanic serve it's purpose in games with linear level, but not so when become an open world.
Exclusives can be beneficial. By exclusives, I don't mean Sony/Microsoft pay the developer for exclusivity, that sucks. What I'm referring to is a developer picking a platform and developing a game using that platforms full potential. Games like Zelda, Crash Bandicoot, God Of War, Last Of Us all took full potential of their consoles architecture and brought pretty good games.
Headbobbing doesn't help with immersion but leads to me wanting to puke violently. Looking at you, east European first person games. At least let me turn it off, then we're cool.
The popularity of skill based matchmaking decimated game design that allows people of different skill levels to play together and progress in a multiplayer setting. Most games actually punish you for playing with better players on your team instead of allowing you to help somehow without being a liability. And when you are, the game is no longer winnable and people get extremely pissed off ensuing you won't get to play with them again.
Breath of the Wild is merely okay.
It's kind of tedious, the weapon durability system is annoying, and the visuals are held back by the Switch's weak specs.
VHS/TV static, scanlines, and tracking filters are obnoxious and developers need to stop using them. You can't just slap a shit filter over bad graphics and be like "It's the 80s/90s!"
I get the aesthetic and that a lot of developers are pandering to my generation, but it's become the hallmark of shit games for me. Do something innovative.
I overall disagree because in average they are putting more thought into their visuals than many triple-A studios that never see an end to their skin pore-delving levels of realism. But I find it very funny how many indie horror games use VHS effects for no reason as if playable VHS had ever been a thing.
I'll agree with that, they are definitely putting more thought into it. When it's used well, it's great, but it's used so often now that it feels like sloppy design in a lot of games. It's like using the piss/mexico filter to convey being in a third world country in the mid-2000s.
The weird thing about analog horror is that its now being done by people who never experienced the art that they are imitating. Sometimes their interpretations are lacking.
First game I remember with it was Hotline Miami, where it worked quite well for the game. I'd say the tape rewind from that game is iconic. But yeah, it's normally just cheap points for le epic retro gamers
As someone who regularly uses CRTs for gaming, I can say with confidence that there's a ton of poorly done scanline filters out there. I have to question if those implementing them even know what a CRT looks like, because there's a whole lot more to it than just a blank line every few pixels.
Sonic Mania has an excellent set of scanline filters if you want to see them done right.
Low-resolution pixel art lets a game be developed with comparatively-inexpensive assets and lets the brain interpolate the missing information.
My guess is that various obscuring distortions can have a similar effect. If your brain sees it as noise getting in the way of what's really there, it will try to fill in the correct stuff.
My true hot take is that despite all the moaning in gaming communities about the death of gaming, we're in pretty much the golden age of gaming. There's so many good games constantly coming out that I haven't been able to play nearly as much of them as I'd like to and my backlog keeps growing.
Sometimes I'll notice that I keep postponing some indie game that I put on my list because it looked like a lot of fun over some newer indie and realize that I'll maybe never end up reaching that far down in my backlog that I'll actually play it.
IMO the industry overall is in a truly horrible place, but only the AAA and part of the AA space. Indies have been and continue to hold up the industry by themselves.
I haven’t seen what you’re talking about, so I can’t even fathom what “death of gaming” could possibly mean. It’s dumb enough that music genres get declared “dead” just for being less popular than they used to be, and it seems even dumber to say it about a hobby that, as far as I understand, is more popular than its ever been.
IMO the industry overall is in a truly horrible place, but only the AAA and part of the AA space. Indies have been and continue to hold up the industry by themselves.
I agree with this
Every console shooter should come out with well-implemented gyro aiming that is turned on by default. It’s ridiculous how much you gain in precision by using it after only a little bit of practice
I've been playing totk and at one point I had to turn off motion control to get more precision (ironic, I know, but gyro induces too much sway for when you need a near pixel perfect positioning) for building a hover bike. I had no idea how much I subconsciously used gyro aiming. For instance I wanted to pick up one of the fans. So I tun the stick to move the camera to target the fan like I always do, but this time I end up just short of actually targeting the fan. Turns out I instinctively also turn the controller to have the gyro assist the aiming, but because gyro was off that last step of targeting was now missing and I kept missing my targeting. It felt super weird to pick them up without the gyro.
I absolutely recommend any skeptic to turn it on, play with it regularly for let's say 20 hours and turn it off. You will feel the difference. It becomes so natural that you won't even notice yourself using it.
