I like Honkai Star Rail, it is from the developers of Genshin Impact, but unlike Genshin, it is turned based so the grind is automatic(plus has others quality of life features). So i only have to actively play the actual content.
I think the production values are very high, especially for a mobile game. The story and characters are decent. The english localization(it’s a chinese game) is probably the best there is. And finally the music is insane. Hoyoverse is a music company that just happens to make videogames on the side.
What really blew my mind about Star Rail, was the fight against the final boss of the ice planet(second world, after the tutorial one). That was some anime good shit, definitely one of the hypest gaming moments ever and i have played thousands of games. The music they used and how it synced with the gameplay, perfect, absolutely perfect. You can watch this vod of a giant weeb playing the final fight, if you dont care about spoilers or dont intent do play the game(25mins in starts the hype part, though it is worth watching the entire video for context).
The space china world was kinda mediocre but the new Dream/Inception/Las Vegas world is pretty cool. Here is the trailer for this world(this song would have easily won Eurovision this year)
I guess the most impressive thing about the game is how much content and care has been put into this game. You have pc/console AAA GaS games, which produce very little new seasonal content, no cool trailers, etc. And you have this, till a few years ago random, chinese developer producing high quality content and advertising all the time, they just never miss. And of course now they can do that, they make a billion+ dollars a year but even with Genshin, they are just too good, not just for mobile games but as games.
thab’s been trying to beat “The Last Dance” for a few days already, it’s really fascinating to watch. And even barb finished one level, then said “fuck this garbage” and spent the next days finishing Paper Mario and complaining how boring it is…
Boomer doesn’t have to be literal boomers but old, like it is a joke in the WoW community to call it a boomer game because most of the people playing it (especially classic) are 30+ years old.
In the same way, people will talk about boomers in politics but Obama was the last baby boomer in the presidency.
Summoners War. Played for years, gave it up, got back into it recently. Very very good gacha game. Plenty of PvE to keep you coming and working towards something, plenty of great characters with awesome skins, TONNES of free stuff and 3-4 events running parallel at all times, booming community, and a very deep PvP scene if that’s your forte when you want to use the hard work you’ve done in PvE. Can recommend if you’re one for the gacha mobile games.
My favorite publishing house is probably Bethesda. I came to this realization the other day when thinking of what my favorite types of games are. Just so happens Bethesda has published nearly all of them in recent years. Arkane is my favorite dev because they’ve kept immersive sims alive with titles like Dishonored 1+2/Prey/Deathloop. ID software/Machine Games both keep the tradition of the classic shooter alive while bringing them into the modern era, games like Wolfenstein (The Old Blood, 1+2), and DOOM. The only games I don’t really care for out of Bethesda are their recent RPG games, I believe they’ve peaked at Fallout New Vegas. But with the upcoming Indiana Jones game being developed by MachineGames, I think they’ll deliver another fun first person adventure. They also quietly released HiFi Rush last year from Tango Gameworks (who also did the awesome Evil Within 2 game) and that oozed PS2 era video games quite amazingly.
The most recent developer who has crept onto that list in recent years for me is definitely FROMSOFTWARE. No need to really explain here, they’ve made a handful of classic dungeon delving masterpieces with the Souls series. Then went onto Bloodborne and Sekiro, most recently Elden Ring (which was the first full game I ever beat from them).
I’ll also echo Remedy, and do an honorable mention to 4A Games (highly recommend the Metro series for those into First Person Shooters, some amazing atmosphere in those games still). Double Fine too, with the recent Psychonauts 2, they aren’t super prolific in recent years but that game was amazing. I think the industry needs more creativity like Psychonauts 2 offered and what the studio offers in general. Capcom in recent years has been on fire too the upcoming Dragons Dogma 2 looks like it could become a classic if it’s as good as all these previews make it seem to be.
What metric are we using? The developer whose games I like the most? The developer who treats their employees best? Or treats their customers best?
Valve has produced mostly bangers, seems to treat customers well and is by all accounts a great place to work. They’ve also been pushing development for gaming on Linux. Hard not to go with them, even though it’s debatable whether they could be classified as a game developer anymore. But that’s fine.
Remedy deserves a shout-out for sticking to their guns, and continuing to produce weird artistic games that push the envelope in the AAA space.
I’m not as high on BG3 as most people (though it’s obviously a great game), but Larian also belongs in the discussion surely. I only ever hear good things about them.
Finally, the developer who inspires me the most is probably Lucas Pope. I love his ability to think outside the box and find entertaining gameplay loops in seemingly mundane things, but moreover I am just so impressed by how multitalented he is. I still can’t believe Obra Dinn was a one-man production. I love his artstyle and the music he makes as much as the games themselves.
I’m going to go a little unpopular here, and say Paradox Interactive.
