Depends on the game I think. Guilty Gear is doing better than ever with Strive and actually has a decent population base for the first time. I do take some issue with the DLC character seasons but it’s hard to fault them too much for following what has become standard practice, and they’ve been continually releasing high quality content in every update. Their netcode needs some work but the game part of the game is pristine, it’s my favorite fighting game by a mile and as they continue to add in the rest of the old roster there’s becoming less and less reason to try and play the older Guilty Gear games.
Perfect Dark, on the other hand, totally still holds up today in my opinion, and there’s a decompilation project that works great on PC and Steam Deck.
Yeah. Their proper remake of SS1 was excellent and I was looking forward to something similar for SS2. Especially a balancing pass on the skills to make some of them not completely useless.
Even remaking SS2 on the engine they used for 1 would have been welcome news, but it’s not clear that they’re doing that either.
Personally, I don’t really go out socially. Like ever.
So once a week or so when my friends go out to the bars and spend $50 on food and beers, I might spend a $20 on a game that’s on sale and get the same or better return on my time and money for it. If I buy a game for $20 and spend five hours on it and never touch it again, that’s about equivalent to a night out with the boys, both in dollars spent and in hours enjoyed.
I’ve built up a collection of indie games on this mindset and I don’t see any of it as wasted. If I get a lower return than $5 per hour enjoyed then I’ll refund the game or not recommend it for others. But I have a ton of games that have kept me well entertained for 3-6 days for the price of a beer and a kebab. I consider that good value.
Fusion has always been my favorite. I “want” to not like how linear it is compared to the rest of the series, but when I get started playing it again that never seems to matter to me anymore. And because of that game structure, the game is very well broken up into chunks of 20-30 minutes of gameplay at a time which makes it excellent for playing on a portable console. I played it on a borrowed GBA-SP for the first time back in the day, a few more times after that emulated, and most recently I’ve been playing it again on my Steam Deck within the past week, I’m like 2/3 of the way back through it again, just took down Yakuza for the Space Jump last night before bed.
Fusion is also a huge story point for the series as a whole. It introduces the X and by doing so gives context to the existence of the metroids. And seeing that referenced again later in Dread was maybe one of the coolest moments I’ve experienced in the Metroid series.
Speaking of Dread, that one is a very close follow up though. I was super hype for Dread when it released and it is one of few games in recent memory that completely lived up to that hype. I was a big fan.
You’ve got more faith in the purchasing public than I do, then. I’ve been watching them buy a new copy of the same COD slop every year for a fresh $60 basically since I’ve been old enough to buy my own video games.
Because Rockstar is going to do it and sell a gorillion copies, so it’s basically a guarantee that everyone else will jump on the opportunity. And once every game is $100, what are people going to do, stop buying video games? I find that unlikely anymore. They’ll bitch and complain about it and sales might drop a little on average but studios will survive. And now we have a new price floor set forever.