Love using gyro controls. It's perfect with a controller just having an extra layer of movement options. Used it first with the Steam Controller.
No gyro on Xbox, so only PS and Switch (and Steam Deck, I guess?) would get to enjoy this.
Nintendo games are great FIRST games.
If Zelda is the first action RPG you ever played, it will forever hold a warm spot in your heart.
Same for Smash Brothers and fighting games, Mario Kart and racing games, or Pokemon and turn based RPGs.
But if you aren't 10 years old or have played literally any other games, they really aren't very good.
People have no right to complain about wanting more Team Fortress 2 updates and should be grateful that it's even still being supported when very few developers would keep up with a 15+ year old game.
League of legends is 14 years old but still has a huge following and gets regular updates and content.
Is the age of a game really an issue in this live service era we're in?
World of Warcraft is going to be 20 years old in a few months.
IMO Final Fantasy is not good. I’ve tried playing several of the games but every time the story is so cliche and overly complicated. I’ve been told “oh just try a different one. This version is better!” If I have to try that hard to enjoy a franchise it’s just not for me.
I'm a fan, but even I can admit that they can be fairly 'typical fantasy saga'. What kinds of videogame stories do you like?
While I'm a huge fangirl of the series, they are blatantly "JPRGy" and are always very full of the numerous JRPG tropes, which can definitely give a cliched feeling.
Admittedly, overly complicated isn't a way I'd describe most of the games, but that definitely fits many of the more recent entries (especially 16). IMO, 7-10 and 12 are the peak Final Fantasy games. My personal favourites being 9 and 10. And even they have some cringe moments that I pretend don't exist lol (for 9, everything involving Quina or Eiko; for 10, stuff like most of the outfits and the utterly bizarre laughing scene).
X has the best story of any game I ever played. IV and VI have good stories as well. The rest didn't pique my interest.
I mean, how many other games were tackling climate change, imperialism, genocide, and deindustrialization in a single game in 1998. I’d say some of the story beats can be cliche in FF, but the stories are pretty unique. Unique AND over-complicated.
That said, I live Final Fantasy. I’ve played most of them. I have never really liked the combat in any of them. Not the real time or turn based combat. It feels tedious, and the rock paper scissors mechanics get tiring after a while. I still replay them way too often,
Final fantasy is a really weird series. Every game is different and every fan has their own opinion of which games are good and why, or what’s important in a final fantasy game.
When people tell me that the story is what’s most important in a Final Fantasy game, I know they probably started with 7 or later. I like the parts where you customize your party and explore and have battles and make decisions and solve puzzles and all that video game shit. Yes, the stories enhance the game, but the story was never meant to be the entire game: But after 7, a whole bunch of new fans were like “there’s this new genre of games where the whole point is to watch cut scenes and read a lot of dialogue”, and the games have changed to accommodate that.
I guess my point is maybe try an earlier game (probably 4, 5, or 6) that has better gameplay, and you can get through the dialogue faster without having to watch all the slow animations of characters putting their hands behind their head.
My hot take: VR is an amazing technology, but it's no good for games - at least not the best majority of games we originally developed for flat screens.
We need to create entirely new styles of entertainment to fully use this medium, instead of modding existing titles or bolting on VR modes.
I think that it's good for flight sims.
Hardcore flightsimmers were putting together multi-monitor setups to do their thing well before VR goggles were around. They already had a bazillion controls, and trying to also handle head movement with the hands was a pain.
I didn't really get into Elite: Dangerous as a game, but when I did play it, I did appreciate how the aim was to create a really spectacular, immersive experience surrounding someome sitting in a chair, how the aim was probably the VR experience.
Do yourself the favor and play a racing sim with vr and a wheel. Its crazy how immerser you get, that does not work as well on flat screens.
I'm all for pushing the envelope and creating experiences that are only possible in VR, but I don't see how you could play a good VR FPS and come to the conclusion that VR isn't a good medium for playing this kind of game. I've gone back to flat screen FPS a few times over the last few years and I feel so disconnected from the game, VR has completely transformed gaming for me.
Here's a super hot take. The N64 is not a bad controller. It's especially good for first person shooters.
I mean, if you have 3 arms, I'm sure it's amazing.
You either use the left pad or you use the center analog stick. Not both.
