Never got into Harry Potter since I was too old. This game was really fun to just explore and I constantly felt a forward momentum. Some of the stories were good, and some were awful.
I would absolutely play a sequel just based on the well done sense of discovery alone. I just wish more of what you found was impactful instead of cosmetic.
On the one hand, I agree about wishing there was more to find than a new color cloak, but on the other hand I think it’s a neat way to keep the game approachable to more casual gamers (and to try and get as many Harry Potter fans to get it as possible). That being said, I would have liked if there were more challenge, and something other than just flat stat improvements could have been a way to keep that interesting if they had higher difficulties.
I get it, but it doesn’t have to be just pure stats. Could have been mild ability improvements or something or maybe changed some of the effects or visual things that occurred around you. Hell, even walking speed improvement or something like a tone to help you locate hidden items.
There’s a lot they could have done considering we’re dealing with magical items! Still had a pretty good time with it overall though.
I wish they’d aggressively apply it to replacing middle-top management. The jobs that don’t add anything except a lot of money being siphoned off, anyways.
This hits hard, the Max Payne 1 was my introduction to Film Noir storytelling and I can still remember how I felt when I finished it in that first play thru.
Keep on driving into the night Mr. McCaffery, it’s a late good bye, such a late a good bye.
i genuinely cannot imagine that it’ll be anything other than a continuation of the bethesda model: simplify and just add more environments to keep the players inside the basic gameplay loop of “go here, do thing, return, reward, go here, do thing”
76 has actually made me pretty hopeful for the direction of bethesdas games- it includes a return to older style dialogue, introduced more skill checks and the like, featured a more cohesive world and generally seemed like it went back on the simplification a fair bit
starfield similarly seems to be more of a return to form for them, focusing more on character builds, an expansive trait system etc
it is also being worked on heavily by the lead quest designer for far harbor iirc, which is absolutely a good sign and is setting my hopes high for a deeper, more complex and more forked main questline than Bethesda usually goes for
Skyrim but no skill tree, too complicated. Player can buy every weapon and spells and skills level are just damage boost. Bethesda adds a 3rd person view during conversation and a weird standard male voice so that any chance of roleplay is dead. All cool spells are removed and players can only use destructions spells. No more illusion or alteration funny spells. Only fireballs and bolts exist now. All guilds quests have been removed in favour of radiant quests. Everything is randomly generated and sold as replayability and “every playthrough is unique”. Main quest is 3 quests long because people didn’t finish skyrim main quest. Everything is level scaled. They learned from skyrim and oblivion mistake so now every enemy is scaled but 10lvl below you so you never struggle against anything (no more oblivion sponges!). Every location can be fast traveled to from the beginning of the game because the world is too big. Spears have been added to the game but it’s an official creation club mod only. The stamina bar has been removed for “faster paced” combats.
Either open source it, lead an effort to create a way for everything to be emulateable involving the players/fans/supporters in it or port everything for another platform.
and don’t even think about charge a single cent again; it’s your part planning to deprive people from the store.
Microsoft should make all of their Microsoft studio games available that they no longer want to host, but they can’t force other studios to do the same anymore than Valve can force studios to do a sale/give away games on steam.
The key thing is, their license model and walled garden policies are what created the problem. Wringing their hands when something they knew would happen happens isn't admirable.
Oh no doubt. Believe me I have no sympathy for M$. I’m just reiterating the fact that it’s not as simple as it sounds, even if it’s because of their own decisions lol
Legally they can't do it, but we need a legal solution for the quick obsolescence of digital media. Digital media can't be reasonably expected to last "120 years from the date of creation" like books can. By then not only servers are sure to be down, but every single XBox 360 will have turned into piles of rust. Even movies struggle to last this long.
Well that’s just painful to read. I wonder how political a conference could be named before he thinks even showing up is no longer the neutrality he thinks he is showing. “BasedCon” is by its definition a political name, and simply showing up shows you are at least receptive to the message, or willing to ignore it.
I do get that he might be wanting to disassociate the Con from the craft, but if I take it further, would he go to PolPotCon? I doubt he would, even if the interest aligned.
