The McRib is actually an awful example for this, because McD’s primary deciding factor is the price of pork. When pork prices drop, McD revives the McRib. They want to manufacture them as cheaply as possible. Then when the prices start to climb again, they pull it from the menu.
That’s why they don’t do big “it’s coming back on this date, and leaving on this date” announcements ahead of time, because those announcements would affect the pork prices as pig farmers would anticipate the upcoming large McD orders, and subsequent dips when they stop selling. By the time the McRib is on the menu, McD has already been buying pork for a while. And by the time it gets pulled from the menu, McD has already stopped buying a while ago. So their profit margins won’t be affected by them adding/pulling it from their menu.
I lowkey considered getting a second SD, just to keep it plugged into my TV 24/7. I cart mine back and forth from work and home, and the minor inconvenience of packing it into my bag each morning had me considering a second purchase.
2 was where the series really peaked. The first did some new things, and brought some fresh life into the shooter genre.
2 expanded upon it, and had a much better story. It was also in the heyday of matchmaking game lobbies, so it was easy to boot up the match finder and jump into a game with someone. Probably half of my Steam friends list came from playing this game and just vibing with people on voice chat while we ran through the side quests.
The prequel was… Alright? I’d put it about on par with the first game. It didn’t bring anything new or exciting to the table, but it was good at what it did.
Then 3 was just bad. It felt really cringey, in a “how do you do, fellow kids” kind of way. Like it was trying too hard.
And now 4 sounds like more of 3. The game sounds rushed, and the CEO’s attempting to cover for that rush makes him sound woefully out of touch. There’s no good reason that cel-shaded graphics should require a 5090 to run smoothly.
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
Exactly. Lots of bosses don’t have convenient save points nearby, so you’re forced to walk back from the save point every time. And many of the treks are either long or just outright annoying (cheesy enemies, obstacle courses, etc). It’s like the 5 Minute Long Unskippable Cutscene’s more annoying older brother, because this unskippable cutscene requires actual gameplay and focus.
Yes, but the bombs would have dropped regardless. So still the same end result.
Supposedly, the game was supposed to have a lot more atmospheric storytelling. Radios playing in the background, with news reports about rising tensions between the US and some nuclear state. Newspapers left laying around with headlines of nuclear war brewing. TVs playing with reporters talking about some country (Iran or North Korea, maybe?) developing nukes.
These were supposed to be scattered all over the place in ways that the player would obviously cross paths with them. The cult was less “doomsday prepping for no reason” and more “doomsday prepping because they think it’s soon”.
But Ubisoft being Ubisoft, they cut a lot of content because they wanted to launch the game sooner.
This is a pretty solid list, but I’d try to bridge the gaps between older games and more modern ones, to show how things progressed. Essentially, you want each section of the museum to tell a story about how some critical building block of gaming was taken from concept to implementation.
I would actually include both the original Castlevania and Metroid then follow it up with Symphony of the Night. Show the original Castlevania game to establish the series, then show Metroid which has the exploration and backtracking with new abilities. Then show SOTN, which shows the combination of the two (effectively cementing the entire Metroidvania genre). Then show a game like Hollow Knight or Ori and the Blind Forest, which goes on to embody the genre several decades after it has been established.
Zelda is a good one, and I’d follow it up with something like Okami, which follows the same dungeon formula in a radically different setting and art style. Again, showing the genre’s establishment, then showing how it can be adapted.
For Final Fantasy, I’d also include FFX, which follows a very similar turn-based playstyle. Maybe include a Dragon Quest game somewhere in there too, as that series tends to stick to the same basic gameplay formula. Then I’d take it in a different direction and show something like Bravely Default, which is still technically turn-based, but also has additional elements layered on top.
I’d chase Super Mario 64 with something like A Hat In Time. Again, showing the establishment of the 3D platformer, then showing the elements in use elsewhere.
You have Ultima on here, which I agree with. But I’d probably break the display for it into two different halves: For the RPG half, I would include some more tabletop-inspired games here too, as the early game devs were largely tabletop game fans who were simply adapting their favorite games into digital settings. Games like Fallout 1/2, or Baldurs Gate. Maybe even show a modern game like Baldur’s Gate 3, to show how tabletop RPG mechanics can gracefully transition to digital games. Morrowind would also fit nicely here, but Skyrim is a little too far removed from old TTRPGs to be relevant to this section. Still important to have on the list, but I’d probably have it in a section dedicated to player-made mods.
For Ultima’s one-point-perspective dungeon-crawling, following it up with something like Persona Q or SMT: Strange Journey could be impactful to show how it was adapted to more modern games.
Yup, it has much broader implications than just porn. If payment processors are allowed to gatekeep how people legally spend their money, then there’s nothing stopping them from targeting other “undesirable” businesses. It’s basically the Net Neutrality situation all over again.
This feels a little bit like eating the peel off of a potato, and stating the entire potato is gross. Maybe you just don’t like the peel. If we judged games purely by their tutorials, Kingdom Hearts 2 was a giant bomb, Fallout 3 was an awful game. Skyrim was wildly unpopular, Metal Gear Solid V wasn’t worth playing at all, The Witcher 3 is a slog, etc…
Yes, the intro is slow. Nobody denies that. Even people who love the game will tell you “just trudge through the first hour until you get to Valentine. The game opens up after that.” You can even find those exact comments on the posts you said to google.
Not sure who decided the same button should be either “talk to NPC” or “shoot NPC right in the goddamned head” but that never should have passed play testing
The controls are actually pretty solid, once you realize exactly how many things they managed to map to a ~16 button controller. Sure, the controls can change depending on what you’re doing. For example, if you’re on a horse, you have different controls than if you’re on foot. But I’m not sure how you managed to shoot someone while trying to talk to them… Because those are, in fact, always two entirely separate buttons. The right trigger/LMB is basically only ever used for shooting. Out of every button you could have picked, you picked the one that is basically hard-mapped to a single action.
The only time the trigger/LMB is used for anything else is when you’re in a menu. But that’s certainly not unique to Red Dead; Games use triggers to change menu tabs all the time.
Hell, if philosophy is the driving factor for a good villain, then GladOS wouldn’t even be on your list. A villain doesn’t need to be morally grey to be a good villain. Plenty of good villains are evil just for the sake of being evil. Even GladOS would fall into that box.
The point was simply that players need an end goal to keep them focused, and having a consistently present villain acts as a moving end goal. The player is driven to chase that goal until the conclusion, because the villain is always just out of reach. If you see a goal waiting on the horizon, the march there feels like a slog. But if the goal is consistently at your fingertips as you chase it, you’ll chase it all the way to the horizon without even realizing.
Certain parts of the game haven’t aged well, but there’s no denying that Vaas was a wonderfully done villain. He’s a great test case for the “a good villain can’t be absent and mysterious” argument. Most of the memorable villains in gaming have been nearly omnipresent; Vaas, GladOS, Andrew Ryan, Handsome Jack, etc…
All of them are good villains because they are consistently present. They have enough screen time to actually develop into full fledged characters. They’re not just some dark and mysterious overlord, patiently waiting in the bottom of a dungeon for you to come fight them. They’re persistently in your face, interacting with you. Even if they’re not actively hindering your progress, the fact that they have a continued presence means their eventual downfall is that much more satisfying.
Yeah, Humble has been spiraling, and this is one of the largest symptoms. If they’re out of stock, they shouldn’t be allowed to list the game for sale. It’s particularly bad on their Humble Choice offers, where trying to claim after Day 1 often ends up with half of the keys listed as out of stock.