Most audio in video games is irrelevant at best and irritating at worst (especially for retro games). I listen to podcasts over 95% of the games I play and don't feel like I'm missing much. In fact, the multitasking aspect of it makes it feel like a more efficient use of time than just keeping the game audio on.
There are exceptions to this when I know there's important audio cues in gameplay. Admittedly, I don't care much at all for narratives in games either, so i know I'm probably in the minority with this take.
Super Mario Galaxy has amazing orchestrated soundtrack that must be experienced with the innovative gameplay and beautiful art design.
I can't imagine playing this game without the music.
definitely. i also feel the same way about the Nier games, their soundtracks add so much to the experience.
I soooo strongly agree about the audio. I regularly hear people talking about how good a game's soundtrack is, but most games don't stand out at all where soundtrack is concerned. I can list on one hand how many games have had songs so iconic that I can remember them. That's not to say I don't care for the audio. I recognize a lot of the audio is fantastic and feels just so natural that I don't even notice it as a stand alone piece, but an intractable part of a scene. But I certainly am not gonna go listen to most games soundtracks.
- Persona 4 - that town/school theme is insanely catchy and burnt into my head. I also can recall the title theme being so good I'd always let it play in full when I started the game.
- Persona 5 - tons of absolute bangers. Rivers in the Desert is perhaps my single favourite piece of video game music ever. I also love the city theme (I forget the title, "I'm a shape shifter, at Poe's mascarade").
- Weirdly enough, FFXIII-2 - I specifically recall how good Noah's theme is. It's this somber piece that plays in a dead world setting and is just haunting.
There might be some others I can't remember. But my point is that most game music is not nearly memorable enough that I can even draw it to mind. Let alone have it caught in my head or be able to recognize it later. Even for games I've played a ton of, you could probably play something and I wouldn't recognize it.
But I was talking about music. Non music? Ugh, that's usually worse. My biggest dislike is menu blips. You know, where every time you move the cursor in a menu, it makes a chime noise. In a lot of older games, I find it's so bad that I refuse to play the game with sound on.
(Side note: I'm told that Fallout's music is great, but I'm embarrassed to say I've almost never listened to it, in part because IIRC, the radio feature where all the good stuff can be heard is actually audible to enemies, making it incompatible with stealth.)
After the first Halo came out, every damn game was a FPS. I don't mind FPS games, but it's not all I ever want to play.
It was around then I was basically forced to start playing more indie games, and now I play them almost exclusively. The AAA space is just 3 games in a trenchcoat (and I've already played those 3).
I agree....but I gotta say I did love the last few chapters of Halo 3, especially the last bit where you drive away while everything explodes.
I mean something good can start trends that are annoying. I love the first Avengers movie, but at some point the oversupply of Marvel shit with all the clones made it annoying at some point.
And now it's all Third Person pseudo RPGs and the FPS genre is pretty small...
Final Fantasy X has the best combat in the series, but gets hate because of the voice acting. If it didn’t have voice over it would be considered one of the best FF games
A lot of people misinterpret the infamous laughing scene. They think it comes out of left field and is out of place... And that's what it's trying to do. It's supposed to be awkward. Tidus is trying to help Yuna release her anxiety by goofily laughing like a lunatic. Does this make the voice acting suddenly great? Nah not really. Also FFX's combat is the best. Being able to see who's turn is next, as well as which abilities might delay a turn. Really fun!
I don't mind the voice acting, but I can't enjoy the linear world connected by literal corridors.
And I hate blizball.
If your game has constant Chromatic Aberration, I respect you less as designer. I don't understand how you have a job making games look good, and then ruin it with CA. And if I have to rate those games, CA is an automatic full point out of 10 reduction.
If it's a temporary effect during dreams or drug sequences, sure, that's okay. I don't like it but I get it. But during normal gameplay, absolutely not. It makes my eyes water and makes the game look just plain worse.
And it's everywhere. I just want this trend to end, please.
I’ll be a Devil’s Advocate here and will try to rationalize the decision to include Chromatic Aberration in so many video games.
Most of the games that have Chromatic Aberration are games that also got releaaes on consoles amd therefore for the majority of the time will be played on TVs. On monitors, I get you, the effects are shit. However, when you play it on a TV, I can see it being better. Having low pixel density really helps with the effect.
That just seems like it would just be "less bad" on TVs, which fair enough, might be the case.
