Dispatch.
It goes the old telltale way of presenting fake choices that dont really matter because the optional character are being written out of team scenes mostly, one romance option is completely ignored because the devs clearly favoured the other and put her in every scene and the dispatching minigame they advertised the game with has absolutely 0 impact on anything. You could fail every dispatch, only do the mandatory ones and nothing would change.
Super Tux Party
I’m sorry but we need something more modern
Skyrim, it’s so damn mundane.
That’s because you’re playing it wrong. You see, at it’s core Skyrim is actually a puzzle game you play on the Nexus Mods website. You spend 30+ hours carefully researching, building, and tweaking the perfect pack of mods, only to immediately run out of interest in playing Skyrim once you’re finally done. The actual Skyrim installation only exists to check if you solved the puzzle correctly and it runs.
Damn. I feel so seen suddenly.
The end-game lasts about 30 seconds after boot.
“Oooh, pretty sky. Ooh, wavy plants. Ooh, god rays. Alt+F4.”
anyway, back to minecraft
minecraftminesweeperFTFY.
Actually. I tried Skyrim so many times and never got into it, then I decided to give it the best shot and play with a cavalcade of QoL mods. I went from a hater to a true Skyrim enjoyer. At this point, with how pessimistic I was about the game, I think with the right setup ANYONE can enjoy it.
If you manage to install the mods
I’m in this comment and I hate it
Real. Without my 800 mods I would‘ve never bothered finishing it. Playing/modding was probably 50/50 in terms of time spent.
Skyrim came out 14 years ago.
Thanks for the tip
The title of this post was, “What’s a recent game you’ve tried playing that isn’t worth the hype?”
14 years is hardly ‘recent’
Depends entirely on how you interpret the question. It could be read as “What’s a recent game you’ve tried…” (as in, a recently released game that you tried), as you’ve done, or “What’s a recent game you’ve tried…” (as in, a game you’ve tried recently) as the person you’re responding to did.
I think either interpretation is fine since the title doesn’t actually clarify either way.
ah fuck you’re absolutely right, it’s ambiguous 🤦
can it correctly be interpreted both ways grammatically though? I think only the former is actually correct.
idk. not my area. but I think they have a point, recent can only refer to the game itself, not when you played it
I started gaming in the 80’s my first game was doom on a 286. Skyrim release date was recent for me and I only recently played skyrim for the first time.
The question is “What’s a recent game you’ve tried playing…?”
Not ‘What’s a recently released game you’ve tried playing…?’
It is when you’re over 40.
I have the opposite opinion. I avoided it for years because of the hype (and not having proper hardware to run it).
Now I have almost 900 hours in it, and sometimes I jump in just to walk around and revisit some places.
Just get openmw and play a real elder scrolls game before Bethesda got got
Or spin up TES3MP with some friends and experience it together!
I recently tried Fallout 4 based off of the same expectations. Probably didn’t even make it a quarter of the way through the main story. I was having absolutely no fun. The thing that finally killed it for me was spending 5 minutes calculating which items needed to be sold at a shop and which I should keep, then getting blown up a block later, then respawning right before I did all that inventory management.
Just played through Doom: Eternal cause it was on sale for 4€ a bit back. The entire time I was wishing I was playing Doom 2016…
Yeah, I enjoyed a bit of 2016, but got bored a didn’t finish it. I think Doom Eternal I had from Steam Family Sharing (or other source I didn’t pay for) and just couldn’t get into it. I hate both of them forcing the melee kill thing that takes you out of the action to watch a cutscene, but Eternal just didn’t feel like it worked for some reason.
The new Doom games are all very different from each other. I liked what Doom 2016 was doing (even if it got repetitive) but really didn’t enjoy Eternal because the constant juggling didn’t sit with me. I haven’t tried Dark Ages but it seems like it’s doing something between 2016 and Eternal (not quite use what you want and not quite always juggle) while also adding its own dimension with the mix of melee and guns.
I would never recommend each Doom title based on the last title. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like what they’re doing. I think it’s brave to do its own thing instead of doing what is expected.
Both of your comments are a testament to why I love the new Doom games – they’re different and don’t seem to be meant to be enjoyed by every fan, every release, every time.
