One of the things that don’t exist anymore in NH but was still a thing in NL is villagers can move in and most importantly out without you noticing, because you can only convince them to stay if you catch them the day they decide to move.
In NH they’re basically stuck with you forever until they tell you they consider moving, and then you can tell them not too. And you can also try to choose a new villager by meeting random ones on desert islands (though you can still just leave it completely to chance too). Depending on who you ask, some prefer the bit of simulated independence, others can’t stand the idea of their “dream villager” leaving if they missed the day.
By the way the same masked rabbit is living in my NH town right now! She’s called Grisette in French.
Damn. I think I kind of fall into the camp of simulated independence. I wish they had given the player a toggle. I mean, I imagine it’d be a bit of work code wise, but I can’t imagine it’s impossible
The masked rabbit I also had move in on New Horizons. I haven’t used it for any screenshots but I caved and bought the switch version just to try it. She moved in pretty recently lol
NH tends to be “softer” in general, and I do regret some choices too, including that one a bit, but I think it would have been a lot harder to maintain to go back to all those little choices and put toggles on them. Especially with all the complaints around everything that was “wrong” back around NH’s debut (with people arguing a lot about how wrong it was).
There has been a lot of QoL added to updates, which makes me think they did hear some of the most common annoyances people had, but if you weren’t there around the first months, you can’t imagine the level of drama going on.
Including stuff that were only problems because of people making up their own rules and getting upset when it was not streamlined enough.
I don’t hear a lot about that anymore, but there was a lot of people trying for a better online player economy (…yeah, not sure why). Their problem was the most common currency, bells, was too easy to cheese/get through cheating. So they turned to another “currency”, the Nook Miles Ticket. Since you get it from miles, and miles are rewarded for actually imteracting with the game a lot, it felt more “valuable” to them (hell, they put proof of work into freaking Animal Crossing).
Since normally tickets have only one purpose on-game and that’s visiting a singular mystery island, the miles redeeming machine only gives one ticket at a time with a fairly long interaction. For normal use, it’s completely fine. But of course people wanting to use them as money complained s lot about how long it is to spit out a hundred “NMTs”.
I think I kind of get what you mean when you say softer. Maybe not In a full understanding, but I can grasp the idea of it.
I can’t really say I’m a fan of an online economy. I am not a big online game person. Give me multiplayer I can play with my friends and I’m happy. I don’t need anymore. Though, I also suppose it can be implemented in an optional way (though, this is Nintendo we’re talking about. Optional online mechanics I feel are kind of rare for them)
I’m trying to imagine spitting out a hundred of the tickets in my head. A lot of the game’s terminology is lost on me but if I’m thinking of the right thing (The travel ticket thing) I can’t imagine what I’d do with that many.
That’s the one, the thing that let you go to random deserted islands, usually for materials. It was just never meant to be printed en masse and hoarded like capital.
I think the idea of needing an economy between players in AC is a bit ridiculous too anyway. My only “trades” with other players, if you could call them that, were stuff like “you can go pick some of my extra blue roses, and please get me that cool red godzilla variant from your town”.
The early Animal Crossings had working NES games in them you could get as in game items. Back before Nintendo learned they could endlessly monetize them. There’s an update for the latest Animal Crossing that adds them in, but they require a Nintendo Online subscription to play them, because if you aren’t paying rent for 3 decade old video games, what are you even doing?
I really want to like omori but it hit one of my biggest pet peeves in gaming. I abhor it when winning an “impossible” fight is mathematically possible to win but then the cutscene has you lose anyway. I dont have as much issue with actual impossible fights or fights with losing cutscenes after winning that game over on a loss. Its just fights that are meant to be impossible but arent, without changing any part of the outcome.
(Spoilers here for prospective players) Outside of the dream for the first time (assuming it happens more than once), I stocked up on medical supplies and unequipped the knife, and then beat Aubrey with my bare hands, and she still freaks out that I have a knife. Instantly lost my immersion and I dropped the game.
