Division 2 and Destiny 2 are much more sequels though than they are an updated platform, tons of content differences. Counter-Strike is much, much more iterative
Played some Heroes of the Storm with an online friend. I absolutely love this game, I only play it Vs AI, but it's the only MOBA I ever really got into, because I don't much enjoy competition and the AI is always there.
I never thought I'd get to this point with a competitive styled game, but I know all of the heroes, almost all of their abilities, I understand matchups or even possible talent choices and ideal or poor team comps. It helps that the game is locked in maintenance mode and I don't worry about an ever inflating hero pool and an ever evolving meta.
Video games are a combination of all other traditional artistic mediums. As such, they can express their different mediums in different amounts and are the most flexible in their execution.
You like the kind that are heavier on the gameplay side, individual personalities or even mood will dictate what game you might enjoy most at any given time. You may one day find a more story driven game that connects with you on a personal level more than Mario could, unless you're counting nostalgia.
Goddamn, for real. Left 4 Dead 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, maybe even my favorite. Everything that's there adds to the experience and is finely tuned and crafted. It just plays so well that it's the only game that Ive played for over 200 hours and still go back to that has no meta progression whatsoever, aside from achievements I don't even chase.
Interesting, that was before my time. I remember getting on Steam for when Half Life 2 released, but I believe that was required right out the gate, and I was already enthralled enough by the game to just give in to it, I was a kid anyway.
I take it you prefer getting games from GOG in that case? They're almost the last bastion for PC games in that way.
I think you do bring up some good points about how a lot of the weakest AAA games now are either extremely over-iterative and lose appeal by virtue of sharing large parts of their design with their past iterations, diluting the novel good bits (Assassin's Creed), and trend chasers (that most popular online FPS games chase battle Royale and extraction shooter genres, though battle Royale seems to be finally dying off.
It takes something like Doom, a game that bucks the trends, but doesn't stumble on the execution of something fresh, but rooted in strong game direction and execution. Or something like Hogwarts Legacy, a rote-on-paper genre of game (open world) kept fresh and interesting because of its long-time-coming incredible choice of setting and the ways that it uses that setting to benefit the gameplay and immersion (the magic combat system, broom riding, and lots of sprinkled bits of lore that reward long time fans of the world)
But even then... imagine ten years down the line if there's a Doom 6, and they let history repeat itself...
Starfield is basically a game that's impossible to have an unbiased discussion on. Just by criticizing it you paint a target on your back, and same for when I praise it, though it does have a lot of flaws. I think for the Creation engine in particular it's not only about dodging royalties from using another engine, it's about what they've already put into that engine, and how comfortable the team already is working on it, and the proprietary parts of it that allow for the modding community, console command knowledge, and radiant systems to come along into new Bethesda games.
I would be quite interested to see them attempt working with a new engine and getting over the speed bump of adding these specific systems and implementations into a new engine that works better to begin with, but only time will tell when they finally find that worth it.
I would agree with that, but then there's a whole debate to be had about whether Odyssey would receive the same funding if it weren't an AC game, and whether it wouldve been executed as well or has as much content in that alternate reality Odyssey.
Check out my reply to the other person who asked the same thing, it's more of a thought experiment of the limitations of OP's idea that all studios could use one engine to accomplish any game. Starfield features some mechanics and systems that are almost vestigial at this point to the engine, but don't exist inherently in Unreal.
I'm talking about the Creation/Gamebryo specific sets of mechanics like NPC schedules and the radiant AI or quest systems, those specific things that needed to be created that aren't inherent in the engine. Not that Starfield is really the best show for those anymore, not by a long shot, it's more of just an example of a limitation of OP's idea of all devs using one engine.
Developers could all use Unreal, but if someone wanted to make Oblivion on Unreal they'd have to program and create those systems and mechanics because they don't just "come with the engine". If they made those, and all devs use Unreal, should they be folded into Unreal for future devs to use? Should Unreal program those mechanics or something similar for future devs to use? At what point does it become too complex to bolt on certain systems to an existing engine instead of make one explicitly for it, depending on the type of game?
I don't have a great example for a game so novel in its execution that it would be truly limited by Unreal, because that engine is absolutely powerful, it's more thinking about what would happen in a world with a single engine monopoly. Some studios would end up with their own proprietary offshoot modded engines like all the engines that spawned out of modified Quake engines back in the day, for instance, goldsrc.
What it's really about now is the combination of certain game mechanics. You've played a Bethesda game, and you've played a space sim, but you haven't played a Bethesda game in a space setting with ship construction, planet exploration and resource extraction outpost building, or really any light space sim with solid first person shooting at all.
To me, that combination is novel. Just like AC Odyssey's fusion of a true stealth game and an open world setting is novel and doesn't exist. The particular parts that make up the whole are not novel, the combination and execution are. There is still new ground to cover there.
I'm just particularly fond of Assassin's Creed Odyssey due to it being the only open world game that is playable as a stealth game with stealth game specific mechanics and a world designed for stealth traversal, there has not yet been any other game designed that way that isn't just light stealth elements that fall apart when you inevitably get caught in two minutes, until someone shows me another game like that, I honestly feel that game to be pushing the stealth genre, which is honestly not hard to do because of the dire state it's in.
And I'm glad you expand on Postal particularly, it goes to show that even games that are despised by many have their own meaningful aspects to be gleaned with the right mindset and with their flaws in mind. I think that when it comes to games of this size it is very hard to be able to say they are crappy, full stop, especially ones like these, or even Deathloop, which I enjoyed. Not as much as Arkane's Prey or Dishonored, of course, but it was still an enjoyable game with an excellent art style and soundtrack that heavily tapped into my love of the 70s, and featured a very nice multiplayer mode that simply doesnt exist in any other game.
You make some true points, but it's hard to take them seriously when you blanket dismiss entire games that are enjoyed by many as crappy or entire franchises as a joke.