Their milking of their properties with DLC is the stuff of legends, but at the end of the day, nobody else is even close at modeling rich, complex and hugely broad historical simulation the way they do. They’re everything I ever wanted when I was a kid, playing Koei strat games. When you’re that good at what you do, fine, make money. Whatever.
I dunno, my rich uncle is a boomer and back in the 90s he was one of the only people I knew who could afford a gucci PC and every big box FPS game. So it kinda makes sense from that perspective.
If you go by standard inflation, games purchased in 1998 would now cost over $100. And, given reduced visuals, those games needed much fewer people to finish.
Selling games for $100 is one idea, and some publishers have even shifted that way. But, that’s not so fair for low income gamers (especially since even since 1998, the minimum wage hasn’t really gone up).
The solution they came up with is changing the entry fee, and giving semi-pointless extras on top. What I’ve generally seen is that the things games sell within them are in no way “Half the game’s content”; usually things more like skins and cosmetics. Levels, story, and gameplay items are very commonly accessible to everyone. There are expansion packs, just as there were in 1998, that usually represent significant development efforts, new voice acting, and new levels.
Skins are not “nothing”, so I understand the frustration of having them unavailable, compared to old days when they were unlockable by doing a kickflip between the schools in Tony Hawk or something. But in those old days, games effectively cost $100. Which would you prefer?
$100 games. I know I’m the minority in this as I have the income for it, but I subscribe to the “buy once, cry once” mentality where I’d rather pay a large up-front cost for something and just have it be mine with all the bells and whistles it comes with. I detest this nickle and dime bullshit modern gaming has become.
Which is why I’ve also given up on “AAA” games from corporate publishers and stick to indie games from indie developers. I’m sure even if the AAA publishers started charging $100 for games, they’d still nickle and dime you just because they can.
That’s definitely a fair opinion - just unfortunate that enough people wouldn’t agree, or wouldn’t be able to afford $100 games, that that will probably never happen.
The other issue is that developers these days keep working on games after their release - often using information gained related to launch reception.
One other thing I think people forget about older games is that they made a lot of sequels. They have the assets for a mid-sized game and a lot of unused ideas, so to put out more content they remix what they have in new ways for a shorter development cycle. That kind of thing now becomes more suitable for an expansion pack; but whichever way it’s sold, the timeline for its release would never have made it to the first game’s production deadline.
There are a lot of benefits to the sequel model in some circumstances. You get to have every permutation of a game and its versions rather than overwriting previous versions of a game that arguably might be better for their own reasons.
Street Fighter 6 recently came out, to pretty high praise from reviewers and the general public.
The game has a “Year 1 character pass” that adds 4 new characters. Eventually, there will be a year 2 character pass that will add more characters. If you’re not buying these, you’re literally not getting the entire game. When you play online, you will face opponents playing characters that you can’t even play yourself.
There are lots of games that have similar features where not spending the extra cash means you’re literally not getting as much content as everyone else. It’s not just about cosmetics anymore and hasn’t been for years now.
That’s actually a very fair point. I don’t play fighting games, but this is a common theme for many multiplayer games now. A lot of developers have worked to make the newer character options “fair”, but even when they work to balance new with old, just having confusing tactical options that some players can’t play as is enough to mess with someone’s strategic skill development.
So for fighting games, character passes are a good thing(overall).
If you bought SF4 at launch and continued to play the game throughout it’s life, you ended up buying the same game multiple times. This was essentially a few characters and a balance patch(had new mechanics as well). This the fragmented the player base a lot, so if you were playing the base game you couldn’t play with someone on the latest version.
Street Fighter 5 however, switched to character passes and even being able to unlock characters with in-game currency(difficult if you came to the game later but possible). This means everyone got the balance patches and major system updates, so the player base stayed as a single entity.
For a niche genre, this is significantly better than multiple purchases of the same game, and allows for a game to get more updates over a longer time.
However I do wish they kept in more unlockable content like costumes, colours and stages.
Specific to Street Fighter 6 though, they have a battlepass(which is not good, but isn’t terrible either) which the free version gave/gives out a bunch of character rental tokens, so you can play with DLC characters you haven’t purchased.
I think klei may be my favourite studio. They create amazing games that are all truly unique but backed by strong game design concepts.
Mark of the ninja - great 2d stealth game were most games in the genre are 3d.
Invisible Inc - great turn-based Rougelike stealth game.
Don’t starve - probably one of the best survival games out there that relies on clever resource management rather than combat
Oxygen not included - a base building survival game, that is well designed to ramp up difficulty with the long term needs of your base
Griftlands - deck building game with a charming plot and interesting mechanics.
Each game they output is truly unique and interesting experience with some really clever design choices, but I think the point they became my favourite studio is when I read their article on Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic rewards to appreciate how well thought out their games were.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne