The OTHER top games of 2022; The okays and the bads

[FakeSympathy]

Originally I was gonna create a thread that ties the good, the okay, and the bad games of 2022. But since we already have that with goty and pgoty discussion, Ithought it would be fun to create a thread that just talks about the okay and the bad games of 2022.

The rules:

• Games do not have to be necessarily from 2022 as long as you played it they are viable
• For games that are actually from 2022, you didn't have to necessarily played it but followed the new and reports regarding the title

My list of okay games:
Thymesia
As I’ve said in my review of this game, I always welcome new souls-like game trying to put a unique spin to the mechanics. This game certainly tries, but I also feel it can’t decide whether it was to be more like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or Sekiro.

AC Origins
Loved the story, both Bayek and Aya were great, and Ancient Egypt looks amazing. But the game also has some repetitive side objects for each sectors in the game, the combat didn’t feel too great, and that last part with Aya at Rome felt shoe-horned in.

The Witcher 1
Great story and characters, dark fantasy setting is actually dark, but the gameplay is horribly outdated. Thank god it’s getting a remake!

Gotham Knight
It just feels so sub-par compared to the likes of Arkham series. Hell, I’d take Arkham Knight any day over this game. The co-op can be fun, and the combat will definitely appeal to some. The dynamic between the Bat family is great tool. But the necessary grind makes it a chore to playthrough, 30 fps on the console is questionable since the city of Gotham doesn’t look that great, and some enemies are juts pure damage sponges. Soem of the attacks doesn’t career the impact that Arkham Knight combat did.

Stray
Look, I get people love cats, and the cat in-game is indeed cute. But I just feel that was its main selling point, and was designed for streamers. Because there really aren’t too many deep mechanics aside from platforming and puzzle solving.

The bad games:

Overwatch “2”
Tons of missing features from the first game, ridiculous grinding for anything unlockable, bullshit phone requirement that is still cauing problems, lied about battle pass not being p2w by having an unlockable hero, not enough improvements or changes to be called “2”, and still not featuring a full-fledged campaign at launch. The base gameplay and graphics might be savable, but that makes it all the worse that they want people to continuously shill out.

Diablo Immortal
Oh wow, another Acti-Blizz title. Who saw that coming? /s
This game is textbook definition of corporate greed especially when it comes to p2w mechanics. Gameplay feels very watered down version of Diablo 3, and the UI feels horrible on the pc port. Seriously, it feels like running the game on a emulator. The worst part is I think there is a great diablo lore and sotry behind all the greed, but it’s just too much for me to care any longer

Madden 23
Do I need to say more?

Saints Row
I seriously think the team didn’t understand what made the previous games so great (at least better than this one). What we have here is a watered-down, butchered, kiddie-friendly version that honestly can be passed for T rating. EVERYTHING that made the original games great and funny has been shallowed out to not offend anyone. Might as well have the game in a blank white space so nothing can be offensive!

 

[CriticalGaming]

I just finished getting the platinum on Gotham Knights. That game is wack, don't even consider it until it's no more than 20 bucks tops.

 

[BrawlMan]

That game is wack, don't even consider it until it's no more than 20 bucks tops.

The game is a rip-off, even at $20.

I really don't have much of a list, but I can add two games on the list. Both are on my on OK category, but the second game I consider slightly above decent.

Final Vendetta - It's not a bad game, and has fun combat mechanics, but is too short for the asking price of $24.99 digital, $40 physical. I am not even gonna talks about the prices for the deluxe editions. The game is only 5 stages long, no online co-op, and only bonus modes that have to be unlocked in some dumb, arbitrary way to "extend replay value". The game is another SOR/Final Fight throwback with more emphasis on SOR. Yet we already got more than enough brawler throwbacks that "homage" the series enough already. We got Streets of Rage 4, and Street Fighter VI is getting its own brawler mode. The game does have, arguably, the best techno soundtrack in video games of the 2020s and brawler history. Rivaling even Streets of Rage 4 in many regards. There is never a dull moment in FV's soundtrack. Get this game when it's $9.99 or lower.

