Your video game hot take(s) thread

[BrawlMan]

Stuttering Craig said Turtles in Time (SNES) was arguably one of the best beat'em ups of all time. He was wrong even back then, and it was really just SNES hype man talk. Don't get me wrong; excellent game and use of the license, but there were and are better beat'em ups than Turtles IV. For best beat'em up of all time, there are at least 10 better options. Craig ended up his opinion years later in 2022 with Shredder's Revenge, but at least that makes more sense.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Like a lot of Capcom's games, Mega Man 11 is deliberately built around its controls, and the things that it both allows you to do and prevents you from doing. You can't shoot in multiple directions with the Mega Buster because that's what the special weapons are for. Knowing when you need to use them, and when you could use them to make things easier or just work with the Buster, is a key part of the game's mechanical depth.

Completely agree, observably it's part of the intended design and I've have no reasonable arguments against the philosophy nor the implementation they've gone with there. But also it feels so wrong! Which is purely a "me" problem, am fully aware of that (a disclaimer am tempted to add to all posts from now on tbf lol). At least It's nothing like the Xbox version of Deadly Premonition with the unchangeable driving controls swapping the R accelerate/L Brake-Reverse generational standard for seemingly no good reason. Being raised - videogamically speaking? - on mostly racing games, permanent psychic damage was incurred trying to adapt, without success!

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

My first hot take of the year is that I don't wanna read in video games any more and that there's almost no reason for me to have to.

Now... of course I'm not talking about accessibility here. Yes of course there should be subtitles and captioning and all that, of course.

I'm talking about as a way to distribute narrative exposition or mechanics tutorials.

I just think that graphics, technology, and design principles have advanced so much that we don't need it any more.

Especially in narrative, and especially in big budget games. So let's say we're talking about our Sonys and AssCreeds and Marvels and whatnot- you got cut scenes, voice acting, mo-cap.. why I gotta read anything? Finding notes for lore and background- that's from old-school when it was the only way to do this stuff.

Indy/small games, that can't afford voice acting.. ok, so here's the double-hot-take- maybe AI voice in these cases is acceptable then. Maybe then rely less on dumping exposition on us and use visuals. Show don't tell, you know.

What about Disco Elysium and Shadow of Doubt- well those are like its own genres. Shadow of Doubt is an investigation game so of course you're gonna read notes and clues that's the point. Papers Please has Papers in the title obviously you're reading- that's the point of these games so they're good for those that like that sort of thing. Even Disco Elysium added voice as soon as their game blew up and they could afford it- but even then that is a game that has no combat so reading walls of text is kind of the point.

And that's why I don't play any of these game- because I hate hate hate reading text on screens. I just find it mechanically an unpleasant, eye-straining experience. And, yeah, that's why I'm playing a video game- do push buttons and do stuff and occassionaly watch a visual spectacle not read.

I love reading... books, and such. Articles, whatever. Just like I don't want an amime cut scene to appear in the middle of a Pro Publica investigation into the corruption of the pharmeceutical industry, I don't appreciate a wall of text in my samurai action games.

Mechanics is trickier- you gotta 'splain stuff to players and video games are complicated. The thing in the beginning of Dark Souls where you get a little cut scene name-checking all the dumb made-up proper nouns and then you control your dude and get brief in-context controls as you move along is great.

Part of what inspired this post is Cocoon, a game with zero text, and my favorite game of the year, and those two things are related. Now, granted, the game mechanics are extremely simple, it's just a joystick and two buttons, so this is an extreme case, but it does demonstrate how far good design can take you without words.

I'm playing the FF7 prequel remake and it's got tons of text explaining the upgrade nonsense- materia, and fusing, and accessories, and blah blah blah. And, yeah, you need all that text to explain all this nonsense but ultimately I just don't think these mechanics are particularly good because I only use like 5 out of 50 things and even video guides tell me to use a couple, so it's all just noise to me. So if the game design is focused, the explanations can be focused and minimal and you don't need to read bunch of boring crap on a screen maybe?

