Instead of chiptune inspired music, how about music that inspired chiptune ? Yellow Magic Orchestra had an important impact (namely) on '80s/'90s era video game music. Here’s Rydeen (1979).
Best game i played this year was Alan Wake 2, though I can imagine it’s probably not for everyone. The Marvelesque “homework” you’re recommended to do before playing to catch all the references and understand the interconnected lore might seem daunting, but the world and narrative Remedy has built continues to impress me. A lot has been said already about how Remedy has been pushing innovation and mixed media, but I’ll also add how impressed I am with the level of writing in general. Not only is the narrative mind bending, but all the characters are compelling and distinctive and all the different styles employed are nailed perfectly and mesh surprisingly well, from the Noir-caricature Alex Casey monologues to the goofy Koskela brothers TV ads.
The worst game I played this year was Ghost of Tsushima. Okay hear me out. The game is beautiful, well optimised and the combat is solid and satisfying. The game is just roughly twice as long as it should be considering what it is. The story is only okay at best, but suffers from a consistently dour and overly serious tone which really starts to drag as time goes on. The only bit of comic relief is Kenji, and he is barely around. On top of this the quest design is 90% “talk to person, move to area, kill the enemies there, go back and talk again”. Main story missions overly rely on walk-and-talk and/or ride-horse-and-talk. There are a handful of missions with more to it than that and those are good, but there just isn’t enough variation to sustain interest over the playtime (especially if you’re attempting to do everything and thus have to chase down the Ubisoft level open world stuff). After about 10h playtime I was loving the game, but by the third act I was thoroughly worn out and bored.
Unfortunately I had to drop Alan Wake after the prologue. The game is probably great, but I think my PC has finally hit a AAA game it just cannot handle. Perhaps I’ll give it another shot once I upgrade.
I absolutely get your criticisms with Ghost of Tsushima. While I personally loved the game when I played it, I do recall commenting that it had the same gameplay loop as I criticize Skyrim for i.e. go here, kill things, repeat, but for me the core combat mechanics were good enough that I didn’t mind. A shame that you weren’t able to enjoy them to the same extent, but very fair critique
I just started Frostpunk, and one of the first tutorial steps is to build a food place. So I built it, but it wasn’t on a road (apparently) so it’s unusable. I don’t know where the road is, and even if I did I don’t know how to build or extend it. And I can’t see a way to move or demolish it. Of course I can easily look all this up, but you know when a game immediately gets on your bad side? Yup, that.
Not a survival fan either but The Long Dark and Subnautica are both fantastic.
I know I’m late but I had that same issue with finding out how to demolish roads (I ended up looking it up). Ironically my most recent obsession with it, where I sunk 30 hours in a week, is also my 2nd time giving the game a chance.
I think my initial complaint was the controls for playing with a controller. Coming back to it with keyboard and mouse was great. If you have any questions let me know, sometimes you gotta set it down and come back to it.
Demolish roads is a small red button below the row of buildings. You should see the roads button that looks like a bunch of lines, and to the right of it should be the small red demolish roads button.
Frostpunk is made by my favorite game studio and I love the genre and all their other games, but I really did not enjoy it. Some reviews mention that the scenarios have such small margins that unless you do things in a specific way, it’s very unlikely you will beat them. I agree with that to a certain extent, but it feels like there’s something else to it too. It’s been years since I played, but the tech tree felt interesting but like it wasn’t properly enmeshed with the gameplay and struggles with an obvious winning strategy that limits your feasible options.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was the best I played this year. There might be recency bias, but I genuinely think it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. Persona 5 Royal isn’t super far behind, was also great.
Worst game I finished was Starfield. Did not see that coming. Worst overall was Vambrace: Cold Soul. Incredibly gorgeous game with a complete disaster of a core gameplay loop.
The games that caught my attention the most were Payday: The Heist, Crusader Kings III (essentially a live service), and Hollow Knight. Honorary mention: Lovely Planet, it pushed me right to my limits, any little bit harder and I wouldn‘t have been able to get full stars. I did play some Zelda but it didn‘t blow me away.