Gungrave GORE - I know I am still going through this game, but I figured opening up about it. I do like the game, it has some QOL improvements much needed for the franchise. Such as upgrades, unlockable melee combos, and multiple Demolition Shots. Grave gets gap closers and can execute enemies. Or he can take grabbed enemies and use them as a human shield. He gets a Devil Trigger, but it does not heal him. The other positives I will give this game are the high-rendered cut-scenes, its soundtrack and having locale variety. Which was something lacking in Overdose with its stages going on forever, and not exactly telling you how to trigger the next stage events. The boss fights are fun too and provide some challenge. They're nothing special, but they work with what you're given, and most are fought in large spaces for you to flex your skills.

This game is not going to appeal to everyone, unless you're already a fan of the series, or don't mind old school arcade shooters. This game does have a rough start. The first few levels are fine, but it's when you get to the subway train level and a few levels afterward, that there are some weird difficulty spikes. For the first time in the series, there are pitfalls that can insta-kill you. Riding on top of the subway train, you can fall off and die if not careful, get knocked off via signs or shots/explosions, and can get insta-killed if not reaching a certain segment in time. The game spawns too many enemies in this particular segment, so it's best to bum rush through them and hope for the best. What does not help matters is Grave is still a walking corpse with a casket on his back. Grave moves about as fast as you think he would (his side dodge rolls are still fast though). That type of character should not be dealing with jumping mechanics of any kind, nor be put in scenarios with death pits. Also, anyone expecting this game to be like Vanquish do not play enough video games and need to be pay more attention.

Then there's a few levels afterwards where you're moving on a slow crane carrying a freight container. It's too fucking slow, the levels spawn too many enemies, and you either die from too much damage, or get knocked off. Starting all the way from that beginning section until you reach that checkpoint. I had to bump it down to Easy to get past it, then bump back to Normal for my current playthrough. After those rough sections, then the game tones it down with the dumb gimmicky sections and lets you get back to proper shooting.

I seriously don't know what Iggymob was thinking when designing some of these early levels. No one likes platforming for a character that can barely jump, let alone wants to be on the slowest and most tedious rail section. Who the fuck thought that this was a good idea? While the levels are not overly long, they spawn in a ton of enemies. I'm grateful, but they could have toned it down in a few sections. The game almost becomes a 3rd person Serious Sam. Luckily, the game does have enemy variety, but not to the crazy amount that Serious Sam offers with its shooting.

This franchise was never about innovation (other than the first game with its graphics and stylization), and just wants to be a fun ass shooter series. Gungrave and GG GORE achieve that, but the original is still the best. Overdose is not good and wasted potential, and the VR game no one asked for. As I said before, I like the game, but I do find it hard to recommend in some cases. The game is $50, but I got the game half off by trading in some games. The game is on Gamepass, if you don't want to risk the money. See how you like it. If it sticks or you can get used to the game's weird difficulty spikes, you'll find yourself a fun shooter. I enjoyed GG GORE more than most of the other AAA shooters out there, because the game is at least so damn honest about what it is. No shitty DLC, no microtransactions (other than pre-order bonus costume), and no lying in the advertisement.

 

[meiam]

Was ghostwire tokyo this year? I think it was. Anyway, really interesting game because it feel like they're 90% of the way to some amazing masterpiece and just didn't bother achieving it.

Massive city that feel closer to real life city than any I've ever player, couple with a good sense of exploration, lots of stuff to find across the rooftop of the city and nooks and cranny and actual scale, like massive skyscrapper that you can climb up. But the combat system is boring, only 4 weapon, none of which are interesting, you're supposed to be using some ancient magic but your weapon are essentially: machine gun, grenade, bow, sword. Nothing special about them, which means none of the enemy are interesting to fight. Story is super boring too, borrow from ancient folklore, which have all these crazy and weird story, but nah, boring story about some dude and his sister complex and some mysterious figure who want... nothing specific, just generically evil.

What a waste of good assets.

Otherwise don't really remember what I played this year/came out this year that are worth talking about, here's an attempt.

Total war warhammer 3 is pretty dang awesome, I really like the design of making 3 game worth of content (race/map area) and combining them. Hopefully they do a 40K version next, want to play as Tyrranid and Tau.

Geshin impact, still great, still awful story/writing but goddamn that exploration, presentation and music are top notch. The gacha aspect is easy to ignore and is really soft anyway, never spent a dime on it but probably played like 200 hours of it.

The last spell is out of EA (or almost), great tower defence/RPG game. RNG does kinda screw you over every once in awhile but its part of the game I guess.

Citizen sleeper, if you want more disco elysium it's about as close as it gets. Too easy though, I could ignore the game mechanic less than half way trough.