I dropped inscryption for the same reason when I won despite the static at the end of act 2 and the game doesn’t even acknowledge your success.
On the whole, achievements encourage players to do stuff that isn’t fun. Sometimes they’re funny or encourage good gameplay, but too often they’re just busywork, mindless random drops, or insane investments in time/skill.
Achievements (for me, at least) are just a reason to spend more time with a game that I enjoy. In most cases, I have trouble enjoying a game if I don’t have goals to work towards (either game-imposed or self-imposed). If I finish the main part of the game, and am not tired of it yet, achievements give me goals that I can follow if I want to keep playing.
Definitely agree that there’s too many games that have achievements that are just in no way worth the time and aren’t even fun as an auxiliary goal, though. The best ones are the ones that get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t (e.g. playing a non-standard playthrough of the game). The lazy ones (‘Kill X enemies, Earn Y dollars’) are just busywork or earned ‘automatically’ while doing other things and add nothing.
Trophies can be very fun when they incentivize the player to interact with the game in ways that you normally don’t do during a regular play through.
Most games have trophies designed by some corporate drone and consist of a handful of trophies giving for completing the storyline and the rest for token actions that you’ll inevitably do while playing. They fucking suck!
Ratchet and Clank did it right back in the day before trophies with their Skill Point system. Little fun challenges that you wouldn’t normally do. Gave you points to unlock some skins and cheats.
Is that really so much to ask for… yeah I already know the answer.
Most games have trophies designed by some corporate drone and consist of a handful of trophies giving for completing the storyline and the rest for token actions that you’ll inevitably do while playing.
Those are basically just publicly accessible analytics for how far people typically get in a game.
After someone on Lemmy recommended Dwarf Eats Mountain (it’s okay), I checked out the idle game genre for the first time.
On one extreme, Magic Archery was completed in under an hour and all seven achievements were earned during normal gameplay.
But most other idle games, ho boy. They tend to have several hundred achievements, many of which would take literal weeks if not months to achieve, and often require resetting the game back to the start dozens of times due to prestige mechanics that are necessary for late-game progression.
Action games, for the most part, have well-thought achievements, TBH. If designed well, they can nudge you towards the intended way to play the game and by the time you’re done, you will have mastered the gameplay or got really close.
In Hi-Fi Rush, for example, some achievements encourage you to parry, parry counter, air juggle… etc.
Too many people seem too focused on getting 100%/Platinum though, and I feel like that’s almost always going to end up in a kind of exploration grind, or just having achievements for playing the game.
The best achievements imo is when you do something random and get an achievement for it, then youll be able to see how many other players managed the same.
I enjoyed the Tokyo Drift achievement in Sea of Thieves. I was running from a larger ship and naturally thought of going full steer around a rock and dropping anchor. It worked! We lived.
Fuck yeah space funeral. One minute you’re being jumpscared by dramatic Charles Baudelaire readings and then chatting up Dracula in the next. It fucking rules
I played this game twice, and tried to get to the end twice, and in both times I just WALKED AWAY. The original was actually playable and beatable in comparison.
One moment it’s a shooter, then it becomes a driving game, then it becomes one of the earliest walking sims with long stretches of nothing, then a horror game, then a tactical shooter, and it wasn’t good at any of them - it was all just cobbled together. Valve would have had a much better game if they sold just Ravenholm, the only part that actually evoked strong feelings in me.
And by this point in time I can’t help but think the funny letter G guy is just a Mary Sue to glue the game together with very little character or substance besides “man in black”.
I firmly believe the only reason this game is “beloved” is the same reason that iPhones sell just because of the logo of the company that made them. (And also because of this game every fucking company that breathes has an online DRM launcher)
Fear by Monolith and its expansions on the other hand, they were so much better despite the aiming system being unintuitive in comparison to HL the 2. Everything just clicks. I just loved Fear. But I’m sure this won’t save me from “Ubisoft target audience” allegations.
