One of my all-time favorites. If you don’t like horror games, don’t let that stop you. It’s too important a story to pass up, and worse-case, you can turn off some of the scary elements of the game. It’s really a sci-fi masterpiece first, and a horror game second.
Dungeon Defenders only has 600 hours on Steam, but I’m well over 2000 hours between Steam and PS3/4
I’ve also got a few thousand hours in Just Cause 2&3, as well as several Gran Turismo games and Forza Motorsport games. Morrowind probably has 2-3000 hours, oh and I’m not allowed near Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri anymore.
Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger are probably up there as well since I’ll replay them every decade or so.
There was a moment in my life when I thought that perhaps I was outgrowing games... that they were just not really designed for the entertainment of adult human beings in a way that could satisfy me. Not one of my old stand-bys could, as you said, "scratch the itch" or provide "the same enjoyment that it used to." I found myself spending more time with films and books.
Then I got into FromSoft games and indie titles, and within a year I realized games still held incredible experiences for me. I hadn't outgrown games. I had only outgrown the bland slop represented by most AAA releases, and especially by online multiplayer releases. Personally, I'd recommend giving up on looking for a new 1000+ hour obsession. Instead I'd recommend seeking a broad array of 10-100 hour loves. If you haven't already tried them, for me a love of gaming was saved primarily by: Dark Souls, FTL, Spelunky, and Hollow Knight.
There was a moment in my life when I thought that perhaps I was outgrowing games
My exact thought earlier this year, honestly. I’m right there with you
Personally, I’d recommend giving up on looking for a new 1000+ hour obsession. Instead I’d recommend seeking a broad array of 10-100 hour loves.
This is exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 6 months. I’ve discovered some pretty crazy and amazing titles. Played Everything from BG3 to No Man’s sky, lots of indie titles my favorites being Boomer shooters and new up and coming titles. I tried Stardew Valley for the first time since everyone seems to be raving about that one, and a couple similar ones like my time at Sand Rock, Valheim was awesome. Guess I feel like I’m running out of stuff to play lately
I assume one OLED for the family and then a portable per person
Stop. Don’t buy anything yet.
What do you mean “one portable”? Do you mean a non-OLED Switch? Do you mean a Switch Lite? Do you mean a pair of Joy-Cons? Do you mean a single Joy-Con?
My family has 3 Switches. I bought a launch system, my wife bought another of that type, gave it to our kid, then bought an OLED for herself.
So, you don’t need more Switches than the number of people (unless you’re planning to host Animal Crossing treasure islands, which, you’re probably not).
We had a Switch Lite, but it was redundant since we each had a regular/OLED, so we sold it.
Why not just start with one and go from there? Get the OLED if you’re planning to primarily play handheld, or if faster loading times are super important to you.
I was talking to my SO about it recently and we both kinda agreed you’d probably have to update the core gameplay so it would be a little more interesting/engaging but overall B&W was fun. Hell, even Spore redone properly (aka not by fucking EA) I would love too. That one always makes me sad to think about, and we’ve not really had anything like it since.
No idea why there are so many people who want this game to fail. Bioware has realistically made two bad games, Andromeda and Anthem, and for me Andromeda has the best gameplay in the entire series, not necessarily the best story and anthem is just not great. It’s crazy the amount of bioware hate that exists that’s completely unwarranted.
I feel like the story has good ideas but ultimately fails, personally. I like the idea of struggling against inevitable tragedy, but when the cause of such tragedy was against always immediately in arms reach of you and caused by a single person it falls flat.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Age_II lots of good information in the wiki page, of which none of your claims are accurate except for maybe the polarizing views on reused assets but that’s literally by design, not crunch. It sold more than origins and sold over a million copies in two weeks, that’s pretty damn good. Nice rage baiting though.
Wow knowing the asset reuse was by design makes me feel way less charitable towards DA2. (I don’t know if I’d go as far as the other commenter and say it’s “a bad game,” but I didn’t like it.)
It depends on how you frame it. I don’t see it as “hate” as I don’t hate Bioware, but objectively speaking, the work speaks for itself. Hyperbole such as disaster, catastrophe, etc are embellishments, but to say the game isn’t bad or just so-so isn’t a scathing criticism.
Anthem was treated the way it was due to ME3 and the narrative choices, for better or worse. People wanted to tell off Casey Hudson, and the game suffered unfairly. Granted it wasn’t a good game, it wasn’t as terrible as it was made out to be either.
Now on Andromeda, however, it was fairly criticized. The gameplay was fun and engaging, but the narrative and storytelling were given their fair treatment. That stuff was just bad, and the developer responses didn’t help either. The pathetic rants amounted to “I put mah heart and souuuulll into it”, and just because people worked really hard on something, doesn’t mean it was a good thing. People worked really hard in the sewers of London to get rid of fatbergs, but in the end all they achieved was moving shit around, and that’s more dignified than the trash we got in Andromeda’s writing and character animations.
Looking at the current marketing situation and the “Bioware hate” as you refer to it, I really think there’s more EA hate at this point. EA is blatantly manipulating the review scores by means of review embargos and selectively cherry picking only favorable review outlets, and in some cases we are even spotting reused catchphrases that indicate signs of coaching by EA to say positive things about the game. They do this in light of the consumer sentiment about preorders “Not touching this or preordering, I want reviews first” is a common sentiment amongst their video comments telling their marketing engagement experts to use dirty tricks like review manipulation.
