If we’re complaining about bad UX, and speaking about Soul Reaver, games with no subtitle option. Or bad, unreadable subtitles that spoil 2 minutes of dialogue at once (and that one’s for you, Bioshock).
That’s the “Quadruple A” studio right? The one that was supposed to have “unlimited budget” so it could create “groundbreaking video game experiences”?
And they ended up not releasing anything before they’re shut down. A+ management there, Microsoft.
I mean, it’s true. Killing game services in a way which ensures people have absolutely no way to use the games they bought is… a choice.
And now a million Europeans have just officially expressed that they don’t agree with “developers” (really, publisher higher-ups) being free to choose that.
It’s not a very notable thing, and we don’t see who the hands belong to, but it just seems like what they went for IMO.
Cadence of Hyrule is pretty good, more forgiving and more of a connected map with item-based puzzles compared to Crypt of the Necrodancer. The map is reordered between games, but it’s mostly designed rather than fully procedural. It’s fun.
It borrows heavily from a Link to the Past visually, but has references to many episodes. You’ve got enemies from Breath of the Wild, Gerudo, Goron, even a full Majora’s Mask inspired DLC.
In Cadence of Hyrule there’s an “enemy” (more like a trap really) that’s a pair of white hands coming from the ground which grabs you and prevents you from moving for a couple turns. I am pretty sure it’s supposed to be that guy.
It’s not a floor/wall/ceiling master, there are wallmasters in the game too and they’re a lot bigger and brown coloured.
If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that’s only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming from pipes, yeah, I’d say that one was hardly a new thing.
Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that’s a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, …)
Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.
Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.
Not really. I am just a bit younger, growing up between the 80s and 90s. I still play old games, only those that aged well though, but sometimes decades after their prime. I play new games a lot too. And games from any time in between, as long as they do something right.
And there are many, many games around which you can bond just as well as you could back then. Not even talking specifically about multiplayer games (which I don’t play very much at all) I’ve always been a fan of “co-piloting” games, just sharing the experience of playing, spectating, commenting around a game.
Some games are fantastic for this. Some games are rich enough that you can share your experience and discover other people do stuff completely differently. This sort of always existed (for example, what’s the right way to complete Legend of Zelda?), and this is still true even for somewhat simple games, but possibilities have only increased in range. I am pretty sure nobody plays a game like Rimworld or Tears of the Kingdom the same.