The worst games, hmm. For sure Magicka, CTDs en masse, absolutely unplayable. DiRT 5 was a huge disappointment to me, driving felt terrible and somehow it looked worse than GRID 2019 with cars that could’ve been toy cars. An HDR spectacle though for sure.
I remember trying to play Magicka a decade ago and I couldn’t even get it to run, but it worked perfectly when I played it again recently. Maybe it’s just very flaky, but I’d recommend trying it again when you’ve got a new machine to try because it is really fun!
The borderlands series. Start from the first and work your way through the franchise. I’m not a huge fan of the latest games but 1 and 2 have at least 60-80h of gameplay I’d say.
I found this really difficult to read/understand this in places with the neutral pronouns. Anyway a cool little coop puzzle game is Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. It’s an asymmetrical puzzle game where one of you is trying to defuse a bomb (played on a computer) while the other is trying to give directions without seeing the bomb. It might fit your asymmetrical needs you described.
As a non-native speaker I still struggle with it. Just sounds like plural all the time. I’d expect something like “they does” for an individual and “they do” for a group of people but “they do” for just an individual frequently fucks up my comprehension.
The post we’re looking at includes “my partner” then almost immediately after “they”, with consistent conjugations of the verb (which doesn’t change). It can look a little odd and take some getting used to, but it isn’t far removed from other seemingly irregular uses, such as yous/youse/y’all for addressing a group of people (direct form of ‘they’), instead of using the singular ‘you’.
I completely understand how overcluttered and distracting some HUDs can become. I have found however that fully HUDless experiences tend to be more of a novelty than an increase in immersion.
If I’m playing a shooter and don’t have information on, say how many magazines I have, I find that more distracting than immersive. In real life I could quickly pat my vest to know. A HUD can be a replacement for information that seems intuitive to have because in a real situation we’d have kinesthetic feedback.
Basic information like health while injured is simply too useful. Realistically my health isn’t defined by a single variable bar nor is it restored instantly from a grievous wound by a using a syringe, so I find that seeing the bar is useful for succeeding in the game even if it is equally as unrealistic.
Something like the iHUD mod for modern Fallout games is my ideal HUD. It is modular and I can define what information I see, what information I don’t, and for how long the information I do get stays on the screen. Health can be set to only show at certain thresholds, the compass directions or map markers can be disabled unless I ask to see them briefly. Other elements similarly made optional.
I’ve played fully HUDless in both Metro games and in modded STALKER games, and each time I do I find myself going back to having at least a minimal informative HUD.
I don’t hate HUDs and I think most people who try HUDless don’t actually hate them either. What is hated are obnoxious tool tips, flashy HUD animations, and floating intrusive quest markers. If UX designers do their jobs right, people don’t know they did anything at all.
I think you hit the nail on the head, give me what I need to know when I need it, and make it more environmental when possible. Halo for example had the assault rifle show the ammo count on the gun itself and other games have as well, there are countless other ways to give information organically to the player.
There are diegetic elements like that, but also how the non-diegetic HUD delivers information.
When is it giving information? Is it giving me information I don’t actually need at the moment. For example a first person game that always has a compass or minimap. Maybe I want those sometimes, but do I want them always?
What are the visuals of the HUD like? Are they easy to read? Are they distracting? HUDs that have stretched and difficult at a glance fonts are a bad idea to me. Simple fonts that can be read against a variety of background colors are seemingly underdesigned to many UX designers, but it’s all I want sometimes.
Do HUDs have needlessly animated elements? Sometimes just putting a plain and simple number or bar on a screen is enough, but many games add so many artistic flourishes that it gets in the way of the game visuals.
HALO CE had its shield bar with the little health dots underneath. Technically diegetic, but obviously a gameplay element. It wasn’t distracting, it was clean and easy to read, it gave information that was constantly relevant.
I much prefer a compass to a mini-map, for me the mini-map is the worst offender in terms of pulling my attention constantly into one corner of the screen. Halo’s motion sensor was good in that sense too, I’d check it but not constantly.
Both Zelda BotW and TotK have the option for a “PRO” HUD mode which only shows certain elements of the HUD at the right time.
It makes exploration so much more fun when you’re not (if not subconsciously) navigating with the minimap instead of the environment in front of your eyes.
+1 for Battlefield 1. That game nailed the cinematic experience and without a HUD it’s turned up to 11.
Have you played heists in GTA5 in first person without a HUD? It becomes a completely different game!
I never forgot the woman who asked me to look for her husband, I found him, dead, killed by bandits. She was in tears, saying life would never be the same.
Five minutes later I sold her stuff, and she was like “Nice weather today, isn’t it?”.
That killed every immersion at that moment.
It was Skyrim. It has fantastic moments, but there are lots of moments that kill every immersion it built up on a grand scale.
Like I kinda get what you mean but stuff like physics glitches and weird moments like your described just make me laugh.
Even in a serious situation like a grand epic battle the sight of a deceased character model slowly vibrating before launching into the cosmos is hilarious to me.
Or in your case a widow who’s heartbroken and sobbing then the cutscene ends and she’s just “hi how can I help you today?” in a cheerful tone and I just burst out laughing
Immersion is one aspect, but I also find that artists put so much work into creating great visuals, it almost feels like I’m ignoring the great things to look at by chasing dots on a map. I really just want experiences that help me focus more on the world in front of me.
It maybe works better as "suspension of disbelief", like in other fiction. You sustain it and you can go very abstract. You break it and things get weird.
I don’t think it’d be possible to trick me into thinking I’m not playing a video game. You can have 0 UI, and I’ll still know I’m looking at a screen and pushing buttons. Maybe way off in the future when VR has gotten a lot better, sure, probably.
I think it's less about being "tricked" into believing you aren't actually playing a game, and more along the lines of having the mindset that you are actually playing as your character. It's more like the difference between performing tasks, going from A to B, and checking boxes on a list, versus actually feeling like you're going on an adventure.
I didn't say anything about actually believing you are the character. Immersion doesn't have anything to do with deception and is more about being engrossed or deeply involved with something. You can be immersed in other things too, like a tv show, book, or tabletop game.
Sorry, when you said “have the mindset that you are the character”, that came across to me as believing you are the character. Also, I have been told in the past by people who care about immersion that that is what immersion is, so I’m still trying to grasp what it actually is.
I’m also struggling to see having a UI hurts immersion, especially since, as you say, reading a book is immersion, and a book is all text. I’m wondering, also, if maybe different people mean different things when they talk about immersion.
What is or isn't immersive is subjective, for sure. As far as a UI goes, some people may think that having a UI with too many elements or taking up too much space can detract from actually experiencing the game and its environments.
VR is decent enough that you can get lost in the game as is. Even if momentarily, like trying to kick the ball while playing ping pong and it falls near you
People get immersed in different ways. Some people get involved in the story, putting themselves in the character’s shoes and imagining it’s a real world. Some people get lost in the gameplay, enjoying the mechanics and focusing entirely on completing the challenge. For some people it’s TV, film, books, or just chatting at the pub and losing track of time. I’m sure you get immersed in something!
I’m on your side a bit, I mean, I hate getting lost, for me that ain’t immersion, having a HUD or being able to look beyond your usual sight scope is awesome and one of the best features of the videogames which are an escape of our mostly boring life.
With that being said, the other day I was playing BOTW (with HUD) in handheld mode in pitch dark (late night) with my headphones put on and I felt totally immersed more than when I play on my 50 inch TV, IDK, it just helps you to isolate in Hyrule that way I think.
I've been working through my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 - it's fairly enjoyable, I'm glad I ignored it outright until well after big patches rolled out. There's something very satisfying about blowing up enemies through a camera.
I've also picked up Dwarf Fortress (Steam) for the first time. It has a lot of depth but has been fun to learn and try and figure out. I just flooded a section of my fortress by digging into an underground river.
My chill-out puzzle game has been Can of Wormholes and it's pretty fun! It's weird for sure... but definitely fun.
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