I still do not understand how someone would think it looks better with CA on than off.
I get that it emulates the imperfections of real-life cameras, but unless you are making a photorealistic game or you deliberately contextualize the game camera as an actual camers, it just has no place. I've seen so many highly stylized indie games with that effect and it just makes no sense to me. It introduces glaring cyan and magenta willy-nilly into all of the color palettes you specifically chose for your game. It baffles me.
But how else can we sell our 70 bucks overpriced triple a game as a "cinematographic masterpiece"?
Sony exclusives are anti consumer, and Naughty Dog games are more just cinematics then game.
I think you can take the "sony" out of that sentence...although exclusives can potentially be healthy to avoid monopolies and grant competition between makers.
Yeah, I'm mostly fine with Sony's exclusives. I don't love exclusives, but Sony funds a lot of games from the start. Their exclusives would often not exist without their funding. You know what I have a huge fucking problem with though? Microsoft buying companies and games already in progress to make exclusive. Microsoft has not contributed to Starfield, they haven't contributed to any Activision games, all they're doing is taking shit that would have existed with or without Microsoft and holding them hostage. They even did this with the OG Halo, it was originally supposed to be a Mac OS game.
All the companies do this, but Microsoft is by far the worst in recent memory. At least Sony and Nintendo actually make good games to hide it. They don't built their entire game libraries on buying other people's shit.
Second half is a bad take. Uncharted on the highest difficulties is fucking brutal.
Knockdowns/stuns/silences/freezes on the player, and immunities that enemies have, are bad game design because they all have the same issue: they remove player choice.
The issue with knockdowns/stuns/freezes is that they remove the player's ability to do anything, at least how they work in most games. They make you take a timeout, essentially, and that's very unfun for the player. Essentially, it's removing your choice of what to do in the moment. You can't react, you can't flee, you can't fight, you just get to sit and wait or maybe press a button repeatedly just to wait a bit less. It is terrible game design that is wholly uninteresting, and it needs to be telegraphed nearly as hard as an instant-death move to be anything other than completely bad.
Silences do much the same thing in that they limit the player's ability to react and use their cool tools you just gave them. It's like handing a lumberjack a chainsaw and then saying "cool, now don't use it". It's not as bad as a stun, but it's pretty close.
Immunities for enemies are similar in that they limit player choice. You wanted to use cool X thing? Too bad, you literally can't win with that method. Resistances are fine (within reason, doing 1 damage is no different from 0 damage in a lot of games) because they allow a sufficiently-skilled player to still use a method they like (ideally), but immunities do nothing but kill build variety.
Eh, I think it's fine for fights to have certain requirements to succeed. Many things in games are basically a puzzle, and figuring out the puzzle is the purpose of playing.
I do agree to a point about the stun thing. I wouldn't say it has zero place in games, but it does general just become a feel-bad moment, leaving the player feeling helpless. That said, I'm not sure what exactly would need to be done to make it appropriate.
I totally agree with the immunities thing. It's a common issue in RPGs. Eg, games will have countless status effects but none of them work on tougher enemies, making them basically useless. I think a lot of more modern games have understood this issue and tried to fix it.
Eg, for all it's flaws, FFXIII did status effects really great. Poison is actually very potent and a legitimate way to kill even the toughest bosses. Similarly, the death spell was useless in a lot of older games (where it was just a chance of instant death), but was extremely useful in FFXIII because it just straight up dealt heavy damage with a chance of instant death. Spamming it was a valid strategy for a lot of moderately difficult enemies that would otherwise be annoying to whittle down.
God, bosses that have i-frames drive me up the wall in any game
Mine? Mystic Quest was fine. It was a fine game. Was it amazing? No. Easy as heck but the charm and personality of the game is just so great. The music slaps, the world is fun even if it is restricted to linear paths. People treat it like it's the most brazen insult to JRPGs. It's just not true. It's a perfectly average game that is a fun beat-it-in-a-day game.
The SNES final fantasy??
It was kinda fun to play through (mostly just to listen to the music) but the fact that there is basically zero challenge hurts the game a lot.
Nintendo needs to release old-school versions of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid again, maybe hiring out an indie developer like Sega did for Sonic.
We don't need a new switch or any stronger gaming hardware at all. There are games 10 or maybe even 20 years old at this point who nail realism. Once I'm in the flow of the game, I wouldn't rate e.g., Dark Souls 1 visuals below Eldenring despite their ~10 year gap. So I'd prefer not spending on a new console every so often.