I firmly believe the only reason this game is “beloved” is the same reason that iPhones sell just because of the logo of the company that made them.
It’s more nostalgia than branding. I’ll entirely agree that half life hasn’t aged great, but what’s important is the historical context. The games were groundbreaking for the time, especially HL2 with its physics engine and gravity gun. I remember playing it just days after release then being shocked and amazed at those different systems. There just weren’t many games with that level of polish tackling such a wide scope.
Just like with watershed TV/movie/music, it seems quaint and overhyped as their innovations become the norm.
I once saw someone somewhere comment that HL2 is actually a tech demo meant to show off the physics stuff. Which I wholeheartedly agree with, and even that didn’t win me over. The game doesn’t feel like a shooter meant to be enjoyed, rather it feels like Valve flexing its muscles only because they can.
I have some similar reviews with 0 hours because I usually play a cracked version of the game and then buy it if i like it just to support the dev. Maybe that’s what was going on here.
Lots of mods for older games circumvent steam, so steam does not know about the game running. Famous example was Skyrim and Skyrim script extender. If this is the case with mmod idk
If you launch the game outside steam the time isn’t accounted for. I know this because I love playing Timespinner with a randomizer. Inside steam I have 40h of played time. If the timer counted my randomizer sessions I’d have at least 4x that
A redemption arc implies fucking up in the first place and working to rectify the previous mistakes.
They lied and the game was missing a lot of features at launch, but now all those features (and more) are in the game, which is still being updated for free a decade later.
I don’t like the game, and I wish the devs acted differently so that a redemption arc wasn’t needed in the first place, but it is what it is. The devs worked their asses off, the game is now playable and feature complete and is still being updated, and from the looks of it Hello Games have learned from their mistakes and are not promising the moon for their next game.
I mean, if the game is actually good with its common space tropes as their marketing materials, instead of having the need to be culturally reframed into a “chill sandbox”. 10 years of disjointed game mechanics and bugs still implies bad game design.
Instead of completely changing the game into something else, they opted to add features that complement the original gameplay loop, and lots of people love what the game has to offer.
There’s nothing wrong with not liking NMS, and as I said, I don’t like it either, but I wouldn’t say that the game doesn’t fit the promises made just because you don’t like it. From what I remember, they promised a sandbox game with a big universe and tons of planets to explore along with your friends. NMS currently has that, plus base building, ship customization, and more. All these systems are subservient to the main gameplay loop of going to planet -> gathering resources -> building more stuff, but it’s like that for every sandbox game. I don’t like Minecraft and Factorio either, but like, it’s my opinion. NMS never promised a 10 hrs story driven experience and cinematic cutscenes.
Doesn’t fit the promise made was not the argument; shoddily made, then being reframed into something else was the argument, nor was I expecting a “cinematic experience”. And no, I like Minecraft, MC is crystal clear about what it is trying to be: a building game first with an open world and survival element.
I cannot say the same with NMS and its space tropes and exploration loop.
Your argument is that the game doesn’t fit its “space tropes”, but somehow that’s not you having different expectations than what it was actually promised and delivered?
I expect functional dogfights, not simulator like flight model, but something arcady in a space game with functional AI. How is that an unrealistic expectation?
Let’s not even talk about a simulated universe of faction battles, which Sean even mentioned as being in the game.
There are also different factions in the game that the player can interact with and gain/lose reputation. According to the wiki, entertaining relationships with the in-game factions net the following benefits:
Availability of certain blueprints to purchase.
Faction specific dialogue options.
Possibility to start missions, which require a minimum faction standing.
High standing will grant the player aid at times when under attack by pirates.
Discounts on technology modules in Space Stations.
Maybe it’s not as in-depth as you (and I) wish it was, but it’s there already.
