What are you talking about? Knowing when to hide behind a bench and wipe the raspberry jam out of your eyes is how the Allies won World War II!
Your video game hot take(s) thread
- Thread starter Dany_the_penguin
- Start date
That would explain why my grandfather had a shed full of army surplus napkins.
"Yeah. And then when I got in, I suddenly got this feeling of innere peace. I can't put it into words. I feel...safe. Like this is where I was meant to be. Like I'd found the key to true happiness. ... Does that make any sense?"
We're ending Q1 of 2023, how we feelin'?
I am going to allow myself a grumpy old man rant about the the state of the world, since I never do these and always roll my eyes when others do these. I mean yes I rant about specific games or mechanics but I hate the whole "games these days suck" thing. However, I am in a "games these days suck" mood today and it's all because:
Remakes, remasters, sequels, spiriitual successors.
This is the first year in a while where I'm really not excited about anything coming out.
Most of it is around sequels. My most anticipated games of 2022 were were Elden Ring, Horizon: FW, and Ragnarok, and while I enjoyed them all to some degree, only Ragnarok hit my hard. This year we got Jedi 2, Spiderman 2, Assassins Creed Mirage as the big ticket sequels for franchises I'm invested in and I already decided I'll not play them on release. They all feel Horizon: FW to me- likely to be competent continuations of things I kind of like, which I can wait for.
Ok so what about other stuff. Well my goodness, it's so much remakes. I'm glad folks love Resident Evil and Dead Space but excuse me if I'm not in love with putting nostalgia as the pinnacle of gaming culture right now. Every round-up of games releases lately is remake- Kirby, Final Fanatasy, even my beloved Witcher.
Even more sinister than direct remakes are "spiritual successors." Wo Long is a shitty Sekiro; The Finals is Battlefield but good? (which was already good, then bad, I dunno...)
Spiderman 2 is coming out but I already played that game, it was called Miles Morales. But this new one will be a new game but also have Miles Morales and they gonna charge $70 for this? Honestly how good can that game possibly be, it can't be great, it can't. At best it will be "more of a thing we liked 5 years ago, a quality production but it cannot be different because it HAS to deliver on the web slinging traversal that made the game good in the first place. So we know what we're getting.
And yes this from the guy that still plays Assassins Creeds, the franchise synonymous with "same old shit," but at least I understand why folks rag on it and I never go around recommending any of the games past the first two. Now Jedi and Spiderman and Sonys all feel like AssCreeds.
Ok, indy indy, play indy, look at how good indy is, blah blah blah. Lemme tell you if I never play another roguelike or metroidvania again it'll be too soon.
Hi-Fi Rush was a good time but it's main selling point is "reminds me of a 360 game." So.. nostalgia, spiritual successor. Not thrilling. If this is the desired future that I see some critics and gamers mark as the desired future, that is pretty pathetic- like, we hope the future is the past? Come on.
Now don't worry I'm still playing games, I'm just not buying new one for a while. I'd be thrilled if I get a Hi-Fi Rush equivalent every few months, but the NEW, the exciting, the bold art, is lagging right now.
I guess it would be fair to point out for comparison moments of that kind of bold gaming newness I mean (the years here are when I think I played them not when they came out):
2015: The realization of quest-based open world gaming perfected by The Witcher 3
2016: Transistor demonstrating where indies can be and delivering story with music and gameplay
2018: Getting and obsessing the Soulsborne formula with the amazing setting of Bloodborne
2018: God of War, applying high level of design and production for cinematic story-telling delivered with emotional and visceral resonance
2020: Sekiro's combat
These are worth highlighting because some of the lack of creativity stems from games trying to ape these games and therefore being lame. Especially all the quest-based open worlds post-Witcher 3 and Soulslikes.
Going into this year there were three games I was anticipating:
1- Wo Long, which so far I'm not liking because instead of taking the Sekiro and Nioh and adding to it, they made it worse (though I will still try to play a bit more so this isn't a final decision on the game)
2- Lies of P, which promises to be Bloodborne but Pinochio. If the gameplay and art design are worse than Bloodborne though, I won't be surprised at this point.
3- The Plucky Squire because it looks hella cute, and cute is the one thing that game designers have gotten very good at.
You know what I'm hoping for? Starfield to be amazing, just to mess with everyone.
I am going to allow myself a grumpy old man rant about the the state of the world, since I never do these and always roll my eyes when others do these. I mean yes I rant about specific games or mechanics but I hate the whole "games these days suck" thing. However, I am in a "games these days suck" mood today and it's all because:
Remakes, remasters, sequels, spiriitual successors.
This is the first year in a while where I'm really not excited about anything coming out.
Most of it is around sequels. My most anticipated games of 2022 were were Elden Ring, Horizon: FW, and Ragnarok, and while I enjoyed them all to some degree, only Ragnarok hit my hard. This year we got Jedi 2, Spiderman 2, Assassins Creed Mirage as the big ticket sequels for franchises I'm invested in and I already decided I'll not play them on release. They all feel Horizon: FW to me- likely to be competent continuations of things I kind of like, which I can wait for.
