We just need to go back to weird. Games have been some of the weirdest things in media I have ever seen. And I consume a lot of media. Books are certainly weird, but games tend to go a bit further in the weirdness than even Franz Kafka or Harlan Ellison.
Mainstream AAA games avoid weird. They want to appeal to everyone, so they are, of course, getting to a point where they will not appeal to anyone. Indie games still experiment. Or at least work on some really weird ideas… They don’t always work, but definitely are out there lol
The others don’t pass muster because they do have some insane difficulty spikes. These don’t, really. Smough & Ornstein is really the only spike I can think of in the entire DS series and BB actually felt pretty even through the whole game.
Grinding isn’t necessary and there is essentially zero fluff in all of them, tho.
Currently it’s The Finals, though I have been taking a break. I need to fire it back up to see if my biggest issue with it has been fixed… It was the fact that the netcode was garbage and the entire match could be completely out of sync to the point that what you actually see other players doing is nowhere near the reality of what is actually going on in the game.
The dev made a post that they knew about the problem and even identified the cause, but as of the last time I actually played, it hadn’t been fixed yet.
Second place is Crossout. It’s essentially F2P Twisted Metal but you build your own vehicles. The biggest flaw with it is the grind. It takes so much time and rounds played to advance to unlock new parts and earn resources. I’ve been playing for a month and I’m only level 11, and still stuck playing the super basic starting modes until I have enough “PS” to open up the others. 😮💨 I think it might actually be P2W with how other players at the same rank can have full blown mechs while I am still stuck with the shittiest car parts going off the normal, free level of progression.
Then again, it also had ABSOLUTELY NO TUTORIAL beyond the basics of driving your car. It doesn’t explain any of the menus, how to build, how to share, etc. I could just be missing something.
Making money is so much easier and reliable, now that you can do all the shit that required being in an open public lobby in a private one now. No more dickheads destroying your shipments. No more modders turning you into Optimus Prime and fucking up your game.
You can even do a million dollar heist all by yourself (though, it’s hard as fuck and you need a nuclear submarine).
I keep playing it just because it’s something to do, but I feel it really misses the mark of what the Control franchise should be about. The world is interesting. It told interesting stories within the confines of a single player game. Firebreak doesn’t seem to have a story at all, and the action is pretty average with the same mininal enemy variety as Control. It also does not feel like a game from a company like Remedy; it’s half-cooked and janky. It works but it’s not quite polished.
Eh… It’s not the combat in Expedition that keeps me playing. Even with the time-based perfect hits, dodges, and parries it’s not as fun as actively being in control during real-time combat.
But the story, characters, and music are incredible.
Maybe you should have listed those, instead of saying that the Valve games he worked on were “indie hits.” (Even though it would still be wrong since the other games you now bring up weren’t hits.)
Chet is also still a writer and not a programmer. Taking his opinion on software development as gospel is still silly.