Any weird/controversial opinions? I’ll start. Before the remake, the best version of Resident Evil 4 was the Wii version. The Wiimote controls old Resi’s tank controls better than any other controller at the time. The PC version had a bunch of little bugs and detractors that the Wii version just doesn’t have.
I’ll extend this by saying that the Wiimote is actually pretty damn good for shooters, and particularly good for accessibility. Not having to cramp up my hands to press buttons is awesome for having arthritis. Aiming with the Wiimote and moving with the nunchuck just feel really natural, you barely have to move your fingers for anything.
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Games are designed like this because too many gamers still subscribe to the extremely flawed “dollars per hour = value” assessment. XP systems and bloated open worlds cater exactly to this fallacy, because more is always better…right?
Games like the Tony Hawk 1+2 remaster for example did not need an XP system shoehorned in (not to mention an “achievement” for reaching level 100). Games can have inherent value that isn’t tied to how many hours you have to interact with them.
Agree with you, but I don’t think all achievements should be easily accessible.
Reaching level 100 should be an achievement. And I’ll never get it, and that’s ok.
My issue with that achievement is that it’s strictly an enormous time sink - it stands in stark contrast to the other elusive achievements in the THPS remaster that are genuine tests of skill.
It doesn’t help that the game caps the max XP you can earn per session, so even if you are a THPS savant you still can’t earn XP any faster than everyone else who has to cheese it past level 80.
I posted a comment on Reddit talking about how disappointed I am hearing that the AC set in Japan is going to be made by the Valhalla people and I got destroyed for it. Like I wanted Japan since brotherhood and now I get this? I don’t like the newer games because they just don’t respect your time and that’s a bummer for me.
I agree. I’m also a bit of a completionist by nature so it’s doubly as painful since I can’t just do the main story…
I have gotten a bit better about it in the last few years to be fair. Though sometimes I relapse and realize I’ve wasted 80% of my free time that day doing mediocre side content.
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I personally do enjoy long and open games. But Valhalla managed to go way too far even for me. It very noticeably came at the cost of quality, with many dull side quests. The map was actually too big. It needed to drop a region or two, because there was just soooo many regions.
Odyssey had the same issue. In fact, I found it worse there, because I recall I completed even less of that game.
The DLCs for all the AC games have at least been much tighter and a better example of a reasonable size.
You know this is a really good point and it’s why I really don’t care for open world single player games. I’ve tried to pick up RDR2 multiple times and I always just end up stopping after a day or two cause it’s not enough dopamine
Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t a good game. Everything is ridiculously time consuming, buggy, and slow for no reason. Painstaking attention to detail on insane things nobody will ever see or care to look at (like horse balls shrinking in cold weather) is not a good enough reason to be considered a good game.
This is a good one, I salute you! RDR2 is one of my favorite games of all time, I had to clutch my pearls for a minute there!
Great world, terrible game.
This is the perfect take. As soon as I unlocked the open world, I hunted all the legendary animals, got all the cool gear, upgraded my weapons, and that was pretty much the end of it. I played like 3 more missions and they were all boring time consuming garbage.
I feel like modding is sometimes a good answer to situations where a developer has spent a lot of money creating assets, but the gameplay that they made with those assets is limited.
I wonder if there’s potential for ways to try to take commercial advantage of that, like have another developer basically bulk-license the assets from an existing game and then just produce new gameplay. I can’t really think of many examples off the top of my head. Some commercial FPS mods, but usually they make larger changes than to just gameplay.
I feel dirty for upvoting your objectively wrong opinion, but you earned it!
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I always hated complex combo systems in fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter. Fighting games shouldn’t be about being able to input 50 super precise key combinations in the span of 1.5 seconds. It should be about positioning, timing, improvisation… Guilty gear strive and super smash bros is proof of this. Every game that gatekeeps new players for not memorizing the built-in combo that takes 60% of your opponent’s HP feels like it’s still stuck in the 90’s arcade game era. Most fighting game series refuse to move forward. There, I’ve said it.
This is why Smash Bros is the goat.
Low barrier for entry but super high skill ceiling.
I’ve always wanted to get into fighting games but I never really have because of this exactly. It feels like a chore to learn all the combos and the fighting feels weird and stiff to me because of them.
