My goodness, this is some insane mountain out of a molehill reporting. The article is extrapolating a lot based on some vague and not particularly noteworthy qualifications bulletpoints that should be expected for military shooter VFX work.
I know of a great way to get gear early in the first STALKER game, but everyone hates me for it.
All you have to do is goad the military into getting into a firefight with the rookie camp and hide in the shop until the shooting is over and the military loses interest. Lots of dead rookie gear to sell, and at least a few dead soldiers to provide some mid-game rifles early.
Fallout 1, which I’ve probably replayed about ten times more than the second game. It’s concise, with this depressing and dark world that gives a feeling never fully replicated in sequels.
Lords Of The Realm 2, a great little strategy game with an effortlessly charming aesthetic.
Civil War Generals 2, when I feel like really grinding out a strategy game. It has the bright colors and charming graphics which create a clear and readable battlefield that can be brutally difficult as units get ground down into ragged bands.
Really it just means the sorts of bugs you find with minimal QA testing combined with stilted voice acting, potentially untranslated audio or text, cultural beats that don’t quite cross over, and some game design choices that are different than how a game developed alongside western games might do things.
If you can stand this lack of polish, these sorts of games can at least give amusement for their price point.
I’m commenting late, but there is The Precursors which does require Slavjank tolerance, but if you have it, it provides an interesting flavor on a space opera adventure.
I also haven’t tried The Tomorrow War which seemingly requires even higher Slavjank tolerance, and probably isn’t a top of all time game, but seems interesting if you like peering into strange forgotten games. Warlockracy did a video of this one.
TLDR Bloated staff sizes and poor workflow management means salary costs skyrocket while a lot of people on staff are left waiting for things to do. The article keeps saying the costs aren’t just about better graphical fidelity, but I think this issue is somewhat related because a big chunk of staff are going to be artists of some variety, and the reason there are so many is to pump up the fidelity.
Not that it much matters to me personally. I’ve said before that games have long ago hit diminishing returns when it comes to technical presentation and fidelity. I’d rather have a solid game with a vision, and preferably a good visual style rather than overproduced megastudio visuals. Those kinds of games are still coming out from solo developers and small studios, so it doesn’t affect me one bit if big studios want to pour half a billion into every new assemblyline FPS they make.
In the stealth section there are static guards and patrolling guards. At the bottom of every turn the players pull from a deck of cards which says which of the patrolling guards will move and also a special event- this can be the meter towards the alarm ticking down, some of the guards reversing direction of their patrol, or reinforcements prestaging just off board.
During stealth if a dead guard or a player character is spotted by a specific guard, it will shout alerting other guards inside a certain radius and act according to the combat logic. At this point the stealth section will likely shortly end because of all the negative stealth modifiers.
In the combat section, enemies will move towards and fire at whatever spotted player character is nearest. The combat is very simple, which is balanced by it being very difficult for the players to survive, which means you want to delay combat as long as possible.
Mechanically I don’t think anything changes with the number of players, since you always have 4 player characters no matter how many players.
I personally don’t think it would be as fun solo. You would have more control and precision which might appeal to certain people, but for me the chaos of having other people doing things and having to negotiate a plan where everyone is constantly inputting was part of the fun.
The box comes with 9 different missions, and there are expansions with more missions and player characters. I’ve only played just this once so far though.
I’ve been working my way through Half-Life Opposing Force. It is harder than the base game, but I do enjoy it. It has a lot of ideas like the squad mechanics that would be great to see reworked.
This is a good example. The cartoony graphics work well for Nintendo because it fits their hardware better as well.
For my personal example I can still play Starfox64 easily, but Goldeneye (one of my favorite childhood games) literally gives me a headache to look at. Goldeneye was going for a more realistic look on the engine of the time and aged terribly. Starfox is all big bright cartoon designs.
I can think of many older games in dire need of facelifts, but the thing is they don’t need a facelift into photo-realistic territory. Just enough to bring the vision out from developers reaching just a little further than their old tech could support. I’m thinking of a lot of early 3D games. Many of the older sprite based games still hold up great.
The AAA gaming industry has gone off the rails trying to wow us with graphics and the novelty has long worn off.