So I guess I'm saying that volumes of text when it comes to tutorials can be signs of week or bloated game design. While I am suspecting that text for narrative exposition may be increasingly a sign of laziness or lack of imagination as technology and game design capability continue to increase.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

My first hot take of the year is that I don't wanna read in video games any more and that there's almost no reason for me to have to.

Now... of course I'm not talking about accessibility here. Yes of course there should be subtitles and captioning and all that, of course.

I'm talking about as a way to distribute narrative exposition or mechanics tutorials.

I just think that graphics, technology, and design principles have advanced so much that we don't need it any more.

Especially in narrative, and especially in big budget games. So let's say we're talking about our Sonys and AssCreeds and Marvels and whatnot- you got cut scenes, voice acting, mo-cap.. why I gotta read anything? Finding notes for lore and background- that's from old-school when it was the only way to do this stuff.

Indy/small games, that can't afford voice acting.. ok, so here's the double-hot-take- maybe AI voice in these cases is acceptable then. Maybe then rely less on dumping exposition on us and use visuals. Show don't tell, you know.

What about Disco Elysium and Shadow of Doubt- well those are like its own genres. Shadow of Doubt is an investigation game so of course you're gonna read notes and clues that's the point. Papers Please has Papers in the title obviously you're reading- that's the point of these games so they're good for those that like that sort of thing. Even Disco Elysium added voice as soon as their game blew up and they could afford it- but even then that is a game that has no combat so reading walls of text is kind of the point.

And that's why I don't play any of these game- because I hate hate hate reading text on screens. I just find it mechanically an unpleasant, eye-straining experience. And, yeah, that's why I'm playing a video game- do push buttons and do stuff and occassionaly watch a visual spectacle not read.

I love reading... books, and such. Articles, whatever. Just like I don't want an amime cut scene to appear in the middle of a Pro Publica investigation into the corruption of the pharmeceutical industry, I don't appreciate a wall of text in my samurai action games.

Mechanics is trickier- you gotta 'splain stuff to players and video games are complicated. The thing in the beginning of Dark Souls where you get a little cut scene name-checking all the dumb made-up proper nouns and then you control your dude and get brief in-context controls as you move along is great.

Part of what inspired this post is Cocoon, a game with zero text, and my favorite game of the year, and those two things are related. Now, granted, the game mechanics are extremely simple, it's just a joystick and two buttons, so this is an extreme case, but it does demonstrate how far good design can take you without words.

I'm playing the FF7 prequel remake and it's got tons of text explaining the upgrade nonsense- materia, and fusing, and accessories, and blah blah blah. And, yeah, you need all that text to explain all this nonsense but ultimately I just don't think these mechanics are particularly good because I only use like 5 out of 50 things and even video guides tell me to use a couple, so it's all just noise to me. So if the game design is focused, the explanations can be focused and minimal and you don't need to read bunch of boring crap on a screen maybe?

So I guess I'm saying that volumes of text when it comes to tutorials can be signs of week or bloated game design. While I am suspecting that text for narrative exposition may be increasingly a sign of laziness or lack of imagination as technology and game design capability continue to increase.

There are caveats to this I think though. Like with FROM games, the item descriptions are what enrich the game world, like the connective tissue for everything. There’s just no practical way this could be done with mocap/voice performances due to budget, time, etc. So it’s there if people want to partake in getting more out of the games.

Even narrative-heavy games like The Witcher 3 have this. Think of all the books and whatnot found out in the world that can be read for extra context. Maybe you didn’t get that down and dirty, but then there’s also the inventory stuff like character descriptions, tutorials, bestiaries, etc.

I get not wanting to read stuff in games, but it really depends on the what and how of it all. If it’s there to help flesh things out, I don’t see the harm. But if it’s impeding progress or testing the player’s patience when it could’ve been done more effectively , then yeah that’s problematic. On the flip side, sometimes story-driven stuff can also test the player’s patience when it interrupts the flow of gameplay. It’s probably one of the biggest challenges of modern game design to balance it all.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

There are caveats to this I think though. Like with FROM games, the item descriptions are what enrich the game world, like the connective tissue for everything. There’s just no practical way this could be done with mocap/voice performances due to budget, time, etc. So it’s there if people want to partake in getting more out of the games.



