Save and exit to desktop straight away with no going back to the main menu before. I’m looking at you Dark Souls series! It’s like the developers have never used a computer for anything not related to writing code before.
I try to be careful where I play it because the character designs are pretty uh… well the characters have huge personalities, usually. That’s not why I play the game, but I recognize some people have more of a problem with that than others so I try to be respectful about it. Also, NIKKE is a mobile gacha game, which a lot of people dislike. So I would say it counts as a guilty pleasure, although I don’t really feel guilty for playing the game.
For me, I don’t really spend money on it. Except for their two collabs with Neon Genesis Evangelion and one collab with NieR, because for me it is literally the law that I pay at least a little for IPs I really like. I am not a Whale (Richard Nixon impression lol), I am not even a Dolphin(?) I think I am called a Minnow. Whatever they call a basically F2P player that spends so rarely they might as well not spend at all. Besides, I have played for 3 years and only spent $60 total, I think that’s a pretty good deal so far.
Anyway, I like the gameplay. I realize to some people this might sound like I am saying “I read Playboy for the articles,” but hear me out.
When I was younger, I really enjoyed going to arcades. In the tail years of the arcades, newer games started to pop up, among them being lightgun games. I really enjoyed playing Time Crisis and Lethal Enforcers, and later on playing Silent Hill The Arcade, Alien, Terminator, and others. It was fun while it lasted, but now arcades are dead and game developers don’t really make those kind of games anymore. Beside my home arcade cabinet where I emulate the older games (and get a worse experience because I have neither the pizza grease and cigarette smell, nor the different shaped controllers), I don’t have new options for lightgun games these days. Then NIKKE came out and the gameplay was close enough for me that I felt that same fun of a lightgun game. I enjoy my time with the game mostly because it reminds me of the fun I had in actual arcades with lightgun games.
I remember an ad for Half-Life that was like “Most shooters just have you run and shoot, but Half-Life will make you think.”
It did not. The puzzles weren’t anything a toddler couldnt solve in 2 seconds, there are barely any of them anyway, and most of the game is just running and shooting.
Drag got stuck in Black Mesa at the reception area. It looks like the way forward is through the big doorway, but it’s actually through the tiny vent drag didn’t notice for 20 minutes
so we’re all clear. What is the difference between selling 100 copy’s at $5 vs selling 5 copies at $100?
Dev’s lock in prices at $100 and only discount down to 5%-10% because industry standards and publishers or some bullshit. They don’t care if I eat, I don’t care if the eat. Doesn’t matter how good the game is. This is how it’s always been in capitalism and to participate means neither of us care about the other one. If we maintained what these sales were like during the hayday, I’d go to bat for any of these devs. But I’ve seen the sales in the past few years. Minimal at best then posts like these saying “support them”. Eat shit.
You’re not a starving artist any more then we are. You want to create a world of maximized profits then don’t ask for sympathy and support when it takes away from my labor too. I will play the game like you and demand cheaper while you demand more money. Go figure games now are not great and maybe profits are up because prices don’t drop anymore, but there’s likely more starving artist types developing games now then there were during the great days because guess what got everyone into gaming then? Cheap sales and game prices we all could afford and play on our jank systems. Now they fuck us and say “support our full price game or you’re a piece of shit”
Can’t say I feel guilty about liking these but if we’re talking about mediocre games I love that would be:
Drakengard 3 - simple, repetitive gameplay, huge amount of asset reuse and terrible performance if you’re crazy enough to play it on PS3. It also has a really engaging and tragic story, full of weirdness unique to the series (well, the first game anyway, haven’t played D2 yet).
Kane & Lynch (both games) - they’re rough, gritty and don’t pull any punches. Pretty divisive in terms of gameplay though I personally think it’s thematically consistent and adds a lot to the atmosphere. My favourite games from IOI despite not being as well designed or polished as the Hitman series.
Oni - 2001 action game by Bungie. Really cool hand-to-hand combat system, huge empty levels, simple story with wannabe Ghost in the Shell elements.
