The combat style that has taken over third person action games is wearying, bland, and I for one maybe have had enough.
Games I'm talking about include the Horizon games, recent God of War, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Evil West.
I've complained about this here and there but it's really come to a turning point for me where I will have to stop playing my favorite of type of game, either for a while or permanently until something changes.
My issue with this style of combat is that it fights against itself. These games offer wonderful looking enemies with cool move sets and interesting, wonderful weapons and tool with which to combat them. These games are also graphically gorgeous and rely on combat as the primary tension and challenge because these are often what Yahtzee calls "ghost train rides" on account of how linear they are, or even the open world ones like Horizon are maps with icons and therefore easy to navigate.
But in order to make that combat challenging, basically what they do is give you mobs of projectiles that you have to dodge. So in effect, the close-up 3rd person action turns into a defacto hybrid weird bullet hell. But with old-school bullet hells, you have full visibility (anyone remember Super R-Type on the SNES? my jam, yo). With 3D 3rd person, and the camera now up against your character's shoulder or ass, it's just a bunch of shit flying at you.
Then as the game progresses, there are more and more enemies shooting more and more projectiles. DODGE DODGE DODGE DODGE... when is it my turn to use any of the cool weapons you have? This is the "crap flying at you from everywhere" phenomenon that I been complaining about.
In order to help the player see where attacks are coming from, there are visual aid markers, like arrows or triangles. They may change color depending on how imminent the attack is (ie, yellow for incoming, red for about to hit you). It's nice that game devs have figured out how to remove extraneous HUD elements that used to clutter the screen, but now it's replaced by combat aid markers that clutter the screen, and it's painful because those are just there to make up for how silly the rest of combat has gotten.
It's also why it pains me that Witcher 3 combat being "bad" has become gospel among a certain segment of hardcore gamers. Why is it bad, because you can see everything, because you can determine when an enemy attacks by actually watching the enemy? Am I going crazy here? Lemme tell you- I been replaying it and it's so much more satisfying than God of War or Evil West combat.
Sekiro's combat is excellent not just because of the amazing posture/parry system (though, yeah, that is awesome), but also because most of the fights are limited to a few enemies or just one enemy and you can SEE them, so it's like a duel. The great tragedy of Elden Ring for me is that at times it feels like Horizon: Forbidden West, with crap flying around all stupid.
Guardians, Evil West, and of course Ragnarok- I loved these games, going through levels and progressing through the story. I actually like "ghost train rides," whatever. And often the combat felt good- animations these days have gotten insanely fun to see and when things come together, it's visceral and exciting. But there is this thin line between excitement and tedium, and when I find myself spamming the dodge button and watching yellow arrows I want to turn the machine off and read a book. And this is happening more and more and defining AAA action games to me.
The next game I worry might be like this is the sequel to Jedi Fallen Order. Before completing Evil West it was potentially a day 1 release purchase for me, but now I dunno.
My next game will be Dead Space remake. Watching video clips, it doesn't look like it has this, it looks like you face enemies directly. That might be nice.