I’m reminded of a required minigame near the end of Star Fox Adventures based purely around button mashing. The requirement needed some dozen attempts when I was a kid and lead to strats involving rubbing a spoon on the controller.
Thing is, it is the same requirement as EA, Ubisoft, and to some extent, Valve.
Granted, I think those others have spread their legal agreements to more countries, which has been the main complaint. But they all get to track player data; I’m sure Sony only got into PC wanting that too.
I’d argue that part of the problem is, gamer culture has approached everything in the industry from a vein of negativity. “Don’t buy this”, “Pirate this”, “XPublisher is damn evil”. Certainly many of those accusations and rejections are valid, but there is now far, far more attention on what sucks than what’s good. A developer puts out an awesome singleplayer game they spent 7 years making, and we’ll give them $60 but…not much more than that. We’ll probably even complain if, due to high budgets, it comes out at $70. Meanwhile, the rest of the world that’s curious about entertainment doesn’t care much about 30 “Don’t” rules and just buys whatever seems interesting when they’re bored - because they got their paycheck and want something.
It’s reasonable a developer is always finding new ways they can pay their staff. I’d even say many singleplayer games we love were NOT the money-makers we wish they were. Granted, quite often now those $60 are going into paying into shareholders and executive bonuses, and I think that’s another valid thing to be negative towards, but once again: If this was an important point to gamers, we could champion studios that grant paid time off and lower their CEO bonuses.
And I’ll even go one further: If a common thread is “Studios ask too much of our money for the full game”…we could even turn our attention to minimum wage laws. We certainly should be.
While I am not an RTS buff, depending on your internet connection from this Mac’s location, Geforce Now could greatly expand your options (basically most Windows games). You would be playing the games on a cloud server (and could switch to local saves if you ever get a Windows PC)
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 enjoyed Class of 09, one of few VNs designed around English VA and auto-continuation, as well as having very tight comedic timing.
That last one is key that so many games utterly fail at - waiting until the line is completely finished from the VA’s laborious delivery and they’ve completely trailed off before reading the next one.
What exactly would that entail? I “own” Hades, thus I can depict Zagreus in my own works, as his likeness is my property? I’m allowed to copy the game to a dozen thumb drives and sell them on the street?
I’m able to keep these games around because I’m pretty good at ignoring FOMO and microtransactions. I don’t need everything. One fun skin that I like when I’ve already enjoyed the game more than I’ve paid? I’ll consider it. But I don’t need everything from events - sometimes they’re just a good reason to play it together with friends at that time, like when the carnival is in town.
Still, there’s enough games out there that no one really needs to consider those types of baited experiences, especially if you know you’re susceptible.
That’s the thing. I even remember trying to use a guide, but it’s difficult to work past all the “Here are 18 secrets that don’t do anything you can get from the beginning” as well as all the bits you can do out of order. Locating the part of the guide that gives you just enough to keep playing on your own is really difficult.
Many other Metroidvanias are sort of more clearly delineated between story beats, or major powerups you’re meant to get in order, all of which allow you to go places you couldn’t before.
Funny thing is, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Metroidvanias, but…never enjoyed Symphony of the Night. There’s so much forceful encounter repetition, so many dead end items that don’t actually help you “unlock any doors”, and it’s so easy to get into a rut of wandering the castle unsure where you can go next.