For example, one thing I read again and again was “Starfield just wasn’t optimized, they easily could have reduced memory and bumped framerates”. Which any actual programmer will immediately feel a pit of dread in their stomach because we’ve been asked to reduce ram usage or speed something up, and that is a daunting task in our simple little apps - let alone a major AAA game.
This thing in particular was picked apart by actual devs in news articles and editorials that showed that Bethesda really didn’t optimize the game at all along with all the technical reasoning and proof showing how it could have been improved.
It’s not just the players, who for the most part, have been citing those articles when they make that particular critique. I mean, shit, they haven’t even used their own texture compression system for the last few games they made, and that’s so easy even someone with minimal modding knowledge can fix because the game already has the tools to make it work better.
They have already started showing ads of the game. It certainly looks pretty but nothing shown, so far, is technically impressive or even indicative of any actual game behind the visuals. Unless they plan to release it soon, this just feels like building up a huge hype train years ahead of launch and that they haven’t learned their lesson from NMS.
They have games on Netflix already that you play using your TV remote. They’re basically just choose your own adventure books, but in a TV show/movie format instead of a book.
There is also old crap like Doodle Jump, too, on other services that work on a TV using your remote.
On one hand, I love the aesthetic and have been saying we need more games with cartoon vibes and physics.
On the other, I can’t say I’m digging the monochrome color scheme. The first full color cartoon came only 2 years after Steamboat Willie. Most classic Disney cartoons other than that first one were in color.
“Well, you know, you’ll just be sitting there, minding your own business, and they’ll come, marching in and crawl up your leg and start biting the inside of your ass, and you’ll be all like: ‘EHY! GET OUT OF MY ASS YOU STUPID RAINBOWS!’”
GOG still has that niche of the “old games.” Can’t think of anywhere else I could get DOS games from my childhood that also come with patches and updates to make them work on modern systems.
Except that Valve revamped Steam loads of times before anyone else was even competing with them. The biggest was when The Orange Box launched and they had added better Friends support as well as literally all the community features and achievement systems. EGS didn’t launch until 2018. Origin didn’t launch until 2011.
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.