Only ever cared for the OG, Minecraft, because it was new and innovative. Mostly why I don’t really like the genre is that most of them are “me too” games that don’t do a lot more than the first game that spawned the genre to begin with. More of the same with different aesthetics or balance. But not really different enough that I can even decide which is better than another; they all get homogenized into a single bland blend where if you’ve played one, you’ve played them all situation.
Unless roguelikes such as Nethack could count as “survival” games. That would be a much bigger list.
The skill tree stuff makes me feel like Bethesda finally listened to all those players who bitched about it being too easy to become “overpowered” and blamed it on how easy it was to level up and not the poor balancing with how level scaling works. So now, all the actually good, fun and useful shit is all the way at the top (or rather the bottom) of the tree, with a bunch of “milestones” you have to hit in addition to simply being the right level and/or having the previous skills in the tree.
It would help to know specific games, as many games of that era require extra fan made patches to run on modern systems. You could buy them again from GOG with these already packaged with it, but depending on the game, there is probably a free option available to you if you have the original discs.
My only issue with VAC and Valve’s policy on dealing with cheaters isn’t that their anti-cheat isn’t good; it’s that even when a player is flagged for using cheats, it doesn’t instantly remove them. It waits, sometimes months after flagging them before it actually doles out punishment.
Their reasoning is that it slows down new cheats being made; but what the hell does that matter if the existing cheats it flags are still allowed to be used for months at a time?
That said, it’s rare I encounter cheaters in CS. Plenty of other games I play where there are constant, obvious cheaters that aren’t even being detected by the anti-cheats in use, since they ban instantly on detection.
One or two egotistical modders don’t ruin the entire community unless those are the only modders in said community.
Greed ruins everything, though.
Not only would once free mods suddenly have a price tag, you’re gonna get a lot of bullshit shovelware mods flooding the scene trying to capitalize on the market.
Valve is the only one of mine that’s still around as more than just a brand name used by EA.
Bioware, Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood, and more… All gobbled up and turned into shit by Electronic Farts.
Others that just died on their own include Black Isle and Interplay, Sierra and LucasArts. Some of these might be around in some capacity, though afaik they’re just used for the names.
If you think the driving sucks now, you shoulda seen how it was at launch. Half the cars would just slide around like you were on ice whenever you tried to stop. They’re at least servicable now. Which is good, since they also removed the exploit that allowed you to stack momentum while on foot by dashing while slowing down time. Still nowhere near as good as driving in GTA but better than driving in an Ubisoft open world game.