Sands of Salzaar, fun mount and blade like game with a lot of variety and more RPG mechanic, although developer are small, inexperienced and overly ambitious so a lot of it feel half baked. The fight also tend to just come down to whoever has the highest stats rather than actual strategy, your individual troop also quickly fall off in strength compare to your man character.

Hero hours, heroes of might and magic in beautiful 2D sprite form, it has all the strength of classic HOMM but also all the problem with it, wished they'd take a few more risk with it.

Kingdom reborn (I think it still is in EA but perfectly playable), if you ever played banished and though "man I wish it was possible to tech up and there was more useful tool to expand" well then kindgom reborn is the answer to that.

Old world, fun civilization like with nice idea, but has one major problem, war are extremely boring. Unit can move very very far every turn so every war become about extreme attrition of just slowly grinding trough a nearly infinite number of troops while throwing your nearly infinite number at them, a real shame.

 

[Hawki]

Alright, I kind of already did something like this on the original thread via the tier list, but since there's some elaboration here, I'll give quick thoughts. Since this rules out good games, that rules out Overwatch 1/2, and Sonic Frontiers, but I didn't play any truly bad games either, so unlike the tier list, I'm just going to do things in alphabetical order:

-Apex Legends: I suck at this game. Really, REALLY suck. That said, it's a fair amount of fun, and not bad, but I well, y'know, suck. At least the characters have personality and there's background lore. This isn't the first FPS I suck at on this list that I suck at, in case you're wondering, but, well, yeah.

-Batman: The Telltale Series - Season 1: This was...fine? I guess? Story's okay, gameplay's limited (but I knew that going in), the plot seems intent on going in a certain direction regardless of whatever decisions I make, it's...fine.

-Battlefield 2042: I only played a few matches of this over one weekend when it was free, so this arguably doesn't count, but I didn't think much of it. I think the NoPats are silly conceptually, I didn't think much of the gameplay, and while I'm not the best BF player in the world, I still reasonably enjoyed BFV. This? Not really. Also, apparently in the Battlefield universe, in 2042, climate change is heating everything up, but by 2142, we're in an ice age? Um, okay...

-Diablo Immortal: Best mobile game I've played (though I play it on PC), worst Diablo game. This game has received far too much hate, but I still have too many gripes with it to really like it. In terms of raw content, this probably has the most "stuff" in a Diablo game given the no. of activities you can engage in, but it's a case of quantity over quality. The story is...passable, but I'd argue that it's really two stories segmented into one, as there's a clear break from what's come before at Mount Zavain. I think Immortal has the best combat in the series, and the voice acting is stellar (even if some lines aren't voiced for whatever reason), but that's not enough to save it.

-Gears Tactics: Lots of fun to play (though got a bit repetitive towards the end), contrasted with having a really weak plot. I'd actually love to see more Gears games (heck, many games) using this formula, it just needs a better plot to buoy it.

-Quake Champions: If I sucked at Apex Legends, I really, REALLY suck at Quake Champions. Coupled with the game being practically dead, plus a dearth of any real lore, and at the end of the day, well, why bother? Id Software clearly didn't.

-Red Faction II: One of the stupiest games I've ever played (in terms of plot), and the gunplay is bog standard corridor shooting. It's weaker than the original, and that was never anything special either. Really, I kind of actually reccommend this game to see just how bonkers it actually is - it'll only take you 5 hours (likely less).

-World of Warcraft: The only reason I started playing this was to help with FFN stuff (yes, I'm still slowly writing that Warcraft story), and, look, I don't even like MMOs, and of the MMOs I've played, I'd still cite LOTRO as my favourite. Again, that's not to say it's bad, it's just not my cup of tea. To really get into this, I'd need far more time, and play it to the (near) exclusion of everything else, and while that's not a slight against the game per se, it's just not my cup of tea. Also, to be clear, this is Classic WOW - Burning Crusade/Wrath has a lot of QoL improvements over vanilla, so that's nice. Also, probably the best game on this list in terms of exploration. I mean, it's called "WORLD" of Warcraft, after all. Just gimme Warcraft IV, and we'll call it square.