I’d honestly love for Veilguard to be fantastic, but the layoffs and staff turnover tell me they didn’t value their developers, didn’t value the product, and don’t value the art or anything really beyond making some flashy flim-flam with marketable gimmicks. The reviews I’ve read mention that the characters in the game must definitely know what Tiktok is, due to the cringy dialogue, and that’s a review that gave it a favorable score.
Just wait until the objective reviews hit and this game is widely panned. That will draw the line between “hate” and “oh, this is actually shitty”, and make things especially clear.
There have been more positive reviews so far than negative, and not a single post has shown any proof that EA is manipulating reviews and cherry picking. The only thing we’ve seen is one guy at fextralife throwing out conspiracy theories about how EA hates him, another guy who’s apparently a racist and sexist asshat, and that’s pretty much it. Mortismal has even stated he wasn’t paid off or anything by EA and would be fined and his account deleted if he was and didn’t disclose that fact, which he didn’t.
Bioware has made two bad games, Andromeda and Anthem, two. One is objectively not that bad, the other is a game in a genre they’ve never dipped their toes into, and the biggest issue is that those two releases were back to back, so that apparently means they’ve gone to shit now and everything else they’ve created means nothing. It’s really sad how petty and ridiculous some people are over bioware. As for the EA hate that’s been around forever, but God forbid someone say something positive about a bioware game.
Do you have proof that EA is forcing reviewers to use catchphrases as you’ve said? I get it, we all have our hate boners, we all have our pet peeves, but damn son…the conspiracy theories and review embargo nonsense is just stupid at this point. Like you said let’s just wait for the objective reviews but how about we simply don’t write the game off because bioware apparently murdered our puppies.
This sure seems to indicate coaching on catchphrases. As for conspiracy theories, this isn’t a conspiracy, it’s pretty obvious. IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku, and Polygon have a long history of rating games higher based on their budget and publisher influence. Standard review outlets are inconsistent, and since 2010 have been the butt of many jokes. This seven year old video from Dunkey albeit, satire, rather well breaks down the inconsistency between review outlet staff even highlighting their own subjective contradictions from individual reviewers (look at the bit about the Sonic game in this one).
When you look at the first wave of reviews given by those issued pre-release review copies, the trend speaks for itself.
You know, I was honestly going to give you some credit for trying, but then you edited your post and decided to turn the conversation political. Your entire argument has lost all credibility, these are video games, please try not to take them so seriously, have a nice day.
Lol, how is that political? It’s a “water makes wet” kind of thing. I’m sorry you have such fragile feelings about Bioware and don’t like the narrative. If it’s any consolation, it’s not even the same people who made the prior games. Whether the game’s a massive success or financial failure, EA’s just going to fire them all anyway. That’s cool though, we’ll see how it looks on the Steam reviews this weekend. If past experience is any indicator, whenever a publisher resorts to funny business, it’s because they have to. Nobody was needed in the defense of BG, MDK2, BG2, NWN, Kotor, Jade Empire, ME, ME2, DA:O, DA2, SW:TOR, DA:I, etc.
I don’t even really care about the studio anymore to be honest, after the layoffs and turnover, we have no idea whether this crew delivered or not, and judging from the review oddities, it paints a bleak picture. Let them sink or swim based on what EA allowed them to do, then through no true fault of their own, face a studio closure because of the obtuse fuckwads in EA corporate. Either way, the future sucks for the gaming studio called Bioware, in name only.
They require a different mindset and approach than many other games. You can view it as a test of will: your victory is inevitable since every time you die, you respawn and have learned a little. The game tries to make you quit, not by being unfair but by punishing laziness and corner cutting. The rewarding feeling you get when you finally, initially through stubborness and eventually by skill beat a difficult boss is immense. The videos of people easily dodging attacks and showing restraint in their attacks beat difficult bosses - that will be you eventually. Just accept that dying and trying again is an integral part of the experience, it does not mean that you are bad at the game. There can not be a feeling of accomplishment and achievement if there is no resistance, no? Go and have fun! And remember, there is no “wrong way” to play - all the mechanics in the games are there for a reason, so use them!
It’s only bad when the game isn’t a stealth game and also has shittastic stealth mechanics.
It’s worse when it’s the opposite, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution where the game is meant to be played in stealth, but then the boss battles are straight up FPS style shootouts when most players probably didn’t put points into combat skills or armor because they’re supposed to be a sneaky spy.
I honestly think the most egregious bullshit that has to do with stealth is Elden Ring and Sekiro. They have decent enough stealth mechanics, but they also have enemies that straight up don’t give a fuck that you’re in stealth so you’re never actually able to sneak around the entire time. It’s not that upsetting in ER, given it’s not the intended method of play, but in Sekiro you’re a literal god damn ninja who relies on being unseen. And iirc, Fromsoft also made Tenchu; one of the best stealth games of all time.
Unfortunately, FromSoft wasn’t on Tenchu until later in the series when it…wasn’t so great. Still, that Sekiro started as a Tenchu concept is why I picked up the game in the first place. And like Tenchu, effective stealth is there, it’s just especially challenging.
Now, Zelda: Skyward Sword is one I can’t defend (and one of the reasons I’m surprised OP is getting crushed for this post).
bin.pol.social
Ważne