Ok so what about other stuff. Well my goodness, it's so much remakes. I'm glad folks love Resident Evil and Dead Space but excuse me if I'm not in love with putting nostalgia as the pinnacle of gaming culture right now. Every round-up of games releases lately is remake- Kirby, Final Fanatasy, even my beloved Witcher.
Even more sinister than direct remakes are "spiritual successors." Wo Long is a shitty Sekiro; The Finals is Battlefield but good? (which was already good, then bad, I dunno...)
Spiderman 2 is coming out but I already played that game, it was called Miles Morales. But this new one will be a new game but also have Miles Morales and they gonna charge $70 for this? Honestly how good can that game possibly be, it can't be great, it can't. At best it will be "more of a thing we liked 5 years ago, a quality production but it cannot be different because it HAS to deliver on the web slinging traversal that made the game good in the first place. So we know what we're getting.
And yes this from the guy that still plays Assassins Creeds, the franchise synonymous with "same old shit," but at least I understand why folks rag on it and I never go around recommending any of the games past the first two. Now Jedi and Spiderman and Sonys all feel like AssCreeds.
Ok, indy indy, play indy, look at how good indy is, blah blah blah. Lemme tell you if I never play another roguelike or metroidvania again it'll be too soon.
Hi-Fi Rush was a good time but it's main selling point is "reminds me of a 360 game." So.. nostalgia, spiritual successor. Not thrilling. If this is the desired future that I see some critics and gamers mark as the desired future, that is pretty pathetic- like, we hope the future is the past? Come on.
Now don't worry I'm still playing games, I'm just not buying new one for a while. I'd be thrilled if I get a Hi-Fi Rush equivalent every few months, but the NEW, the exciting, the bold art, is lagging right now.
I guess it would be fair to point out for comparison moments of that kind of bold gaming newness I mean (the years here are when I think I played them not when they came out):
2015: The realization of quest-based open world gaming perfected by The Witcher 3
2016: Transistor demonstrating where indies can be and delivering story with music and gameplay
2018: Getting and obsessing the Soulsborne formula with the amazing setting of Bloodborne
2018: God of War, applying high level of design and production for cinematic story-telling delivered with emotional and visceral resonance
2020: Sekiro's combat
These are worth highlighting because some of the lack of creativity stems from games trying to ape these games and therefore being lame. Especially all the quest-based open worlds post-Witcher 3 and Soulslikes.
Going into this year there were three games I was anticipating:
1- Wo Long, which so far I'm not liking because instead of taking the Sekiro and Nioh and adding to it, they made it worse (though I will still try to play a bit more so this isn't a final decision on the game)
2- Lies of P, which promises to be Bloodborne but Pinochio. If the gameplay and art design are worse than Bloodborne though, I won't be surprised at this point.
3- The Plucky Squire because it looks hella cute, and cute is the one thing that game designers have gotten very good at.
You know what I'm hoping for? Starfield to be amazing, just to mess with everyone.
That applies to Mirage and Jedi 2 more than anything. With that said, I'm not interested in the next Jedi game, because it's still a Dark Souls clone. Had it played more like an old school God of War/DMC clone, I would be interested.
I appreciate the big love for Miles, but the term you're looking for is stand alone expansion pack. Not a full blown sequel. That's what Miles Morales is. I do
with not paying $70 for the next Spider-Man game. More than likely, Spider-Man 2 will have either co-op, or character switching. I'm more so believe it'll be the character switching aspect. The crazy combo and team combo are going to be great for skill videos. Plus, I'm really there for the combat and characters. I'm sure it'll be plenty of new stuff. Don't forget that we got a new Wolverine game coming out on the PS5 as well.No. The correct answer is PS2, OG Xbox, & GameCube. The 6th generation of consoles. Some of the qte's are 360esque though. The "360 game" you are thinking about is Evil West.
That was already going on before since the late PS1 and early PS2 days. All God of War 4, did was make it "legit" to snooty professional critics. The ones who don't actually like playing games or are ashamed of the medium they are in because of some dumb insecurity.
You know you're only playing yourself right?
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The original Doom game would have been a useful training aid in WW2. Not because of it's realism or something, but there's training films that discuss the way bullets fired from a moving object and another moving object appear to fly from the point of view of the firer that require lots of explanation and diagrams that could be summed up with "You know the ways the rockets look when you're firing them at a Cyber-Demon you're circle-strafing?"
Hey, 2 of my 4 excluded tags on Steam... the others being Deckbuilding and Pixel Graphics.
Hmmm... maybe that's why I sometimes don't see many indie games on Steam.
Man if you'd-a told me years ago that all thousands of gamers wanted to do with their digital entertainment is to simulate playing cards I'd have laughed in our face, but here we are.
So I guess not much of your massive Witcher 3 play time consisted of Gwent sessions then lol?
