Of the OWSC-type games that I’ve played, the one I’ve enjoyed most is Raft, and even then I get burnt out on it pretty quickly. I think it’s because, at least until you get your raft surrounded with metal plated platforms, there’s a very direct relationship between the materials you pick up and the amount of ‘base’ you can build, and so you’re pretty constantly engaged with collecting, refining, and using most of your supplies in a very straightforward and immediately gratifying manner.
The thing in these games that burns me out is, it seems to be a neverending parade of collecting materials and recipes to get better materials and recipes, to the point that you’re thumbing through like eight different pages or tabs of schematics looking for what you need to make, then digging through some arcane storage system to get the shit you need to make the shit you need. After a certain point, it feels like having a second job.
Maybe it’s just me getting older, but since Skyrim, Bethesda games have failed to capture that magic for me. They’ve been leaning on the creation engine for too long, to the point that so many of the features, not the least of which being the goddamn shouts, are all carbon copies of one another, the base building is literally just a fucking resource sink, the gunplay sucks and the enemies are all bullet sponges unless you dip into late game planets and filch a late game gun, the jobs are 90% basic bitch fetch quests, and the core gameplay loop of “go place --> grab shit --> sell shit” has not evolved since Morrowind.
I stop playing games when they start feeling like a second job, and for me that point in Starfield was about three hours in when I was trying to complete survey data for the homesteading program and I was wandering around this deserted planet, looking for samples of flora and fauna, and I scoot back from my desk as I realize, for 20 minutes, I have done absolutely nothing meaningful or engaging. The closest I’ve come is, I’ve pointed a scanner at a bunch of procedurally generated animals hoping they don’t land a hit on me because they’re too spongy for me to kill, so I can fill a meter, so that when I’m done filling meters I can go back to BDG and tell him this place is suitable for people to live. That’s not fun. It barely qualifies as gameplay, and it is an aggressive waste of time.
Eh, not very well - there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that these games capture, revolving around skill allocation and character development that Skyrim doesn’t have. It’s exciting to become a water master in MM6 because it means being able to teleport freely between towns, or expert level spirit being able to bless the whole party at once.
I really want to see more games like Might & Magic 6-8 or Wizardry 8, in that vein of open world dungeon crawler, but not locked to a grid like M&M 1-5 or Dungeon Master 1&2 (although I do like those games, they’re more well represented in the contemporary space with titles like M&M 10 or Legend of Grimrock.
Bloodstained is a top contender, I can’t say I first discovered it on the Deck, but it just feels right on a handheld, in a way that it didn’t with controller on desktop, and the Switch just isn’t good enough to run it at a passable framerate.
I’m going to make a recommendation for pretty much all the metroidvanias, the deck was practically built for them. The Castlevania Advance collection has three great old games, including Aria of Sorrow, which was the progenitor of Bloodstained (which might honestly have a little too much going on - if you feel like you’d enjoy a simplified version of that, Aria is your game.)
But also do remember to pick up Hollow Knight. And Blasphemous. And if you’re emulating, Metroid fusion, Zero Mission, Metroid prime even, if you feel like frigging around with the GC emus.
Also, Soulslike games play particularly well on deck. I can get a pretty stable 30 out of Elden Ring, I’m sure the older titles work pretty well too.
It can’t really be surprising from the series that tends to go above and beyond in their diversions. I can’t think of a Yakuza/Judgement that didn’t have half a dozen other Sega games, shogi, mahjong, cho-han, blackjack, hanafuda, collectible card games, cabaret club management, and slot car racing, to name a few, each with their own powerups and rewards.
Yeah, pretty much. But of course, they deny culpability because “It’s not like we pulled the trigger” or some other limp-wrist bullshit excuse.
If gun lobbyists hadn’t pushed for a ban on the CDC studying gun violence under the pretense that the data would be construed as advocating for gun control, maybe some of those kids at Uvalde, or Sandy Hook, or any of the other hundreds if not thousands of school shootings over the last 20+ years might still be alive today.
I mean, it’s bad, but it’s not nearly the worst of the firearms industry’s sins. Look up the Bushmaster ‘Man Card’ ads - Really outlines how the confluence of toxic masculinity and gun culture is a key factor in the prevalence of school shootings in the states.