I don’t know if this will help you, but I think that’s pretty normal. I felt similarly at your age in some ways and in other ways I felt like a baby, depending on how I looked at things. I still feel that way and I’m twice your age! It’s weird. Growing up is weird. I feel for you. 💖
The mobile market mostly targets kids and boomers and their resistance to microtransactions has been basically non-existent, making the market quickly become predatory and full of spam
Modern app stores have become abysmal, making it impossible for smaller games to see the light of day. 99% of google play is a dumpster fire, and the 1% that is decent isn’t published by a multi-billion dollar company so you’re unlikely to ever see it. There are good games out there, but the way the algorithms and ads work makes them constantly pushed down in the list. This isn’t “a problem” to a company like Google because they’re making bank off of all these ad spaces.
Anyways, most good games are paid, but here’s a list of stuff I’ve enjoyed playing on mobile:
Fancy Pants Adventures
Bloons TD 6
Dicey Dungeons
Dead Cells
Slay the Spire (but the mobile port is rough on small screens)
Don’t forget Plants vs Zombies 2. Which despite some micro transactions, definitely held up in its early days. Rather, I’d say it got do either dirty from balancing issues rather than greed.
The challenge with this question is that not everyone has played in every console, so like, for me, I can only comment on the Atari 2600, the Wii and the XBOX 360.
From that small sample, the wii wins hands down. I loved the motion controllers a lot.
I get what @berttheduck said about long games / serious gamers but can you imagine your grandma trying to play most Switch or PS5 or other new console games now?
The Wii brought gaming to the general public in a way nothing else had. Like most modern Nintendo consoles it was under powered and gimmicky but the gimmick worked so well for people new to gaming, point at the TV or wiggle the controller as you would to do the thing in real life was a huge step to making an abstract concept make sense to people. For longer gaming sessions or more “serious” games the Wii controls were generally lacking but damn if Wii sports wasn’t good fun.
Sadly because it works, mobile gaming is bigger money-wise than PC and consoles combined, all because people are susceptible to short term dopamine hit your can buy any time, it’s a part of what we call enshittification, making the product less user friendly and make more money, shareholders are happy, your don’t have to
It’s meant for children so, yeah, as an adult it fucking sucks to hold. But that is still the case when it’s docked and you’re using the joycons. The joycons are just incredibly small. They also suck in terms of construction and get drifting sticks super fast.
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.
I don’t know man, I had my fair share of fun with a pair of Nyan Cat games, the original Plants Vs Zombies, Nimble Quest (I just got this again on Android and cracked the heck out of it with Lucky patcher, and still suck lol), Tiny Wings, Angry Birds and I could be missing some others.
I mean the high quality paid games are still around, and I’m reasonably sure new ones are still being made. They’re not a lost art, just not as popular as free games
They’re making the same argument people make about music. There’s plenty of good music out there of all genres. Radio just doesn’t play it and you have to go out of your way to find what you like.
That’s just the wages of living in a huge postmodernist society that produces a vast amount of media. We no longer have centralized institutions (or rather they’re losing relative importance) so you have to go looking through the depths of either recommendation algorithms or topical forums
I find that to be a good thing. The less centralized institutions that can control what we do the better. I say that while social media is the biggest it’s ever been.
Actually, yes, by a big margin. Back in ~2011 mobile games were actually trying to be great. Games like Edge Extended, World of Goo, Bounce Boing Voyage, Zenonia 2 & 3, etc.
I remember early Humble Bundles being full of exciting games for mobile, now you’ll be lucky to find just one of them that isn’t filled to the brim with MTX or ads.
I remember buying Bioshock on my iPhone way back in the mists of time, before decent controller support existed for iOS. The on screen controls weren’t great, so I didn’t spend much time playing it, always planning to come back at some point.
Then it got removed from the App Store so completely that it disappeared from my purchased list, and that was that.
i mean its not like you cant go onto the mobile store and buy games like stardew valley or terraria. its just that pay to play games have taken a back seat due to the profitability of free to play games.
It basically needs more ergonomic joycons to be usable for more than an hour in handheld mode for me. I’ve got a pair of hori split pad pros that work really well, but you lose the gyro which kind of sucks for aiming in games like zelda
Back in the day I was drifting in Mario Kart DS on the Dpad until my thumbs hurt before the Wii version (with Nunchuk) and later.
The switch was fine, of course in handheld mode its inferior to the larger/heavier, newer and more ergonomically designed Steam Deck. These days at my friends house I bring a Pro controller around which works and feels just fine.
Oh and yeah the best Switch gaming experience is via emulation of the games you own and using nicer controllers.
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