When rebinding the keys, the game wont let me save the changes unless everything has something assigned.
During character creation the lightning on the model is completely different what you will see in game and I end up with an ugly character (Dragon’s Dogma, Saints Row 3 remaster, etc.)
Indepth tutorials told by dialogue boxes. Run 5 steps.
[Hey player!]
[You know some boxes can be moved right?]
[Just walk up to the box]
camera pans 3 feet to the left to show the box in the centre of the screen
[Press X to grab it]
[And when youre done press X to let go]
[Im sure youll find many uses for this during your adventure]
[Why not try it on that box over there?]
<hmmmm. Seems like im going to need to move that box if I want to get anywhere>
When you get near the box a massive X symbol flashes madly and unmissably above your head, and theres lines on the floor showing where it needs to be pushed to, which is also the only way its programmed to move, literally impossible to do wrong, and you push it like 5 feet.
[Wow! You did it! Looks like you can get to the next area now!]
<I should probably remember that, it could be useful in the future>.
You’re now free to play the game, all the way to the next room, where you’ll spend way longer than necessary learning something a fucking 4 year old could figure out, and you dont even need figured out because its been a staple of games since before you were even born.
I know there are folks out there who are profoundly bad at games, and that’s who these things are made for. I’m reminded of that one gaming journalist who gave Cuphead a bad review because he couldn’t figure out how to double jump and never got out of the tutorial.
But just make it a quick selection when starting a new game. “I’m new here, show me guides” and “I’m an expert, skip tutorial content”. Or even just make the tutorials an optional object interaction in the game that you don’t have to touch if you’ve already figured it out.
But the best games are the ones that teach players how to play organically. Level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros is the common example. Setting the camera controls in the older Halo games was also a work of genius. Newer games are a bit too dense to be able to cover everything quite as quickly and organically as Mario, but you can still offer some similar diegetic hints and just add a little “Help” button for anyone who can’t figure it out on their own.
Yep. Not to say that people who struggle with games aren’t valid or there shouldn’t be accessibility options to cater to them, but when writing professionally about games, you should be a near-expert in how to play those kinds of games, at least at their baseline difficulty.
It’s fine to say “I don’t quite get this game, but I’m sure there are people who do and who enjoy it.” But that can’t be a “review.” When you’re a reviewer, you’re supposed to be an authority. If you admit to not being an authority, then you’re not quite qualified to review it.
It shouldn’t honestly matter, but knowing how many publishers tie aggregated review metrics to their developers’ wages/bonuses/raises (or even if anyone gets to keep their jobs at all), it’s crazy for a publication to have journalists who don’t actually know how to play games just reviewing them on vibes alone. It’s too easy to run the risk of not understanding a core part of the gameplay and just assume it’s the game that’s wrong instead of me (because I want to continue getting paid to review games). So I assign it a negative score because my lack of understanding made the game feel bad, and then a level designer somewhere loses their bonus because the aggregate score was half a point lower than the total stipulated in their contract.
I’m souring on difficulty options lately. How am I supposed to know the ideal difficulty of a game without having played it before? You’re the developer, you designed it and if you’re confident in your game balance you should pick the default difficulty. Better yet, get rid of discrete difficulties and add customizable assist mode instead.
Whilst I didn’t enjoy the mechanics of Control, I was very impressed at the settings it offered. I could essentially turn off combat if I wanted. Yes, it won’t be the same game experience, but if I choose to play that way - let me!
In the old days we had cheat codes for this stuff. I cheated my way through a lot of games and then revisited later without cheats. Some of those became my favourite games of all time (Theme Hospital and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 both spring to mind).
By playing the game and adjusting as needed to the experience you are having. That’s what difficulty options are there for. Only you can decide what that is. No one can or should dictate that for you.
While I do change them if I feel things are seriously off, I don’t think changing the settings mid-playthrough is the solution. It is normal for the same game to have different difficulties at different times so if you’re adjusting difficulty mid fly on a first playthrough you probably won’t get the same highs and lows as intended. It is impossible to know from the first stages how the difficulty ramps up, sometimes they are easier, sometimes they are just mechanically simpler and sometimes they are purposefully difficult so you have to learn key mechanics.
