My particularly niche gripe is bad dialogue tree options. There are so many games where the mechanism is selecting an option and watching it play out, but so many of them are shit when it comes to the difference between what you see as the option and what actually is said/done. Heavy Rain did it. ‘What should the character say next? Unreadable zalgotext option A, or unreadable zalgotext option B?’ Or ones where the options on screen are ‘A) I thoroughly agree. B) I thoroughly disagree. or C) What?’ but selecting C means the character isn’t just asking for clarification because ‘What?’ actually points at the voiceline, ‘What the fuck are you talking about, you piece of inhuman filth? I bet your a murdering rapist.’ If I can’t have some idea of what selecting an option will do, I’m not actually playing a game at that point. I might as well be trying to play Mario with a controller that remaps itself randomly.
Random my little pony and other young kid games. Hate to admit it but even the paw patrol games are entertaining in this way (had a ps+ subscription, wouldn’t have paid for these). They are short and easy, and kinda junk, nice palate cleanser, and often very cute and encouraging. You don’t know a silly morale boost until you play something that says “you’re doing great!” periodically on the easiest thing you’ve done all day.
Anything from Paradox, but right now it’s Europa Univeralis V. I really like some of their grand strategy staples, even if it’s an abusive relationship where they sometimes release updates that make the games worse and annoy you into buying overpriced DLC to make the last update slightly less bad. The new Crusader Kings 3 DLC is excellent, though. I hope they do more like that.
As a Stellaris player, nothing is more infuriating than Paradox putting out an update that breaks the save of your 2 month multiplayer game when you havent even reached the endgame lag yet. At least we can downgrade versions.
Escape from Tarkov, but single player (SPTarkov, not the paid upgrade). Lots of controversy surrounding the game, but I quite enjoy it playing at my own pace and difficulty
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.
Final Fantasy VIII impressed me in my childhood and since then I’ve finished it 4–5 times. The story is a bit of a mess and doesn’t make sense sometimes, the fighting mechanics are peculiar, but the game is very dear to my heart. Thinking about giving it another go now, ha!
As a kid I picked up VIII before VII (thanks to demo discs) and it has always been my favourite FF game despite its predecessor’s huge shadow. Learning all of the quirks of the games systems felt really rewarding, though I can understand why it didn’t appeal to many.
Far Cry games at least until 4. I like mindlessly collecting 300 map markers sometimes. Funny enough, I don‘t like 5 cause there doesn‘t seem to be a collectibles map that lets me just move up and down the map collecting everything lol
Fortnite. No story to catch up on, no true goals besides winning, no long-term strategizing. I’m sure PUBG is the same/better, but my SO is entertained by the cartoonish nature of FN. It brings us excitement when I’m close to winning. With the introduction of zero build, I fair well. I used to feel more guilt for it being a “bad” game and for not giving time to the betrer story/campaign titles, bur you know what? I’m tired and my time is limited as an actual adult. I’ll take my dopamine where I can get it, thank you.
I’m replaying Ace Combat 7 right now. I can’t believe how bad the writing is. I played it in 2020 and had a grand time with probably 6 runs for the various achievements. Turns out, I remember basically nothing of the story. It’s definitely amusing to revisit the AI story aspects now that “AI” is in full swing. I guess AC5 set my standard for AC stories, but maybe that doesn’t hold up well either. Regardless, I’m in it for the fun, respectable flight physics. Just don’t ask me where I keep 144 missiles stored.
My kids play fortnite and I sometimes join them. Was watching some tournament on a stream and the “meta” at a high level of this game is just completely bonkers.
I quit around 2019 because I just didn’t stand a chance anymore. I’d place 2 walls and a ramp in the time it took most top-25 players to build a small castle with a wine cellar, jacuzzi, and escalator (or so it felt). I can’t keep up with these goddamn Ritalin-riddled kids.
It always cracks me up when my go-to move (in zero build) is to just stand still when it gets to close quarters. They start jumping like a cracked out kangaroo and miss shot after shot. I only do pitch/yaw and some sideways strafe, no jumping. It lets me use my Ps1/Ps2 era PvE experience.
Is it? I actually just played the mission where you find out Mihaly has 20 names and thought “this must be a joke, right?”. If it’s anime tropes, I’m totally unaware. The subreddit was just full of meta memes so I didn’t learn anything useful in my reddit days
Didn’t know the cold taiga was so hard to play in. Especially with a snow storm going on. The constant thunder strikes created a bunch of skeletons, skeleton horses and special skeletons with ice arrows.
Soon the whole forrest was riddled with them.
After the snow storm was over I was also able to bring in some cows and sheep they reside now behind the safe house. Please make sure theres enough cows! If you are hungry you can also go fish in the frozen lake, i put a fishing rod in the chest inside the safe house.
Well certainly it had a lot of bugs. I remember there was one that bothered me when I first bought it, though that was fixed and I think more were fixed than you seem to imagine. Also being re-released on every platform hardly makes it a bad game, and special editions are only an issue if you’re buying multiple copies I’d say. All the bugs aside though I’ve never heard someone call it a bad game exactly.
I just got back into it since I never finished the main quest line and it’s actually more fun to play now, bug fixes and optimization for the series S/X made load screens instant and I’m blazing through stuff a lot faster.
When it comes to games, I have no guilt anymore. I enjoy some games and despise others. I think the only one that comes to mind for this category is E.V.O. The Search For Eden (SNES). I prefer it with a patch to improve the translation.
A classic. I loved how in the last phase you could make the right combination of nonsensical choices and end up with human and do really well. Not as well as my hyper-evolved Rhino-montser, but really well.
For me is Dragon Ball Dokkan Battle. Its a Gachal so it has its share of nasty monetization strategies and dark patrerns but since its PvE only, its not as agregious as other titles focused on PvP.
Dragon Ball was the first anime I warched so the Nostalgia factor is very high. I really enjoy the Character attack animations and the team building.
As weird as it sounds: Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (The OG one).
On the surface, it’s a shit platformer game for kids, but what makes it interesting is the ways you can break the game and the lively speedrunning community. If you just try to play the game by following its rules, you’re going to have a bad time.
However, if you use cool speedrunning glitches and exploits, it becomes much more fun to break the game in ways the developers didn’t intend. I tend to play from time to time 100%ing it using exploits to reach locked areas earlier, skip entire sections, and play some levels backwards.
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