Even narrative-heavy games like The Witcher 3 have this. Think of all the books and whatnot found out in the world that can be read for extra context. Maybe you didn’t get that down and dirty, but then there’s also the inventory stuff like character descriptions, tutorials, bestiaries, etc.



I get not wanting to read stuff in games, but it really depends on the what and how of it all. If it’s there to help flesh things out, I don’t see the harm. But if it’s impeding progress or testing the player’s patience when it could’ve been done more effectively , then yeah that’s problematic. On the flip side, sometimes story-driven stuff can also test the player’s patience when it interrupts the flow of gameplay. It’s probably one of the biggest challenges of modern game design to balance it all.

Ok.. so, yeah, I played all the FromSofware games and read all the things.



And The Witcher 3 is my favorite game of all time and I happily read all the things in it multiple times.

But here's the thing- those games are both exceptional, and, more to my point- old now. The Witcher 3 came out in 2015. Dark Souls came out in 2011 and each iteration has been the same in its lore thing. And I just think a general problem is that lesser games lazily copy from the best. There's a greater point I've made that one reason I so obsessed with the Witcher 3 is that so many games keep trying to copy it and don't measure up.

If the next planned Witcher game has the same kind of in-game books and such, though, I will be disappointed- this is my whole point- things advance. We don't need this any more. Unless a book is relevant.

Ok let's use an example- in The Witcher 3 there are points where Geralt actually has to read something to proceed: the Nilfgaardian's notes about Ciri's wereabouts in Velen; Keira's book about the Ladies of the Woods; Dandelion's ledger, etc. And in order to progress you just have to click on it but it's up to the player whether to actually read it or not. I think this is fine, it's once in a while and in-context dramatically logical.
But having the points of interest have all these notes, and all these random books explaining things irrelevent to the game like Zerrakania and gnomes playing tricks- yeah I get that it's world-building but that just feels lazy at this point. Like those huge books in the Elder Scrolls games. I dunno, make a web site or something for people to go to if they want that stuff.

I haven't played Cyberpunk so I don't know if CDProjekt moved away from this sort of thing or not.

Item descriptions to explain lore in Dark Souls was a cute idea and nice for its time but if anyone does it now I'll be like- oh, you're doing a Dark Souls, and you will never be Dark Souls.

 

[BrawlMan]

My first hot take of the year is that I don't wanna read in video games any more and that there's almost no reason for me to have to.

Now... of course I'm not talking about accessibility here. Yes of course there should be subtitles and captioning and all that, of course.

I'm talking about as a way to distribute narrative exposition or mechanics tutorials.

I just think that graphics, technology, and design principles have advanced so much that we don't need it any more.

Especially in narrative, and especially in big budget games. So let's say we're talking about our Sonys and AssCreeds and Marvels and whatnot- you got cut scenes, voice acting, mo-cap.. why I gotta read anything? Finding notes for lore and background- that's from old-school when it was the only way to do this stuff.

Indy/small games, that can't afford voice acting.. ok, so here's the double-hot-take- maybe AI voice in these cases is acceptable then. Maybe then rely less on dumping exposition on us and use visuals. Show don't tell, you know.

What about Disco Elysium and Shadow of Doubt- well those are like its own genres. Shadow of Doubt is an investigation game so of course you're gonna read notes and clues that's the point. Papers Please has Papers in the title obviously you're reading- that's the point of these games so they're good for those that like that sort of thing. Even Disco Elysium added voice as soon as their game blew up and they could afford it- but even then that is a game that has no combat so reading walls of text is kind of the point.