Don’t do that? I recently replayed the remastered versions of the old PS1 Final Fantasy games, and they have built-in cheat codes (press left and right stick to turn on God mode). I didn’t do that and played the game normally.
Thanks for proving my point.
You are strangely confrontational for some reason. But anyway, my point was that the game is, and always has been, exploration first, and everything else is complementary to the main gameplay loop. You were setting your expectations up for some sort of grand RPG dogfight game that never was, and are now telling us that it’s HG’s fault.
“Don’t do that?” I didn’t press S to win, they still circle around in an arc. And they can barely kill the player when he is not moving. Is that good dogfighting AI in a space game?
“You are strangely confrontational for some reason.” Because it is a common tactic for NMS fans to claim others have “different expectations”, which you have done twice already.
“exploration first” Precisely, Minecraft started as a building game, NMS started as an open-world sandbox, or is it an aesthetic planetarium? Does that mean expecting good dogfights is unwarranted? Would you please check their original promotional material on what they are selling?
Minecraft started as a building game, NMS started as an open-world sandbox, or is it an aesthetic planetarium? Does that mean expecting good dogfights is unwarranted?
It’s a sandbox exploration/crafting game, not a combat/flight sim game. The survival aspect in Minecraft is barebones and monsters are stupid and useless, so what? Why is Minecraft “crystal clear” about being a “building game with a survival element” but you still insist on NMS being a “space game”? What does space game even mean? Can’t two space games provide different experiences, a different focus on different mechanics, or is good dogfighting a prerequisite to all space games?
Would you please check their original promotional material on what they are selling?
I did. I could count the number of SECONDS space battles featured in their pre-release trailers on one hand. The major focus was always on exploring planets, taking in the sights and gathering resources.
Because it is a common tactic for NMS fans to claim others have “different expectations”, which you have done twice already.
I’m not a NMS fan. I think the game sucked. I hate sandboxes.
“You, however, had different expectations.” Why are you keeping hammering the flight sim angle? Did I say 6 DOF and Newtonian physics? And you wonder I got defensive? xD
“What does space game even mean? Can’t two space games provide different experiences, a different focus on different mechanics, or is good dogfighting a prerequisite to all space games?” Fair enough, then take it out; the abandoned mode should be the default. Everyone is finding combat so bad that it is obnoxious anyway, and I wouldn’t mind for it to become a fantasy planetarium like Space Engine mods. :)
“I’m not a NMS fan. I think the game sucked. I hate sandboxes.” I love them, I can do so much with them, this is not this one, though. Sandbox doesn’t mean there is an excuse for bad mechanics.
I have to agree with him, honestly. HL2 was novel for its time, but if you're playing it for the first time in 2026 then yeah, it really doesn't hold up to modern game experiences. I also dislike games that end ambiguously or on cliffhangers, and the lack of closure provided from sequel-bait endings like HL2's can be annoying to people who just want to play a complete story. I want to see it through to the end and get the feeling that my actions had any sort of consequence to the world, and HL2 really doesn't provide that.
And narratively, the fact that Gordon is a silent protagonist really doesn't make the player feel like they're a real part of that world, and rather they're just going along for an on-rails carnival ride. The player has no real agency to affect anything that isn't a part of the singular route offered by the game. This would be okay if it was a role-playing game, and the player is intended to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, but HL2 is a wholly linear game where characters just bark commands at you from start to finish.
Honestly, for being a negative review, I think he was very fair about it. It's an important part of gaming history, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a great experience for modern players.
HL2 has a ton of story, but it isn’t spelled out in cutscenes or written down in item descriptions. It’s discussed by NPCs and inferred from the environment. You experience it all in a first person frame, without third person cutscenes or by asking someone to exposit at you. You don’t even have to go out of your way with a guide on your second monitor to unlock that info, it’s right there with you, you just have to pay attention.
You’re a person in the world and nobody will be the explaining the concept of lightbulbs or the where the combine came from or how the city was built. But you can absolutely find out more about that in the game.
