Achievements are at least partially responsible for the industry shift to generic hamster wheel yearly triple A releases.
Your video game hot take(s) thread
- Thread starter Dany_the_penguin
- Start date
Care to expound?
I started gaming consciously in the 7th generation, so supposedly I should be head over heels for achievements (well, for me trophies), but I don't get the appeal. If I ever did chase a trophy it was purely out of peer pressure when I was younger. Now it's just something that pops up on the corner of my screen, and occasionally something I delete the automatic screenshots of when I'm bored.
I had to think a minute about gaming “consciously”, but I suppose all of us were pretty mindless and unaware of the “why” of it all when consuming digital entertainment as a youths.
If I had to define it, I'd say I gained "consciousness" when I started to care about how shitty certain industry practices were. Before that, any game I could get my hands on was a good game.
Well it's not like I have a hard and fast absolute rule about anything.And I rather play something that makes me happy rather than annoyed, angry, frustrated, and bored. I usually don't have to squint when it comes to retro 2D indie games. I don't love every indie game under the Sun either, but at least they usually take risk or don't try to weight the player down with some bull crap. At least both of them know how to have fun be fun. And it's not just a 2D style ones, there are plenty of 3D style indie games that work fine, play great, and do more than the standard AAA shell price of 60 to 70. Regardless, if it's a game I know I'm not going to like, nor am I going to have fun, I won't even bother wasting money and time on it. I want my time to last you can't even bother with tedious games anymore. There is so much to life, that's some things aren't worth it if they're that shallow or uninteresting.
I literally started the year with a 4 game run of small games on Gamepass and I enjoyed it: Genesis Noir, Forgotten City, Unpacking, and The Artful Escape. Then followed shortly by Death's Door. Each had something of interest to offer.
This is where you hit the division between challenging gameplay and frustrating gameplay. And when you're running into constant frustration is when the "fun" part of gaming stops being a thing.
I've mostly stopped caring in hard games if I use any advantage I have to. Assuming I'm still engaged enough to keep playing.
Op weapons and strats? Sure. Calling for help? Why not? Use the wiki to find weaknesses? Yep.
Call me a filthy scrub if you want. I actually want to see the end at some point.
It's why I won't ever bother with most Ninja Gaiden games on the hardest difficulty. Razor's Edge especially has most bosses that are tedious and not fun to fight. The only optimal strategy is to get a few cheeky hits and back away, unless you know exactly what you're doing. I tried playing a little bit of Hard mode, but I can't get past the stupid helicopter boss because it's spams rockets at you and there's really no other way to heal. Healing items are gone. So I said screw it, so I just to stop playing after I had beaten the game a normal mode. I'll still play the challenge mode and trials, but that's about it. It's why I never bothered with Dark Souls games at all. I don't mind challenge, but a fair challenge without fake difficulty. Just recently, I traded in Gun Grave Overdose, because it's not fun and has a lot of crap difficulty. People complain about the original being too easy, but it did have challenges in it. Plus, all you have to do is go to the hardest difficulty, if you wanted a challenge. You have to play the game twice to get to it, but a player would be more than familiar at that point.
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It's the realization that life itself is inherently frustrating and stressful, and the desire to get away from that sort of thing as much as possible.
I'd say that if you enjoy the gameplay a game will rarely be too hard. I've played games where I died over and over and over and over, but I kept going because the game mechanics were satisfying. And I've played Soulsborne games where I honestly don't even die that much, but I'm still 'fuck this shit, I'm done' due to how those games mechanically function.
In a way I’m kind of glad and relieved that Elden Ring was designed as it is, so massively. After crossing the hundred hour mark last night and only just now proceeding on to the capital…I’m still pretty enthralled by it but it is starting to feel like it could be the ultimate swan song in a way. After seven of these games I might just wind up like @Old_Hunter_77 and retire from FROM. Another Sekiro or Bloodborne is unlikely and I was never really into Armored Core before. Feels appropriate and my backlog would appreciate it too.
In case you're wondering, the game that made me come to this realization is Jedi: Fallen Order. It's a good game, quite well made. I just hit a brick wall at a boss fight, and it kind of broke me mentally. Someone overheard me cussing myself out after another failure, asked me why I played the game if it was upsetting me that much, and...well, she was right. Why was I?
I hate "Original Label/Black Label" snobs. People who make fun of, or hate on gamers for not getting the game when it first came out, and later got the "Greatest Hits" (any Sony game) or "Player's Choice" (GameCube) copies of games. So the fuck what? Not everyone is you where they can get the game immediately. Life happens: people can't afford every single game on the block. They have to wait for the cheaper option, or were super young/barely born, or not born yet at the game's release. As long as they got a working copy of the game, that is all that matters.
These attitudes usually come from collectors and old style game reviewers from YouTube. Alpha Omega Sin being one of them, the fucking prick. I got plenty of games where I had to but the second run label of some game, and I have no shame in it. If it's a great or excellent game, I do not care.
These attitudes usually come from collectors and old style game reviewers from YouTube. Alpha Omega Sin being one of them, the fucking prick. I got plenty of games where I had to but the second run label of some game, and I have no shame in it. If it's a great or excellent game, I do not care.
Ok, so first of all, I feel that 'lazy cash grab sequel' is a bit disingenuous, both because I feel that they did do enough to reinvent the gameplay wheel from HM1 with all the new characters/abilities (way more than what I feel is the textbook definition of lazy sequels, L4D2), and the fact that there wouldn't have even been a sequel had there not been so much fan admiration and want for one that surprised the devs (though I won't refute that it is a bit buggy).