Anecdotal, but I have never read a game review in my life that was from a journalist. It’s always been in forums, and lately some small youtubers. I want to hear from normal gamers, not people getting a paycheck for it.
I‘d rather read a well articulated opinion that is embedded into a rich cultural context than some rambling from strangers. I know the former is hard to find (Eurogamer and RPS are good, but suffer from layoffs, too). The latter I only skim through to find things I might find distracting that were omitted by others.
Back in the late 90s-early 2000s the PCGamer magazine was actually worthwhile. It had reviewers who specialized in different genres and if read enough you could get a feel for their writing style and critical voice. The fact it was a monthly publication meant they weren’t racing to get a review out in the first 24 hours.
Nowadays it all seems like publications race to put reviews out online for relevance, and the reviewers often seem to have a disdain for video games and even if they don’t they aren’t genre experts.
I don’t like fighting games. My review of a fighting game would be trash. Yet major publications just pump out reviews by whoever.
Individual youtubers at least can develop a recognizable critical voice and stick more to genres they know and enjoy.
Embargoes exist to prevent that race. Your fighting game problem has been solved by assigning fighting game reviews to the “fighting game guy” on hand, which is why you’ll see the same byline on games in the same genre from major outlets.
I’ve actually just renewed my subscription to PC Gamer, I read it on my tablet. A large part of that decision was to just help keep it alive because I feel it’s important.
Future Publishing can get fucked though.
For all of the reasons everyone’s saying here that the quality has gone. When the only revenue for an organisation is adverts and data it tends to head downhill pretty quickly.
I actively borrow content from the internet but willingly cough up the money for things that i get good use out of. There’s no way you can visit the pc gamer website without an ad blocker, so i pay a little bit quarterly and sit with a magazine instead.
I also have box sets of tv series that I’ve never opened, i just bought them because I enjoyed the pirated version so much.
I’ll listen to music on Spotify or whatever but then go to the artist website and get some merch.
There’s a lot of content that deserves to be paid for and supported.
I noticed you haven’t mentioned the actual quality of the content. Is it a responsibility to give money to a medium simply because it takes payment instead of using ad revenue?
The competition for what’s in those magazines is with independent online reviewers.
I would have thought my judgement of the quality of the content I’m willing to pay for would have been implicit.
For further context, for what it’s worth, I’m a British guy in my late 40’s who plays single player offline games. I don’t use or follow anyone from twitch, discord, or YouTube, mostly due to a lack of both time and inclination.
I’m pretty sure the few overpaid execs that are “fuck you” rich are still there, and they’re probably richer than ever. However now they probably consider themselves too important to park with normal people. It’s all about private jets and helicopters.
Tells a lot about this guy and his ilk that he thinks you measure a healthy company to how many assholes actively flaunt their money with shallow luxury shit.
The quality of games did not improve, in fact game quality and diversity has deteriorated. The quantity of content has dropped off as well. Graphics fidelity and production costs have skyrocketed though.
Graphics are so superficial when it comes to games anyhow, why would anyone pay more for a pretty waste of time?
Edit: i am talking about AAA games here, obv there has been an extreme proliferation of indie titles
Diversity and quality are both going to be difficult to measure objectively, and I’d argue both are still in better supply today. Quantity is far easier to prove objectively. Not only are there just far more games out there, but try some like for like comparisons of some of your favorite long-running franchises on How Long to Beat. Assassin’s Creed II was 20-25 hours; Assassin’s Creed: Shadows is 35-64. Halo 2 was 9-12; Halo Infinite is 11-20. Baldur’s Gate 3 is close to as long as its two predecessors combined. Call of Duty is three games in one now.
The value of a game’s Quantity is directly proportionate to its Quality though, starfield and its 1000s of repetitive planets are the perfect example of this. Would any halo fan rather play 20 hours of infinite or 20 hours of halo 2…?
Yes there have been outliers of increased quality and quantity over the last decade, but in the full priced AAA space nowadays, that is the exception not the rule.
Quantity is directly proportionate to quality though
I’d disagree with that premise. It’s not like they’re making just as much game in the same amount of time. Games are taking way longer to make these days than they used to. As I’m 70+ hours into Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and nowhere near done, they could have made about 2/3 as much game as they made, and it still would have been phenomenal and worth the price. The same goes for Baldur’s Gate 3, not to say that I’m unhappy about how much of it I have.