I think the combos in Street Fighter are already too much.
How should I twist the stick to make the special attack for this character? Hold on, pause the game so I can look up. Oh, I filled up the ultra attack meter, let me check how to perform it for this character.
They should just adopt the control scheme they implemented for Ryu in Smash Bros. Forward + B for Hadouken, Up + B for Shuriyuken, etc.
They did, SF6 has “modern controls” as the default, that get rid of motion inputs entirely.
Now I’m intrigued!
Instead of being a six button fighter with motion controls (which are available still), you have light, medium, heavy, and special buttons. Specials are essentially just hitting the special button while either in neutral or pushing the stick left right up or down. It also has a system that will let you repeatedly hit one attack to do some preset auto combos. It’s really nice!
I loved Final Fantasy Dissidia for this. Every character has the same basic controls, and the abilities are totally customizable. So I’d make general schemes the same across everyone.
Guilty Gear Strive and smash have these combos though, and just like street fighter they aren’t required to do well at beginner levels(even at higher levels you can get by with basic bnb combos).
The main thing fighting games need to do better is teach new players, as it isn’t clear what you should be learning as a beginner. That’s probably why so many people think its combos they have to learn.
Fighting games should not be QTE
The other things you mentioned, “positioning, timing and improvisation” are all infinitely more important in every fighting game when compared to combos. Long complex combos don’t matter if you can’t land a hit.
If the only combo you know is a 3-hit combo that does 20% HP, and your opponent has a 15-hit combo that does 70% HP, then you just need to hit the opponent 5 times while avoiding getting hit 2 times. If your spacing, reactions, and adaptation are much better than your opponent’s, you can win consistently.
Of course there’s always gonna be different variables when it comes to stuff like specific game knowledge, but that’s usually not as much a skill issue as it is a knowledge check. In the end, stronger fundamentals will always reward you more in the long-run.
@simple @LeylaaLovee I think where we are now with fighting games is exactly where it should stay. Auto combos and modern controls make it so the bar to entry is super low, but they need to be scaled down so that they do less damage and the incentive should always be learn pure combos to get better. At the end of the day there’s no interesting high level play if you can press a button three times and do 30% damage.
Paradox Interactive is eventually going to release so many DLC that they eventually collapse inward from their own gravity and implode, taking the company’s future with them.
They’re basically in an arms race against The Sims
And now they’ll have their own Sims game, so they’ll be going into overdrive.
That isn’t a hot take though, everyone and their mother makes jokes about how many DLC there is for Paradox Interactive games.
Here’s the real hot take -> I don’t mind the amount of DLC on Paradox Interactive games. Every game of their I’ve played was really good on its own, and I only buy any DLC after I’ve poured tens of hours into the main game, usually not because I feel like anything was lacking from the main game, but just because I want an excuse to keep playing it. So for all I care, they can keep making all the DLC they want if the base games keep being this good.
That is hotter than mine. You must not mind paying a lot of money.
I guess you can spend a lot of money if you buy them on release, but I personally never do. And both their games and the DLCs pack are always on some sale. I’m pretty sure I bought Stellaris for like 10 euros and eventually bought a bunch of its DLC in some DLC pack for another 10 euros. The same for Cities Skylines basically. 20 euros for the amount of fun I took out of those games is hardly a lot.
How’s it any different than buying a new game though?
In the end, is paying $30 for DLC and getting another 50 hours of gameplay really that much worse than paying $60 for a new game?
As long as I actually use the DLC, to me it’s equivalent. I’m paying money to extend the hours of entertainment I’m getting.
It’s a game I like and it gets more and more stuff. The only times games keep adding more things to itself is either a very infrequent constant subscription fee, or more frequent DLCs. There’s only so much you can do off the sales of the base game.
Ive got collective thousands of hours in paradox titles. The good dlcs (and there are trash ones I haven’t bought) adds dozens of hours of playtime. They also keep the mod community active which adds hundreds more.
It seems expensive but 10-20 bucks every few months is reasonable to me.
