Just be careful not to idealize the past as some golden age of gaming. During the SNES era, worthwhile titles were few and far between on top of spotty regional availability on account of profitability (supposedly). The bar to entry for gamedevs was huge: the dev tools were obtuse and the distribution methods were shit and centralized (toy stores, computer stores, magazines). The offer was also ridiculously sanitized, at least on consoles.
It’s great that we can still enjoy the good games of the past, but I absolutely love what indies come up with nowadays. There are so many and they’re so creative! ❤️ Some talented big studio devs even manage to release something nice once in a while despite the organizational structure they work in. I never want to go back to gaming in the 90’s. Furthermore, I’m of the opinion that there are many past titles being hailed as classics solely based on some unconscious nostalgia for youth (I’m looking at you GOG).
Its just like with idealizing music eras. People remember the stand outs and forget the bad and mediocre stuff so it seems like everything was better in whatever time.
Weird take, imo. Mobile games are probably the best they’ve ever been. They were traditionally a place for rampant p2w garbage gacha machines, and while those are still there, the platform has actual decent games nowadays. Real PC games are being ported to mobile and the platform is being taken seriously. Even in the world of micro transactions and gacha games, there are far more that are actually decent as games then there ever has been.
I’ve been playing Monster Hunter Now and I’ve been really impressed with it. The entirety of the Riot games are good games with reasonable microtransactions. Vampire Survivors, my go-to “I am offline” game, is the exact same game on mobile as PC, save the fact that it’s free and you have a choice to watch ads for marginal farming speedups (which can be disabled if you buy literally any of their ~$1.50 DLC expansions, which are hilariously large considering their price). Fucking Warframe is coming to/already on (?) mobile.
I genuinely can’t say mobile games have ever been in a better place than today, despite the existence of the shovelware P2W games that continue to roll out.
I’ll side with OP from a slightly different perspective here, because you’re not wrong but neither is OP. First and foremost I think the word missing here is innovation – mobile games in their very initial start were exactly what you are describing, but mobile games that OP are talking about took some time to find freedom to innovate. The very first mobile games, almost all of them, were PC ports. Solitare, poker, mahjong, snake, tetris… These were all games that had existed for years and were just now put into a 160x128 res screen and played with a circular slider (first iPod), or whatever the specs of the Blackberry was back then. Few unique games were created for these devices.
By late 2009 the iPod Touch 3g had released. It was this and the following few years where OP is talking about, where not only were old games like Spy Hunter being remade, and funnily enough, I’m pretty sure Rockstar also released a few GTA’s on this device. But there were also entirely new games like Doodle Jump, Canabalt, and to a lesser extent Pocket God. (Well, relatively new and unique, at least.) These of course paved the way for Temple Run and honestly I had so many amazing mobile games back then that remembering them all would be a trip down memory lane far too long for today.
Anyway, my point and I’m assuming OP’s point is that it’s harder to find truly unique and “new” experiences in the mobile game world. The idea of Talking Tom when he first came out was something truly unlike anything else available. Not that it was particularly good, or that being unique makes it good, but rather there were more games willing to take a risk on being different.
And yes, of course back then there were plenty of shovelware games trying to pine off another apps success. I think it’s simply a difference of mindset, for the good games that are available today generally seem to follow the same principles – a good game comes first, and if you accomplish that the expenses pay themselves. For your examples, the only games that didn’t already exist were semi-MH Now (Pokemon Go/Ingress, but I agree they are unique and fun) and the Riot mobile games. I agree that the other games you mentioned are good as well, I’d even include the fact that there are other full PC/console games like Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2, Final Fantasy, and plenty of others.
But none of these were made specifically with the attributes of mobile gaming in mind. Where are the disjointed IRL vs. on screen games like Panoptic! There’s so much potential for mobile phone games of really wild and unique stuff, but it’s easier to make money by iterating and porting existing things to the platform.
The Bluey run memed so hard. After the run, people were shouting “hooray!” after every significant event in other games, e.g. when collecting shines in Super Mario Sunshine.
The Super Mario Sunshine and Mario Kart 64 runs both had great commentary.
Super Mario 64 Drum% was great. CZR did a 16 star run with a drum kit.
This was my first time seeing Cocoon, and my mind was blown. Orb!
The Super Metroid TAS was awesome.
The Metroid Dread race was nail biting. 2s difference over a 1h50m race.
Go! Go! Hamster Chef. No spoilers. You should watch it.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the poster child for this. That game was easily 7/10 even when it came out as a buggy mess. Now that it’s had a few years of polish, it’s much better than 7/10.
But the public perception was bad mostly because of unmet expectations. I don’t know if I’d call them “unreasonable” a they were set by the devs themselves, but either way, the game was and is much better than a lot of people think.
