Same story for almost every passion industry. I remember being surprised at first to learn how underpaid Formula 1 engineers are when some of them are literal rocket scientists, for example.
There is an alternate universe out there where the N-gage was a smash hit, Nokia is reigning supreme in the handheld market and we’re all rocking gull-wing phones.
For me in general I think FPS games have aged the worst. There is such a big part of the pleasure that comes from animations, gunplay, recoil implementation, enemy AI, ragdolls, hit effects… I have a much easier time playing something like Fallout 1&2 - which are even older but have mechanics that are more timeless.
But yeah it was definitely a time in gaming where technological advancements felt like they were happening at an exponentially increasing pace. Comparing games from 2000 with just a few years later is like night and day. Splinter Cell came out only two years after NOLF and that’s a stealth game that’s aged spectacularly. And even Monolith’s own F.E.A.R. came out in 2005 and feels like one of the first truly modern shooters - one that still really holds up well.
The writing, setting and concept were charming and the art direction is good which means despite being polygonally challenged I don’t mind the way it looks. Great soundtrack too. That being said I tried playing it earlier this year for the first time and it just struck me as one of those games that have aged like fine milk mechanically. It really really wants you to be a stealthy spy sneaking around and being non-lethal yet the stealth gameplay felt terrible, and going guns blazing wasn’t particularly fun either as gunplay in these old games is hard for me to enjoy having gotten used to modern FPSes. And it doesn’t help that the guns blazing approach forces you to listen to a constant soundtrack of blaring alarms, which frankly was hard for me to deal with.
I couldn’t make myself finish it despite really wanting to be able to say I’ve played it, but maybe I’ll give it another go some day. At least I don’t think it’s all that long.
Ah. I guess of the Sigmas it’s the least offensive version. It’s a shame still though as NGB is the perfect version. But yeah I momentarily forgot about it being an Xbox exclusive.
My STALKER: Anomaly playthrough is progressing at the typically languid pace. As soon as I find a scoped shotgun for Hip’s quest I can start thinking about migrating my base of operations a bit north. For a Loner run this would be prime time to setup in Rostok, but Mercenaries aren’t on friendly terms with Duty so that’s out. I’ll have to make it to Dead City probably and that will be quite a trek. I probably have to wait until I find and repair a better suit. And also hope my companions don’t die on me as I need them to haul over all my collected shit in my stash.
I’ve also been playing Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yes it’s a gacha game (don’t buy any currency to gamble) and yes the character designs are unfortunately a bit too gooneriffic, and yes the story is pretty bad and the translation is pure Google Translate level machine-translated slop. But you know what? The actual gameplay of the roguelike deckbuilder portion is actually very fun. Tons of customisation with an incredibly mutable deckbuilder that has tons of variations for every single card. Even the balance is surprisingly good, with such endless possibilities in combos and specific versions of specific cards that you can make pretty much any character shine with enough work on finding just the right decks and setups. Don’t know if it will stick, and I’ll keep an eye on balance going forward to see if they start making it more pay-to-win, but for now I’m having a surprisingly good time with it.
I want to finish it some day but I also kind of get sick of it quickly whenever I try to play it for extended periods and actually do main story missions.
Fucking around in the open world and fishing and hunting and all that is great though.
Even better, Remedy themselves are! Rockstar are publishing it though as they own the rights to the IP. I’m super curious about how they’ll turn out, especially with James McCaffrey’s passing.
Putting my final touches into my STALKER: Anomaly modlist and creating the last couple of compatibility patches. I think I’ll end up at 400 mods which is a nice round number. Hope I’ll get to start my playthrough this weekend.
Will also try to get through another chapter of Alan Wake 2, I was on a replay of it when I got derailed but I do want to finish it and finally start the DLCs.
Had this on my watch list for a long time and every new video it keeps looking better. I’m still of two minds about the black-and-white - I get the idea and it works for the theme but I can’t decide if it’s worth it or if I miss the detail color would add. But at the same time maybe it would make it too bright and cheerful for the setting and story?
Still looks super cool and I’m looking forward to playing it.