Dunno if I’d call it a stinker, but my excitement for Starfield waned very quickly as I played. 20 hours in, it was still fun. 30-40 hours, I’m like, eh. Past about 60 hours I was completely disillusioned with it. The perk system is a nightmare, leveling up gets really difficult really quickly. Making money (especially after they hid all the vendor chests), getting materials, etc. is a tedious slog. The UI/UX for ship building and settlement building is painful. Settlement building in general is a pointless waste of time and takes way too long to get the perks enough to make it even remotely worthwhile.
It also doesn’t help that there’s not a native version for the Xbox One, and Cloud Play is miserable. Constant disconnects, jitters, long load times, long wait times.
SPOILER BITS
The main quest is completely pointless. It has no effect on anything. Outside of Constellation and the other Starborn, no one even knows anything is happening. Your choices don’t have any impact on anything. Side with the Hunter? Side with the Emissary? Outside of the number of dupes you fight at the end, it literally doesn’t matter. And getting to the end does absolutely nothing. Now you have to start over with a shittier ship you can’t upgrade, some armor that’s mostly fine, and literally nothing else. Nothing’s different. Sure, after enough times through, silly things start happening at Constellation. But what else? It’s not worth it.
The faction quests are fun, but then again, have basically no bearing on anything.
The companions are disappointing: ostensibly you have two lovable rogues, a religious zealot, and the most Lawful Good character who will judge you for even the slightest non-Squeaky Clean choices you make, though they all end up being basically the same.
Otherwise, you just keep running the treadmill: get all 10 upgrades to your Space Shouts, ship, and armor? And then what? Just keep going. Do it again. And again. And you still don’t have enough perk points.
On second thought, maybe I would call it a stinker. So fucking disappointing. It had so much potential.
You know, I’m thinking I’m either not playing enough games, or getting “too old” because most of the stuff I remember playing is either old or, ahem, adults only.
This year was the year I finally fully played Star Wars Dark Forces. Would’ve been a great game at the time, playing nowadays would be just for curiosity, really.
I played Fallout 4 a bunch, especially once I discovered how to get infinite enemies/gear/money by building settlement traps to catch Gunners. Silly loop, but I had lots of fun coming up with new ways to blow them up shortly after stepping out of the traps.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate is still the best fighting game I’ve played this year.
Phantasy Star 1 for the Sega Master System is the worst I’ve played this year. I don’t think it’d be much fun even back in 1989, because it mixes typical jrpg with first person dungeon crawling and the latter is awful. Feels like the purpose of the game was selling strategy guides and/or magazines with walkthroughs.
Elden Ring and Stardew Valley ate a decent chunk of 2023 for me. And are both amazing games in their own right. Totally different, though.
I didn’t play anything really bad this past year, but I did bounce off Crosscode pretty hard after expecting to love it given I’m a sucker for early JRPGs and the 8 and 16 bit eras in general. It’s a well made game, just overlong and featuring some tedious and frustrating mechanics.
I played a few games that were just really mediocre.
Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor was a super boring ARPG and I couldn’t put in more than a few hours. The levels were super short and just corridors.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker started out ok, but was just far too long, terribly paced, and the last third was a complete slog. This was probably the one I’d call a “stinker” the most.
Crisis Core Remake (FF7 spin off) had a boring story and lame characters. The bulk of the “content” were 300 side missions that were usually less than five minutes long in one of like six stages. I picked it up after I enjoyed the FF7 Remake far more than I thought, but this game adds nothing to the overall story. To be fair to the game though, I did complete all 300 side stories, because from time to time I like a mindless grind.
I’m continuing my four-year-old save of Octopath Traveler, where I got a third or so in. I dunno if it’s the Steam Deck, but there’s just tons of aliasing, shifting sprites and flickering, it just looks bad, and the detailed enemy sprites were the only thing I really liked about the game in the first place. Combat is also a slog at times, so I don’t know if I have it in me to finish the game.
After some plays it got frustrating when you’re going along fine but a massive monster spawns right next to you and kills you with one hit before you have time to react
I thought the story was pretty boring and the vast amount of copy and paste in the game made it feel like it just dragged on. That absolute joke of a final boss was something too.
I got a lot of games with AMD hardware or other give aways, games I normally would not buy anyway. Imo Forspoken, Starfield, Redfall, Dead Island 2, Callisto protocol, AC Mirage and Harry Potter I did not like.
Glad there have been a lot of games I did enjoy recently, Dave the Diver, my time at Sandrock, Thalos Principle 2, Stray. I did like AAA Jedi Survivor although some technical glitches occurred.
Cocoon - short with no dialog but really enjoyed the puzzles
The Talos Principle 2 - great puzzles and well done story. Really enjoyed it.
Far - Lone Sales - the start wasn’t super intuitive but didn’t take long. Short, no dialog. Ok puzzles. Fair enough especially on sale
Dave the Diver - Really good. Didn’t finish since I played it enough that it didn’t drive me anymore. That’s not the games fault since I tend to do that and rarely play longer games much with my schedule.
I expect you to die 2 - short and alright. Loved the first one, second wasn’t as good but not bad either
Stray - I really enjoyed this one. Fantastic world setting and ambiance even though it’s too short for some people’s taste I found it to be really good.
Gorogoa - Really weird and really good. I love deeper narratives revealed over time and this one hit me like Rime
sourcing an older computer that can run xp isn't terribly difficult, or expensive. don't need internets for them, don't need massive video card, or a big high-res monitor. in the end, finding one, and a little space to set it up, is a lot easier and with far fewer headaches than getting many of the old games to run on 'modern' windows or linux.
i have systems from an old celeron 300a to dual core am2 to play the really old games on.. even have crt and white kb/mouse for the full 'experience'.
Yeah and? I don’t know what are you trying to say here, its not like I said “Its crazy that Grim Dawn still gets updates unlike WoW”. Do I really need type out all the old games that still get updates when I want to talk about one?
You wanna know another old game that still gets updates? Project Zomboid. /J
But really though Zomboid has also been in early access since like 2013 and it’s still getting actively updated. Not to mention all the mods available on the steam workshop.
I just finished replaying DMC V. After replaying DMC 1 - 4 + DmC in the past 6 months, made me realize that I don’t like playing as Nemo. He feels underpowered at times, and his skillset are kinda boring compared to Dante.
In DMC V, I enjoyed my time playing as Dante and V.
V is a change of pace, being slower and ranged, while Dante has really satisfying moves and weapons. I like Nemo’s robotic arm, but the idea that it’s a consumable and sometimes you might ended up picking up an arm that you are not familiar with, does disrupt the flow. Even his basic swordplay feels kinda lacking.
I played DMC3 years ago and never really understood the genre. It was fun, but every other game like it felt exactly the same to me. Then Hi-Fi Rush came out this year, and it clicked, so before this year's releases started really kicking off in summer, I played through DMC1-3 and half of 4. I'll get back to it soon enough, but I really liked what I played of 4; it was the best one so far, honestly. Were your problems with Nero limited to how he plays in 5, or did that criticism also apply to 4?
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