My bigger issue is some of them are starting to feel very paytowin with the feature/power creep (compare vanilla Russia/Ottomans in EUIV to dlc versions for an example)
I’m fine with paying money as long as what I’m getting for it is commensurate to what I’m paying. I don’t think that Paradox is a particularly bad actor there (not the best, either). I mean, the DLC model permits funding production of more stuff for a game that one likes in a direction that one would like.
There are a number of games where DLC is sold by publishers at vastly higher prices than the content in the base game, though, and where the base game is kind of indadequate on its own. That is something that I’m not really enthusiastic about.
It probably works out about the same as buying a subscription for a game, which many do for lots of games. I still think it’s egregious, but then again I own all Stellaris DLC, so…
I just bought Stellaris utopia dlc, despite not being able to tell you if the game I’m looking at it galactic civilizations 3, Stellaris or endless space 2 (I own all 3, I will play one of them some day). When I do play one of them I’d like it to be an enjoyable situation, which I’ve heard Stellaris needs utopia to be.
Also I love paradox games.
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True. This is why I don’t play subscription based games either, and usually buy my triple As several years after they release, and on sale. I suppose I’m a big fan of getting a lot of value for my money.
Honestly whenever I see a game on sale for <$20 and I open it only to see 5+ DLCs that increase the price, I just close the page and move on without even bothering to research whether or not I should buy the DLCs. Fuck that mess.
Perhaps Steam could use a “price of game+aggregate DLC” sorting/filtering option.
People who get video game burnout or say gaming is dead or whatever are victims of AAA marketing.
Most of the time I see posts like this they complain that they bought all the newest games with great reviews and aren’t having any fun. Normally it’s Sony games and other cinematic experience kind of games. Or they are games that they put 100’s of hours into. They are doing the same stuff over and over and getting bored.
Unfortunately critics care more about production values and polish than novel game mechanics. Plenty of interesting games get overlooked due to being a little weird or not fitting in modern game conventions. If you only play the big budget AAA stuff you are going to get burnt out because they all copy each other trying to be the next “big game”. If you play games that get bad reviews, have weird mechanics, or do something different you won’t get burnt out. I like to recommend the Gravity Rush games to people who have a playstation and are burnt out on the “cinematic” games. They typically have never heard of it and end up having a blast with them. Makes me sad when I see people still buying games based on metacrtic scores. They miss out on so much.
I know this post is about games specifically, but this is so true about all media. It’s wild how many people bemoan how “bad” movies/tv/music/etc is, when it’s super obvious their only frame of reference is mainstream media that’s mostly doing the same thing all the time. If they took a look just once at indie content creation, they’d see there’s so much cool stuff out there. But their so locked into the “right” media that they don’t consider anything else.
Getting back to games, I rarely ever buy AAA games anymore. There’s so much cool indie stuff being released all the time, it’s simply not worth it to me to deal with all the downsides that come along with AAA games.
I definitely agree it applies to all media. There’s always something good to find but you need to dig sometimes. A great AAA game is normally well made and can be a lot of fun but rarely are they unique or surprising.
Ugh you’re not joking. Many of my friends that game complain about the same thing, yet getting them to try any new game that isn’t League of Legends, Apex, Dead by Daylight or Destiny is like pulling teeth.
The worst part is that most of those games have an endless grind or some sort of FOMO mechanics that encourage people to keep playing even though they’re having an awful time.
Perhaps they’re the kind of people who see anything that doesn’t require at least 100 hours per month to progress as a waste of time. I used to play that often until I found a job. Went from 5+ matches of league daily to maybe 2 per week.
There’s legitimately 0 purpose to playing a bit of a game when it won’t change the status quo of your life.
All we want is a game that’s worth wasting our life on.
I guess that is how people in monogamous relationships see polyamory…
Completely agreed. Seriously, if anyone genuinely feels like gaming has become stale, go play Hi-Fi Rush and Pizza Tower (both having come out this year).
AAA games are more interested in keeping you on a virtual engagement treadmill than simply being fun.
I still don’t know how to go about finding these. I’ve had so many bad experiences I hardly know what I like anymore. All I “know” is I’m not big on FPS games. But at the same time I loves The Last of Us.
It’s hard to find something unique but I’ve found some of my favorite games by taking a gamble and playing a game I don’t know much about. If the box art looks cool or I like the trailer I give it a try. Game critics don’t help much as they only like specific kinds of games so I can’t rely on them too much.