Well you’re mostly right in your original post, game was a solid 7/10 on release, but the studio just did so much disservice to themselves by hyping it up for nearly a decade before release, and especially hyping a bunch of stuff that never made it into the final product, and on top of all that breaking their own promise to not release until it’s finished.
The whole reason people liked The Witcher 3 was people were convinced the multiple delays to release “made it a better game.” It was at that moment that CDPR built the image that they won’t release a game “until it’s done.” They now had their own studio history working against them when they made the promise of “It’s finished when it’s finished” and people were expecting that. People loved that CDPR was so dedicated to the gamers that they wouldn’t let pesky things like money-men push a game out too early when it’s half-baked. Oops, they did exactly that with their next game, which absolutely shot all that goodwill from the players right through the heart, especially after already waiting nearly a decade for it.
In the end, are the expectations really unreasonable if the studio themselves were the people who built the hype those expectations were based on?
I get it. I said I didn’t think the expectations were unreasonable.
I think you’re pretty much proving my point, though, that the game is unfairly maligned due to unmet expectations. The game they released, while buggy, was fun. You’re pissed off about a lot of things that aren’t how fun the game is to play.
I’m not really pissed off, I’m just listing off things that were unmet based on the studios own desires and their own promotional materials leading up to release.
There’s still videos out there from when they were hyping wall-running and the Ghostrunner class. *shrugs
I really don’t think it’s unfairly maligned when those expectations were set by the studios themselves.
I mean… sandy, optic camo/cool, blades? For some odd reason it took Edgerunners for people to give the sandy an honest spin, possibly due to “aw shucks doesn’t work with guns and I can’t hack”.
The problem is that they advertise it a certain way and sell preorders, and then the game doesn’t live up to what they advertised. Worse, they didn’t allow anyone to review the console versions which were so unplayable that Sony removed it from the store. It would have been fine if people knew exactly what they were paying for, but they were misled.
Sure, it was unmet expectations but even if the expectation was just 'it works", they still didn’t meet it. And that’s kind of the bare minimum to even be legal when you’re charging money for it. I disagree that the console versions were 7/10 on release - more like 1/10.
I don’t know what to tell you, I played it on Xbox just fine. Played the whole game through from start to finish and had fun. I believe the issue was with last gen consoles specifically.
And again, I think a lot of the criticism was reasonable. But my point is that the game itself was and is fun, but suffers because of the bad reputation it got at launch thanks to some ill-advised (intentional understatement alert!) decisions by CDPR.
Yes, the issue was with last gen consoles. I don’t think that matters to the point I am making, nor that it worked for you personally on your setup. It worked okay for me too, but I was on a high-end PC.
Seemed to me you called the console version unplayable. You said they didn’t work. I was just correcting that statement for anyone who wasn’t aware that your were bending the truth to make a point.
Sony literally pulled the game from the PlayStation Store because of the low quality. At that point it’s not just a subjective opinion but fact, so I resent the claim that I’m bending the truth.
I don’t see people mention Cross Codes often and no one has mentioned here yet so I think it’s “lesser known”.
It’s one of the games I got. I’m 20 hours in and the game is amazing so far.
The game can be pretty challenging sometimes so I’m not sure if it’s for everyone. I’d describe the game as a MMORPG but without the MMO. It has a lot less grinding than a MMO and a lot more puzzles.
I saw some people compare it to Zelda but I feel like that’s only accurate for some aspects.
Cross code won awards and was featured several times on Linus Tech tips. IDK how lesser known it could be then. It did come out a while ago. I agree that the game is good, but it is one of the few games I quit because of performance issues.
They don’t do gaming reviews, but Crosscode was always that game Linus tested on those handheld consoles up until and including the Steam Deck. I remember him playing it to test latency and stuff on displays and stuff.
This varies between “functionally impossible” to “tricky but doable” depending on the game. Generally speaking getting old games to run via using the original media is very hard. The easiest way is to buy them again on GOG.com. Second easiest is to quasi-legaly (legal in my country, illegal in others) download a pirated copy of the GOG version. The other options I’d need to know which game before I promise anything.
Well not if you can dig up and get running the computer you bought the games for, or one say 5-10 years younger. Windows XP will do for anything on a CD, Windows 95 for anything on a 3.5 floppy. 5.25 floppy then most will run on 3.1.
It’s just that it’s a lot of work ensuring backwards compatibility and it’s not always a good idea, I’d argue the software world, in general, strive to much for backwards compatibility but that’s another discussion.
That work needs funding so it’s either pay GOG for the work that has been done remaking parts or repacking to make it run on modern computers. Or look to the hobbyist side of things but since they aren’t paid, they of course seldom package what they do in an easy to consume format leading to enormous guides with 20 steps that maybe works, but probably not if you don’t have an exact setup like the guy who wrote its.
