I enjoyed the fighting simplicity of the original pokemon games. I could recognize and know the names of 151 pokemon and their weakneses/strengths. Now there’s too many pokemon and too many counters and hybrids. Too much work to keep track of.
As much as I adore, love and still prop Gen II as peak pokemon. I also have to blame Gen II for bringing in EV and IV that has served for the longest time, as fuel to the fire. Additionally so has making pokemon born and all that.
Now there's mega-evolutions, old pokemon have aurora forms or whatever. Why complicate it?
Yes. I enjoyed the simpler “rock paper scissors” offense/defense of the older games. There is such a thing as too much and it would be nice if game developers didn’t always feel the need to add way more stuff to every sequel.
The IV and EV system in Gen II is the same as in Gen I.
The “mordern” EV and IV system that’s being used today was introduced in Gen III with Ruby and Sapphire.
That’s just crazy talk. Pokémon Blue is my favourite, although I’ve only played up to gen 4 (Diamond, I think is the name). It’s not as good as the previous generations and the physical special split is just weird IMO. I’m sure that’s an unpopular opinion for people who are used to playing like that though, I think it would make more sense to me if it was how it had always been. Abilities were a neat addition though, I’ll give you that
Even though it’s hard to go back, I think Gen I is still quite good. I replayed Red maybe 3ish years ago, and had a great time. It’s just that it’s very rough around the edges until I’m used to it again.
The main thing that made me bring it up actually was remembering going back after playing GSC, and really missing the in-battle exp bar.
I’m surprised to hear you didn’t like the physical/special split, I think it makes much more sense the new way.
That split was great, the sp. atk/def split is very good, hold items and abilities added a lot. Inventory management got a lot better in later games. And monster sprites did too, although the bad sprites in Gen 1 have a lot of charm and nostalgic appeal of their own.
I’m sorry, I’m a young gen, so maybe that explains it but… I played the virtual console Yellow and got so damn bored…
It’s hard picking a favorite gen, as 4 was my first (Platinum my beloved) but I liked 5 despite not being able to beat it, but the features they introduced after gen I are all very good. Physical Special split is good imo, makes more strategy to a relatively basic game (when you don’t play against real people), abilities are great, newer types and type combos are nice additions, and a major one it the aesthetic.
Gen I characters and region are just so bland, the lack of themes, no extra minigame stuff… And I get it was the first gen so I can’t fault them for that. But the characters in the modern games are fantastic even if they’re weak, the music only gets better and better (each gen feels like it has a genre now), they include neat side stuff like the Poke Olympics, performance contests, berries & snacks, a ton of other stuff throughout the games. Like yeah, the newer games fall hard on the battle/difficulty aspect, and GameFreak’s inability to make a good looking game is astonishing. But they do put some heart in the little things in the new games, that just made grinding all day long in OG Yellow feel like a chore…
And even those there’s a lot, more Pokemon just makes that initial hour or so of a new game feel so special, like you’re discovering it all over again.
If you are seeing this message it means you tried to abandon your run before the boss bind has been attempted. This will not be permitted. You have not purchased a mult mult joker when available, embarrassing yourself and the entire Balatro community. Your attempt to reset is a an act of cowardice. Your self destruct joker has been recycled, you will be limited to the checkered deck and you will need to beat the orange stake and try to find a good flush hand.
And also, to be kind of a shit, I think the complaints about being underleveled and not having the right gear, mostly come from games like these being streamlined to the point where they usually have no friction. The obstacles in this game aren’t just tolerable, they’re the main reason I love it.
I definitely read a review where the reviewer was frustrated that he was underleveled and annoyed that his companions kept yelling at him to upgrade his gear, lol. But seriously, this sanding down of any sort of friction is something that has gotten to me with plenty of games in the past decade, so I appreciate someone laying it out plainly.
The thing to understand is that reviews are inherently subjective. Decade(…s?) ago, Kieron Gillen wrote a pretty famous manifesto where he basically compared game reviewing to travel writing.
When you are booking a holiday, you don’t care how many grains of sand are on the beach. You probably don’t care too much about the average flow rate of cars on the highway during rush hour. What you care about is whether you will enjoy it.
For some? That means there being plenty of museums. For others it is beaches with accessible parking so that you can leave your crap in a rental car. For others still it is nightlife.