Yeah it’s hard. I might go retro :)
I’ve never played a military shooter, but Battle Bit is piquing my interest.
It’s not a super-hot take, but art style >>>>> graphics when it comes to “beautiful” looking games. There are games coming out today that can run on a toaster that look far better than many AAA titles with all the fancy lighting effects and ray tracing that require you to dump 4-digit sums into a monster gaming PC to fully enjoy, all due to how the smaller games masterfully handle their art design.
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I think this take got ice-cold shortly after Windwaker released.
The issue is that game developers have been using this as a crutch to do less and still charge full-price. Even with Windwaker, I always found the art style was inappropriate for the tone the rest of the game tried to set. It really felt more like they were trying to save time and money than actually having something that serves that art. That style worked pretty well in the handheld games, but I just don’t think it holds up as well as Twilight Princess on a big screen.
I enjoy the occasional 16-bit style indie game, but I’m not paying $60 or $70 for that. I love Supergiant games, and they all look amazing, but even they know that art style can only push the price so far. There’s also value in a game that is realistic and not stylized, especially in military shooters and racing games.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have AAA games from big studios selling for full-price that have neither. Look at GameFreak’s Switch games: terrible quality textures, uninspired lighting, bad draw distance, terrible FPS, and they literally cut to a black screen describing what your character does instead of animating anything. And the art style is just the most generic anime-style imaginable. It looks like Nintendo too the Mii system and just made some minor updates and used that to make human models. This may be a hot take, but I think the models in TotK and BotW are the same. The devs create some fancy clothes, hair, and accessories, but the actual models are bland. It’s essentially the Mii system.
Graphics and art style are not mutually exclusive. It’s fair to ask for both in a full-price game.
I’d love to see a big budget AAA low-res pixel art game, like what you’d see on a GBA.
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The sentence “I lost my gear / They took my gear” has never been followed by a fun part in any videogame, ever
That island in Breath of the Wild though
Based on the sentiment I see online, my hot take is that Deep Rock Galactic is way over-hyped and is actually pretty shallow. It’s a fine turn your brain off game, but I don’t think it’s as great as people make it out to be.
Damn, you can voice unpopular opinions on Lemmy and be upvoted for contributing to the discussion. What a wild place this is!
I couldn’t get into DRG, but I’m willing to give it another try.
That is honestly like 90% of the reason I have stuck around, the community here is reminiscent of early reddit (or rather when I joined circa like 2011). But, yeah I totally appreciate that people enjoy it and I’m happy they do, I just really don’t agree with most their points.
Totally off topic, but with the third party client I’m using I forgot I was even using lemmy until I saw your comment.
I had my fingers crossed that someone was gonna pop in and start shitting on Zelda or something else of the sort that would get a ton of people going
Love Zelda but I rate BotW a high 7, and TotK a solid 8. Excellent games, some flaws.
my scores would be lower if I had played on the switch though, to be honest
Full disclosure: I don’t do dumb journalism ratings. 5 is a game worth playing. 6 is a good game. 7 is great. 8 is excellent. 9 is basically flawless or unique or brilliant. 10… I think I have like four tens.
Holy hell do I disagree with this but I will kill every elf in this thread to defend your right to say it. Rock and stone.
thanks brother, I don’t really try to not like it, it’s just not my cup of tea. I grew up playing L4D 1 and 2 a lot and I think thats all I’ll ever really enjoy from that genre. There are other similar games I’m not a huge fan of either.
*angry dwarf noises*
Despite my opinion I will still constantly quote “I KNOW THE WAY.”
Honestly, I think the hype is more for having one of the least toxic online communities.
yea thats a respectable reason, it’s a rarity.
Removes mask They were a glyphid all along!
I very highly disagree but to each their own, of course.
Wow, I really disagree with you, but upvoted since that’s the point of this thread. I love DRG, however I didn’t love it the first time I played it. I had the same problem, I felt it was sort of shallow and I got lost, both literally in the maps and figuratively since I felt I had no goals and it felt repetitive.