I will say that even then, it was missing a bit of “acknowledgment”. Kleiner and Alyx don’t even question where you came from or what you should be doing now you’ve suddenly arrived.
Some of that could be as simple as, if Gordon was non-silent, have him wonder questions while wandering C17: “What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
“What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
But, you KNOW what happened to the Earth. What would spelling it out add to the story, except replacing the wonder and accomplishment with a boring bit of exposition.
Having Gordon be a silent protagonist adds hugely to the first person experience of the game. Sure, you can add dialog and questions and elaborate, but that would detract from the experience. Picasso could have also added pointers to each of the characters in Guernica to explain how they relate to the bombing of the city, and it would make the painting a lot clearer… and a lot worse.
I want to compare Half-Life with SOMA here (so spoilers for both). They’re both great experiences, but Gordon is silent while Simon won’t shut up. Simon needs to asks questions because the story requires you to understand some things, and some people need very basic explanations. When I played SOMA, I kept waiting for there to be a secret plottwist that Simon was copied incorrectly and was thus either braindamaged, or modified not to recognise reality for a specific purpose. No, that didn’t happen, Simon is instead an absolute moron who completely fails to realize that everyone constantly being copied means that he too will be copied instead of having his mind relocated. The game treats this as some kind of big realization, when it was in fact absolutely blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. It’s literally the core of the game. Simon, being a moron, then takes this out on the person helping him, because he’s a moron.
Not only is the main character an idiot, I’m being railroaded into taking decisions that are stupid, which are then reacted to as if I couldn’t possibly have foreseen this, implying I (the player) am probably really stupid too. That was a huge detraction in SOMA. Simon is an idiot for the sole purpose of getting the information to you, the player, because apparently you need to be informed like you’re some kind of idiot too.
On the other hand, Gordon doesn’t talk. That’s a BIG restriction, but it also means you don’t even have to option to ask questions. On the other hand, you don’t need to; all the reasonable questions you might have are answered in the game by environmental storytelling. Who are the combine? Well, we see them beating up random humans, speaking a weird garbled message, we hear speeches by Breen, we see the combine raid random apartments. It’s very clear who they are without Gordon needing to ask about it. It’s like starting a book in medias res, which is quite common in writing.
Half-Life 2 assumes you can make connections, and you need to do so because Gordon doesn’t talk. SOMA assumes you’re an idiot, and reinforces that constantly by Simon talking to people like an idiot.
That feels like a bit of a hate train on SOMA that’s not really relevant. We often dislike character idiocy, especially when it’s our player. But speaking protagonists can be done well - Dead Space 2 made the move, and even ported it back when they finally did a DS1 remake.
Perhaps the only major issue with using environmental storytelling to give City 17’s base exposition is that the game is both a sequel, and intended as an entry point. I remember as a kid playing HL2 (with very little knowledge of HL1) and as soon as I saw the aliens in gas masks corralling everyone, really wondered what sort of story I missed in the first one. Leaving people to figure things out is definitely cool, I’m just offering ways to point out clearly that you, the player, didn’t miss anything key, because in today’s media deluge, often the reason for that feeling is because a story is slapdash and poorly written - as opposed to simply hiding the details in plain sight for the player to find.
Interestingly, there are some notes in an art book where the G-Man originally gave a longer opening speech to explain what’s happened in your absence, but they removed it. Overall it was probably the right move, but I’m curious how it would have felt.
That feels like a bit of a hate train on SOMA that’s not really relevant. We often dislike character idiocy, especially when it’s our player. But speaking protagonists can be done well - Dead Space 2 made the move, and even ported it back when they finally did a DS1 remake.
Yeah, the DS1 remake had Isaac talking, and they did it pretty decently because he’s not constantly surrounded by people who have answers to questions that Isaac has. The game is still about finding out what happened, and nobody can answer that, so you can’t talk about it. You’re discovering it with Isaac AND the other survivors. In DS2 you can’t really ask all that many questions about unitology, because people don’t really know the answers either.