You own a version of the games, sure, but the version you own is effectively useless on a modern system.
Perhaps the taste is less sour if you consider what you are paying for here is someone else doing the hard work to get an old game to run on modern hardware, saving you all that frustration and effort and time.
You're trying to get games built for a different OS (e.g., Win98) to run on your current OS. If it doesn't work out-of-the-box, you're going to need to seek a solution that either requires emulation or significant hoops to jump through. For example: if the game was built for a 16-bit machine, and you're running a 64-bit version of Windows, the game is just not going to work natively.
DOSBox may not work as it's an x86 emulator intended for MS-DOS. However, earlier versions of Windows (up to Win95) were just shells to MS-DOS. So, if the games in question were built for Win95 or earlier, DOSBox could be an option. I've also successfully installed Win98 on DOSBox but have run in to issues with drivers.
It may be best to simply list the games you're trying to get running and seeing if someone else has gotten them to run in Win10.
It's probably stuff being less "indie" than it appears on the surface. Both of those games you listed appear to have successful publishers, one behind Maplestory and multi-million (in USD) net income (also largest shareholder is investment firm, Maplestory NFTs). The other has more games (and significantly more DLC) on Steam.
That doesn't really answer your question, well aside from saying money. Though there may be a deeper connection as well (shareholders having hands in everything etc)
Huh. My siblings and I love the Trine games, and wanted to like Nine Parchments, but found it to be one of the worst games we’ve ever played. I don’t think we could find a single redeeming quality, and it just seemed like a total misstep.
So seeing it here on this list makes me think maybe there’s something that was okay about it? I’m curious what people liked…
(all the rest of these seem like good games, though, which honestly makes me even more confused about Nine Parchments’ inclusion…)
It’s okay not to like it of course. As you have seen it’s nothing like the Trine games, sharing only a bit of lore with them.
It’s basically a very pretty arena-based top-down shooter reminiscent of Magicka (which I also loved), with a good difficulty curve. There is not much of a story to carry the game forward, so it hinges on whether you like the gameplay and the challenge it offers or not. I for one really enjoyed Nine Parchments, doing multiple runs in single player and co-op with friends (even a “hardcore” one, which we usually never touch).
It’s funny to see this because I have found it to be the complete opposite.
First, the amount is surprisingly copious for a DLC. The new area they added is deceptively large because it has so much verticality. The main story missions for Phantom Liberty are also much longer than normal missions. The “like 5” you quoted is ridiculous because not only is it WRONG, it discounts the size of the missions.
They also added a ton of side missions and gigs, as well as two completely new side activities in car missions and supply drops. It’s a lot of content and just saying “they only added x number of missions” is reductive and frankly deceptive.
And maybe more important than the amount of content they added, the quality of the content is off the charts. The art style and creativity in the new areas is fantastic. It doesn’t feel like just more Night City, it really feels like a different area. It’s visually distinct from the original game; you know you’re in the new area without being told.
And the missions… the main story missions are completely different than anything in the original game. Fighting through the wreckage of a downed airplane to rescue the president and then getting thrown into a spy story complete with James Bond style banter over a roulette table! Idris Elba is amazing. Even the side missions are interesting with different ways to resolve them.
If you liked CP2077, I don’t see how you could possibly not like this DLC. They added more of everything that was good about the original game and did it at a higher level than the original game.
When I think of some of the other DLC’s I’ve paid for that are basically just a few extra missions and maybe a new companion or something, it makes this seem even better.
Now just so I don’t sound like a complete fan boy, I will say they added in a bunch of new bugs making the game less stable than it was in 1.63, which is really frustrating. But everyone gets those regardless if you paid for the DLC or not. So as much as it sucks that they added those bugs, it has nothing to do with whether you think the DLC is a good value or not.
@Stillhart@sederx personally, I was really missing the "crime" aspect of the game, so the fact that there's the ability to steal cars is a big plus for me. Can't believe it took them this long to implement something that fun into the game.
Idk I found the story to be pretty silly and again the bad acting didn’t let me get into it. All those story missions are extremely linear.
I’m not impressed. As I said in another comment I like the base game and this is similar im not sure where you see all this in value in so little.
The car theft is not fun it’s all scripted,the drops became boring after the second one. Like really that stuff satisfies you? A loot box with some average enemy around? Idk man this is nothing for me.
Maybe if they didn’t get Idris Elba they could have sold this for 14.99? I could take him or leave him tbh,I don’t think celebrities have ever helped this game and I thought they learned their lesson.
Honestly, I think Idris Elba blows Keanu Reeves out of the water. Clearly we’re on very different wavelengths if you think the acting in this is worse than the base game.
