I will personally shout out Tactical Beach Wizards. Incredible writing, charming art style, easy to learn hard to master mechanics, loads of content for the price, it really is a gem of a game. All my homies hate Steve Clark!
Okay so I've watch some of the video and I'm annoyed by it. A problem in the video has been highlighted when it comes to indie games and that's genre favoritism.
Indie game development seems to have such a hard on for roguelikes, strategy and anything that is addicting with retro visuals. That to me throws a lot of red flags. He does show some other games from other genres, but the ratio is evident. A lot of the games don't really impress me that much and that's coming from someone who has already been spoiled with the best of what indie gaming had to offer in previous years.
That guy is also kindof annoying too. "I realllly want to play", "addicting" .etc
I’ve been pretty vocal about my annoyance with the roguelike genre. I even have the tag blocked on Steam so they’re never recommended to me - my hope is that Steam shares metrics on tag-blocking statistics.
But, I would guess there are enough fans of them to keep being made.
I’d say this is mostly due to budget constraints. Voice acting, music scores, high fidelity art, models, animations etc cost a ton of money. Making random generated boards / levels / dungeons with simple art and scalable gameplay is simply just more feasible.
Another aspect is the popularity of the game. We’ve seen a lot of saturation in genres over the years. A the peak of PUBG and Fortnite popularity, there were so many battle royale games coming out. Then we got extraction shooters, and so on.
Personally, I love roguelikes and how we got to the point of mixing it with other genres (Balatro, Dungeon Clawler), but I can see your point. I feel the same about 2D (pixel art) platformers: I feel like I’ve seen it all already and nothing can excite me anymore.
It was technically always licenses for every video game ever commercialised. It’s just that a publisher has no practical way to control what happens to someone’s floppy/optical disc/cartridge/whatever physical media.
Same for almost every book you’ve ever read, every CD you’ve ever listened to, and every movie you’ve ever watched. You owned the leaves of paper the book was printed on, or the plastic disc the music or movie was stamped into, but never the words, the songs, or the movie itself.
Like Kichae mentioned, every media we buy is technically a license. License to use. However we own the physical part of it and we can use (read, watch, play etc.) it whenever we please. Should be like this with games as well. At least GOG does this. As long as an installer is in our hard drives, it’s a physical media.
Ale muzyka też jest “AI generated” czy tylko teledysk? Bo na podstawie teledysku mogę zmienić mój stosunek do całej tej “generatywnej SI”, że to tylko jest w stanie mielić stare kotlety i nie da się nic nowego i kreatywnego z tym zrobić. Co do muzyki to się nie wypowiadam, bo nawet nie wiem o czym jest tekst :)
I have avoided spoilers for this game, as I’ve been meaning to get to it. I’m worried that isn’t gonna happen, and wonder if I will get the same experience others talk about from watching it
Not quite. But it probably also depends on how you play the game to some extent. If you approach it like CoD and let the story take you, you’ll probably have a good experience. If you go in thinking you can figure it out or outsmart it, you probably will and it won’t be as good.
I’m gonna be that person and say that if you haven’t made the effort to play a 12 year old game by now, you never will. Not belittling your effort to avoid spoilers though.
My friend, I still go back and beat NES games I never played before. Age doesn’t make a difference to me, it just isn’t high on the priority list
It isn’t super difficult to avoid, the game doesn’t come up super often. Typically when it does people want others to experience it blind and try not to spoil much
No, watching a gameplay won’t give you the same experience. Keep avoiding spoilers, it is really best experienced blind, although knowing there is something to experience might weaken it.
I’ve always known there is something to experience. Have a general idea from context clues as well, just nothing specific or certain. Maybe one day I will get to it. I’ll just jeep doing what I’m doing for now. Thank you for your response
Amazing game, and one of those “video games as art” that is often overlooked. The gameplay itself is nothing to write home about, but the narrative would not have been nearly as powerful if it wasn’t completely interactive.
Maybe we could get some young, impressionable, IDF kids to play that white phosphorous sequence so they can learn what it feels like in a video game without having to actually murder countless civilians.
What a great video! I was afraid going in that it would have some “forced” new opinion on the game to be relevant, but it was actually super important and interesting.
Remember when No Man’s Sky bombed on release but the developers admitted they fucked up and made an effort to mend both the game and their relationship with their player base? That could have happened here.
It’s such a shame too, because on paper, everything they’ve added should make it one of the greatest games ever. Instead, every 3 months they add a new Mechanic that will entertain you for 20 minutes, but doesn’t meaningful interact with any other system they added.
You should play it today before saying such things then, it’s as deep as a lake using your own metaphor. Maybe try an expedition, make some friends, or actually try to see what the game has to offer before shitting on it.
I’ve played it within the last few weeks. Like I said, deep as a puddle. Lots of systems have been bolted onto the side, sure. But the gameplay loop remains largely unchanged since launch. None of the added features integrate into the experience in any kind of meaningful way, they’re all just distractions, little side excursions. Base building? Cool, what are they for? Oh gloried fast travel points. Their primary practical use is to help you build more bases. There’s no real rhyme or reason to engage with any of the new systems added. They’re just novelties you toy around with briefly because they’re new.
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