When I tried the game again a year or so later it just clicked. I love the end game of getting overclock mods and trying new weapon builds. I love that each class is fun to play and I don’t mind playing any of them. I love that I can relax with a lower hazard level mission or challenge myself with a higher hazard, but I don’t feel forced to play either since I’m rewarded regardless. I love that the developer that respects their player base and doesn’t have awful microtransactions.
And like others have mentioned I think having such a positive and non competitive community helps a lot. ROCK AND STONE
getting overclock mods and trying new weapon builds
I’m not sure I got to this point, and tbh everytime I’ve played I’ve felt like I’m missing something, so my opinion might not be well grounded. But, I’ve given it quite a few tries and just never get to this point. I’ll give it another go though :)
I will say, if you’ve been playing alone or with 1 or 2 friends it’s so much more fun and engaging with a full party even if it’s just randos. Hosting a match will almost always get joiners within a couple minutes and barely anyone talks with how good the ping system is. It’s a lot more of an oh shit moment if you get caught alone with bugs swarming from every exit because of damage and health scaling with the number of players. Sometimes your scout pops a cocoon while everyone is separated and it’s a mad dash to find a good spot to fight the dreadnought, or someone called the drop pod before you did an event and now everyone has to work together to finish it asap before the pod leaves empty. Fellow dwarfs keep you on your toes. There’s also moments where everyone is in perfect sync and you easily crush whatever challenges the mission throws at you. Idk, if you already play with others this doesn’t really apply. But I think a lot of people play alone or with only 1 other person and miss out on what I feel like is the main fun of the game: the unpredictability of your teammates.
Same, couldn’t find the fun in it
I think a big part of the hype is how in-tune with the fan base the devs are. It’s just refreshing to feel like the devs are on your side. Rock and Stone.
For some reason I can’t do anything but get lost/lose my party/fail to understand the map in that game.
lol tbh one of the only part I did like was the map, because of what you’re saying. It’s procedurally generated, but does require coordination on abilities / movement.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the map generation, it just seems like whenever I find a shiny thing over in the corner, everyone else progresses to the quest, or did they just finish the quest, did they go forwards or backwards, why don’t they need to throw their lights as often as I do, oh now we need to get to the extraction point, which way was that? And now I’m down and feeling like a burden again.
Games are for fun. If you’re not having fun, stop playing. Don’t spend effort on griping about the game; just stop playing and do something else. Do not go on the game forum and spend hours arguing about whether the game started sucking with the last release or two years ago. Just stop playing and do something else with your time & energy. Stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.
Software quality varies widely in online games; even for “simple” games such as abstract strategy board games. One of the highest-quality pieces of game software is lichess. Most board-game software, even for other abstract strategy games like Go, absolutely sucks compared to lichess. The best Go client is KGS; it’s pretty good, but it’s no lichess.
Regarding CCGs: Hearthstone is terrible. Magic Arena is okay. Eternal is fine but I stopped playing it when Magic Arena released for Android. Mythgard is pretty neat. Runeterra is probably okay if you’re already into the League/Arcane characters.
Paying for games is fine, but consider your opportunity cost in both money and time. (“Opportunity cost” is an economist’s way of asking, “What else could you be doing with this money and time?”) Maybe you just want to go see a movie instead. Or go stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.
Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection is an astonishingly good collection of puzzle games that runs on pretty much any computer or device you use. You can install it for free on your phone. It’s all open source, no ads, no bullshit, just puzzle games.
If the game you’re paying for is pissing you off, consider whether you’re paying for the service of being pissed off. Maybe just stop doing that?
Simon Tatham’s puzzles are goated indeed
Bumped for Simon tathams puzzle pack.
Half the games in there I’ve marked as favorite. There’s barely any better way to unwind after a day than a 60 point ‘untangle’ puzzle.
Exactly, the same goes for movies and tv and even books.
Don’t like it? Stop. Move on to something else.
I started playing ac: origins last year, and as soon as I got the “Kill Animal” side missions I knew I wouldn’t like the game. I made it to the second city and haven’t played since
The Minesweeper implementation included in that is also miles ahead of the standard Microsoft one because instead of generating the grid randomly, it generates it in a way that guarantees you can always solve it without guessing, making it a pure logic puzzle.
Developers who lock the FOV of their games have no idea what they’re doing.
