It’s old enough that I can’t attest to how hidden it was/is, but Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery is likely the greatest 3 hours I’ve spent in a single videogame. It’s chock-full of confidence and style and atmosphere. The story is nothing unique but the presentation is everything. Pixellated graphics contrasted with vivid sound design and a glorious soundtrack. I love everything about it.
DUDE did you also attend Digipen (camps or real classes)? Nitronic Rush was the fuckin shit and Distance was a massive graphical upgrade. Also hard to deny how great multiplayer is as an addition.
Imagine you just finished playing Arkham Knight, and you get an interview with Rocksteady as a game developer. They love you, your passion, your creative skills, and they onboard you. This “game” is what Warner Bros hands down to you to work on. The well-known head of the studio leaves within a few years of you joining. You hold out hope that everything will come together so people can enjoy the art that you’ve worked so hard on. Warner Bros adds a battle pass. Warner Bros makes it a “game”-as-a-service. Warner Bros announces nonsensical lore additions for the sake of post-launch content. Warner Bros denies review copies. The “studio” you thought you were signing up for has become nothing but a slot machine for the higher-ups.
What a shitty thing to do to a whole group of wonderfully creative and skilled people.
Don’t get me wrong, the game has fantastic mechanics and great art direction.
HOWEVER. The game relied too much on its lack of hand-holding in order to be enticing but it came out just raw fuckin frustrating. You know what’s cool? Finding new areas by exploration and not by being told it’s where you’re supposed to go. You know what’s not cool? Being handed a list of names of places with no idea of what is in each of them and being expected to know where to go. I got really frustrated with a boss and quit for a few weeks. I come back, kill the boss, and learn that there’s no new door out of the boss arena. I open the fast travel list to find a long list of names of places I had been to but had no fucking idea which one I was supposed to explore next. That is the absolute worst design choice I have seen in a universally loved game. Fuck Bloodborne.
Yes, I will absolutely buy it when they decide to remaster it for PC.
Oooh gotcha. Yeah, when I was a kid I enjoyed that sort of game, like The Force Unleashed was one of my favorites. But as I’ve gotten older they just haven’t been fun. I tried Darksiders when I was in college and it was mind-numbingly boring.
If God of War (2018) didn’t grant me the flexibility to chuck Kratos’ axe whenever I want and switch up styles between axed and hands/shield on the fly I would probably get too bored of this game to continue. But I do get a lot of enjoyment out of hucking that axe into someone’s noggin then bum-rushing them and beating the shit out of them with godlike aggression. That’s pretty cool.
I’m not sure I know what a character action game is. God of War feels a little grating to me because there are enough enemies who feel like they’re programmed to be challenging and aren’t naturally challenging. I know some enemies from the Spider-man and Arkham games are technically the same, but they ride the other side of the line that defines immersion. DOOM 2016 and DOOM: Eternal are better examples of games with combat mechanics which encourage you (sometimes very strongly) to play the game a specific way, but lets you try to play it your way if you want, or can’t play the way it encourages.
I remember being very unimpressed with RDR, though that could be because I rushed through it the week before the sequel came out. In my experience rushing through a game like that ruins the experience completely.
What is it you enjoy most? Open cowboy world or the story or something else? Might have to go back to it (and actually finish the sequel lol)
Just finished Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time. I had it since release but it grew on me very slowly. Focused more on it after the release of 2.0 and it quickly became one of my favorite games ever made. Highly recommend.
I wanted something more linear so I finally started playing God of War (2018) with the intention to finish it. I started it back in 2018 a few months after it came out but it was hard to get into since the combat didn’t feel as free or open-ended as the games I was used to like Spider-man, the Arkham games, or Dark Souls but it’s okay imo. I’m hoping the story has better payoff than the combat does.
I remember when Gotham Knights(game, not the show) and Suicide Squad (game, not the movie) were announced almost back to back. I was more excited about the setting of Gotham Knights, then immediately irked when they made it clear it did not line up with the Arkham story, then immediately completely turned off when they announced it would include a leveling system for the player and enemies since it clearly would not have the feeling of the Arkham series’ combat and was likely to have leveled weapons that have artificially weak feeling impact. Suicide Squad seemed more exciting at the time simply because it sounded more narrative-driven like the Arkham games even though the jump from playing as Batman against the more grounded Batman rogues gallery to literally “Kill the Justice League” sounded extremely jarring and made it seem like the games could not possibly feel like they were from the same development team or storyline. Here we are, years later and I feel very proven right. Neither game so far has sounded even remotely interesting. EXCEPT for the co-op. If Arkham Knight had co-op baked into the game that would have been incredible. That’s all that I wanted from either Suicide Squad or Gotham Knights. Sadly, that’s not what we get.
I’m pretty confident it’s following closely in the shoes of The Avengers game that came out not long ago, and not in the shoes of any popular co-op game.
I would LOVE to be proven wrong. Rocksteady has (had?) a lot of talent that shouldn’t go to waste.
No trackpads? I’m straight-up not interested. With how finicky PC gaming can be when it comes to window-focus issues, if I don’t have extra controls on a handheld PC to be able to randomly click or mash emulated keyboard keys I’m not gonna feel comfortable with the handheld.
That’s fair. I guess I read the criticism like they were saying the game lacked the depth of the Witcher 3 which I would say is far from true. They’re roughly the same imo
Holy fuck is there a lot of content in Cyberpunk 2077. I remember when the game came out people complained of it being as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle but those people can fuck right outta here. It’s chock full of interesting stories to learn about and tons of fun gameplay. Same goes for Phantom Liberty which takes countless hours to get through.
I get that cost does not directly correlate to play time when it comes to video games, but it’s hard for me not to gawk at how this game was sold for the same price point of the yearly reskin of <insert corporate slop here>.
No, the irony of how CyberPUNK was almost ruined by corporate interference is not lost on me, but it’s clear that the developers, artists, writers, programmers, and designers behind this game are true masters of the craft.
This year, I’m most looking forward to playing through it again after I’ve taken a good couple months off.