**3D Grand Theft Auto games (GTA 3, 4, 5)**Some video essay (I can’t recall which one) compared GTA’s attitude to that of the protagonist of “Catcher in the Rye”. Its comedy is very cynical, just pointing fingers at everything and saying “they are phony”, “they suck, don’t they” and “we are too cool to even admit we’re cool”. The tone always rubbed me the wrong way and felt like these white gangsta rappers - Vanilla Ice and the kind. Rampant fanboyism does not help, either. I dared critisize GTA6 trailer somewhere (by saying “this is not for me, I will pass”) to be downvoted to oblivion and I shit you not, receive threats in DMs.
No Man’s SkyWhen it came out, NMS was a broken, buggy mess of a game with inventory management as a central mechanic. Punch trees got replaced with laser plants, but it’s basically the same loop of gather, combine, refine, build better tools. After a decade, NMS is a game chock-full of various content, with inventory management as a central mechanic. Not for me.
Souls-likes and MetroidvaniasI have plenty of rewarding challenges in my real live and consider myself lucky enough to have work that’s fulfilling and gratifying. I don’t seek validation in games - I seek relaxation and escapism. I play most games on easy and don’t feel like proving my skills in the game is the right use of my time. I can appreciate skilled players - often watching speedruns, 100% attempts or professional tournaments, but when it comes to playing - I rather pick fun, easy, light entertainment. (Death Stranding is one of my all-time favorites)
on a flip note, a game that everyone seems to hate and I quite enjoy is ForspokenSure, the dialog is cringe and there’s way too much of the same barks repeating (I need to look through menus, I think they added some slider to adjust the rate if I recall), but the traversal is fun, I love the UI design (gold and purple), I think costumes are freaking fantastic and combat is easy enough (on easy) to happily zone out to and play an hour here or there.
TLOU - Great story, don’t get me wrong; probably some of the best writing in games for it’s time. But the gameplay got super boring once every concept was introduced. The loop is just not satisfying, and exploration is more or less go check out the dead end before moving on, because the level design is so linear. This is more or less the same problem I have with most big AAA titles; they look great, have a good story, but are just so incredibly boring to play. You can tell the budget went entirely into graphics and voice acting, because the game itself feels more like an afterthought to those; it’s just there because otherwise it would be a movie.
Lethal Company - The game itself is pretty shit and tedious. What makes it fun is not the game, but how voice chat sounds when someone is being chased or getting eaten. 100% a game made for Twitch streamers where more people will be entertained by watching others play than playing themselves.
Palworld - I was interested by “Pokemon with Guns” and then I found out it’s more like Rust with Pokemon. I hate Rust and Ark all those kinds of survival PvP games. The genre itself has all the same weird jank, like everyone who has been copying the idea from DayZ or the like also copied every bug and bad idea, too; even the AAA made ones! They usually run like shit, are balanced like shit, and get so stale alone and are super frustrating in multiplayer unless you’re playing with a large group of friends so you’re not just being singled out for being all alone.
GTA:O - Specifically the online portion of GTA5 has made me never want to buy another GTA or rockstar game period. Not because the game play itself sucks, but rather because it’s extremely fun but the game doesn’t want you to have fun if you’re also making money. I can spend hours and hours doing all the activities that don’t earn you cash and have not one single issue other than maybe some other players trying to blow me up (especially if they are modding). But once that Mission Rep meter starts going up, hoo boy… The game starts breaking in all sorts of interesting but frustrating ways. Headshots stop killing in one hit, traffic starts behaving erratically and non-sensically (like straight sliding sideways at light speed to force a collision), triggers start breaking, the server decides to go down or get super laggy, etc. Since none of this happens in single player or while not doing activities that reward cash, and there is no other obvious function of the Mission Rep stat, I can’t help but think these are actually features put into the game on purpose specifically to slow down grinding so people will buy Shark Cards. The same kinda shit happens in RDR2:O, too.
I’m not far enough into paltopialand to really say, but at the beginning and five hours in, it runs at 142FPS and never drops *at max settings. Its performance is really remarkable for an early game.
To clarify here: It’s not really the game specifically; I just know it’s the latest example of the type of game and super popular atm. It might be the best game of that genre; I still don’t like the genre itself, which is why I’m not getting Palworld.
Skyrim. I dislike most everything about this game. It’s not a “bad” game as in it doesn’t work and it’s not exploitative, I just think it’s quite average.
Combat is pathetically simple. There are some interesting support spells but by and large magic is either bolt spamming, beam spell, or you summon golems. Melee is even worse just having basic and strong attacks. This is exemplified by the meme that you can make your character however you want…as long as it’s a stealth archer. But even then the Stealth Archer gameplay is pitiful. Archery has the same boring attacks as melee and stealth is just watching a little icon.
The story is garbage. Besides a few side quests, the main campaign is just awful.