And that applies to “friction” as well. Because let’s take a different example. Many people (myself included) criticized Elden Ring for having a grace outside of basically every single boss room. We half joke that people would lose their god damned minds if they had to play Dark Souls 2 where one of the hardest bosses in the game involves fighting your way through a solid wall of Black Knight level enemies every single time. Others think we are fucking stupid for liking Dark Souls 2 (… they are probably right) and that this lets you focus solely on the boss and not memorizing what a weeb in armor is going to do… before you fight the other weeb in armor. And others still will point out that having to run past those enemies or fight one or two helps to “reset” the mind between attempts and avoids being on tilt against a boss.
Just like some people want a beach where everyone is in a bikini and dehydrated like Hugh Jackman on a film set. And others still want somewhere they can relax and maybe surf for a bit.
Which… mostly speaks to Grubb’s problems as a reviewer. As a “game leaks” guy, he is amazing. I think he lacks the drive to be a full on game journo but that is also a function of him working for the company that steals the work of the rest of games media on the regular (Fandom). But he has a VERY long history of giving “spicy takes” where he has a rudimentary understanding of a topic but still feels the need to shit on others unnecessarily. He isn’t the only one but I am increasingly at the point where I can’t tell if that is engagement farming or “Just Jeff Grubb”.
I understand that reviews are subjective. I just found it funny that the characters in the game were shouting the solution to the reviewer’s problems at him for so long that he found it frustrating.
Jeff Grubb’s not-a-review was speaking to exactly the kind of thing that’s important to me in games and why he likes this one so much, which did me a great service, so I’m not sure why you’re shitting on him for spicy takes here, lol.
And good for you if that aligns with your wants (it sure aligns with mine).
But, at its core, it is “stupid games media” rhetoric. If you are in a mad dash to finish a review or even a game guide (Fandom’s gotta eat), you might not have time or even interest to go back track and do ten side quests in the starting area. At which point constantly hearing “you should get a better pistol” is gonna be REAL grating and is arguably bad encounter design. What is described as “no friction” is often designing encounters so that people can do both the critical path (just story quests) and all the side paths. And its why so many games either have continuous encounter scaling or just big levers you can flip (PoE1 and 2 did the latter).
So yeah. I do have a bit of an issue with someone in the games media space (especially at the company that steals the work of the rest of games media…) “be(ing) kind of a shit” to colleagues in a manner that just fuels the same kind of bullshit they constantly put up with on social media.
Whereas a “real” games reviewer learns to… not be a shit? I forget what game it was, but I remember Mortismal basically saying “The level scaling is kind of wonky. If you just do only the main story quests, you are going to have a bad time and you’ll need to really understand the combat systems to progress. But if you do too many side quests, you’ll be overpowered and just run right through everything” (… actually that sounds like PoE1 after the DLCs came out…). Rather than just making fun of other reviewers for not being able to handle “friction”.
Although I will say, in Grubb’s defense: That is also kind of the Giant Bomb style guide. It ignores that the OGs (Ryan, Jeff, Brad, Alex, etc) had fairly strong “games media” backgrounds by the time the site started and knew how to say something inflammatory to get a point across without angering the publishers to the point of losing ad revenue (… okay, Jeff wasn’t quite as good at the last part). But without those old hats to act as editors (and no, Dan doesn’t count), you get situations where “snark” is just shit stirring that feeds the people tormenting the rest of the industry.
Grubb has no ill will toward his colleagues. But there are plenty of them praising games that he and I found disappointing for that sanding down, so I understand frustration when there are reviews knocking down a game for delivering what we feel games “ought to be” doing. You get short snark because it fits better in a character limit. If you want more nuanced opinions of his, they come in podcast form, not written form.
I understand frustration when there are reviews knocking down a game for delivering what we feel games “ought to be” doing.
Yeah… that is a real shit perspective. You are actively “frustrated” that people like things you don’t. That is a very big side effect of the content bubble we all liv ein.
And I say this as someone who has loved squad based tactics since the JA2 and Silent Storm days. I am WELL used to “okay, add about 30% to the metacritic score for anything in that genre” and the like.
Grubb has no ill will toward his colleagues (…) You get short snark because it fits better in a character limit.