Starbound - lots of hype about Terraria in space, lots of wasted potential and cool features that didn’t make to the final release. I tend to prefer beta versions (mainly “Glad Giraffe” beta) but the final one also seemed alright based on what little I played of it. Definitely not as good as it had chance to be during development.
Scarface: The World is Yours - budget GTA clone based on the 1983 movie with Al Pacino (it’s actually a sequel). It looks bad even for the time but it plays well enough and has some neat mechanics which made it stand out, if only a little.
Tresspasser - the infamous Jurassic Park game with full control of your arm and focus on physical interactions with the environment. It’s a bit clunky and far from polished but it’s an interesting experience nonetheless.
That’s all that comes to mind for now, I might update the post if I remember anything else.
Dude, I loved Kane and Lynch! I co-op both of them with a buddy of mine. The jank was real but added charm to it. People complained about the violence but that shit was great. Also might be bias because IO Interactive made Hitman and that’s one of my all time favorite series.
It was also an unfortunate victim of the time when IOI struggled with figuring out how to transition from “classic” way of making games to the modern, high budget approach. I’m glad they managed to get back into the rhythm with new Hitman games but it’s still a little disappointing K&L had to serve as a stepping stone towards better times.
Beta Starbound was the shit. Release was just shit, with no “the”. They took a great game of endless discovery and procedural generation with a gameplay loop that just worked out of beta and filled it with completely predictable set pieces and juvenile hard-coded nonsense. They literally added a poop emoji monster FFS.
The worst part is there’s no “full” version since each beta added new features and removed other ones. I’d give a lot for a build which combines all of the lost mechanics into a single package.
I don’t think the final release was “shit” per se, but I was super confused when I played it and expected cool features from the beta. The beta was also very beta and not all of the features were actually good, but I feel like they ran out of time/money/patience and just cut down a ton of stuff to ship it.
Currently, I’m replaying The Witcher 3, and the main annoyance I’m having right now is not being able to pause during timed choices (and timed choice are a whole other problem in games too).
You can pause during non-time-sensitive dialog choices, but not during timed ones. I don’t know why they specifically deny pausing for those. Maybe to prevent people from pausing and thinking it out? But, some of these times sensitive choices greatly effect the story. I want to be able to think about these choices when they effect the story.
Timed choices have their place in games as a valid storytelling mechanism but please not in my open-world, RPG, fantasy hack-n-slasher.
Like if I’m playing a role I need to think about my choice and make sure it fits the character I’m trying to play. I’m not playing myself so my knee-jerk choice might not be the same as what I’m trying to experience.
I mean that is kinda exactly what the developers want to provoke with timed dialogue choices. Timed dialogue choices are a game design mechanic to try and get a player to answer on instinct/gut feeling, rather than over analysing and trying to optimise the dialogue.
You not getting to think about it long is very much the intended effect, and allowing a pause would entirely defeat it.
There are of course definite accessibility concerns that should be considered and worked around, such as people with dyslexia who may not be able to properly parse the dialogue options before the timer runs out, but as a game mechanic I think forcing the player to pick on instinct definitely has merit. It helps make the game more immersive, because it puts you under the same pressure to react as your character is in the story right now, and it can lead to more interesting and ultimately enjoyable games by forcing players to potentially make a mistake, and having to find out a way to deal with the fallout.
Putting too many game mechanics into a game, like fighting system, bonus crystals, combinations of stuff to upgrade other stuff, plus pets, minigames, repetable quests, party combinations, crosswords, and more, in a single player game especially.
Yeah, I particularly hate when crafting mechanics get shoehorned into a game, simply because market studies told the publisher that games with crafting sell better. Especially when the crafting system is clearly an afterthought, and the game is entirely unbalanced as a result of it.
For example, the game had crafting added after the inventory system was designed. And crafting doesn’t really become viable until near the end of the game, because it requires a wide variety of materials and you only have access to half of them for the first half of the game. So now you’re drowning in crafting materials that are taking up inventory space/weight for the entire first half of the game.
