They were shitty for different reasons. Notice that nowhere on this meme is “shovelware.”
E.T. is always cited as the cause of the video game crash of '82, but it was really the rampart shovelware, no QA to speak of, and a lack of reviews to inform customers what was worth their money and what was absolute garbage. One bad game isn’t enough to topple an entire industry; especially one that is only slightly worse than the best game ever made for the Atari.
This problem was, however, mitigated a lot by Nintendo through the late 80’s and the entirety of the 90’s by creating the kind of licensing agreements between publishers and the console makers that still exist today, as well as the increase in review publications. Most of the best shit (from consumer friendly practices to the games themselves) from the industry came specifically in the 90’s thanks in part to actual curation of the software allowed to be sold for these systems.
At least you can easily determine shovelware from something worth your time when everything has reviews attached to the store page. Still sucks that you have to wade through all that bullshit, though.
I tried the first one when someone told me it was like Dark Souls with better coop. Felt more like Monster Hunter than Dark Souls tho. While not bad, it wasn’t what I was looking for.
Travel is gonna become boring if you have to travel the same road multiple times in the course of the game even if you have a bunch of cool stuff along that road. Eventually, I won’t give a shit about that stuff since I’ve seen it a million times. So I would hope there is still some kind of fast travel to go between places I have already been if the world is super big. Otherwise it’s just gonna feel like you’re padding the game for time to inflate a 10 hour story to take 40 hours to finish.
Steam link doesn’t work for external games added into your steam library?
Yes it does. I dunno about the hardware unit, but the android app alone works with everything you have on Steam; even the non-Steam games. Just fired up The Outer Worlds Spacer Choice edition given away on EGS some weeks back added to Steam as a non-Steam game through Steam Link on my phone.
It even straight up streams your desktop, so you can launch games not even running through Steam.
To be fair, GTA 5 is in a fictional version of LA, in a fictional California. California has state funded free medical insurance. Which is great for when you get shot in a drive-by or at school; just like the game!
Most of my emulation happens on my phone, because most of the games I like from back in the day play well enough with touch controls and are quick things I can play while waiting for various things while out of the house.