I love the original GoW but the new ones feel different enough to me and many that I would disagree with that assessment. 2018 GoW incorporate the "playing a movie" feel of Uncharted and Last of Us that became beloved and now has a backlash. Old GoW has epic cut scenes and big finishing moves and all that but it's not the same experience as what we now call "cinematic" games, at least as I hear critics and such use it.
As for Starfield, I'm not actually predicting it will be awesome, I just think IF it were to happen it would be hilarious to watch the reaction, and that's why I'm rooting for it (also, you know, cause I want games to be good).
I do think it will be graphically gorgeous. Like most I'm imagining it will basically be Fallout 4.
Oh, I can complete the Card Collector achievement by heart without notes or internet lookups. I am Gwent master.
This is where game "vibe" and "feel" and setting matter. I do things in that game that I wouldn't in other games.
I know the influences, but it doesn't make the prior games or other games from the 6th era, any less cinematic. The classic God of War Games took from Clash Of The Titans. Which became ironic as the Clash of the Titans remake movies from the 2010s took from God of War. I don't give a damn what the critics are using. They don't know shit. The problem with games that go overboard being cinematic that they play themselves. The Norse God of Wars don't exactly have this problem, but they still had the case of push forward to walk and unskippable cutscenes. Hell, God of War 4 needed a patch update for you to skip most of his cut scenes and walking sections. I've already made this hot take, but games have always been cinematic since the early 8-bit days. Look at all the Ninja Gaiden intros on NES. Look at the Castlevania intros. They are all either borrowing from cinema or try to make themselves feel like an action or anime movie from the 80s. Clock Tower from the SNES and PS1 were borrowing from Italian slasher horror films. The PS1 sequel especially wore cinema all over its sleeve. The only difference is that it remembered to have gameplay. Sure, some of these modern games have better storytelling, but it doesn't invalidate the accomplishments nor the storytelling of games back on the PS1, PS2, or even the 16-bit and 8-bit days. Plenty of these games do have excellent storytelling, hardware aside.
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Speaking of @Old_Hunter_77's rant on spiritual successors. Atlas Fallen looks to be a spiritual successor to the Darksiders franchise. With the way this scenario is looking, AF looks to be a better Darksiders than the entire franchise. The big problem with the Darksiders franchise is that each game just copied whatever was popular at the time. To the point that every game becomes dated in some way or fashion, based off of whatever trend it was following at the time. Plus, Darksiders I-III suffers issues of padding and a slow middle area. It's why I could never finish the first game, nor took interests in the later sequels. All of this is even more ironic, as Darksiders itself is a spiritual successor to Legacy of Kain and Soul Reaver. Darksiders 1 is the most blatant and obvious about this.
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Eh.. I guess. Would explain why I both pick up and drop Darksiders games. But they copied with style and execution so I'm kind of fond of them.
I dug the trailer of Atlas Fallen so if it turns out to be a good Darksiders, then I look forward to playing it if/when it's on GamePass or whatever.
Depends on which one you're talking about. I'll give credit to Darksiders & Darksiders II. More so the former, but Darksiders III they dropped the ball turning it into a half-assed Dark Souls clone. Only with the optional patch update to play like the first two games, does III start resembling its elder brethren. Darksiders Genesis is a co-op Diablo II clone, yet has the better reception over II and III. I have not played it, but the game is good and has the best pacing of the franchise.
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I'm glad he mentioned the Chronicles of Elyria. That's one of my favorite Salt Factory videos. Yeah, there's something about "Well, you can be a virtual blacksmith" except that really not that many people want to be a virtual blacksmith is kind of a problem here. And of course the "You can be A lord or a general and boss other people around in game" which begs the question just how that's meant to work.
IRL being a noble and lording it over the peasants worked because the lord had all the power over the peasants and it's not like the average peasant could just move somewhere else with a better form of government. Same with a general, because someone conscripted into the military couldn't do a whole lot about it. Someone playing a video game who decided they didn't like Lord or General flaunting their power can just decide they either don't want to give a shit, go offline or go to another game(and considering such games usually get income from subscriptions or people buying ingame currency you really don't want to alienate people into leaving for stupid reasons), so it begs the question how you could realistically get anyone to go along with an ingame feudal system run by another person in a virtual economy. It's great if you can get that many roleplayers together in the same game but that's really who it would have to be for because that would really be the core and target audience here.
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"Be a serf, till the fields and die of the Plague" might be more accurate, but good luck clearing that with Marketing.
"Serfs can't have internet! They might get funny ideas"
Yes, I'm aware the French Revolution was vastly more complicated and morally fraught then "Eat the Rich". Stop ruining my joke.
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You're already complicated it by bringing the internet into it. Many historians claim the internet played little or no part in the French revolution,"Serfs can't have internet! They might get funny ideas"
Yes, I'm aware the French Revolution was vastly more complicated and morally fraught then "Eat the Rich". Stop ruining my joke.