-Xenoblade Chronicles 2: I'm still conflicted over this game. Compared to XC1, it's got higher highs, but lower lows, and on both gameplay and story, there's a plenthora of material I could draw from to cite as good/bad. XC1 is easily the better game, in case you're wondering. XC2...this is the game that had moments that made me embarassed to play, but also moments that drew me close to tears. It's got one of the most unique worlds I've seen in fantasy fiction, period, but it's a world that takes forever to really get into as the opening chapters are slow as hell. It's a game that deals with motifs of faith, death, decay, etc., yet is also the game where a boss drives a giant lolli doll mech, to fight your pre-existing lolli doll mech, who's previously beaten ANOTHER lolli doll mech (I wish I was making this up). And, look, I love boobs as much as the next guy, but the sexualization in this game is idiotic, which is a shame, because the writing for the characters are solid, but, well, yeah. I wish I could love this game, but I just can't.

 

[CriticalGaming]

So I guess the next game I should talk about is the big one. The one that is going to win every award this year because reasons.

Elden Ring. You guys can look at the Elden Ring thread for the deeper thoughts as to why I feel like this is the weakest FromSoft game since Demon's Souls. But it's bloated, overly long, exceptionally unbalanced, and unreplayable.

Elden Ring hits hard for some people, but for me the open world absolutely does not fit with Souls' game design.

 

[Worgen]

Vampire Survivor. Its good, but I don't get the opinion that its the best thing ever, which seems to be pretty common. The gameplay loop is good, the unlocks are good, the gameplay is good, but I'm not sure I would call it great.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Vampire Survivor. Its good, but I don't get the opinion that its the best thing ever, which seems to be pretty common. The gameplay loop is good, the unlocks are good, the gameplay is good, but I'm not sure I would call it great.

Honestly the only reason this game falls into my best games of 2022 list is simply because it was very addicting and a very fun gameplay loop for 2 dollars. It's not much of a game admittedly but it's cheap as fuck and great for what it is at it's price.

 

[Worgen]

Honestly the only reason this game falls into my best games of 2022 list is simply because it was very addicting and a very fun gameplay loop for 2 dollars. It's not much of a game admittedly but it's cheap as fuck and great for what it is at it's price.

You certainly get value for cost and its a decent game to play if you are listening to pod casts or something, but for me it falls into the 'time waster' category more then most games and I just find it ok.

 

[CriticalGaming]

So unlike my top games list, I feel like there is far more bad to come out of 2022 than good which sucks. So here are the games that sucked this year.

1. Dying Light 2 - The year didn't start off great for broken releases with Dying Light 2. An open world game with broken quests, broken mechanics, and a bad story. Dying Light 2 was a long time coming and it wasn't worth the wait. At best the game is exceptionally mediocre, at worst it's slightly better than another game on this list we'll get too later.

2. Grand Turismo 7 - It's been a long time since we got a full fledged sim racer on Playstation. Like Forza for Microsoft, Grand Turismo has fallen for slowing people to a money grind for cars to entice them to buy microtransactions to skip grinds. It's shady and fucked up, but the game itself is well made and if you can enjoy the grind or simply race for fun in small chunks then it's okay.

3. Elden Ring - I'm just putting this here for cataloging purposes. ER is probably the most disappointing game for me this year hands down.

4. Saints Row - This is probably the game that should be given the Worst of the Year award. Broken, Buggy, unbelievably cringe, stupid story, stupid characters, gameplay from 2002, Saint's Row took everything they learned from making Saint's Row games and threw it all out of the window. This game was so bad, volition works for another publisher now.

5. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet - Continuing with the theme of being broken and ugly, there is a fun game underneath the sheer shitty optimization on this game. It's really a shame that Game Freak simply has no respect for it's own franchise, and it's worse that they'll keep getting away with it because nobody actually cares if a Pokemon game is jank no matter how janky the core formula is still fun.

6. Gotham Knights - They really wanted to make a DC version of Marvel's Avenger's game, but thankfully they saw that people hated that pile of shit and they pivoted into an open world game and as a result the game is just a big fat "meh". It isn't high praise, but it's also not total shit.

 

[BrawlMan]

I feel like there is far more bad to come out of 2022 than good which sucks.

Speak for yourself. Depends on where you've been looking.

because nobody actually cares if a Pokemon game is jank no matter how janky the core formula is still fun.

I wouldn't go that far. People do care, ironically more so the younger fans, but Pokémon is such a hot franchise any fucks ups the super hardcore will make pathetic excuses. Or those on the heavy casual side won't notices, because they haven't played a game in decades. Remember too: whenever it comes to a new game, people care more about the waifus, hubandos, MILFS and DILFS.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So unlike my top games list, I feel like there is far more bad to come out of 2022 than good which sucks. So here are the games that sucked this year.
.