Another example, devs had an end game build in mind, but decided to lock it behind 35 hours of crafting material grinding. Crafting isn’t really used for anything else in the game, but the end game builds all require a ton of extra grind, with obscure materials hidden behind rare or secret enemy drops. The only purpose is to artificially inflate the playtime, so the publisher can claim the game has “over 100 hours of gameplay” in the ads.
Another example, devs were told to add crafting after the game’s equipment was balanced. In order to encourage players to actually use the crafting system, it is full of super overpowered gear that completely wipes the floor with anything else in the game. Or inversely, the devs didn’t want you to be able to grind materials for gear before you were “supposed” to have it, so all of the crafting gear is subpar at best.
That shit has ruined so many single player games that were otherwise fine.
When a game rereleases with an enhanced version or remake and it ruins the atmosphere. Been playing SMT Strange Journey Redux, and the new artstyle feels so generic and bland compared to the OG Strange Journey. The original had this kind of dark and oppressive atmosphere that Redux is sort of missing. Its really minor, since Redux does add a ton of stuff, so its probably still the better way to play, but that original tone just isnt the same.
I’m souring on difficulty options lately. How am I supposed to know the ideal difficulty of a game without having played it before? You’re the developer, you designed it and if you’re confident in your game balance you should pick the default difficulty. Better yet, get rid of discrete difficulties and add customizable assist mode instead.
Whilst I didn’t enjoy the mechanics of Control, I was very impressed at the settings it offered. I could essentially turn off combat if I wanted. Yes, it won’t be the same game experience, but if I choose to play that way - let me!
In the old days we had cheat codes for this stuff. I cheated my way through a lot of games and then revisited later without cheats. Some of those became my favourite games of all time (Theme Hospital and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 both spring to mind).
By playing the game and adjusting as needed to the experience you are having. That’s what difficulty options are there for. Only you can decide what that is. No one can or should dictate that for you.
While I do change them if I feel things are seriously off, I don’t think changing the settings mid-playthrough is the solution. It is normal for the same game to have different difficulties at different times so if you’re adjusting difficulty mid fly on a first playthrough you probably won’t get the same highs and lows as intended. It is impossible to know from the first stages how the difficulty ramps up, sometimes they are easier, sometimes they are just mechanically simpler and sometimes they are purposefully difficult so you have to learn key mechanics.
Difficulty options are like consumable potions to me if that makes sense
Gaming experience is subjective. The highs and lows are entirely dependent upon the player and their preferences/capabilities.
It’s your experience, no one else’s. The experience is either fun or frustrating. If it is frustrating, then adjust until it is fun. It’s just that simple. For some, a brick wall challenge is fun and enjoyable, for others, it is time consuming and tedious. Both players are valid and both should have the option to play a game the way they want
The “highs and lows” should come from the storytelling, not the gameplay loop. The gameplay loop should always be fun, engaging, and enjoyable for the player.
The math don’t add up. 5.5h/wk x 52 = 286 h of gaming, but all those games together are an average of 425h to complete the main story. You are playing alot more than you think!
I’m jealous you had that much time, i love rpgs as well ;) have fun.
We need the year they started playing each game to calculate it correctly anyway since this assumes 2025 is both the year started and the year completed.
If I finally finished Skyrim this year, it would represent a decade of half-assed gaming on my part. 🤣
It is… kind of. Hence the half-cheat. First off it’s 3D, but the game is completely centered around the Oldest House, which is the headquarters of the fictional FBC. Like a Metroidvania you explore and backtrack back and forth through it and unlock new areas opening up from previous places. There is also one (although only one) proper ability gate that lets you explore previously unreachable parts of earlier areas once unlocked.
Even if you don’t classify it as a true Metroidvania it’s definitely Metroidvania-inspired.
I would absolutely categorize Control as a metroidvania game. It has all the characteristics of one. I know some debate it because it’s so combat focused but aside from that it checks all the Metroidvania boxes.
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