More recently, I couldn't tell you the difference between a PS4 and a PS5 release without a side-by-side comparison. Maybe in loading times, but a PS4 with an SSD would have done the job. Once again, I won't spend on a PS5 for as long as possible.
Lastly, without this focus on graphics, development time and cost probably wouldn't be so ridicolulous as it is today.
Power isn't just about graphics though. It's also about scope and general performance.
Pokemon scarlet isn't going for realism, but it's junky as hell.
Even botw and totk get noticeable frame drops and those are also not trying to be realistic
You're right, there are certain edge cases.
As for Pokemon, that's just bad software. It struggles on the same console every Xenoblade game runs on. Or both zeldas you mentioned.
As for botw/totk, they are actually my prime example for this opinion. If you can run a physics simulation within an open world on that scale, I cannot fathom what you couldn't do on the switch - disregarding basically the same with better graphics.
You could argue for stable 60 FPS in the games I mentioned, and I'd accept that. But as for me, I cannot tell you whether or not Zelda or any of the Xenoblade games run at 30 or 60 anyways.
RE 4 on wii is the only reason I could play the game. Played it on playstation 2, couldn't even get pass the first village. But the wiimote control is a game changer. It makes it soo easy to aim.
RIGHT? It's so much more intuitive. Last time I played, I played on an OG steam controller and that was better than a regular controller, but Wiimote for RE4 is unbelievably great. I've gotten so much flack for this, but with the game's semi-tank controls, the Wiimote is perfect for it!
Windowed Fullscreen should not be the default!!!
Is borderless always better? And why?
Borderless Fullscreen and windowed Fullscreen describe the same thing, a window they resize to take up 100% of the screen. This shouldn't be default, and it is! This mode only utilizes a portion of your hardware, and is frankly only useful if you plant on tabbing out of the game without closing it (for streaming or chatting purposes I imagine). Every time I start a modern game I have to go switch it to exclusive fullscreen so I can get as much performance out of my PC as possible, and I am not even sure how it became the default or why, it just seemed to happen.
That’s not a hot take, that’s just a fuckin fact. I hate this trend so much.
Mario Kart is not a fun casual party game, because it rewards skilled metagame play way higher than racing skill.
While valid game design, it means new players will just be crushed by bullshit and not know how to improve by just playing better at the game in front of them.
Resident Evil 6 is one of the best games in the franchise. It's definitely the best out the 4-5-6 era. It's huge, has many, many hours of gameplay due to the three different campaigns. The monsters are fun, even if they do have guns, and the bosses are the wild and insane kind of Resident Evil content I'm in it for. It has all those romantic overtones between Chris and Piers. I'd call it a must play.
People were SO unfair to RE6 back in the day, in my opinion. I bet if it had not been associated with the series, it would be remembered as a ridiculous bombastic cult classic in the same vein as Metal Gear Rising. It may have issues but come on, it managed to have a super fun, super unique, super deep take on TPS gameplay, it is wonderfully over the top, it has stupid amounts of content...
But because it was called RE and didn't fit whatever mold the titles in the series should fit in the eyes of some, it was panned. Thankfully it has been looked at with different eyes in recent years.
A lot of multiplayer games are made unplayable for newcomers because they'll be instantly slayed by a minority of players that revel in the killing of everyone they meet even though it's not the focus of the game.
Even though there's potential for cooperation, it almost never happens. You'll be quickly massacred by space pirates, roaming bandits, or whatever that have amassed high end weapons and ressources.
OG Final Fantasy VII is the worst of the mainline games.
Now, I haven't played II, IV, VI, XI, or XIV. But I feel pretty confident about this.
Nothing will beat VI for me. I both wanted to marry Kefka and BE Kefka.
It's definitely not the worst. But I consider it overrated (considering how it's perhaps the most popular). Hands down I'd put 9, 10, and 12 above it. I'd maybe even put 8 above it depending on my mood.
The first game is probably the worst. It's very basic. Arguably it's unfair to compare it to later games, given it's age (as an aside, I've only played the GBA remake of it -- I probably wouldn't be able to stand the true original). I'd say 1 < 3 < 2 < 5 < 4 < 6 < 15 < 13 < 14 < 7 < 8 < 12 < 9 < 10. And honestly I could drop 15 a lot further down depending on my mood. I'm clearly biased against the 2D games.