Looking at you sea of theives…
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I do. (Hot take incoming) People are absent-mindedly maxing that slider and making the game butt-ugly because they heard some pro plays the game like that to see as much of the screen as possible. That Wasn’t even the same game btw.
They are not playing the game competitively so all they do is make it ugly as hell for no gain. It’s like using wrist straps to deadlift. Consider getting better at the game instead.
Same for screen shake actually. Some idiot game dev overdid it 10 years ago and now everyone turns it off even though it is subtle nowadays and makes actions feel a lot more impactful.
You’re not special when you say it makes your head hurt. You just played a game where screen shake was badly implemented.
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Look at the entire sea of theives community.
I’ve had my posts deleted from the steam community forums for simply asking who else wanted higher than 90 fov
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Just as a wild guess, it might be related to performance tuning on consoles. If you increase the width of the view frustrum, you’re throwing more stuff on the screen.
I’m currently playing through Breath of the Wild for the first time and I don’t think it’s an amazing game. I think it’s decent and fun enough, but it has a lot of grindy BS and aimless wandering, plus a story that is a rehash of literally every Zelda game every made, but now with 100% more open world.
Seriously how many times are we going to beat Ganon? And good God the voice acting is cringe.
Also, I just freed the second divine beast and I still have no idea how to dodge or flurry rush.
I got bored after like 8 hours of looking for things to do before I just said “fuck it, I guess I’m killing Ganon.” I don’t know when I am meant to go find the Master Sword but I was able to get it without having a quest and just using my knowledge of Hyrule from past games (“sword in forest!”) and I activated the 4 ancient machines; but then I couldn’t find many side quests that weren’t just fetch quests for things I already had in my posession.
TOTK actually has shit to do. I thought BOTW was a bit bare bones before, but given it was Nintendo’s first go at it I just thought it was that. But TOTK makes BOTW look like an alpha build of a tech demo for TOTK.
BotW was the first Zelda game for me, and it was such a massive disappointment. It’s just open world without any redeeming qualities, with every single mechanic existing just to support open world. Felt more like a sandbox than a game. It’s fun for about 2-3 hours, but then I just got really bored
I did finish it, because hey I paid for it, but it was not really something too fun for most of the time
EDIT: And I’m still mildly salty that BotW got GOTY in a year we got Nier Automata and Persona 5
Zelda games straight up have a very mediocre story. And often nothing about their world building makes much sense either. They’re definitely a series built only for fun gameplay. Everything else is just glue to hold the gameplay together.
Personally, I love the gameplay and exploration, but you’re definitely right about the story and voice acting.
PS: dodging should be the same as jump (x). Lock on with ZL and point the movement stick to the side you wanna dodge to, the jump. If you pull the stick back, you’ll do a backflip. Whether you want to jump back or to the side depends on the enemy attack (eg, do they swing horizonal or vertical?). If you dodge juuuust before the enemy attacks, you’ll get a slow motion during which you’re prompted to spam y to rapidly attack. Especially useful for tough foes like lynels.
There’s shrines near the start of the game that teach you to dodge & flurry rush;
While locking onto an enemy, jump while moving to the side or backwards at the last second before an enemy attacks-- if the timing is done correctly, you can flurry rush. The trick is finding the timing for each enemy type, though you start to get a feel for it.
It’s a grindy mechanic, but I really enjoyed filling out the compendium once you upgrade your Sheikah Slate-- taking pictures of things became the focus of the game for a while, and I’m glad that TOTK improved upon that.
It’s a decent game but once I beat it I’ll likely never play it again
And it’s so ok that I have a hard time getting back to it after breaking for a few weeks
I killed Ganon and still had no idea how to actually do these things.
Turn on japanese audio.
So I can’t understand anything without subtitles?
Yes. Way better voice acting.
I’ve never understood this idea. Usually I see it in reference to anime. How can you even appreciate the voice acting when its in a language you don’t understand while you are trying to read something in English?
You don’t need to be able to know the words to understand the emotions. It’s asking why watch any movies in the original language.
When I went to go see Star Wars Episode 3 when I was overseas, the English version with subtitles was packed while the local language dubbed version had a moderate crowd. People want to see the original because the delivery is usually just better, even if they can’t understand the words.
