I mean, vaporware would require it to fail to manifest. There is a game. You can play it right now. Has it delivered on everything they promised? Absolutely not. But that was never the definition of vaporware. And, paradoxically, what’s there, despite being far reduced from the theoretical scope, is also one the most technically impressive games ever made. Entire planets in a complete solar system that you can traverse without a single loading screen. Not even a disguised one. It’s also, y’know, a buggy janky mess that still lacks many core gameplay features.
Like, there’s so much that you could legitimately criticise about Star Citizen that resorting to the both meaningless and innacurate claim of vaporware just shows an extreme lack of imagination. If you want to be critical go for it, but surely you can come up with something more coherent than that?
The airship is what sold me. I’ve wanted ships in Minecraft for as long as I’ve been playing Minecraft, both because it’s cool, and because I think survival games would really benefit from the idea of a mobile base. Being able to take your home with you is such a huge deal and really bridges the gap between the “cosy” and “adventure” aspects of these games.
I’ve been spending a little more time with Forever Winter.
Its very definitely early access; not the bullshit “We’re releasing the game, but calling it early access so you can’t complain about any bugs you find” stuff you get now but actual real old school Minecraft style early access where you’re basically getting alpha builds straight from the developer.
That said, it’s in much better shape than it was when I first looked into it (maybe a year ago?). Game is really fun to play, unbelievably tense, but without being too punishing. I think they’re really starting to zero in on that Dark Souls sweet spot where dying sucks, but not in a way that actually sets you back all that much. The stealth gameplay feels good, and getting out with a haul of loot is intensely satisfying.
I came here to say this exact same thing. Videogames are an art form, and the history of that art should be preserved, both the successes and the failures. People should be able to look back on what was a hit and what was flop, on the ideas that worked and the ones that didn’t, on the well made games and the badly made games. All of it matters, all of it is part of the same story.
Basically everything can be set through server / game rules. How do zombies work (speed, strength, toughness, hearing, vision, nocturnal or not, memory, intelligence, etc), how does the virus work, loot availability, XP gain, how long its been since the outbreak, whether power and water should shut off at some point, and so many other things. And that’s all without even touching a single mod. It’s incredibly versatile.
For the record (mostly saying this for the benefit of people who don’t play but might) Zomboid is one of the most customizable games ever. Rules like “How zombie virus transmits” are completely up to you. My wife and I play together and we decided that all survivors are immune to the virus in our world, so we turned off transmission entirely. It just made more sense to us if it was something like an airborne pathogen.
I often describe Project Zomboid as a toolkit for creating your own personal zombie apocalypse.
I mean, that’s exactly what makes it so “mid” to my mind. It’s not an atrocious disaster like Gollum. It’s not appalling bad, or even moderately bad. It’s just mid. The shooting isn’t dreadful, just dull. The map, the movement, the exploration… None of it is exactly bad, but none of it left any kind of impression on me. Like you said, it scratches that “running around and collecting stuff” itch, the numbers go up, you unlock new powers, etc. But it all just kind of passes straight through you and at the end you’re left with “Well, that sure did kill a few hours.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn suffers from all the usual modern open world hallmarks, the map littered with things to collect, the towers, the grinding to level up abilities, etc, etc. But the story is an absolute banger, and even a lot of the random collectible junk is full of little moments of deeply moving storytelling. I remember collecting every single one of the vantage points because I absolutely needed to hear all of the short story you unlock by doing it. It has zero relevance to the plot, but it’s just a great piece of writing. In comparison Ghost Wire is just, sort of… There.
It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it’s just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of “Hey I know that anime” level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.
I’m here to say Portal as well, specifically because, once you really look for it, you realise that about 90% of the game is tutorial. Like, seriously, basically everything leading up to “The cake is a lie” is teaching you the skills you need for the final sequence. It’s a massive tutorial followed by one level of actual game, and it’s beautiful, precisely because you don’t even notice that the tutorial hasn’t ended.