3. Elden Ring - I'm just putting this here for cataloging purposes. ER is probably the most disappointing game for me this year hands down.

Curious what your expectations were for it to wind up with that honor lol? I mean, I’ve read your complaints many times, but you must’ve had some sky high expectations.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Curious what your expectations were for it to wind up with that honor lol? I mean, I’ve read your complaints many times, but you must’ve had some sky high expectations.

I wanna say that I wanted something like open world Dark Souls 3, or better yet Bloodborne. But as it turns out, an open world does not suit the Souls formula as much as people might have expected or hoped. I think that's the problem fundamentally. The Souls game formula does not work for several reasons in an open world setting. For example because you are free to go anywhere, you can immediately head straight to some really strong item, summon, weapon, art, whatever, without any barrier to do so because any difficult challenge that might be in the way can easily just be avoided.

Key example of this, look at the Hoarfrost stomp axe that is simply sitting in a chest in the middle of Lilurnia. Which speed runners would run to, and originally be able to beat the game in 30 minutes because the art on that axe was crazy good. While there are several items that are somewhat limited to some sort of challenge or gameplay, there are lots in which can be avoided to get something to trivialize the game.

Additionally there are farming spots where you can get 100k runes in 1 minute, with zero fighting required.

Now here is the thing, these items and tricks are irrelevant on launch. Nobody knows shit and therefore it's a blind free-for-all to figure things out. But once people start making videos and figuring things out that's it. So think about anyone who comes to Elden Ring in the next year or so, or maybe buys the game for the upcoming DLC. There are so many videos that tell people where the best items are, how to get the best start, whatever. Here is the thing about the open world nature that isn't present in other Souls games.

Assuming the player isn't glitching through levels, there are no other souls games that you can skip bosses, or other challenges to deck yourself out in crazy gear. In fact most gear in most souls games isn't really that important. Souls is basically, finding a good weapon movement set you like, and improving your skill with that weapon to get through the game. There are no weapons in any other Souls games that will just annihilate bosses without effort. So in every other Souls game the player is expected to confront the bosses on something of a baseline level. You could argue that magic will make some bosses easy, at some point even magic will struggle against something that require the player to step up.

Point is, Souls games are loved because we all go through the same journey. We can approach it slightly differently true, the line of that journey is the same. In Elden Ring that's not the case, the guy using Rivers of Blood will have a drastically different experience than someone doing jumping R2 spam with a huge weapon who will be drastically different than someone blasting things away with Comet Azure. That isn't to mention using summons.

Then you have the fact that someone who plays Elden Ring now for the first time will have a DRASTICALLY different experience than someone who played on launch. They'll have full maps, guides, walkthroughs, and videos showing them anything they want. The sense of discovery is very different than when we all were new with the game. Top that off with the fact that Elden Ring is not worth playing 100% more than once. I would argue that the vast majority of players who might have 100%ed the game would never do it again. Discovery can only happen once, and with ER's very small pool of required content, trying to beat the game with different builds isn't as in depth as any other souls game.

Think about replaying any other souls game, for the most part you will have to engage with most, if not all of the bosses the game offers no matter what build you try. In ER you basically only have to do 10% of the game's bosses, give or take a few that might have the items you need for a given build. Now you could play as much of the game as you'd like on repeat playthroughs, but why would anyone bother with the vast majority of copy-pasta'd catacombs, caves, whatever unless there is absolutely something they need in one of them?

So as a result I can only come to the conclusion is that ER is a disappointment. Because while it's a hyped 1st time early adopter experience, I don't think it will stand the test of time the sway DS1 or BB will.

 

[meiam]

I wanna say that I wanted something like open world Dark Souls 3, or better yet Bloodborne. But as it turns out, an open world does not suit the Souls formula as much as people might have expected or hoped. I think that's the problem fundamentally. The Souls game formula does not work for several reasons in an open world setting. For example because you are free to go anywhere, you can immediately head straight to some really strong item, summon, weapon, art, whatever, without any barrier to do so because any difficult challenge that might be in the way can easily just be avoided.