And that's why I don't play any of these game- because I hate hate hate reading text on screens. I just find it mechanically an unpleasant, eye-straining experience. And, yeah, that's why I'm playing a video game- do push buttons and do stuff and occassionaly watch a visual spectacle not read.

I love reading... books, and such. Articles, whatever. Just like I don't want an amime cut scene to appear in the middle of a Pro Publica investigation into the corruption of the pharmeceutical industry, I don't appreciate a wall of text in my samurai action games.

Mechanics is trickier- you gotta 'splain stuff to players and video games are complicated. The thing in the beginning of Dark Souls where you get a little cut scene name-checking all the dumb made-up proper nouns and then you control your dude and get brief in-context controls as you move along is great.

Part of what inspired this post is Cocoon, a game with zero text, and my favorite game of the year, and those two things are related. Now, granted, the game mechanics are extremely simple, it's just a joystick and two buttons, so this is an extreme case, but it does demonstrate how far good design can take you without words.

I'm playing the FF7 prequel remake and it's got tons of text explaining the upgrade nonsense- materia, and fusing, and accessories, and blah blah blah. And, yeah, you need all that text to explain all this nonsense but ultimately I just don't think these mechanics are particularly good because I only use like 5 out of 50 things and even video guides tell me to use a couple, so it's all just noise to me. So if the game design is focused, the explanations can be focused and minimal and you don't need to read bunch of boring crap on a screen maybe?

So I guess I'm saying that volumes of text when it comes to tutorials can be signs of week or bloated game design. While I am suspecting that text for narrative exposition may be increasingly a sign of laziness or lack of imagination as technology and game design capability continue to increase.

I'm going with no on most of that. Not every game needs a wall or text of course, there's people who just love reading in games or like looking at the typography design and menu design. Especially when they complement each other. This is something a lot of old school games and games from the PS1 and PS2 got right with their menu designs and sound effects. I don't read text every single time and every game, but as long as it's clear and to the point and doesn't drag on too long, I usually don't have a problem. Though I usually save it afterward unless it's woven in part of the narrative really well. This sounds more like a you issue. You don't have to read all that stuff, at the same time there's plenty of people who pick up the slack for you. They will not be complaining.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

> This is something a lot of old school games and games from the PS1 and PS2 got right with their menu designs and sound effects.

Yes... my point. Old school. I am absolutely NOT retroactively criticizing those games. I'm talking about new and future games.

And more my thinking is about explaining and tutorializing- optional lore stuff is just optional lore stuff. I'm fine with equating reading tomes of dorky lore with clearing every ? on a map- it's there for those that want it and leave the rest of us alone. Ok. But I don't like the action stopping because I have to read a description about how to upgrade some item I don't have yet, or that I can play a DLC I don't have, or that I should really check out some blacksmith when I have time even though I don't have any armor yet or whatever.
More importantly, the whole act of seeing a dumb-face character standing there silently while text scrolls on the bottom and I have to press X to see the next text ten times... this has got to go! Make them talk, or make the exposition shorter, or make it happen dynamically. This is the gaming equivalent of modern black and white movies- like.. we don't need to do that any more, we have color now.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Ok.. so, yeah, I played all the FromSofware games and read all the things.



And The Witcher 3 is my favorite game of all time and I happily read all the things in it multiple times.

But here's the thing- those games are both exceptional, and, more to my point- old now. The Witcher 3 came out in 2015. Dark Souls came out in 2011 and each iteration has been the same in its lore thing. And I just think a general problem is that lesser games lazily copy from the best. There's a greater point I've made that one reason I so obsessed with the Witcher 3 is that so many games keep trying to copy it and don't measure up.

If the next planned Witcher game has the same kind of in-game books and such, though, I will be disappointed- this is my whole point- things advance. We don't need this any more. Unless a book is relevant.

