The key defining characteristic of a game is interactivity: the ability to affect the outcome in some way. Some games allow for less freedom than others in that respect, but watching someone else play and make those decisions for you is always going to be fundamentally different to playing it yourself.
Not to diminish the value of streams, especially if you find enjoyment in watching them, but you should understand that it’s not a comparable experience.
Like watching playthroughs of Gow Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2. I don’t have a PlayStation so I couldn’t play them when they first released (they’re on PC now, but expensive), but I was on the hype train so I wanted to see what happened.
Now that I know what happens, I still want to play through them myself so I can make the decisions, like you say.
It’s published by the same studio (11 bit studios), but they each have different developers. 11 bit studios also created The Alters, but Starward Industries created The Invincible.
It can definitely seem unfair at times. I mentioned in another comment that it feels like the game has a story it wants to tell and it punishes you for straying too far from the plot. Fortunately, it marks your conversation choices, so if you have to redo conversations, you know which path you previously took.
I finished "Hardspace: Shipbreaker". It was pretty fun! Much better story than most sim games.
I'm mow playing "Enderal", a totally free full conversion of Skyrim. You need Skyrim, obviously, but everything is new. New world, story, questlines, skill trees, everything. So far it's really, really good. Much better than Skyrim. It's difficult, but there is no level scaling so you can actually revisit areas when you levelled up.
I really enjoyed Shipbreaker, I really hope they expand the game some more as it definitely left me wanting more. It’s a super satisfying game. A really fun hidden gem.
It really is a great game. The story’s imaginative, the ambiance is jawdropping. And that sound design, man. It’s also fairly well polished. Played it for a good while, until I could not be bothered to manage people anymore. It felt too much like a job lol. The UI is a bit clumsy too I felt, but it’s awesome that the grindy bits are sped up and the game doesn’t waste your time, I appreciated that. However I hated the lack of manual saving, especially in a game that sometimes crashes at inopportune moments. It also does this thing where it appears open, but it punishes you if you don’t do things the way it wants you to. I’m in the “it’s a difficult game” camp, but there’s plenty of people who feel it’s an easy game just because they did some actions differently, or timed some events at different times. Still, it’s definitely worth a play.
Yeah, there definitely seems to be a story the game wants to tell, and you’re punished for veering too far from the plot. I’ve definitely restarted a save or two to undo a bad choice.
I do like that it highlights your previous conversation choices, so you know which route you picked and could try another option in your next run. That definitely makes it a bit easier.
I’m excited to see what new alters you create and what their personalities will be like, but I’m also kind of dreading the personnel management system getting too complex.
Thank you! I enjoy discussing video games (and movies, but my movie review blog has been abandoned for the past couple years), and I’ve always wanted to find someone who goes into a little depth on games; someone who introduces people to the premise of a game and gets them interested. The little summary on Steam isn’t always enough to let me know if it’s going to be fun or not.
Since I couldn’t find any content like that, I decided to just create it myself. I’m retired young and I got nothing else going on, so why not?
I like a lot of middle evolutions better than final, Charmeleon included. Wartortle with those wing-ears, the Nidoran middle forms are pretty good. Zubat is better than Golbat. Meowth has more going on than Persian which is just any regular cat from Earth. Voltorb is better than Electrode, but in fairness they're both just Pokéballs--I always thought Electrode should have been modeled after a Great Ball or something.
Are you serious!? First of all, Haunter is indeed S-tier design, but so is Gengar???
Here’s a list of a FEW middle evos who have far better designs than their first/last evos: Wartortle, Dragonair, Arctibax, Dolliv, Rhydon, Dottler — I could go on….!
Am ready, willing, and able to fight to the death over these opinions, so come at me!!!
Going from Haunter to Gengar, they added arms and legs and big square teeth. All of which are functionally unnecessary for a ghost. And the overall aesthetic went from “scary” to “goofy”.
I 100%'d Expedition 33. Masterpiece of a game, NG++ has no appeal to me though, I preferred the french dub FWIW, I found American actors saying french words to be really offputting, but maybe that’s because I’m Canadian.
Now that’s done I’ve dusted off the PS5 for ** Death Stranding 2**. I just got to the place past the animal shelter to give a non-spoiler point in where I’m at. I really enjoyed the first game, mostly just the vibe, it’s a very cozy game for me. DS2 is mostly more of the same, which is pretty much what I want. They greatly expanded the combat, and made it a more important part of side quests. I’m not particularly excited or bothered by that, it is more fun, particularly stealth but I’m a bit disappointed they haven’t built up the trekking part of the game much, so far I don’t think I have unlocked any items that weren’t in the first game and isn’t combat focused but I’m hoping they mostly added to late game. I do really like that roads are not the pinnacle of development any more (I LIKE TRAINS!!). The UI is also a bit of a step down for me, but I can’t quite figure out why, it just feels a bit more awkward. I really like the added skill trees and the backpack modding, the new BTs are alright. The one thing I really really hated in the first game were the flashbacks to old wars, I despised these forced combat sequences and find them dull, thematically odd, and shows off the worst aspects of the game, I’m disappointed to see these are still in DS2 but with the better combat they are slightly more tolerable. Overall it’s a good sequel and I’m having a really fun time, but it is going in a direction that I think makes it less special. I find the themes are really interesting with the series as a whole, developing the wilderness is obviously a good thing, having lots of teamwork and cooperation is genuinely really good for the world of DS, but also the structures you make are ugly, contributing to something worse and somewhat annoying. It’s really interesting commentary imo and very nuanced which is a rare thing.
