They’re not saying a Bethesda game is supposed to be bad. They’re saying a Bethesda game is supposed to be… a first/third person western RPG with exploration and looter-sometimes-shooter elements and a heavy emphasis on skill checks. That’s been every one of their games since Morrowind besides FO76. Expecting different at this point would be asinine, especially considering Todd and Bethesda repeatedly said this was an RPG.
I’m in college now and I haven’t taken a single course where 70% wasn’t the bare minimum for passing. I even took a comp sci course and it was the very first year that department lowered the passing grade from 80% to 70%. Apparently for the past 30 years of the comp sci department’s existance, a B- was barely passing.
I think I know some friends whose majors have 60% as the passing grade, but my major is a science and it’s all been 70%.
It’s similar with movies and TV. I think a lot of people see a 50% rottentomatoes or a 5.0/10 on IMDB and automatically assume it’ll be unenjoyable, but that isn’t always the case in reality.
I just tried 2003 on emulator and I really tried to like it. You’re right, it’s really funny. But oh my god these controls are ATROCIOUS! I get it was 2003 and gamecube controllers were already wacky, but I really wanna punch the guy in the face who decided that to throw an out to a base you need to press TWO BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME.
I see what you mean with the gameplay. Personally I really enjoyed the story and the setting, as well as the level design. But the gameplay wasn’t very great.
MLB: The Show. I used to really enjoy these games because they felt like a sports game that actually cared about making a very realistic simulation while still keeping it fun. Now everything is about Diamond Dynasty, the fantasy baseball mode. All the other modes only reward you by giving you packs and giving you a gentle shove into Diamond Dynasty. One of my favorite modes was “March to October” where you play select innings in select games over the course of a whole season. Each game’s outcome determines your team’s general ability over the season. The better you do, the better you win rate and the higher chance of making it into the post season. Your rewards? Card packs. SMH.
Ghostrunner. The levels were fun and had big Hotline Miami vibes but the boss fights were far too difficult and just utterly boring. Yeah, I really liked wall running in circles for minutes on end because the floor was lava. That was great.
Atomic Heart. Bought it on a whim while high. I liked the bioshock influence and the level design is really cool. It just suffers from being a “survival horror” without the survival or the horror, so most of the gameplay involves you scrounging around for bullets and then dealing ultra light blows to enemies because you ran out of your 3 bullets. Pretty much none of the combat was fun and the stealth was a relentless ultra punishing slog. As a lover of stealth games, please if you’re considering making a stealth game do not take any notes from this game. It did it all wrong.
Dying Light 2. I loved the first game but this game just sorta felt overwhelming in a way? I really don’t know how else to put it. I like open world games but developers just need to calm the fuck down. I don’t need 10 map markers.
The Quarry. I get that it’s supposed to be a rip on teen slasher movies but that still didn’t make it very fun to me. I loved Until Dawn and played it probably 5 times so I was super hyped for this but just really let down. I hated the way the game ended and I hated pretty much every second that I played it.
The Hunter: Call of the Wild. It was just boring. I guess that’s what hunting is like in real life, but so is truck driving and I like truck simulator games…
I swear that battle royales are specifically designed for precisely timed dopamine release to make players have longer play sessions and to encourage addiction
You’re really just describing live service games though, of which most battle royale games that come out in the modern era are a part of. Pretty much any AAA online multiplayer game is going to be about encouraging addiction and dopamine release. I think why battle royale games seem to be at the forefront of this is because they are inherently online multiplayer games. You couldn’t really make a true “battle royale” game before the prevalence of online multiplayer without some major concessions.
Battle royale games happened to be the industry darling back in 2017 which is why so many AAA studios rushed to carve live service models out of them. If you pay close attention in the coming years you may notice that this will likely again happen to whatever new burgeoning genre takes the industry by storm. They already did it back in the early 2000s with MMO’s.