Cities: Skylines but ecosystem repair. Plant forests, regrade areas of mountains to mitigate landslide potential, reintroduce species and study their functional relationships with each other… Game progression comes in the form of additional research grants or new area assignments which present new challenges and unlock a new set of tools/procedures, but the successes from previous sites allow for migration of the reintroduced species into the new site.
I’ve only watched gameplay of Terra Nil, but it seems like it’s just an environmentalism themed puzzle game. You could replace all the titles with colors, and all the buildings and what they do with arbitrary rules, and it seems like it wouldn’t look anything like an ecosystem sim. It would be like taking the game Lights Out, changing dark spots to “growth”, light spots to “wastelands” and saying the goal is to balance out the ecosystem.
I didn’t see the late game though, so maybe I didn’t see where it shines.
I was hoping this was the direction Dyson Sphere Program would go. I think it would be an interesting twist on the factory management genre if nature was working against you; not in a Factorio “aliens will attack you if they see your pollution” way, but a “you’re producing pollution, this is creating more in-climate weather that is damaging your factories and changing the landscape dynamically” sort of way. I think this was the natural next step given that the game is already about climbing the Kardashev scale, producing more energy so that you can construct the means to produce exponentially more energy. Seemed like the natural next step would be exploring the balancing act that has to happen to achieve that energy production without also creating systemic issues for yourself that make it infeasible.
Instead their latest patch adds aliens that attack you 😕.
I guess this game just doesn’t exist, but remember that tweet of the guy who had a dream about an open world pirate exploration game with Waluigi in it?
Now I'm just imagining AC Black Flag, but Waluigi just replaces Edward whole cloth, just does all the voicelines and everything, everybody else just pretends he's a normal guy.
There is/was a fan made version of this in development! I don’t know the status of it currently, and I heard that development was rocky for a while… and they haven’t posted on the blog since 2020. But take a look anyway!
You need to grab the Duolingo APK from a source like APKpure or APKMirror and patch this file.
This is because the installed Duolingo app consists of multiple (split-)APKs.
But wasn’t that the evil AI very explicitly trying to psychologically hurt the protagonist and being really lame about it? I mean it’s the evil AI doing it and I remember the point of it being that fat jokes are lame.
I always sort of read those jokes as illustrative as GLaDOS being a bad person fielding weak material more than like, an earnest expression of the game writer’s values. Like, the game itself doesn’t present the remarks themselves as funny so much as GLaDOS being rude, snippy, and actively incorrect given that Chell is mega-fit.
Yeah, that always came across as “I’m trying to neg you but I ran out of my best insults like an hour ago so I’m throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.” Same with the adopted joke.
I get that context, and I think that was for sure the intent, but they did not stick the landing. We already knew GLaDOS is evil. Casual fatphobia was not necessary. Plus the fact that some people won’t get that context or choose to ignore it and just think it is funny, as evidenced further down this thread.
Edit: The person saying they would replay it for the fat jokes was removed, so my last sentence makes less sense, but that was the reason I said that
There’s an extremely long list of creative works made to be satire that idiots don’t understand. The Colbert Report, Starship Troopers, hell there are people that think Homelander is the good guy in The Boys. I think it’s a little too restrictive if someone can’t make a point that certain jokes are lame out of fear of how a few idiots might misinterpret it (many times deliberately). There are people right now arguing that the Barbie movie is actually “anti-woke”.
Also consider how many people actually did get the message. They heard how lame the jokes sounded and realized how stupid fat jokes are. From what I recall, the game really makes an effort to deconstruct these jokes. There is no audience within the game laughing at the jokes, and the evil AI explicitly states that it’s making the jokes solely to to negatively affect the protagonists psychological well being to prevent her from achieving anything. And the jokes are directed at the player, so someone that might have made these jokes themselves hears someone else directing these jokes at them and can hear how lame they are. The evil AI comes across as lame, petty, and desperate. Someone who made fat jokes before playing that game might have had the realization “is that how I sound?”
I feel like the people that didn’t get the context likely made fat jokes before playing the game, and would be making fat jokes even if they never played the game. So I don’t think there was any negative impact. Someone that committed to being an idiot isn’t going change in either direction from any kind of media.
Like I said, I understand the context. I don’t need more of it.
Jokes like this and the other examples require either a very deft hand or an extreme level of satire. The jokes did not achieve either of those for me. The harm it causes by folks misinterpreting or ignoring context is not worth the people who get it. I have friends that would 100% understand the context and would still be made uncomfortable by the delivery. That to me is the best indicator to how well it aged.
Also, posting a wall of text full of ableism is also not a great way to convince me otherwise
Yeah I never except anyone on the internet to admit they’re wrong about anything. But randomly accusing someone of being ablest based solely on a disagreement over the interpretation of a piece of media is rather petty behavior (even by internet standards), don’t you think?
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