But it would ruin all the interesting stuff about HL2’s history discovery. If someone just tells you “Oh yeah, the combine conquered the earth, and now they’re using these hybrid soldiers to suppress humanity after their military conquest, and their citadel is slowly expanding an ever more repressed population in this city” that’s not nearly as interesting as finding it out. But if Gordon asks, anyone would know the info, because they lived through it. By having a silent protagonist, people can just assume Gordon’s been around and knows this stuff, and not magically kidnapped by a supernatural magic guy in a suit who keeps mysteriously following him around. Half the fun in HL2 is figuring out the world, it’s a core concept of the game. You learn something for yourself, you figure it out by putting it togehter. Having G-Man spell it out would remove the fun. And having Gordon spell it out for the player would definitely detract from the game too. HL2 really hit that level of natural discovery, and making it optional to the game enjoyment.
Of course, launching it today removes a lot of the fun too, since there will just be 5000 youtubers repeating eachother about the game.
It doesn’t exactly need to be a secret plottwist, given the game literally starts with Simon’s brain damage, but there is also a bit of optional exposition about half way through about the gen 1 brainscans being primitive. Admittedly, it being consistent with the plot didn’t make Simon any less infuriating, at least for me.
I mean, Kleiner saying “I had expected more warning!” is a sort of mixed surprise. If he’s been gone for 20+ years, the natural reaction I might expect is “What…? That’s impossible! We all thought you were dead! Or lost in Xen forever!” Heck, even Kleiner’s reaction to the “slow teleport” you and Alyx take late in the game is much grander. “I had…given up hope of ever seeing you again!!”
Yeah, that’s probably because Kleiner knew the G-Man was involved in the interdimensional shit and had Gordon in stasis (or whatever), and he expected more warning when Gordon was on his way back, not just have him dropped on the doorstep, whereas the slow teleport was entirely experimental, accidental, and unexpected.
Oh BTW I am currently waiting to complete a “challenge” (its an achievement) for a special game, with a special achievement. All I have to do is, not to play the game. No seriously, “The Stanley Parable” has a famous achievement, that you get if you don’t launch the game for 5 years. The fun story is, I purchased the game just to get this achievement. Really. I purchased it and waited 5 years, then installed it and run it.
But wait, why don’t I get the achievement? After an investigation I came to realize that the game has to run at least once, so the timer starts counting. Well, since then I played the game and wait another 5 years. I almost reached the fifth year. So to complete everything (which I did not honestly) you would need to do not to play the game. Is it worth it? I say absolutely!
Yeah I know, there are methods. But I want to “earn” it the right way, as I don’t like cheating for this kind of stuff. But thanks for the tip nonetheless. Edit: Especially as I’m in the ninth year now…
Praise where praise is due: They did pump out a ton of free updates. Does this compensate for the terrible state the game was released in? That’s something everyone needs to judge for themselves imo.
Does the game have what they once promised now? Is it “good” yet? I think that’s a more difficult question. If I was to criticise Hello Games for anything, than that even now they have not met some of the expectations they set. At least not for me personally.
And I’m not talking about bs speculation or hype, I am talking about things they have said would be in the game, some of which are still not here, and many of them feel like an alpha version of what you would expect. I can’t help but feel disappointed even today.
Given the number of upvotes by posts, it seems that the reaction to Hello Game is a reflection to the industry rather than the actual quality of the game and the intention of Hello Games.
They didnt have time to playtest the game. So the AI can fire faster than a human. It was one of the things they sorted for Halo CE but never got to due to constraints. It is literally the hardest Halo game because of this. I think on legendary youre even the weakest character entity in the game.
Yeah. I have to say, it’s probably one of the most difficult par times I’ve done. Though, Reach, 3, and 4 all support 4 players so I’m sure we have an advantage in that department
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