Key example of this, look at the Hoarfrost stomp axe that is simply sitting in a chest in the middle of Lilurnia. Which speed runners would run to, and originally be able to beat the game in 30 minutes because the art on that axe was crazy good. While there are several items that are somewhat limited to some sort of challenge or gameplay, there are lots in which can be avoided to get something to trivialize the game.

Additionally there are farming spots where you can get 100k runes in 1 minute, with zero fighting required.

Now here is the thing, these items and tricks are irrelevant on launch. Nobody knows shit and therefore it's a blind free-for-all to figure things out. But once people start making videos and figuring things out that's it. So think about anyone who comes to Elden Ring in the next year or so, or maybe buys the game for the upcoming DLC. There are so many videos that tell people where the best items are, how to get the best start, whatever. Here is the thing about the open world nature that isn't present in other Souls games.

Assuming the player isn't glitching through levels, there are no other souls games that you can skip bosses, or other challenges to deck yourself out in crazy gear. In fact most gear in most souls games isn't really that important. Souls is basically, finding a good weapon movement set you like, and improving your skill with that weapon to get through the game. There are no weapons in any other Souls games that will just annihilate bosses without effort. So in every other Souls game the player is expected to confront the bosses on something of a baseline level. You could argue that magic will make some bosses easy, at some point even magic will struggle against something that require the player to step up.

Point is, Souls games are loved because we all go through the same journey. We can approach it slightly differently true, the line of that journey is the same. In Elden Ring that's not the case, the guy using Rivers of Blood will have a drastically different experience than someone doing jumping R2 spam with a huge weapon who will be drastically different than someone blasting things away with Comet Azure. That isn't to mention using summons.

Then you have the fact that someone who plays Elden Ring now for the first time will have a DRASTICALLY different experience than someone who played on launch. They'll have full maps, guides, walkthroughs, and videos showing them anything they want. The sense of discovery is very different than when we all were new with the game. Top that off with the fact that Elden Ring is not worth playing 100% more than once. I would argue that the vast majority of players who might have 100%ed the game would never do it again. Discovery can only happen once, and with ER's very small pool of required content, trying to beat the game with different builds isn't as in depth as any other souls game.

Think about replaying any other souls game, for the most part you will have to engage with most, if not all of the bosses the game offers no matter what build you try. In ER you basically only have to do 10% of the game's bosses, give or take a few that might have the items you need for a given build. Now you could play as much of the game as you'd like on repeat playthroughs, but why would anyone bother with the vast majority of copy-pasta'd catacombs, caves, whatever unless there is absolutely something they need in one of them?

So as a result I can only come to the conclusion is that ER is a disappointment. Because while it's a hyped 1st time early adopter experience, I don't think it will stand the test of time the sway DS1 or BB will.

It's not really the game fault if player spoil it for themselves.... And there's plenty of way to deck yourself in crazy good gear right at the beginning in other soul game, the dragon sword in DS1 comes to mind.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It's not really the game fault if player spoil it for themselves.... And there's plenty of way to deck yourself in crazy good gear right at the beginning in other soul game, the dragon sword in DS1 comes to mind.

The dragon sword is good, but also a limiting weapon as it is very difficult to upgrade early, and doesn't upgrade as far as other weapons that have far better scaling. And here is the thing, even with that sword it will not beat bosses for you the way weapons in ER will.

 

[immortalfrieza]

-Batman: The Telltale Series - Season 1: This was...fine? I guess? Story's okay, gameplay's limited (but I knew that going in), the plot seems intent on going in a certain direction regardless of whatever decisions I make, it's...fine.

Typical of Telltale games. The "choices" always lead to functionally the same outcomes no matter what the player decides to do with a minor detail changing at best. Telltale doesn't even bother to offer the illusion of choice, it becomes pretty plain even on the first playthrough that none of your choices matter. You could probably just watch all the cutscenes on a couple hour long video on Youtube and you would be effecting the outcome just as much as if you'd actually been playing it.

5. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet - Continuing with the theme of being broken and ugly, there is a fun game underneath the sheer shitty optimization on this game. It's really a shame that Game Freak simply has no respect for it's own franchise, and it's worse that they'll keep getting away with it because nobody actually cares if a Pokemon game is jank no matter how janky the core formula is still fun.

Well of course nobody cares. The only audience that pokemon has is either 8-10 year olds picking up a pokemon game for the first time and thus don't notice how bad it is, haven't gotten sick of it yet, or the competitive battlers who don't really care about the game itself and just want some more pokemon so they can build the "perfect" team for that generation. Game Freak has an infinite geyser of replacements for everybody who gets tired of the old formula and wants something new so they got lazy and just keep releasing copy pasted crap over and over.