Souls-like games aren’t difficult, they just show you how impatient the average player is. Very rarely do those games actually challenge your ability or technical skill, and instead they just test your patience with annoyingly-defensive enemy behavior that encourages impatient players into aggressive, risky gameplay.
People spend way to much time complaining about how games are not perfect in their eyes, instead of taking it at face value. They get literally outraged when a game doesn’t function exactly how they want, instead of finding a game they actually enjoy.
Back in the day we’d just pick whatever looked cool at the store and hoped it was decent. People have the right to complain, but its gotten out of hand and modern gamers are whiney as all hell.
Edit: just want to clarify, I’m mainly refer to post launch and established games. If a game promises somthing and is released half baked, 100% people are in the right to complain.
My hot take: Skyrim is the most overrated game of all time. Not bad, but overrated. My phone hardcrashed while I typed out the reasons why I think so, so I won‘t anger the gaming gods further this time.
I think of skyrim like Jay Leno.
No one would say he’s the best comedian, or even great. But he’s unoffensive and kinda funny to most people.
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Agreed. To me the comment from op sounded like “pizza is overrated” which is weird cause it’s not like pizza is rated incredibly highly, it’s just that even bad pizza is pretty good
Skyrim is definitely my comfort food. Along with Fallout. I can replay those games like nothing else, just like how I can eat mac n cheese damn near every day and never get sick of it!
I think if you compare it to games from the last 10 years, then yes.
But at the time it was miles ahead of everything else. Most RPG’s were incredibly unfriendly to beginners, throwing paragraphs of text to read, spreadsheets of numbers to understand, incredibly unfair mechanics, making the player make decisions without understanding them, and legacy mechanics that traced their routes back to tabletop wargaming. The marketing for RPG’s revolved around hyping up bigger numbers of systems, skills, weapons, armor, items, spells, and whatever else you can think of. You can still go back and have fun, but the ethos of a lot of RPG’s was quantity over quality. They were very difficult to get into, and most RPG’s kind of had the assumption that the player already knew how to play RPG’s.
It may seem silly to say that Skyrim was a break from that. After all, it has radiant quests, tons of NPC’s, a pretty big map, tons of dungeons, etc. But it streamlined a ton and made it accessible. The quantity of voice lines was incredible for the time, and reducing the reliance on text made couch gaming easier. The leveling system is incredibly intuitive and fun, and IMO the best I’ve seen before or since. A lot of systems exist to allow customization of either the roleplaying or mechanical experience, but most of those systems are optional. You can just bash through the game with the equipment you get in Helgen if you want.
The game isn’t perfect, but when I see criticisms it’s usually that people want to add more systems or more complexity. That’s the kind of thing that always sounds great in an armchair thinking about it, but when you actually put it in a game the game usually ends up bloated and tedious. It’s great to add mods later after a couple playthrough, but it’s easy to overwhelm new players with things like a spell creation system.
Whenever I see people talking on the Internet about trying Skyrim for the first time, I see a lot of other players recommending to start with mods. I also see a lot of people saying they bounced off of Skyrim, and I think there’s a correlation. I ran into similar experiences with Civ and Cities Skylines: it’s tempting to add in tons of stuff to try to get the best experience possible, but sometimes it’s better to start simple.
Skyrim has bugs, but most of them are either just visual, hilarious, or can be fixed by re-loading the area or the game.
It’s not perfect, but overall I think it’s fair to include Skyrim in the conversation for… Idk, top-20 ish games of all time.
Do you enjoy other games in that vein/genre?
Open-world action RPGs? Elden Ring for instance, or modern Zelda games. 3D Soul-likes if you want to stretch the definition. I‘d go as far as to say it’s my favorite genre.
Most AAA games are boring. All the big games from the last few years are just plain boring. They found a formula back in the 2000’s that they never expanded upon or really changed in any way shape or form. The focus is on visuals and story (and I gotta say, the stories are pretty fucking cringe a lot of the time unless you’re a 13 year old) or skinnerboxes and psycho tricks to keep you addicted and the gameplay remains the same stale shit it’s been for over 20 years. I feel like AAA games are games for people who don’t play games, because the actual game part is always the worst part about them.
