They kinda always were, tbh. Just with some kind of unique limitation specific to each console that prevented them from being used for any purpose other than playing a specific brand of video game.
Please note that the genre is PvEvP Extraction Looter Shooters. So some games, like Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, are missing from the list because they do not fit that category.
I have tried to play (ie, only played a few hours each, not like multiple days):
The Cycle Frontier
Escape from Tarkov
ARC Raiders (the closed beta in June 2023)
Dark and Darker
Delta Force Hazard Ops
Lost Light
Marauders
Hunt Showdown
Gray Zone Warfare
Incursion Red River
Games that I tried that don’t exactly fit the genre but are close enough I feel like I should include them:
Steel Hunters (the closed playtest in March 2023)
Sea of Thieves
SYNDUALITY: Echo of Ada
Dungeon Stalkers
Its not that I haven’t given the genre an honest go.
I hate that death means I lose not only the items I picked up, but also the items I brought into a match. The behaviour of players in this particular genre is almost always peak toxic. I am thankful that the genre exists, because it is a sponge taking some of the toxic people from other games. The people that derive fun and pleasure purely from ruining someone else’s game experience (like cheating, harassing, etc.) It is not a genre of game I enjoy, because some other players always ruin the fun.
Some games had a PvE mode, which was fine but the loot was limited to be basically useless. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just have separated inventories, and perhaps allow transfers of items below a set gear level to keep the PvP economy balanced.
For me, Fallout 3 ran perfectly but New Vegas is incredibly unstable and crashes often before I can even finish character creation. I have tried playing the game multiple times and never make it out of the starting area before the game crashes, and as a result I have never played New Vegas. And thats with the community mods and patches to help stability.
Meanwhile Fallout 3 boots and runs perfectly fine completely vanilla. It still crashes occasionally, but I can at least play it for an hour or two with it crashing.
Did they fix the cheater problem? I played when it first dropped on Steam, and good lord was the cheater problem bad. Spawning grenade explosions every frame on all player positions for the entire match was awful. I haven’t reinstalled since.
Sometimes, the only way for players to get the developer’s attention is by doing something drastic like that. Not always, but many times. Because developers and publishers think Steam Review Scores are important for game sales (and I mean, they are, but maybe not as much as they seem to think).
Sometimes this comes from players in a different language complaining about bad translation or something.
Review Bombing, the term, is almost used to discredit when people have negative sentiment for something, and does nothing to explain why players may be doing it. Sometimes it is warranted, sometimes it isn’t. But most people are going to read that term and think “Ah, its just a bunch of whiney children,” only to later feel frustrated at the things those negative reviews were talking about.
A remaster is generally a re-release of an already existing game. It is a new build of the same game, on the same engine, with the same assets. The only difference being compatibility with new hardware, etc. In my opinion, a lazy cash grab that realistically shouldn’t even exist. Often times these new builds aren’t even the same and have many bugs not originally present in the original game that the remaster developers never even fix.
A remake should always try to stay as close as possible to the original for its initial presentation. The intention of a remake is to become the current market replacement of an old product, for various reasons. Maybe it doesn’t run on new hardware or the original code was deleted/lost. Maybe the original game was poorly received and the developers want to try again with some QoL adjustments. Maybe the graphics haven’t aged well but the story is timeless. This is why a studio would opt for a remake instead of a lazy remaster.
The issue comes from something like Silent Hill 2 Remake. It did not include a “Classic Mode.” The remake alters some pretty important themes in the game, changes multiple story elements, and entirely changes the focus of the gameplay, putting a greater emphasis on action and combat than the original ever did. The remake shifted the tone away from a melancholic exploration of a character into a Hollywood action movie with an over-reliance on jump scares (basically every Bloober game, honestly).
This has problems when fans attempt to talk about the game. Which version is each talking about? People do not always specify. If one person talks about the Coin Puzzles in the apartments for example, the clues, hints, and solutions are completely different between versions. Players of the original game needed to get a crate of rotten juice cans and drop it down a trash chute in order to receieve a coin for that puzzle, but that entire sequence was removed in the remake. This is only a minor example that doesnt impact the story, but the problem of discussion disconnect is apparent. You can imagine how confusing it would get when there are other major changes that do impact the story later on in the game.
These differences are fine if the developers add them as an “Arrange Mode” or “Remake Mode,” but not as the only way to experience the game. That effectively says “our new version is the only good version, because we won’t allow the players to directly compare the two with the same engine and graphics. If you want the old version, you can’t, because we definitely aren’t selling the original and pirating the original that we refuse to sell you is copyright infringement.”
Have you ever tried playing a multiplayer game where other players can pause the game? Stellaris has this feature and it is an immense annoyance. In fact, it is considered BM to pause the game when playing with anyone other than your real life friends that you inform in a voice call.