Ok let's use an example- in The Witcher 3 there are points where Geralt actually has to read something to proceed: the Nilfgaardian's notes about Ciri's wereabouts in Velen; Keira's book about the Ladies of the Woods; Dandelion's ledger, etc. And in order to progress you just have to click on it but it's up to the player whether to actually read it or not. I think this is fine, it's once in a while and in-context dramatically logical.
But having the points of interest have all these notes, and all these random books explaining things irrelevent to the game like Zerrakania and gnomes playing tricks- yeah I get that it's world-building but that just feels lazy at this point. Like those huge books in the Elder Scrolls games. I dunno, make a web site or something for people to go to if they want that stuff.

I haven't played Cyberpunk so I don't know if CDProjekt moved away from this sort of thing or not.

Item descriptions to explain lore in Dark Souls was a cute idea and nice for its time but if anyone does it now I'll be like- oh, you're doing a Dark Souls, and you will never be Dark Souls.

I think what actually is bothering you is that you feel games have started from the age old adage of "Show, don't tell." Games have perhaps gone too far in feeling a need to spell everything out through text. I don't mean handholding though, some of the best teaching you can do in a game is done through allowing the player to DO an action rather than just telling them how and sending them into the deep end of the pool.

I feel this is another side effect of more power and options in the hardware. Older games had fewer ways to communicate and had to do so as quickly as possible.

Then again, some games are just more complicated. One I've been enjoying recently, Astrea, has a LOT of keywords and effects in it that have numerous combinations and ways to be used. One of the characters, Orion, is VERY complicated to use thanks to the number of keywords and effects he has in his kit by default. All of these things need a lot of text to translate, there's no way to onboard someone to that game without text. Once you understand the game then you can start relying mostly on icons and colors, but that requires a lot of experience with it.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I think what actually is bothering you is that you feel games have started from the age old adage of "Show, don't tell." Games have perhaps gone too far in feeling a need to spell everything out through text. I don't mean handholding though, some of the best teaching you can do in a game is done through allowing the player to DO an action rather than just telling them how and sending them into the deep end of the pool.

I feel this is another side effect of more power and options in the hardware. Older games had fewer ways to communicate and had to do so as quickly as possible.

Then again, some games are just more complicated. One I've been enjoying recently, Astrea, has a LOT of keywords and effects in it that have numerous combinations and ways to be used. One of the characters, Orion, is VERY complicated to use thanks to the number of keywords and effects he has in his kit by default. All of these things need a lot of text to translate, there's no way to onboard someone to that game without text. Once you understand the game then you can start relying mostly on icons and colors, but that requires a lot of experience with it.

Certainly the show don't tell is a big part of it, I think I used that phrase myself in a recent post. The whole fun of games is its ability to do a lot of cool showing, right?

Is this a PC game you're playing? I think this is also a part of it for me. I am a pure console gamer and always have been. Even when I built PC's, I plugged TVs and controllers into them and used them as consoles for gaming. I sit at a kb+m and squint at a monitor all day to make the money to buy the games I can play with a controller and big TV (or the occasional hand-held).

So I get having a keyboard and learning all the commands but I don't wanna do that personally, and it's annoying when that kind of thing is encroaching into my couch+controller gaming. That's why I'm a little cold on Larian and the explosion of cRPG into console and mainstream- not the games themselves obviously but this year's discourse over how it's an example of how to do choice and why it's better than other games and all this- dear god, is that where we're headed, where "good" games means more text and icons and commands and branching choices? That's only one way to do something not an inherently better way and it primarily benefits PC gaming.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Certainly the show don't tell is a big part of it, I think I used that phrase myself in a recent post. The whole fun of games is its ability to do a lot of cool showing, right?

Is this a PC game you're playing? I think this is also a part of it for me. I am a pure console gamer and always have been. Even when I built PC's, I plugged TVs and controllers into them and used them as consoles for gaming. I sit at a kb+m and squint at a monitor all day to make the money to buy the games I can play with a controller and big TV (or the occasional hand-held).

