A friend convinced me to pick up RE Village because it suposedly plays more like an FPS than a classical RE horror game. I did beat Dimitrescu recently and I kinda have to disagree with him. There are so many moments that feel very tense because enemies aren’t vulnerable because “magic” so you have to play cat and mouse like in RE 3 with Nemesis. I do like it enough that I’ll keep at it though. Love turning those red rooms blue on the map.
Correct, they do scale the boss HP when solo vs a normal trio game, you also get one guaranteed free revive and shops are guaranteed to sell a revive item. Personally, I’d still rather queue with randoms, but we’ll see how that goes when they add duo games. Queue times can already be a bit long sometimes, and I’m a bit concerned that losing duo teams to their own mode will make solo queues even longer and more annoying.
The problem isn’t mobile games, and it’s not console games, and it’s not PC games. It’s the profit motive and corporations and enshittification. And there’s plenty of that going on in games for mobile, console, and PC. (And, for that matter, TTRPGs. And it’s not like the 300 different collectors editions of Monopoly released every year aren’t enshittification at play.)
Addictive gotcha mechanics are shitty when they’re tied to microtransactions. Even when not tied to microtransactions, I think they can still be shitty depending on the specific circumstances, and it’s definitely wise to responsibly manage your (and/or your children’s) engagement to not cause other problems in your(/their) life. But is addictiveness in a video game inherently a bad thing? I don’t think so. All games cause dopamine squirts whether it’s Pong or a slot machine. That’s kinda the point of games. There are plenty of Open Source games out there that cause big addictive dopamine squirts. (Mindustry, anyone?) And such games aren’t made to milk whales. They’re made because someone wanted to create and play such a game.
Don’t be talking too much smack about shovelware! Low-quality games create their own vibes. Some are accidental masterpieces. Both of my favorite two YouTube gaming content creators do a lot of their content on really low-quality games. This series got me to buy Radiation Island and I had a great time playing it. And here is a great video on all the shitty official games based on the movie Avatar.
“Gaming is as much about socializing as playing” is an awesome outlook to have on gaming! Addictiveness in games can be… concerning. But sometimes particular games are the key by which your kid can be involved in peer group. I’m not saying that automatically trumps any downsides and you should let your kid spend $∞ on Fortnight skins or whatever. But I think probably in most cases a balancing act is superior to a hard “yes” or “no”.
I should probably specify that I’m admittedly an old fart who doesn’t know shit about mobile gaming. (The only mobile games I play are Open Source ones on F-Droid.) And the only modern console I have is a Switch, and I don’t have any plans to get one soon. I’ve played a lot of Breath of the Wild, though. And a fair amount of Tears of the Kingdom.
Some final thoughts:
Open Source gaming is awesome.
The way they’re doing anti-cheat on PC is fucked-up.
But so is the way they lock down consoles and phones.
Hack your games. Hack your consoles. (If you don’t hack it, you don’t own it.) Get your kids interested in hacking stuff.
…responsibly, of course.
Play games with your kids! (And not just the ones you want to play.)
Roughly in order of how much I enjoy them from most to least. (Not that the later ones are bad. Just that they’re more low-key.)
Mindustry is amazing, but as I mentioned above, really really addictive. (The commercial game it’s most often compared to is Factorio.)
Then there’s Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Amazing dungeon crawler.
Endless Sky is a great space mercantile sim.
Luanti is a Minecraft clone.
Unciv is a turn-based civilization development game.
And if you’re wanting to do emulation, there’s Lemuroid. Also, EasyRPG, an engine for playing RPG Maker games like Yume Nikki. Oh, FreeDoom is a great implementation of Doom for Android.
Those are the ones that’ll keep your attention for a good long time. There are tons of much simpler games that are still fun like Frozen Bubble and Hyper Rogue. And plenty of games that I haven’t really gotten into very much but that people really seem to like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
Man. There are a lot now that I’m listing them out. Lol.
I would just like to mention that it is called “gacha” not “gotcha.”
“Gacha” is short for the Japanese term gachapon, which means “capsule toy.” You remember gumball machines? You put a quarter in and twist the handle and a gumball comes out. Gachapon is like that, but with a small plastic ball with a random toy inside. Those are less common than the gumball machines, but there were also some that had sticker/temporary tattoo sheets and those hard candies that looks like fruits(mostly bananas).
Gachapon is a bit different from gambling. Gambling comes with the inherent understanding that you have a chance to lose. With gachapon, you always get exactly what you are paying for: a random capsule toy. You just don’t get to pick which one you get. With gachapon, you always “win,” there is no chance that your money is spent and you get nothing in return. This is why games with gacha mechanics makes duplicates of characters or items useful. Whatever you get is still useful to you, even if you don’t get what you wanted.
I think you already understand the negative aspects of gachapon, but I just wanted to add that little bit of information.
With gachapon, you always "win," there is no chance that your money is spent and you get nothing in return.
Although you're technically getting something, typically the common items are nearly worthless, and may as well be nothing. You only "win" when you actually get the ultra rare 5* SSR Jackpot waifu.