The pokemon formula has been stale and repetitive for decades now. It's only really superficially changed with new types and new pokemon while the games themselves have done the same "beat 8 gyms, beat the elite four, beat some team of bad guys along the way" formula that the first game had. The series has made little to no attempt to retain it's old audience while still drawing in more. They don't even make that many spinoffs anymore that might cater to the old fans and when they do it's gimmicky stuff like games about petting Pokemon. Whenever I have that pokemon itch I prefer to go try some pokemon fan games like Pokemon Reborn which are made by pokemon fans that notice those flaws and have thus worked to correct them.

6. Gotham Knights - They really wanted to make a DC version of Marvel's Avenger's game, but thankfully they saw that people hated that pile of shit and they pivoted into an open world game and as a result the game is just a big fat "meh". It isn't high praise, but it's also not total shit.

Gotham Knights is weird. It's like the Arkham games but it's like it goes out of it's way to do everything the Arkham games did but worse. The combat is worse, the stealth is worse, the advancement is worse, travel is worse, Gotham itself is worse... Really, it wouldn't have taken all that that much to bring it up to the level of at least Arkham Origins if they just let it bake a bit more. The "Arkham but worse" is so uncannily ingrained into the game it's almost like they were deliberately trying to do so.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I wanna say that I wanted something like open world Dark Souls 3, or better yet Bloodborne. But as it turns out, an open world does not suit the Souls formula as much as people might have expected or hoped. I think that's the problem fundamentally. The Souls game formula does not work for several reasons in an open world setting. For example because you are free to go anywhere, you can immediately head straight to some really strong item, summon, weapon, art, whatever, without any barrier to do so because any difficult challenge that might be in the way can easily just be avoided.

Key example of this, look at the Hoarfrost stomp axe that is simply sitting in a chest in the middle of Lilurnia. Which speed runners would run to, and originally be able to beat the game in 30 minutes because the art on that axe was crazy good. While there are several items that are somewhat limited to some sort of challenge or gameplay, there are lots in which can be avoided to get something to trivialize the game.

I think FROM basically proved that open world DS3/BB is practically impossible, or at least with the intent of keeping that feel and focus intact. For me though, I didn’t mind. We’ve had half a dozen of these games beating us in the dicks and I welcomed the chance at wrecking bosses the same way for a change. I mean, sure a lot of people will still want more of a challenge and they can still do that.

It’s just one of the ways the game was made more accessible or “easy” for newcomers or casual players, having bleed or whatever OP weapons/skills. The main difference now being that bosses don’t have to be damage sponges, and spamming L2 vs R1 (+dodge roll). As an aside, barring perhaps Sekiro, mechanically ER is probably the best game FROM has made yet.

But I do get the idea of everyone going through the same journey, and the older games still have that. Again though here, I liked being able to proceed (for the most part) however I wanted. None of these games ever remain “fresh” or unspoiled months after release either, so again the main difference boils down to how much of a mandatory brick wall is in front of the player. I also think people would be complaining even more if FROM made a significantly larger percentage of bosses mandatory given the side effect inherent with open world design like repeated content.

Additionally there are farming spots where you can get 100k runes in 1 minute, with zero fighting required.

Which is another plus for me. Here’s the thing: I’ve never felt compelled to replay any of these games from scratch (well, I started a game of DS3 and Sekiro on PC but only played a few hours each), so the size, repeated content, etc. is pretty irrelevant to me. What matters is the game offer more freedom of progression and supports more build variations than ever before for the kind of people who play these games through NG+7 and beyond (though again I’ve only done that for trophies myself), so it’s easier than ever to go nuts with something new on whatever number of bosses. I haven’t started NG+ yet in ER but have tried about half a dozen builds so far just trying to find that personal sweet spot for that and presumably DLC.


Basically, yeah on one hand regarding stuff like story progression, pacing, balance, ER is a bit of a hot mess next to the older games, but the overarching playability can still be really tasty.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I think FROM basically proved that open world DS3/BB is practically impossible, or at least with the intent of keeping that feel and focus intact. For me though, I didn’t mind. We’ve had half a dozen of these games beating us in the dicks and I welcomed the chance at wrecking bosses the same way for a change. I mean, sure a lot of people will still want more of a challenge and they can still do that.

