Your video game hot take(s) thread

BrawlMan

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Giant Bosses are overrated.

Whenever I see a giant Boss in a game my first thought is 'well, better take care of this guy', when I see a man-sized Boss my first thought is 'oh fuck'.
That usually how it works. Most giant bosses are warm up/spectacle bosses. Some games get it right, but most others get it wrong, do more than 1 or 2, have a bad/weird/tedious gameplay mechanic, or all of the above. The best giant bosses are Little Eddie, Wyzen, and QA 1MIL.

Human sized/humanoid sized bosses are usually the rival fights and are almost always the best boss fights in games.

 
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Casual Shinji

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That usually how it works. Most giant bosses are warm up/spectacle bosses. Some games get it right, but most others get it wrong, do more than 1 or 2, have a bad/weird/tedious gameplay mechanic, or all of the above. The best giant bosses are Little Eddie, Wyzen, and QA 1MIL.

Human sized/humanoid sized bosses are usually the rival fights and are almost always the best boss fights in games.
I'd say Shadow of the Colossus gets it right due to the whole climbing mechanic. But pretty much every other giant Boss needs to be either slowed down or tweeked in a manner that compensates the difference in size. A regular sized Boss is allowed to be as fast or faster than the player character without looking ridiculous or taking up the screen.
 

BrawlMan

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I'd say Shadow of the Colossus gets it right due to the whole climbing mechanic.
You can have it no problem, but Shadow of the Colossus is its own beast entirely.

But pretty much every other giant Boss needs to be either slowed down or tweeked in a manner that compensates the difference in size.
Bayonetta does most of its giant bosses and mini bosses well. More so the Cardinal Virtues in the original.

A regular sized Boss is allowed to be as fast or faster than the player character without looking ridiculous or taking up the screen.
Large mini bosses in Bayonetta 1 & 2 move fast without looking ridiculous. Especially when playing on Infinite Climax Mode. These are the two games that get it right for large and small bosses. Transformers Devastation too while we're at it too.
 

meiam

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Hellworld.
Tim sweeney must be creaming his pant right now. If there's one thing that could make it possible for EGS to become dominant, its microsoft buying valve.

Also, we all agree that we go mad max on microsoft if they try to do that, right?
 

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Hellworld.
Remember, Microsoft at one point tried to acquire Nintendo.

I don't see it happening. Though the acquisition would make sense from Microsoft's point of view.
 

Bedinsis

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I can imagine exactly how it would go: MS acquires Valve, attempts to make a Half-Life themed hero shooter, cancels it 90% through production and closes Valve.
Wait what? You actually think it's the IP Microsoft is interested in? It's the Steam storefront that they'd want.

They'd let the IP lie dormant (like Valve mostly does) or let Valve do whatever with it. I also thought there already was a Half-Life spin-off hero shooter called Team Fortress 2. And my understanding is that Valve are not strangers themselves to cancelling titles rather far into production.

I also am not familiar with any instance of Microsoft acquiring a developer and doing the things you listed, but I might just be forgetting an obvious example. What are you talking about?
 

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I also am not familiar with any instance of Microsoft acquiring a developer and doing the things you listed, but I might just be forgetting an obvious example. What are you talking about?
Right, I think I confused them with another company. Microsoft buys developers, lets them put out successful games, then closes them, while complaining about how they need studios like the ones they just closed.
 

BrawlMan

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@Old_Hunter_77 Remember when we were talking about obvious sign posting using yellow? Hi-Fi Rush uses yellow for sing posting too. Not as much as the games we talked about, but still, plenty of moments. Yellow ramps, yellow air duct grates/vents, the yellow magnetic rail lines, cracked yellow doors, and even yellow platforms. Even the gears you collect are yellow. Granted, some levels have a little or lots of construction going on, so it justifies half of it. Yet HF didn't get any negativity nor slack, probably because most of the sign posting is done in unique ways with yellow or other than the color yellow. PS2 style platforming being part of the core experience helps too.
 