Which leads into my second point, that the message of HM2 isn't some sort of nihilistic 'nothing matters' shtick, but rather 'the fetishization and celebration of violence is incredibly fucked up, you monsters'. The entire game, from top to bottom, is built around this theme, from all the characters being homicidal maniacs with flimsy excuses for their behavior (the only one to escape this being the soldier Beard) all the way to the ending (which I'm going to assume is the reason for thinking the game is nihilistic). The whole 'laughing at the people trying to figure everything out' is an especially weird complaint about a game that spends most of it's time adding backstory and context to it's predecessor's story (the Hawaiian war and Beard, Richter, and the writer), made even more weird by the fact that you got to the secret ending in HM1, wherein the devs actually laugh at you for trying to find more meaning in it's story by giving you an utterly ridiculous and convoluted reason that your character expresses absolutely no interest in.
Hell, if you had said that HM2 was the devs way of saying 'fuck you' to fans of the first game, I would agree with you. The Fans being the most obvious example (fans of the protagonist of HM1 who want to keep doing what he did and all get brutally murdered for it), but even the whole 'more people with guns with longer, unbroken sightlines for them'. This was deliberately to fuck over the careful players who would turtle around a corner, make a noise, and then bludgeon everyone who stepped around the corner, as I mentioned the last time I talked about HM2. Even the ending (the nuclear war that kills everyone) is less 'haha, you chumps actually cared about these characters' but rather a bit like the ghost of Christmas Future, showing just where this path of glorifying violence leads. The ending isn't some sort of rug pull, but the only inevitable outcome to such a horribly fucked up world that is HM, and was meant as a final slam of the door in the face of people who just need more of it by leaving no possibilities for another sequel (even to the point of making a level editor with a 'you want more then you are going to have to do it yourselves' mentality).
I'm not sure if I could handle ER 2, honestly. I'm at 65-70ish hours and working through the late game dungeons and honestly I just want be be done soon. I used wikis to help me avoid wasting time doing a lot of the mini-dungeons that I wouldn't get much out of but I still feel pretty close to done now. At least I think I've got pretty much everything I need to just be able to roll through the final bits, barred only by my ability to reach the next grace/boss and take the bosses down.
I've ready enjoyed the ride and I don't regret playing through and exploring all over the Lands Between, but these games feel LONG in the best of times and it feels really EPICALLY long here. Limgrave feels so long ago, I feel like I beat Radhan in a different lifetime, and even taking down Morgott was hours and hours ago in game and like two-three weeks ago in real life.
I did get the Demons Souls Remake for my PS5 but that's gonna wait for a couple months. At least I know it's not nearly as long(HLTB puts it at 20-30 hours) while I only played a couple hours of the original DS, IIRC, a lot of the challenge is based around the Souls formula which has since been iterated on by later games I have already played so it'll probably be a bit less of an undertaking.
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That is mainly frustration talking, but it's still lazy they couldn't bother to fix most of the bugs that were already present and very annoying in the first games.
I got all the backstories and all that, but it's still a fuck you for playing, even I was not the exact target. Everything about it feels "HA, ha! You're an idiot trying to figure anything out or extra!". And if it is about people in the audience being that depraved, than the developers sucked at communicating that.
The Fans were more obvious, and them I did not have problem with.
Congratulations, all that does not make me want to play the game at all, and spend time doing something else more important. All of it still feels like a poor piss take that was not needed, and punishes those that weren't asking for it, nor aware of the misaimed portion of the fan base. You can scream "ART!" all day; it does not mean the game is immune to criticism nor makes the problems any less problematic. That doesn't excuse the crappy level design, many fake difficulty moments, and enemies shooting off-screen with these big open levels with all of the GODDAMNED WINDOWS!
As far as I am concerned, there is only the first game and the Biker's scenario is the true ending to the series.
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Art is meant to be criticized. That's most of its purpose
Anyone who says 'art' doesn't understand art
Yeah, I understand that. I feel like I might have been too harsh calling it 'disingenuous' previously.
But again, most of the story was for the people trying to figure things out by giving lots of backstory to the world and characters of the first (in fact, I feel it went just a little too far with it and removed a lot of the mystique surrounding HM1). Hell, one of the least awful and homicidal characters in the game, the Writer, is a direct stand-in for the 'just looking for answers' crowd (you can even play him as a murderous psychopath to make his sections easier by allowing you to use guns and quicker executions to further drive this home). Plus, I feel like thinking that the ending being a 'fuck you for playing' is a bit like thinking that Saving Private Ryan is saying fuck you for watching because Tom Hanks dies at the end.
I mean, I don't think you can get anymore blatantly on the nose than the characterization and story of the Fans. I brought them up because they were the most obvious of this idea, but it shows up elsewhere too, such as the stories of the Actor and the Detective. The Actor tries to explain away his role in commiting violence with a 'I'm only playing a character' (while being weirdly into it), and the Detective is a stab at the people who thought they were playing some sort of hero (even while standing over the piles of corpses you leave in your wake).
I mean...okay? I never said it was art, that you couldn't criticize it or even that you had to like it. I've had this game since release and only actually completed it last year. I just feel reducing the whole thing to being some sort of nihilistic farce is a bit of a stretch.
Damn straight!
Anyone that says No More Heroes 3 does not have a good/deep combat system, obviously never bothered experimenting. They mostly likely stuck with the most basic moves, and never bothered with the training area. One of those people that speed through games to play the next one or move on to next review. The combat ain't Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, but if anyone's actually ever played a Suda51/Grasshopper game, then they should know better by now, that is not what the man and company are 100% striving for. They always wanted to do their own distinct thing, despite influences.
No More Heroes 2 has hidden depth as well, but not as refined in 1 or 3. Mechanics seem to be a bit more finnicky in Desperate Struggle.
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