I feel like it’s just wrong to call these games ‘free’. They are ‘partially free’ with the incentive to extract as much money from you as possible in order to get the ‘good stuff’ or simply to avoid endless hours of unfun grinding. It’s just inferior in every way compared to games you pay for once and that’s it, because they don’t need to drip feed you ‘fun’.
Exceptions apply to competitive games that need a changing meta and content updates. New content for non-competitve ‘free’ games mostly amounts to new stuff you can buy to surpass new arbitrary walls built in front of you.
I’m still on Nioh, but I’m almost done having only a few main missions left. I still think it’s great, but it does suffer from its blocking mechanic being so strong. While bosses are usually the best thing about soulslikes, I often find myself having only one or two fights against a boss to succeed. Once you know their entire moveset it’s really easy to execute the fight, mostly blocking and poking the boss. Dodging as a mechanic is harder to execute due to the timing required instead of just holding the block button, but it’s hardly ever required.
Ruined King was a fun RPG and Bandle Tale looks like a nice cozy game. I’m not interested in their competitive stuff, but they financed some other studios doing good work with their IP.
I’m not playing League, I stopped many years ago. But I liked the lore and am sad to see them shut down further collaborations - they made some nice games.
I mostly game on consoles, but we’re multiple years into this generation and there still isn’t anything I’m interested in that isn’t on PS4 too.
However, I’ll get the next Nintendo console. The switch was more than worth it. A steam deck could work too, I guess, but I liked quite a lot of Nintendos exclusives.
I’ve played most of the original Soulsborne games and this is my first game in the genre not made by Fromsoftware. I’m quite enjoying it! I like the loot approach to gear and the Ki pulse is a great addition. Bosses do feel quite a bit different from Fromsoftware ones, blocking being this strong makes it a lot easier to learn and fight them.
What layoffs? If you’re refering to the posts earlier today: The layoffs happened at Hasbro and Larian was only commenting on it because they worked with them. Larian itself had no layoffs I know of.
I won’t support any store that sabotages Linux on purpose. Just earlier today I read a lame excuse for them to not support Linux with Fortnite despite only needing to click a single checkbox. Of course, it’s easy not getting tempted since I don’t have a windos system to begin with.
Same. I haven’t looked up the nominees, winners or even categories. The next day I saw Monster Hunter Wilds and Metaphor news and that’s really all I care about. I don’t get award shows in general since they don’t change anything for me - the product doesn’t get better or worse depending on the outcome.
Kinda a nice example why it is bullshit to rate stuff on a one-dimensional scale. Given the right point in my life, I too would like the calculator app more than Elden Ring, for example during a math exam back when +/-/*// were all the operations I needed. Good times.
Unfortunately you’re right seeing how well the Super Mario RPG remake does. They could have put the original on their online service and worked on a new one instead. That’s something I dislike about pretty much all media.
If I want nostalgia, I go back to the original anyways.
I may be an outlier here, but I don’t think remakes should be done at all anymore. They were great when the medium was still new and we made major jumps between generations or when we started to figure 3D out. Nowadays, I can’t even tell the difference between a PS4 and PS5 game. The medium is evolved enough to just go back and play the originals without them feeling dated in a bad way. Take for example the demon souls remake: Yes, it looked nice, but people argue to this day whether or not it’s better. The gameplay is identical. Or even worse: Look at Pokemon. The remake for Gen 4 is worse than the original and didn’t even include Platinum content. Instead of wasting dev time on a full on remake, they could have ported Platinum to the switch and called it a day. A remake probably only makes sense anymore if you can’t port a game at all. Make new games instead.
Why would it be a straw man? It’s exaggerated for sure, but the point being: If you pay per theoretical hour of gameplay, games will include a lot more low quality padding.