I don't really get why 6 is so popular (there's even another person replying to you mentioning it). It's the best of the 2D games hands down, but I didn't find it as good as really any of the later games. I think I put a lot of weight in the ability for graphics to be able to show emotion and make settings more interesting. I utterly adored the cutscenes that began with the 3D games.
I agree with you to a lesser extent when it comes to the 2D games. It's so much harder to show emotion. I love V, but I feel like there are a lot of story beats that would land a lot harder in a game with good graphics.
Having said that, I prefer the gameplay of some of the 2D games to some like IX and XV. And the 3 I have played aren't as grating as others like VII, IX, and XV. So while they can only be so good, they also aren't as bad as some of the others get.
1 is nice comfort game. And honestly, beating the big villain at the beginning of the game and following the time loop would be subversive if it wasn't the first game in the series.
I fond Uncharted original trilogy extremely boring and repetitive. I also dislike TLoU for many reasons. I understand why most people love them, but I just can't
PVPVE is not fun. Pick one, is your game PVP or PVE?
I'm sorry, I thought this was a hot take thread
Any examples? I don't think I have ever played a game mode that's a mix of both other than PvP with AI players.
Hunt Showdown, which is probably the most fun of the PVPVE games I've played, but Tarkov, Sea of Thieves, GTA Online, anything that incentivizes other players to go after players instead of the AI
There are a lot of survival-ish games that use PvPvE. The Battle Royales. Never played one either tbh.
Extraction games are like this.
DayZ
Interested to see how hot this take actually is but... The Nintendo switch is the best console ever made. As a lifelong Nintendo fan boy (Nes, right the way through) I may be a little biased but I have also owned various PS/Xbox and I don't think I've spent as much time on any console as the Switch. Being locked inside for a few years during the pandemic helped, but even a year or so after that I'm still playing. It helps that Breath of the wild is maybe one of the best games ever made, and Tears of the Kingdom is, so far, an incredible sequel. But also playing Overcooked with my wife and more recently Mario Kart (a personal "couples goal" of mine I never thought would happen) has filled so many lazy Sundays with hours of gaming joy.
That's a big claim when the Steam Deck exists
Yeah, Steam Deck costs a little more, can play newest AAA titles handheld, can play Switch games too, can buy a shit ton of games for cheap because of Steam Sales, and gives you a whole desktop if you plug it in a dongle. Also, it's an open system, so you can actually install any OS on it, if you like.
I picked up the switch the other day (it was getting dusty so I wanted to put it in the electronics box) and was surprised at how light (by mass) it was. I almost turned it on. But the call of the deck, the smell of it's exhaust, the non drifting controls, the Bluetooth m+kb, the deck is my new favorite console ever. (That said there are still some ui improvements that absolutely need fixing)
Now that's a hot take!
I find it incredibly uncomfortable to play on. Games are way too expensive too, and the console is massively underpowered. To each their own though.
Agreed. Enjoy the hot take tho. I love the pro controller and I love playing switch games on my computer.
I love my Switch SO much, but I find myself playing Switch games on my computer way more than my Switch now…
Honestly, I would almost agree with that, if the damn thing was not so crappily made.
I've replaced way too many drifting sticks and broken joycon rails. Also needed to replace the backplate that broke around the corners because it's made of that crappy brittle plastic, and had to replace the internal fan that was dying and started make helicopter noises.
Also its wireless is shit, getting the poorest WiFi signal of any device I have, and having joycon Bluetooth fail when I'm three meters away if I'm not in the right position.
Love the games, like the concept, hate the execution.
Silent Hill: The Room is just as good as the first 3 games.
Indie is the new AAA. I think some people were saying this even back when most indie games were just 16-bit style sidescrollers. But now small teams and even individual developers are giving us stuff that looks good, plays good, and is more fun than a lot of AAA games out there, and it comes with a lot of variety too. I think that AAA games are going to become micro-transacriom factories. Once Nintendo starts putting loot boxes into their games it's over for AAA.
Here's another one. I do not care about 60fps unless the game looks for input every frame. Not even a little bit. I would not have known how many frames Tears of the Kingdom was running on if no one said it in the reviews, and honestly I don't even really see the difference most of the time.