Sometimes, but most of the time duplicates let you level up a character beyond their basic level (Limit Break, most commonly called), or give you materials to pick a new character (sometimes called Pity System, but that is a little different), or materials to forge new weapons.
I have played many gacha games, and I have only ever spent money on NieR Reincarnation because I wanted Square Enix to see that I like Yoko Taros games and want more of them. I am not a whale, dolphin, or a minnow. I am a “barnacle” F2P player, and I have never had a problem with the games I play. They’re not really designed to be constantly played all the time like a “regular” game would be, instead being level or session style games. I don’t compare my game progress with other players, and I play to have fun and pass time. I get exactly what I want from them for whenever I play them.
Why? Because her Android has Genshin Impact, Fortnite, Roblox, Candy Crush, Wuthering Waves, and Sky: Children of Light.
These games are all great examples of everything I hate about mobile gaming: full of incessant ads for microtransactions. Literally every mobile game I’ve ever played (outside of FDroid) is this way.
Plus you need a controller anyway, at which point you might as well just carry a handheld ging system.
You could buy whatever your favorite Anbernic device for $50 and have access to a library of thousands of fun ad-free games.
Mobile gaming, on Android, is an interesting space right now. I used to buy flagship phones exclusively, as high spec as I could just…because I could. I played a few emulated Nintendo Switch games on them, as well as the odd Game Pass title (with a telescoping GameSir Xbox mounted controller thing) and then I realized I really had no use for them. I rarely played, and my most recent phone purchases have been mid-range.
The scene for Android emulation is incredibly dramatic with frequent in-fighting, but also pretty impressive from a technical standpoint. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea - and that’s fine, but the mobile scene which isn’t just gatcha games hooking kids on the Play Store is so varied. Then you’ve got actually impressive games like DREDGE getting a Android release, replete with custom builds and changes for the Android system (no lazy ports!). Heck, even No Man’s Sky is coming to Android soon!
I’m not sure why you’re on a crusade to convince people to like mobile games. I’ve always got my phone on me, and I frequently find myself on a subway ride that’s too short to bother with a Steam Deck. Mobile games would fit in great there. My options are pretty terrible. For the kinds of games I like to play, the only ones that actually have mobile versions are basically digital versions of board games and a small handful of roguelikes. I tend to just read on the subway instead. It’s not for lack of trying. The library just sucks, and it offers less value than other places I can buy games. Your daughter is playing games designed to keep you “engaged” and addicted with all of the greatest tricks of the gambling industry; you can find the GDC talks with a quick search on your favorite search engine.
Whenever I see an echo chamber where people parrot the same shallow talking points—no nuance, no real analysis—the contrarian in me kicks in.
You claim there’s “no library” on mobile, but even a basic look at the stats and available titles proves otherwise.
If you actually want fun, premium mobile games with zero microtransactions, they’re not hard to find. You just have to look beyond the surface—and actually try.
I’m not parroting anything. I’ve looked. Sure, sometimes you get a port of XCOM or Slay the Spire, but then it’s not going to carry over progress back to my PC, where I’m more comfortable playing at home, and my reluctance to buy a version of the game like that explains why there isn’t enough money in trying to port the kinds of games that I like to mobile. Sometimes a game has a port, but it fell out of compatibility with modern Android and never got updated; and let me tell you, that’s a great way to convince me to stop looking. Even crazier is when something like Fire Emblem Heroes happens, because it’s adapting a traditional handheld/console game into an interface that makes way more sense for controlling the game, but it’s not a proper version of that series; it’s a gacha game. If I have any kind of extended anticipated desire to game on the go, my Steam Deck is just a better answer than trying to find the few games I would like that also got Android versions, because I’m going to spend more time playing them at home anyway.
Sky is fun but you know it hooks you with those candles. The only evolution you make clear here is they’ve gotten better at disguising the loot boxes and cash grabs.
My kid loves roblox because its controls are pretty much completely ideal for her ipad and apple pencil
Roblox is entirely unplayable to me because its control schemes inevitably break all my millennial expectations and I don’t have great internet connectivity at home anymore. It hurts me and makes me angry, lol. ANY game that properly works with an Xbox controller is superior for my personal experience because of decades of that paradigm. Touchscreen controls are death and other control schemes are second class citizens in the modern landscape
Still Project Zomboid, it’s been like 10 years. The game have evolved, and current unstable version includes a lot of completely overhauled mechanics. I’ve seen some bugs, but those guys know their job, so even a “buggy” content works better than some “released” other games.
Recently got Green Hell, and this is one of the best survival experiences I’ve seen. Basically you are dehydrated, starving, and infested by parasites in South American jungle, but on a good side, you have some meat to fry if you won’t die before you’ll manage to make fire.
I think so - to sync all of the new stuff (ragdolls alone) for multiple people is a big work. And I already had a multiplayer-like bug where the game hung on me when I was driving. When I reloaded, the car was stopping in front of me, and I was standing on the road with zeds around. I survived, but damn!
They changed survival with the animals - I’m living on a farm, drinking milk, making bone stuff
You may also like Coffee Talk (1 and 2). Good story, the characters are likable, and it works with controllers, so you can play it on the go with a Deck or anything similar.
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