I don’t think the high quality games are outliers. We just have so many more games coming out these days that it becomes more and more likely that we get some bangers in that volume. EA or Ubisoft may be putting out fewer games because of how long they take to make, but they’ve got more competition than they did 20 years ago.
As the end user why should i pay sympathetically for the extended dev time of a product that hasnt tangibly improved for my uses?
Yes the price ceiling of $70 does not do justice to games like KCD 2, but all that matters for the end user is perceived value. If the perceived value of any game isnt going up, then it is difficult to charge consumers an increased amount.
KCD 2 and Elden Ring are great examples of RPGs with content that fans perceive as a great value, but only AFTER playing.
Maybe KCD 3 or Elden Ring 2 can push their perceived value beyond $70, but the simple fact is that the majority of AAA games DO NOT offer an amount or quality of content that gamers would consider to be worth $70, especially with the tiering off of content with various editions, passes and DLC.
It is just subjective that you and i disagree about the amount of games that cross the value threshold of $70, but the evidence of a $0 cost increase for full priced games over the past decade or so definitely seems like evidence towards my perspective.
I wish i could pay more money for higher quality games with more content, but the advertising for these products happens within a competitive and reciprocal market, and that market has a mean perceived product value of $70.
KCD 2 and Elden Ring have essentially wasted dev time/cost creating bonus content, although the perceived value towards their brands it has created, plus the positive IP mind share, will pay off for them down the road with units sold i am sure.
As the end user why should i pay sympathetically for the extended dev time of a product that hasnt tangibly improved for my uses?
That’s not the point I was making. The price you’re paying is the same, but they’re delivering more for the same price, which you argued they were not. Then you said that quality dipped when they made more, which I argued it did not, and the reason for that is because they’re spending more time making it, so they don’t have to sacrifice quality to build more game, because they can give it as much attention as they’ve always given it but for longer.
Yes both very subjective. Accessibility and streamlining gameplay has seemed to be the focus. Developing unique, novel but also enjoyable new gameplay experiences? (the reason i believe most people game) That more or less ended with the Wii, Ps3 and 360 era of consoles.
I will, respectfully, still disagree with that assertion. Just because Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, and the like are on their umpteenth entry, does not mean that no more unique and novel games are being made.
I would argue that AAA full priced gaming space is not where that innovation has been happening in recent years, it has mostly been with lower priced indies.
As soon as they showed the JoyCon mouse control I was hoping there would be support for standard mice. It still doesn’t do anything to steer me toward a Switch 2 over a Steam Deck, but it’s an excellent move for accessibility.
Yeah it’s about use-case. Owning 2 handhelds from the same generation really only makes sense if you collect consoles. I didn’t buy a Steam Deck because I got gifted a Switch Lite. I’m covered as far as handhelds go until there are new games I can’t play. I would argue most people think this way.
Your perspective is way off. It sounds like you’re young, single (no kids, at least), and doing well for yourself. Which is great!
I have a pretty well-paying job, at least enough for my family and I to live comfortably. But I also have adult responsibilities, including taking care of said family. Sure, on paper, I could feasibly afford to get both, but there’s no sense in getting two systems that–to my earlier point–seem to serve identical functions. Especially not when I’d also like to go out with my wife, prep a high schooler for college, help my younger child with severe special needs with everything he needs to thrive, sometimes go on vacation, do some other hobbies, responsibly maintain vehicles and things around the house, and so on. All that on top of purchasing frugally (every single piece of furniture in my living room, for example, we got secondhand for free).
So yes, it’s very much an either/or decision for me, as it is for a lot of people.
Funny you mention it, the next large purchase I have planned is a gaming PC to replace my aging 2018 laptop, and I plan on going all-in on Linux. From what I can tell, AMD seems to be the way to go, and as a long time Fedora user, I’m interested in Nobara.
On one hand difficulty settings seem good because it gives players choices.
But on the other this genre is meant to challenge you. And for me if Dark Souls hadn’t been one difficulty only and hard was the way it is now I probably would have never beaten it on the hard difficulty. But I persevered and did something that felt great because of that design choice.
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