And a bonus: reamking old games is a good thing. Re-releasing is fine i guess, but enhancing character models, textures, lighting, addressing glitches and stuff that made the original less fun, and maybe giving some bonus content is a great idea. Companies like Nintendo need to stop cracking down on people emulating/modding/making fan enhancements of their old games and start making their own upgraded versions. Most people who play HD mods/remakes of their games would be happy to pay to buy a competent remake/remaster. I play Render96 for Mario 64 and own multiple copies of the game. Would I buy and HD remake anyway? Absolutely.
People love to hate on motion controls, but when implemented well, they are actually the best way to play shooters. Also without motion controls VR would have never gotten to where it is now.
I like random encounters in JRPG. Having enemies that I can avoid all the time (DQ11) removes the challenge and fun.
In earlier DQ games I enjoyed exploring new locations, taking the risks of being wiped by stronger enemies. In DQ11 there is no risk and no reward.
I think this sometimes, too. But at the same time, I gotta admit there is some feel of convenience with not having random encounters. It can be tedious sometimes when you're just trying to do something and you have to keep doing battles at regular intervals. Eg, revisiting a low level area would be soooo boring because the battles are absolutely trivial and unrewarding and just get in the way.
Perhaps something to be said about the hybrid systems like Persona 5 have, where the battles aren't random, but rather there's enemy indicators that you have to touch to start a battle. So you can avoid battles, but if you're not careful, you'll still end up in a battle. In fact by preemptively accepting the battle, you can gain an advantage (and inversely, if you're not careful, you'll get ambushed).
I like the system of Earthbound where enemies need to touch you to start a battle and if you're overleveled, the battle is skipped and you still gain exp and items
Yes. And I like that when the enemies are stronger, they actively chase you so you can't always avoid the battles.
Most popular survival games (Minecraft, Valheim, Raft, Ark) are dull, unimaginative experiences that disrespect your time. I truly don't get the appeal, other than if you're a terminally online kid with nothing else going on. They promise this world of near-eternal fun and imagination, and then forget to develop fun mechanics, write a compelling story to give context to what you're doing, give you goals, teach you how to play...
Raft is probably the worst example I can think of. What a crock of shit that game was. Zero tutorial, a terrible grind. Just lazy. You can softlock yourself in the first 30 minutes if you jump onto an island and let your raft drift away, because you can't build a new raft, and all the game's resources spawn around it for no good reason. The game has a Very Positive rating on Steam with over 200,000 reviews...
There are some obvious exceptions. Terraria is still so charming, and does away with the hunger/thirst/durability trappings of other survivals. I didn't get too far into Subnautica, but it's clearly a fresh idea and has an ambitious story. And y'know... I can't be too hard on Minecraft, it's iconic.
But the rest is just hollow and soul-crushing and in most cases unfinished. They're punishing time-sinks disguised as a "world where you can do anything," and the fact that so many go to bat for them really makes me grieve for people's taste in games.
Hot take over... Woof, I need to lie down...
New Super Mario Bros U is the best 2D mario game. Even more so if it is including Luigi U (which some shipped with)
People dismiss it because it's part of the NSMB series, but it's basically Super Super Mario World.
I used to really like it, but after Mario Maker, I noticed the controls in NSMBU feel different, and I couldn’t go back to it.
It's great, but as the 4th in the "New"-series it didn't really feel fresh, and it soon got overshadowed by the Maker games.
It was the first one of the four that was actually challenging, so that’s a big deal.
In no way was nsmbu overshadowed by mario maker. The quality of levels is not there in those games. Either kaizo or very dumb are the two options of mario maker levels
When I played RE4 on the Wii, I felt that controllers were a thing of the past and we entered a new era of gaming - the wiimotes were just amazing for RE4 - problem was it was the only game I played that really brought the controls to the next level. Somehow humanity fell back into the controllers - real shame honestly, but I'm glad I got to experience that next level of awesome I have yet to experience since
Nintendo should have flopped years ago, but so many people shovel out cash for no other reason than 'it's Nintendo!'. No, you don't need every 'version' of the Switch or every color of joycon.
The Switch is a disappointment. The hardware is purposely under clocked because of the did a 'Pro' that ran at full speed it would really shine a light that in it's current spec, it's barely a 720p device. The OS is embarrassingly not done.