The difference is the challenge in Ds3 and BB is controlled. There is a baseline to that difficulty that always falls into the tough but fair category. ER does not share that design choice and that's been proven in many videos with input reading, animations with impossible to react start up frames, and much more. For some people there will never be a hard enough, as shown by people doing lvl 1 runs no problem but those people are a very very very very small portion of the players. So the choice for the average player will be to use a Mimic Tear and one of the crazy weapons or spells. This is bad design, because it shouldn't be either god-gamer levels of skill or cheese. That's why previous From games are so loved because while it takes a bit of effort to learn the skill set, most anyone can beat them without "abusive" tactics.

I mean fucking DSP has beat every souls game. DSP!!!! If you know.....you know.

None of these games ever remain “fresh” or unspoiled months after release either,

But they can. Most of the people playing Souls games for the first time, play them on reputation alone. While they may look up guides later when they get stuck, there is no reason to look up boss guides, or build guides because the fundamental way to beat every boss in BB is "Dodge attacks, and hit them back." There is no grand plan, what build does a hunter have really? Put points into the stat your weapon likes. That's it. So yes I believe a lot of the other souls games can still be played pretty blind.

In ER you are thrown into a giant fucking world and given a pat on the ass saying, "Good luck bro." So it's design in general is more promoting of looking something up to figure out where to go and what to do and when to do it and so on.

Like you said, it's not inherently bad and some people will really like this game design. But I believe that liking something doesn't mean it's good.

Which is another plus for me. Here’s the thing: I’ve never felt compelled to replay any of these games from scratch (well, I started a game of DS3 and Sekiro on PC but only played a few hours each), so the size, repeated content, etc. is pretty irrelevant to me. What matters is the game offer more freedom of progression and supports more build variations than ever before for the kind of people who play these games through NG+7 and beyond (though again I’ve only done that for trophies myself), so it’s easier than ever to go nuts with something new on whatever number of bosses. I haven’t started NG+ yet in ER but have tried about half a dozen builds so far just trying to find that personal sweet spot for that and presumably DLC

Does it though? I mean what do you mean by freedom of progression really? You are free to get lost and find random shit, but that's not always progression especially considering the huge amount of junk behind random cave boss number 324. Same thing for build variation, you are either big weapon, fast weapon, two weapon, or magic. That's really it, much the same way I don't really think the build variation in Souls games is generally good, nor do i think it's that important. The reason why "builds" feel different in Souls games is strictly because the weapons feel different due to the move sets. But if you are a person hitting a thing with a weapon, the type of weapon really isn't relevant because the playstyle is mostly the same, hit the guy with your thing and dodge away to not get hit by the guy's thing.

I don't much see a way to argue how a Katana plays differently than a longsword. Nor can I really find a way to argue how Comet Azure is different than summoning a moon to land on someone's face.

Let me be clear it's fine to like the game, and it's fine to enjoy how it did things. People like different types of games. I hate Breath of the Wild exclusively for how shit the weapon durability system is, but some people love the fuck out of that......some people also love cocaine so what do I know?

 

[BrawlMan]

mean fucking DSP has beat every souls game. DSP!!!! If you know.....you know.

So? The butt-fuck beat all of the Dead Space games, and was able to beat most of the final bosses first try in Guardians Heroes (He did do co-op with the same former buddy. They did Dead Space 3 as well.). Still doesn't change the fact Phil sucks and most hate him, and have no respect.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Typical of Telltale games. The "choices" always lead to functionally the same outcomes no matter what the player decides to do with a minor detail changing at best. Telltale doesn't even bother to offer the illusion of choice, it becomes pretty plain even on the first playthrough that none of your choices matter. You could probably just watch all the cutscenes on a couple hour long video on Youtube and you would be effecting the outcome just as much as if you'd actually been playing it.

Video games don't feasibly have much of an ability to alter the main story path (because of the amount of work it takes to legitimately do that). So you can have major choices on side stories that branch off the main quest like how Mass Effect gave you those type of major choices that weren't major to the main storyline. The other purpose of choice is building your character's character and role-playing. You can basically play the Batman Telltale games as if Batman was in essence Archer. That's why everyone had such OSD about making their Shepard look just right for each of the Mass Effect sequels in the character creator because it was their Shepard, not that it was their story. The choices do matter very much in the end.