This is the kind of stuff you might know if you already know what’s ahead of you, like if you played it before, but as a first-time player of the game, not knowing what’s coming, I found it to be a poor experience when you only have a melee weapon but specced for guns.
I watch and listen to a lot of Giant Bomb and SkillUp, and both had praise for the multiplayer modes, warts and all. I can’t agree with all games media just being marketing, otherwise you’d never see bad reviews for the likes of those publishers spending all that money on marketing. It may not have worked for you, but doing all of those modes has done very well for the game.
It was also famous for having multiplayer modes that were just fun and didn’t ask you to commit your life to them. Some of those multiplayer modes were really cool.
They sell to the type of person who only buys a few video games per year. They’re easy to play, they look nice, and they have a lot of content for the money, so you can stretch your dollar.
It seems to be resonating pretty damn well for them. In fact, the competitive multiplayer has been praised for its simplicity and feeling a lot like the kind of multiplayer that we used to get so much of back in the 360 era.
Games got bigger to their own detriment. Halo and Gears of War are open world games now, and they’re worse off for it. Assassin’s Creed games used to be under 20 hours, and now they’re over 45. Not every game is worse for being longer, as two of my favorite games in the past couple of years are over 100 hours long, clocking in at three times the length of their predecessors, but it’s much easier to keep a game fun for 8-15 hours than it is for some multiple of that, and it makes the game more expensive to make, raising the threshold for success.
The family is buying the shares as well, with Tencent having a minority ownership. Or might, rather. This is a consideration. It isn’t definitely happening.
I’d second Pillars of Eternity II except that it’s not actually on sale. It also doesn’t have gamepad controls, which is disappointing, so Steam Deck controls can be kind of slow.
I agree that the game should have a tutorial. The problem with the temple trial is that it only caters to one play style, so it’s not a good tutorial. I’d call the first game’s tutorial the cave with a handful of rats.
I just played through it this year for the first time. It was overall very good, but the beginning and end of it are pretty rough. The beginning is tedious unless you’re playing a strength build, and the end is some real point and click adventure game moon logic to find out how to get to the final area and, in some ways, through it, that I would have never figured out without a walkthrough.
I agree. Hence this initiative. Nothing will change without action, is this is the action that EU citizens can feasibly take. I’ve written my legislators, and that’s about all I can do in the US, other than spread the word on social media.
Also: If your only argument is that I am not taking the “Stop Killing Games” movement seriously enough? You don’t have one. Which… is par for the course.
We have to hope they do, because the industry would love to never resolve this on its own. So far there are reasonable laws on the books in places in places like Belgium and Australia for things like loot boxes. Also, you do your argument a real disservice by using childish language like “vidya games” and “oh noes”.
It is a citizens’ initiative for the EU. Ross has been consulting with legal experts and even members of parliament in these territories in order to get this off the ground. This is not some feel-good change.org thing; this has legal ramifications, albeit with an absurdly high threshold to clear.
Gambling is bad and it ruins lives. So let’s get some legislature. Oh noes, now there can be no kissing or depiction of blood in any game because sex ruins lives and so does murder!
This is a strawman. We do legislate gambling already. Several countries have legislated loot boxes already without adding violent content on as a rider.
This initiative, which again, has actual legal implications unlike most petitions you’ve ever heard of, can only ask for so much before it’s in lawmakers’ hands. Terminology like “reasonably functional” is used all over laws on the books, and courts rule on what is reasonable or not. It would be reasonable to say that a video game is no longer functional if you can’t play it anymore. Lobbyists and special interest groups are why we have an industry subsidized by legalized gambling for children and other ways of fucking us over.