Ignoring the chuddy lead and constant insistence on making the game a bit more hateful with every update… it just isn’t a good game.
Weapon balance is very much you either go meta or fight health sponges. At first I thought it was just me but then I checked a few of the mid tier streamers and they were having the same issue where it felt like an NG+ fight in terms of damage… on NG. That said, it also seems like LOTF classic where there are a few OP spells that can trivialize any fight.
Level design? The concept of the lantern is REALLY cool. The reality is that it just means you explore the whole light world. Then you switch to shadow. And then you explore the whole shadow world. And because of the focus on geometry changes, you never really have a sense of continuity. It is very rarely “I am going to shift to the shadow realm to get past this flaming wreckage” and more “I am going to shift to the shadow realm and end up outside the boss gate”.
And for general build theory? On paper, the idea of linking item descriptions to minimum stats is interesting. In reality? It just means you are either checking a wiki or building blind because you have no idea if the item that needs Radiance 20 to identify is good or not. I get that this all has links to the old PnP games but… even those have mostly done away with this and just hide extra stats behind a catch all dump stat for your high INT player.
Also, speaking of the updates. Yup, trans and enby erasure with every update. But even if you are totally tolerant but don’t approve of their lifestyle blah blah hateful motherfucking blah… it also fundamentally changes the game. They removed the boss fight that you were basically guaranteed to lose on a first run which, in turn, breaks what little story there is. And, last I checked, the only way to reenable those is to play with the launch balance of enemies which was… real bad. It is a parody of inclusive difficulty settings with basically “if you want to play the real game you have to play our bullshit where even Dark Souls 2 thinks it is a bit much”.
So yeah. Chuddy ass game from a bunch of chuds that isn’t even all that great. Like… I might actually prefer the original Lords of the Fallen since that at least tried interesting things and had some fun boss encounters… if you picked the right magic at the start of the game. And those devs moved on to make The Surge which (poor level design aside) are genuinely fun souls games with an eye to both transhumanism and workers rights. This? At BEST it is an incremental improvement to the laughing stock of 2014.
The Surge 1 & 2 are massively underrated. They’re not without their annoying issues but even despite them I can enthusiastically say I enjoyed my time with those games. 2 was a big improvement as well. I’ll get around to revisiting them sometime and doing a second playthrough.
I never even got terribly far in the first LotF, it just straight up did not feel good to play. Everything was just a bit too clunky and jank around the edges. I intended to check the second one out but never made it a priority, guess I never will.
I’d absolutely take a Surge 3 from the other guys though!
I remember playing the original because I got it with Games with Gold on Xbox. I couldn’t even get past the first (second?) boss in that cathedral it was such a bullshit.
But The Surge 1+2? Those are cool games with interesting lore that’s actually fed to you, so you don’t have to go searching for little scraps of lore from item descriptions or cryptic NPC dialog. And it’s fun to play, but can still be kinda bullshit sometimes. I still haven’t finished either one though.
“The past is a puzzle, like a broken mirror. As you piece it together, you cut yourself, your image keeps shifting. And you change with it. It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free.”
“We’ve spent 30 years underperforming and manipulating our customers to get where we are today! We’re not about to let some noob take a slice of our pie just because they came up with this wacky idea of a ‘Fun game that’s reasonably priced!’”
I think that's a bit farfetched. I don't think any AAA dinosaur feels threatened by Balatro, and if we talk specifically about sports games Balatro is not a threat because that genre has formed its own thick bubble that Balatro could never penetrate.
The more obvious reason is probably true, lawmakers are simply too stupid to tell the difference between using gambling motiffs and actual gambling.
No. It is because Balatro actually had playing cards and pretended it was poker. Its similar to how so many older games could have your character popping meth near constantly but it is fine because it isn’t tobacco.
That said: I really do wish we would have a proper reckoning. I love Balatro. It very much takes the skinner box and slot machine mechanics to an all new level. So does Vampire Survivors. And if you ask most millennial gamers, we’ll have stories about how we almost flunked out of college because of Diablo or WoW and the like.
The gacha games and ultimate team and all that very much exploit the same concepts but with a goal of milking every single penny out of their consumerbase. But time is often just as important (and most of said milking comes from people realizing they have no time to spare) and it is important people realize that.
If he’s a YouTuber and it’s a work expense I’d think the videos he made on it more than offset the cost, pretty sure that’s how it works with the gacha creators that spend $200K on genshin impact
Yup. I watch MtG Arena draft videos, and they throw hundreds with worth of resources sometimes in a single video, but they’re also making ad revenue and whatnot, so it works out. And viewer numbers are peanuts compared to more mainstream games.
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