Nintendo hates it's customers. Loves to sue because you emulated a game you can't buy. Did you make a YouTube video and the games music played, that's their video now! Here's a crappy subscription were going to tie services to, but cloud saves... Nah. Discounts... Ha, no. (Meanwhile, Stream exists). Oh and they'll fight tooth and nail to not have to do warranty work (joycon drift for example).
Far less of the first party games are actually good. And any game that's multiplatform is better on anything that's not a Nintendo device. BotW was at best a 7/10, but the zealot fans sent death threats because it didn't get a perfect score. And the latest entry, looks like they yet again couldn't come up with real content so they did the classic fallback of 'have the player make their own fun'.
Oh and the Pokemon games are garbage. Every main line game since going 3d has been shit and a waste of money. There been no actual development, it's the same white bread game it's been since the 90s. Sorry, the older games were better, they had villains and rivals. Now it's what, disgruntled emo kids and an overly attached forced friend.
Frequent deep game sales are disrespectful to the customers because you either need to time your purchases or pay way more than the game "actually" sells for, and the gamer attitude of "I only buy games on sale" is both enabling this and disrespectful to game developers who charge a reasonable amount for their game.
18 years later and there's absolutely nothing like Killer7 until today. Not even by the same developer suda51.
Killer7 gave me hope that in the future we'd have games even more bizarre and stylish than it. But nothing.
It's not quite the same, but did you play No More Heros? One of the best Wii games, made by the same studio. It's so fucking sick.
Gaming has been actually dead for almost 10 years.
Occasionally the body twitches, but virtually all of my purchases in the last long time are just catching up with all the great things created before the collapse.
Latest twitches for me: Dave the Diver and Rogue Legacy 2. Incredible games.
Many stellar games also go unnoticed. The Forgotten City didn’t get nearly the amount of love it deserves. The Hex is basically an unknown game, overshadowed by the same dev’s excellent Inscryption.
…I loved Inscryption… but I found myself walking away from The Hex loving it EVEN MORE. If anyone is interested, go in blind. Ignore the graphics, they’ll make sense. Playing Pony Island first isn’t necessary, but it’s two hours long and does make the experience even better.
@SJ_Zero @LeylaaLovee Maybe this can be said for the tripple A space, but indie devs have been firing on all cylinders the last 5-6 years.
When the western Roman empire fell, it was the Germanic people in the wilderness who came in to fill the vacuum, bringing new ideas and new vitality to what was a stagnant slave society (which is why it collapsed in the first place). In the same way, indie game developers are the ones bringing new ideas and vigor from the hinterlands. In one sense, the fact that indies are hitting so hard only proves that the industry has mostly collapsed.
What was the collapse?
If we consider the golden age of video games to be between 2007 and 2013, a lot of the stuff that caused that era to be so extraordinary was companies taking risks and succeeding at making something people had never seen before. Part of the fall from there was that companies stopped taking risks because they found massively successful formulas. Another part of the fall was companies realizing that video games could have a 10 year lifecycle. That meant that video games became an investment that had a far longer window for success or failure so the successes would pay off far longer and the failures would hurt that much worse, so staying with established formulas and making things more vanilla paid off more than taking risks.
Valve did a lot of smart things in focus testing and sanding off rough edges back when there were some really bad examples of rough edges breaking good games, but eventually everyone was sanding so much that everything was a fisher price toy.
These types of comments remind me of that Douglas Adams quote.
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
If there has been anything I've seen in the last 30+ years of gaming, it's that people always think games used to be much better.
Bouncing babies on my IBM XT is just the way I likes it!
The Apple II is still the most fun I've ever had playing games. Even now, I will regularly go back and play games like Snake Byte and Swashbuckler in an emulator.
Older systems have much less delay between the controls and the screen than modern systems do. USB is slow. HDMI is slow.
Am I too late for this?
Persona 4 is a competent story held back by a mediocre game (Persona 4: The Animation does it justice; it's the right format for this amount of content). Persona 5 is a decent game held back by a poor story
I strongly dislike open-world games and prefer denser, hub-world designs. Open-world designs do not immerse me. They feel like busy work.
WoW is overrated.
I don't like Half-Life, even though I appreciate that it has an important place in gaming history.
Witcher 2 was more fun than Witcher 3. There, I said it.
Idk, just something about the super clunky controls and dated graphics (I played it about 4 years ago) made it extremely lovable. Witcher 3 had so much to do that I never got fully into the main story line. I'm probably an idiot though.