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Old_Hunter_77

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@Old_Hunter_77 Remember when we were talking about obvious sign posting using yellow? Hi-Fi Rush uses yellow for sing posting too. Not as much as the games we talked about, but still, plenty of moments. Yellow ramps, yellow air duct grates/vents, the yellow magnetic rail lines, cracked yellow doors, and even yellow platforms. Even the gears you collect are yellow. Granted, some levels have a little or lots of construction going on, so it justifies half of it. Yet HF didn't get any negativity nor slack, probably because most of the sing posting is done in unique ways with yellow or other than the color yellow. PS2 style platforming being part of the core experience helps too.
Well I would also guess it's because Hi-Fi Rush isn't realistic looking, it's a Saturday morning cartoon. The games I've seen criticized for it are more realistic looking. Even Final Fantasy which is anime still presents its characters are recognizably human- a big draw for the FF7 remake series.
Also Hi-Fi Rush was a shadow drop indy game and was one of those critical darling that was going to be looked at more favorably.
 
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BrawlMan

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Well I would also guess it's because Hi-Fi Rush isn't realistic looking, it's a Saturday morning cartoon.
That too, but it's still crazy no one brings it up nor complains. I have no problems with people not complaining about HF's sign posting, but it's still a weird double standard.

Also Hi-Fi Rush was a shadow drop indy game and was one of those critical darling that was going to be looked at more favorably.
FTR, Hi-Fi is not an indie game. There was money put behind this (Tango always knew how to budget) and Tango was a AAA studio before getting unrightfully shutdown by MS.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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That too, but it's still crazy no one brings it up nor complains. I have no problems with people not complaining about HF's sign posting, but it's still a weird double standard.


FTR, Hi-Fi is not an indie game. There was money put behind this (Tango always knew how to budget) and Tango was a AAA studio before getting unrightfully shutdown by MS.
I was using "indy" as an aesthetic term not a business one. Dave the Diver was an indy game, despite the hoopla during last year's awards season.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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I think it's just a fact that any visual fidelity batter than what a PS4 can render is basically effort and hard-drive wasting vanity. Being able to zoom in on Aloy's vellus hair is neat and all, but seriously: outside of the weirdest people on the internet, did anybody care? Is that a thing you saw when sniping robot dinosaurs?

Hell, rolling it back to the PS3 era and just using the extra engine power for things like crowds and frame rate is a better use for the vast majority of games. Any game not going for raw realistic fidelity is basically operating on that level anyway

And maybe, just maybe, being able to release more than 2 games for a platform might let teams get some fucking system mastery. Nintendo's fucking embarrassing everybody when it come to actually using the full power of their platforms, and has been doing so for 3 generations.
 
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BrawlMan

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And maybe, just maybe, being able to release more than 2 games for a platform might let teams get some fucking system mastery. Nintendo's fucking embarrassing everybody when it come to actually using the full power of their platforms, and has been doing so for 3 generations.
I remember back during the GC and Wii era, anti-Nintendo fans and gaming "analysist/experts" were downplaying those consoles accomplishments or blaming Nintendo for "casualizing all of gaming". As if Sony, Microsoft, or a vast majority of the gaming industry didn't play a heavy part. I am glad I kept my GC and Wii, because there are so many games that are more fun to play than the "raw graphical powers" of mostly generic cover shooters or bland open worlds games from 7th or 8th generation.

I like these quotes from the comment sections of Max's video:

@MegaQuickMACH6

1 day ago
Iwata was right back in 2005 when he said that consoles with better graphics would eventually hit a breaking point and stop being interesting if they couldn't come up with new exciting gameplay.

@mrcwillis6970

1 day ago
Satoru Iwata was always right about graphics and development time. That and other reasons are why Nintendo and indies are gonna be high on the rise.
@pokemigas6049
1 day ago
Max is right when he said that Nintendo is one of the few that gets it but I think he forgot to mention one reason why Nintendo's strategy works as well as it does which is their understanding that not every game needs to be a 200 million dollar AAA game in order to make bank AND be fun. If you look back at the Switch's life, Nintendo published a game almost every month. Whether they were made internally or by their partners (Intelligent Systems, HAL, Monolith Soft...), this consistency is what made the Switch become the 3rd best selling console ever (and maybe 1st when all is said and done). Most of these games varied in "size" when it came to how many copies they would sell but that didn't matter. It's games like these "smaller" ones in between the big Marios, Zeldas, etc that made the console look so appealing. It had games for everyone and that came out consistently since they weren't trying to be the most technologically advanced game available in the market. This is the reason gaming now on the PS5 and XSX is so boring: there is nothing between the big releases because, unless a game is projected to make 100M in profit, then it's not getting greenlit
Iwata continues to be right, even in death and called this attitude nearly 20 years ago. People mocked, scoffed, or laughed at him/Nintendo, but now most of those critics, other than blind MS and Sony fans, ain't laughing much anymore.