It depends on the game, and my familiarity with it. If it's a linear, story-based game where the player doesn't really influence the end result at all, then watching it is just as good as playing it myself, in my opinion. Or if it's a new addition to a franchise that I'm already experienced in, like a new Super Mario game, then watching it is generally just as fine of an experience as playing it.
But if it's a game that's based entirely around the experience of playing it, like most multiplayer shooters for example, then watching somebody else play may be entertaining, but doesn't substitute actually playing it myself.
I recently discovered Celeste and love it so far. It’s a skilled platformer that doesn’t seem as punishing (edit) compared to other platformers that I’ve played, but still challenging enough to be satisfying. (edit: And the base story difficulty is not as bad as some other platformer games). The story is also really nice (overcoming depression and mental health stuff), not something I usually play but I was really engaged with it, and communicated in a nice simple way (not a ton of cutscenes like story-heavy games). edit: Celeste is similar to Hollow Knight, though I got stuck at a part of Hollow Knight and haven’t picked it back up in a while. Celeste is much easier than N++ and Super Meat Boy, IMO.
(I had intended to play it on my 4k TV, but I found that it has a significant delay that makes it hard, and I somehow didn’t notice it in other games. It’s much easier to play on my PC).
Also RE the OP’s mention of simple phone games, I really like “Simon Tatham’s Puzzles”: iOS, Android on Google Play and F-Droid. It’s a collection of simple puzzle games that I enjoy idly playing for a few minutes at a time.
Isn’t Celeste supposed to be rather difficult? Or is that the Ori games? Or both? Regardless, I don’t think I’ll ever play these games sadly as I’m not a god gamer, and I especially suck at platforming. Same reason I don’t think I’ll ever attempt Hollow Knight either.
It is fairly difficult, but there are a few reasons why I found the difficulty more pleasant:
pacing: the most difficult parts you’ll first encounter are optional bonus objectives (strawberries) that you can skip and come back to later. So you can take your time and get them as you go when you feel like it, and if you get frustrated you can continue with the main storyline for a bit (this happened to me a few times when I was playing, so it was basically continuous enjoyment)
very forgiving: in Hollow Knight, it’s like Dark Souls where if you die, you lose your in-game currency and need to make your way back to your corpse to recover it, and if you die again then you lose it completely. But in Celeste, you get a checkpoint at every “screen”, so it’s very forgiving to experiment new techniques and just keep trying over and over again. There are some longer patches so that it doesn’t feel too easy, but overall I really liked it
most of the storyline is accessible without having to do much extra. There are some more challenging levels at the end that require finding some hidden unlocks earlier in the game, and beating some tougher challenges that I’m going through now.
But fair point, even the base storyline is quite challenging, especially if you don’t love this genre. I’ll edit my comment to be more clear. They do add some “assist mode” to make it easier if you want to enjoy the story, but I’m not sure if it’s still fun to play it that way.
It’s very difficult at the hardest level but it ramps you up very smoothly. The main story is something most people (and children) can beat fairly easily, getting all the strawberries takes some time and some tighter skill but it quite forgiving and generally requires only one “advanced” move at a time. After that you get B sides and C sides which are when the real challenge starts and you have to start chaining multiple advanced moves together.IMO it’s an amazing game for transitioning from a casual platformer to a “hardcore” platformer if that is something you want to do, but you can also stop at a casual level and still get a full experience. There’s also an accessibility easy option if you really just want to get the story.
Yeah I will totally watch a playthrough over playing sometimes. There are many games and I only have so much time. Many playthroughs the person already had completed the game and then to boot they will edit out going back to save games. Heck back in the day we would hang at arcades and we did not have enough money to constantly play so we would watch each other or strangers play neat games. Someone who is good might regularly get a little crowd around them. And money is another thing along with time. Games cost money. I have not played deaths stranding or the last of us but I know the game.
EDITED - so I did not really answer the question. no its not the same but yes its an acceptable way to enjoy a game.
No, but also I don’t find the distinction all that critical. Watching an LP of the original NieR and the Drakengard games is an objectively better way to experience those games.
This is so annoying. Even though I’m not a fan of porn games on the whole, it is extremely irritating that payment systems can decide how and when you can spend your own fucking money. We’re not seven, anymore. We can take care of ourselves.
It smacks of the idiotic “babyproofing” of clearly adult spaces everywhere except bars, these days. Antiquated moral panics, just like 1954’s lavender scare all over again.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne