Myst. I know, I know. One of the hallmarks of video games. I hated it. I like games that give you a path and let you figure it out. I’ve hundreds of hours into Factorio and it’s kin. Portal! A puzzle game, Portal gives you A and Z and lets you figure out how to get there. Myst doesn’t do ANYTHING. Nothing was obvious to me. I didn’t understand where the A to Z was. I couldn’t find A, Z, or any of the other steps. None of it clicked. Years ago, I watched some parts of walk throughs and I did not understand how I was supposed to know the things they were doing. None of it made any sense to me.
Went to the steam page. I had no idea what this game was. Never heard of it and the title doesn’t really do anything for me. So, a minus there. Reviews: Mixed. Minus there. The hero is named Jack and it’s high fantasy. That is the most generic name. Minus there. He looks like every other cookie cutter generic white guy main character. The only time he looks different than a movie star clone is the last second of the trailer. Nothing positive there. The hip hop music with high fantasy is not a good mix, IMO. It’s published by EA. Minus there. The dialog is very “I’m so edgy with my quips.” Minus there.
The villain designs are pretty good. The cinematic trailer is well done.
Reviews say it’s really demanding on hardware. Minus there.
Tons of negatives, a few neutrals, one or two positives. Yeah, this ain’t worth it.
Same. It’s very broad, but not very deep. I’m generally a deep-system type gamer. Gimme Factorio or it’s kin. I really get frustrated with NMS’s implementation of logistics and stuff. I just gave up. It’s an explorer’s game and I’m not an explorer type.
I’m frustrated by the current largely-unethical state of the games industry
It’s the fate of any large enough company in a capitalist system. Greed creates/incentivizes this behavior and then rewards it. Microtransactions and dark patterns wouldn’t exist if they didn’t work. Greedy people know this and the rest of us are plagued by them.
Turn based strategy. As others have said, RTS’es, as well, but TBS. Yes, Civ series isn’t dead, but everything else seems to be. Master of Magic (1994) is literally one of my favorite games of all time (none of the sequels or successors measure up). Colonization, also 1994, (warning, MANY ethical issues) had a great logistic and economic model… (Just ignore eeeeeeverything about the white-washing of history/slavery/indentured servitude/genocide.) Alpha Centauri. Maybe I’m just old.
limited inventories are kind of abused currently and that unlimited inventory systems would give more player choices.
In some sense that’s correct. You’d have more options, but you wouldn’t take them. Having a limited inventory forces you to make choices. Yes, you can use that scroll/potion/whatever, because you’re gonna run out of room, so feel free. On the other hand, I think that many devs don’t consider inventory management enough! I think that it’s often an afterthought and could use more dev attention.
What game mechanics do you love and hate?
Hate: instakills. Diablo 4 and Risk of Rain 2 are my current games that have this. ROR2 is not as bad, you can prevent this by getting enough defensive items. D4 is worse about this. You can be chewing thru trash mobs just fine but get to a boss and immediately die. There’s no ramp up to this.