Difficulty options are like consumable potions to me if that makes sense
Gaming experience is subjective. The highs and lows are entirely dependent upon the player and their preferences/capabilities.
It’s your experience, no one else’s. The experience is either fun or frustrating. If it is frustrating, then adjust until it is fun. It’s just that simple. For some, a brick wall challenge is fun and enjoyable, for others, it is time consuming and tedious. Both players are valid and both should have the option to play a game the way they want
The “highs and lows” should come from the storytelling, not the gameplay loop. The gameplay loop should always be fun, engaging, and enjoyable for the player.
Games that refuse to let you change the difficulty once you begin a game. More broadly, single player games that worry too much about preserving some sort of honor associated with doing well and make it annoying to play. Like rougue likes that have no save and quit for fear of people save scumming.
I’m a “grown-up” these days, but I grew up with games and they’re part of my life, and I love them - but in the larger scale of things, they’re still toys. The requirements of a pet/partner/child/phone call/doorbell will always nearly always outrank them.
“We don’t let you pause because it’s a simulation and and you can’t pause real life so it means the game is more realistic” = piss off
Yeah, the Steam Deck is actually pretty good for this on most games.
On a computer, you can, I suppose, set up a keyboard shortcut to pause the process, but you still think “this should just be part of the game in the first place”.
I’d also make that complaint about adjustable difficulty, but to speak to the game progression, I have to agree.
Games should be teaching players what they’re getting into from the very beginning. The tutorial should be “When you do everything right, this is how easy the game is. When it’s not this easy, it means you’re doing something wrong”. That “wrong” thing could be messing up a mechanic, not upgrading your character enough, or you’re trying to go to a later area too early. It’s a teaching moment.
So many games today, at “Normal” difficulty, will throw players into combat encounters where they just basically kill everything in one hit. So players in the tutorial think “This is a bit too easy, I’m going to up the difficulty to Hard”, but then they don’t realize that everything gets harder when you exit the tutorial, and then over the course of the game the difficulty keeps outpacing your progression.
As far as the difficulty slider goes, I think it’s always better when harder modes just make you easier to kill, rather than enemies being more difficult to kill. There’s often a good balance that can be struck between the two, but too many games just opt for just making enemies tankier and tankier, which ends up turning the “difficulty” slider into a “time/resources waster” slider.
‘Puzzles’ that are just fetch quests for numbers or pieces of something.
It’s so boring and such a waste of my time.
Let me circle these four pillars to find the numbers on them and plug them into the whatever keypad. Wowie. What a head scratcher. I sure feel like I solved a thing, boy howdy.
Yea, if it’s a lock code or but you’re not gonna make me think or work out what those numbers are, like finding calendars dates or other info from the game world and needing to piece it together, then just make it a damn note to find instead of making me hunt around for each individual number or those lame “match the symbols” shit. Those are so lazy.
There are others but this is one I just can’t believe is a thing. It’s so fucking simple to fix. Just start the volume on the lower end and if it’s too quiet I can raise the volume or just give me a volume slider first thing on initial load before any sound is played and let me find the right levels with a test sound before playing any menu music or something.
This and full white dev/publisher logo screens. I have a pretty large HDR monitor and whenever I boot up a Bandai Namco game I’ll flashback myself if I don’t look away in time.
Isn’t this what the volume on your sound system is supposed to do? Master volume in a game should be pretty much maxed out by default and the volume on whatever you use to output the sound should be set so loud isn’t blowing your ears out.
Unless you are actually complaining about sound levels of stuff that shouldn’t be loud (like menu clicking or background music) but that’s relative sound levels of different categories in the game, not the master volume.
Nah, I get what they are saying; games are just unusually loud. I can have my sound system’s volume when streaming YouTube or something on my PS5 set to a decent level but when I switch to a game I have to cut the volume in half if I haven’t messed with the settings yet.
Yeah basically this. My system volume is exactly where it needs to be for anything else I’m doing. Videos, music, voice calls, etc. I shouldn’t have to basically mute my system to not go deaf when I launch a game for the first time.
Reminds me of the first time I booted up Elden Ring. The title screen started up and I heard some music, but it was so quiet. I turned up the volume and then a second later thought I almost blew out the speakers on my headset.
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