The open world is pretty decent, but is waaaaay too small and jam-packed. Skyrim is supposed to be a remote nordic province. But Skyrim does a terrible job at having places feel remote and like wilderness. Every time you turn a corner in a mountain pass there’s another cottage or bandit tower, etc. It feels like a theme park whose theme is nordic wilderness.
The progression is mostly boring. The skill tree is almost entirely passive bonuses. Do X% more damage, Attacks have a chance to do bleeding, increased range, etc. Very few skill trees have an effect on what you can do; just how well you do it.
Again, Skyrim isn’t a terrible game. It’s competent at what it does, but not good at it. The only caveat is that there weren’t many open world RPGs before Skyrim that were as large or became as popular. Plenty of games who did every aspect of Skyrim better; but I struggle to find one that did them all at the same time. /rant
The open world is pretty decent, but is waaaaay too small and jam-packed. Skyrim is supposed to be a remote nordic province. But Skyrim does a terrible job at having places feel remote and like wilderness. Every time you turn a corner in a mountain pass there’s another cottage or bandit tower, etc. It feels like a theme park whose theme is nordic wilderness.
That’s exactly the reason why I like the game. That and how moddable it is lol
Edit: Also the multiplayer is god awful, why can’t my friend and me just team up and play, instead you have to jump through all types of hoops to play together.
Surprised this hasn’t been said more in this thread, to be honest. All it seems to be is Breath of the Wild and Soulslikes.
I’ve tried 3 different Monster Hunter games, I’ve really tried to see what people enjoy about them. But the controls are so awful, the loop is tedious, and I could never find anything good to say about them. This series truly confuses me.
I so wish I could like Monster Hunter. I mean there are huge monsters, what’s not to like about it. But the rest just isn’t fun or enough to me so I get bored really fast. It’s a bummer.
Installed it. Spent two hours in unskippable tutorials and dialogues learning about a million different mechanics. Sent out into wild; collecting mucous for 45 minutes. Find monster, hit it a bunch. Monster runs away. I chase it for 10 more minutes, then Quit and uninstall.
Steam input is absolutely baller. I use it extensively with my Steam Controller. For FPS games, I have gyro aim activate while the right pad is touched.
Ubisoft make it pretty easy for me. I don’t have to worry about any of this, because none of their recent titles have been worth spending your money, let alone time on
This is my take as well. The last Ubisoft game I enjoyed was Black Flag. It’s a shame because in the early 2000s they were great, but now they’re just churning out yearly sequels to turn Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry into Call of Duty.
Life is Strange (any of them, favorites are the 1st and True Colors. Both could be played without the other (separate stories)).
Mass Effect (I started with 2nd) is among the best imo.
Detroit Become Human
Heavy Rain - this one had my first immersed quick decision that I was like, “holy shit I just did that” and it made me question if I would’ve acted that way in real life given the scenario.
I made some shit ass choices on my first playthrough of ME2, during the final mission. Precious Tali took a bullet to the face because of it. I forced myself to live with it and made more sensible choices the next time around. I don’t believe I lost anyone the next time, but when it came to the Kaiden (accidentally called him Carth there for a moment) vs. Ashley, I definitely let Ashley go boom on that second playthrough and every consecutive time afterward as well. Kaiden is moody and a little annoying to have around, but at least he’s not a fucking dickhead like Ashley.
Life is Strange hit me so hard. A content warning for people unfamiliar, but a core theme of the game is suicide. It comes at the topic a few times with different contexts that had me crying more than once. Highly recommended.
A good chunk of comments have spoilers, so if you read this first beware. I guess people like to brag about game knowledge more than they like having other people experiencing stuff.
I love them. I remember quake 3 had something similar too. It lets you challenge yourself a bit more, and in the case of Smash play equitably with players of different skill levels, so that everyone experiences a fun challenge.
Basically solves the problem of being “too good” to play with your friends
Fallout: New Vegas. Hell, Fallout 2. In 2 early on, you only have time to one of two quests and people die when you can’t help them. You can’t save everyone.
Very different from later games where time doesn’t matter and the whole world waits for you.
Flash-in-the-pan multiplayer games that may not have anyone left to play with if you don’t join in while the pan is still hot. Heck even ones that stick around a while just get harder to start in when most players have built up skill in the game and know all the little nuances. It’s a lot easier to grow along with everyone when a game first drops, IMO if you care at all about the competitive side.
It would be interesting to see how many 'patient gamers' are actually into multiplayer games at all because of this reason. I wouldn't call myself one per se, but I probably fit the criteria, and most of the games I wait to come on sale are single player campaign.
I’m patient for SP games, but I also sometimes jump on bandwagons for MP games from time to time. Especially when they’re cheap, like Lethal Company or Fall Guys.
I tend to play co-op with a friend and enjoyed playing V-Rising on a private server. We built up our vampire lair and roamed the lands collecting resources and expanding the lair. The bosses are challenging, and the map is varied. It is also fun to play with friends as the game accommodates this very well.
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