Which gets back to what is really “the problem”. It is about building his brand by “lightly ribbing” his colleagues. His colleagues who are perpetually days away from layoffs and who are constantly attacked by the asmongolds of the world who are using the exact same arguments and are glad to say “See, this person gets it. Why can’t they?”.
Its about worker solidarity even amongst competition. It is why so many of his colleagues will make it a point to preface even the skeets with “I get that this probably came from on high but” or would have just removed the “snark” entirely and said something like
I think the complaints about being underleveled and not having the right gear, mostly come from games like these being streamlined to the point where they usually have no friction. The obstacles in this game are the main reason I love it.
Well, yours is certainly one perspective that I don’t share. I’m sorry his post wasn’t polite enough for you, but I promise he is and will continue to be friends with all of these people afterward; it’s a small industry and only getting smaller.
While several reviews are knocking the game for things that he and I find not only to be non problems but in fact solutions, I found value in him sharing that perspective coupled with a negative review detailing the opposite, which is why I put it here.
Hmm… sure, but I feel like "reviews are subjective" gets used as an excuse to give low-effort reviews a pass too often.
Like, I understand if a Steam reviewer writes whatever because they're just a user, but I cannot justify using the same scale to judge a professional reviewer.
I understand a game may not be a reviewer's cup of tea, but if this stops them from engaging with the game's systems and attempting to provide insight through their review then I think it's fair to judge they haven't done their job well.
Like, if someone hires me to do a job, and I accept, I cannot go "Oh, I'm gonna do half of it because the rest isn't my cup of tea. Sorry." No, I'll do the job and maybe complain about it afterwards, which IMO, is exactly what reviewers should do—example: "I beat the boss, but the fight sucked because X, Y, and Z."
I think there should be standards, otherwise you get reviewers unfairly judging games they barely played like in the infamous God Hand review.
Like, if someone hires me to do a job, and I accept, I cannot go “Oh, I’m gonna do half of it because the rest isn’t my cup of tea. Sorry.” No, I’ll do the job and maybe complain about it afterwards, which IMO, is exactly what reviewers should do—example: “I beat the boss, but the fight sucked because X, Y, and Z.”
How about we have ANY job security before we start playing the “I am paying you sub minimum wage to run that kroger. HOW FUCKING DARE YOU DO RESTOCKING AT EIGHT AM!!! YOU ARE PAID TO DO THIS OVERNIGHT!!” shittery? Hmm
Which is something a lot of old hat games media have actually talked about. It is a lot easier to run a 36 hour day to finish up that JRPG review when you know you’ll be able to rest next week. Rather than be told your contract isn’t being renewed but to check back next month. Or to just have your entire department gutted because an exec decided they didn’t need to have TWO whole people playing video games. And when you know you’ll get something other than “Fucking woke reviewers don’t understand how to play a game” feedback from the “fans” who only ever see your review when their favorite hatemonger youtuber talks about it while making sure EVERYONE knows your social media accounts.
I think there should be standards, otherwise you get reviewers unfairly judging games they barely played like in the infamous God Hand review.
Define “standards”.
Is it “You must finish a game before reviewing it”? Because Jeff Gerstmann kind of infamously made it a point to finish Metal Gear Survive prior to reviewing it (I think it might have been his final print review at Giant Bomb?). EVERYONE, colleague and fan alike, told him he was stupid. And his consensus was basically that he felt the same way after 30 hours of misery that he did after 2.
Is it “You must be good at a game to review it?”. Because, funny enough, Remap Radio kind of talked about this last summer on one of their ridiculously long podcasts in the context of “games media suck and aren’t good enough to play Shadows of the Erdtree” in that short window before basically everyone said “So… this DLC is fucking hard, huh?”. And they pointed out that this is not at all a new experience for them. They are regularly playing much less polished and MUCH harder versions of these games under a strict time crunch where the only “guide” they have is what their buddy who is paid to write a game guide can experimentally figure out.
And how that translates to a review?
like in the infamous God Hand review.
You mean the game which, throughout every re-release, the vast majority of players either nope out after they get their asses beat by random grunts in the first stage? And most of the rest leave when they get to the shop and realize they need to buy and build their own combos blind?