So I get having a keyboard and learning all the commands but I don't wanna do that personally, and it's annoying when that kind of thing is encroaching into my couch+controller gaming. That's why I'm a little cold on Larian and the explosion of cRPG into console and mainstream- not the games themselves obviously but this year's discourse over how it's an example of how to do choice and why it's better than other games and all this- dear god, is that where we're headed, where "good" games means more text and icons and commands and branching choices? That's only one way to do something not an inherently better way and it primarily benefits PC gaming.

It is on PC but it's played entirely with your mouse. It's a dice building Roguelike game.

I certainly hear you on how cool it is when a game like Cocoon or Journey get made that don't need any dialogue in them though.

 

[BrawlMan]

Yes... my point. Old school. I am absolutely NOT retroactively criticizing those games.

I know and understood you fine there.

I'm talking about new and future games.

Yeah, most are gonna be doing there own thing any way when it comes to text. Especially the indie.

More importantly, the whole act of seeing a dumb-face character standing there silently while text scrolls on the bottom and I have to press X to see the next text ten times... this has got to go! Make them talk, or make the exposition shorter, or make it happen dynamically. This is the gaming equivalent of modern black and white movies- like.. we don't need to do that any more, we have color now.

This one I can agree with you on, and I hate the types you can't skip the whole conversation with the press of a button.

I'll tell you one of my favorite use of text, lore, or extra character details in a AAA game. Devil May Cry 5. The DMC franchise is no stranger to this, as you would unlock character and enemy files as you progressed through each game. Normally, you would have to access them while pausing your game during a mission. DMC4 started the trend of making these lore entries separate and in their own menu. Yet DMC5 makes it even better by adding flavor text from one of the new characters, Nico. You know it's her, because of the way the dialect is written and she has a Southern accent. Her descriptions either add more context, eases in newcomers, or reveals something about the characters and the world they inhabit. That includes even the demons too. There's even a manifesto from Morrison, a character from the anime, that ties backstory and references events from the DMC1 prequel novel! You only read the first page in Nero's 2nd mission, but more of the manifesto becomes unlocked as you progress the game. It's 4 pages total, and what's great is these files or documents never out stay their welcome and are not overly long. They are precise and the right length. The game never prompts you for these, and you more or less have to go to the gallery section to find out. The only prompt you get when selecting gallery, is getting an exclamation icon for anything new.

There is an additional bonus on NG+ where completing each mission with nets you photos (2 for S-Rank, 1 for A-Rank) and one line of flavor text from Nico showing what immediately happened after completing a mission, or our devil hunters doing something fun in-between missions. Or photo from the past in some of the character's childhood.

 

[BrawlMan]

This is crazy hot take right here. I can't even agree or disagree, because I have not played the original TimeSplitters since it came out. I have way more memories of Future Perfect, than either of the first two games.

​

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League looks terrible and the more I see the worse it gets.

 

[BrawlMan]

Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League looks terrible and the more I see the worse it gets.

Congratulations, you're not alone. Most people aren't looking forward to it.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

I don't think any legitimate human has publicly announced positive feelings towards suicide squad that I've seen so far. Would recommend savouring the moment of almost unanimous agreement, calm is a dwindling resource.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Is too late for me to edit in, but rereading last post am not sure if am crazy or accidentally sounded threatening or sinister. If not crazy, much apologies! If crazy, well, business as usual.

 

[BrawlMan]

Is too late for me to edit in, but rereading last post am not sure if am crazy or accidentally sounded threatening or sinister. If not crazy, much apologies! If crazy, well, business as usual.

Dude, your fine. Nothing wrong with any of your previous statement.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Is too late for me to edit in, but rereading last post am not sure if am crazy or accidentally sounded threatening or sinister. If not crazy, much apologies! If crazy, well, business as usual.

We're all mad here.

 

[Worgen]

I kinda like it when a fps game takes away your weapons. It gives the opportunity for more interesting encounters since a lot of the times when you use your most powerful weapons, it tends to trivialize things and losing those makes you have to think again. It also means you are about to encounter a pretty well balanced part of the game since the devs can just focus on balancing that area with a fresh inventory, instead of all the weapons you have gotten, plus any secret ones you found.