I have no idea what “infamous God Hand review” you are referring to. But the majority I read when I heard about this cool ass PS2 game? It was “Hey, this is a really freaking cool concept and I personally had a blast. But it is not for everyone and a lot of the fundamental gameplay concepts are outright bad. OPM or whatever the hell has a demo of it and we strongly encourage you to get that if it is still on news stands because you are either going to love or hate this”. And, because this was still the era of print (like the VERY tail end), there was money to have one main review and like two “impressions” reviews at most of the major outlets. And, like almost all games, they would make it a point to have at least one sicko persona give it a high score while the rest bounced off. Which kind of represented how players respond to it to this day.
I think there should be standards, otherwise you get reviewers unfairly judging games they barely played like in the infamous God Hand review.
Or is it just “you must agree with me?”. Because, speaking as someone who has loved flight sims and tactics games his entire life (I was the kid in elementary school who liked xcom. The old xcom…)… most gamers don’t have my tastes in gaming. So having someone who dreams of Silent Storm reviewing Fire Emblem isn’t a particularly useful metric for most people.
That said? I learned from an early age to actually look at the by line on a review. I learned which guys/personas at EGM or PC Gamer I vibed with and which I didn’t. And that continued on into the online age and to this day.
Sometimes it is really annoying. Like… I like WW2 RTSes a lot. I fully understand why I need to vet every single youtuber who likes the games I like…
But also? Sometimes it is a really awesome realization that the weirdo audiophile on a podcast is the same guy who wrote some of my favorite reviews over the past decade (Rob Zacny is a treasure). And that the reason I am vibing with his thoughts on Valkyria Chronicles is that I have been vibing with his thoughts on other games for a significant part of our adult lives.
Some games are super easy, press a button and it’s done (steam workshop and things like that), most games are pretty easy but it varies (drag and drop some files to a specific place, maybe do a load order) and then there’s the games that aren’t made in a mod friendly way and require a 50 step ritual to add a minor graphics update that probably won’t work the first 3 times because you forgot to add a patch on step 7b. Mass effect is definitely not a game designed to be modded, bg3 hasn’t had full official mod support that long afaik so some stuff is likely still hacky
Uhh, because I have a working optical drive. Am I in the minority now? Doesn’t get a ton of use but every now and then I have to rip a DVD I own because it’s starting to die.
I have two that are constantly hooked up to my mac! One for ripping and burning CDs and DVDs (which I still do regularly, in fact I ripped five audio CDs just today) and one for ripping/burning 4k/blu-ray. I occasionally use both at the same time to make copies of discs, but my need for that is for part of a hobby project.
Not sure about the minority now, but you will be in a few years if not already. Prebuilt PCs haven’t included optical drives as standard for years now, and good luck buying a new laptop that has one.
Optical media isn’t dead but it’s on life support and will become functionally obsolete in the next decade, same as what happened to magnetic media.
I have one as well in my PC of Theseus, it’s been an ongoing part for more than a decade now. But, I also haven’t used in in a year or more.
It’s kinda funny to think back at how excited I was when my father first installed a CD-ROM drive in our home PC and knowing I could now get some of the newest games which were coming out on PC at that time. And now, I don’t even know if my optical drive is still working.
I got an internal BDXL drive and flashed firmware to make sure I can rip the 4K discs I started getting as part of physical bundles. Still need to start getting NAS drives to be ready for when my main PC stops being my daily driver+Plex Server before I had to get a new TV that could view them (still don’t have a dedicated player and annoyed the PS4 Pro didn’t ship with 4K playback). For now I can at least hook my PC to the TV if I really want to watch a disc.
My pc sonetimes doesn’t start up, i assume the psu is wonky or something stupid like a wonky power button connector. I started to look into it and was shocked when i saw that my pc has a optical drive hidden behind a little hatch. I completely forgot about that. But also shows how much i need it.
Not anytime soon. Nvidia tried, and nobody liked it. LLMs still suck at creative writing and need a ton of RAM/VRAM just to work. They also often get confused or trail off in any discussion/roleplay.
The only game that sort of made it work was Suck Up!, where you’re a vampire that has to convince an AI to let you in their house so you can suck their blood. It’s a fun concept but even that game gets repetitive quick and the LLM is very stupid and random.
Tiny models only get stupid like that because you’re taking a general purpose model that knows everything in the world and compressing all that knowledge too much. If you start with a model that only knows basic english and info about a few hundred things in the game, it can be much smaller.
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