Apart from the first two games (and Doom 64 for that matter), each offers different gameplay and feel and it’s so, so beautiful.
I feel lucky having a blast in each one. Doom 3 is my favorite, actually, especially with the vanilla flashlight (for the uninitiated: where you can either have your weapon out or the flashlight).
Yeah. I didn’t really enjoy it, but I got into it and finished it. Once I realized that you’re expected to die and respawn frequently, and you don’t lose anything when you do, playing went a lot better.
I still don’t get that decision, because Doom has never been like that. Even arcade games don’t do that. It just felt trivially cheap at that point.
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is less fun than 3.5e IMO.
There was more of a sense of character progression, and ability differentiation in 3.5e.
5e achieves balance by flattening the power curve.
For example, the attack bonus for a level 20 Fighter in 5e is just 4 points higher than it was at level 1 - same as a 5e Wizard. Both get +2 at lvl 1 and +6 at lvl 20
In 3.5e, a level 20 fighter’s attack bonus is 19 points higher than it was at level 1 (+1 to +20), but a wizard only gains half that much fighting prowess as they level up (+0 to +10).
All 5e characters are pretty much the same statistically & mechanically. Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
I started TTRPGs with Pathfinder (1e). Some people talk about it like some impossible thing to play. It does have a lot more detail than 5e, but it isn’t that bad. (I did play one character as a wrestler, who did grappling a lot, which is notoriously one of the most complex systems.)
5e sells itself as being simple, and it is in how little control it gives you. However, the rules are anything but simple. There’s so many contradictions and stipulations every player has to memorize. It’s a mess. For example, some spells can be used as bonus actions, but not if you’ve already cast a spell, except for some that can anyway. It’s stupid.
Pathfinder 2e seems to make things so much simpler for everything, while still giving players freedom. Actions are just actions. If you’ve got the points you can use them for anything. Movement, attacks, spells, etc. Pretty much everything just is what it says.
I think this is one of the reasons why Pathfinder 2e has been doing so well.
It’s a middle ish ground and it feels good to progress.
My current issues with it are how underpowered the items are. So boring.
Heartbreaking that they decided static item attack rolls and DCs was a good idea. It’s my biggest gripe with the system. Some items, like the Holy Avenger, subvert this and are pretty good, but most items suuuuuck the instant you outlevel them. Like, Sparkblade is cool, who doesn’t like chain swordbeams? Anyone over level 4, aparrently, because every creature you come across has learned to dodge lightning from that sword in particular
I haven’t played any 3.5e proper, but I understand Pillars of Eternity 1 is largely based on it, and I’ve played a handful of the 2e games. I dig a lot of the changes in 5e. I wouldn’t say the power is so flat that the differentiation only comes down to role play; I’d say a lot of it comes from the apples and oranges comparisons between classes, like things beyond to-hit roles. Your fighter has no AoE attacks like the wizard has but has Second Wind and Action Surge, for instance. The advantage to flattening the differences a bit more is that your character’s role is less preordained (“you are playing class X, so you must be responsible for Y”) and that you are less hamstrung by the absence of one particular role, which scales better to small parties.
3.5e being the best is an opinion I’ve heard for my entire life. I would say preferring 5e is a more unpopular opinion.
2024 is even worse. On top of that, they also stack extra abilities, and try to give everyone everything.
One of these days I should try Pathfinder
5e character progression does feel kind of bland.
I feel the 5e rules are poorly organized, too. Lots of interdependent rules scattered far from each other in the books, and sometimes buried in the middle of seemingly unrelated sections, so unless you’ve memorized multiple chapters, understanding how to resolve common situations sometimes requires stopping the game for 15-30 minutes while someone digs through the books to find all the relevant factors. Even when you do find the relevant info, it’s often in ambiguous language describing what could have been made perfectly clear with a few keywords. The books are pretty, and the text might be nice to read for entertainment, but they’re pretty bad the the job of being game manuals.
Does 3.5e use the d20 system? Does it have the advantage/disadvantage mechanic? I like those aspects of 5e; they’re simple and they help keep games moving along.
Maybe I should give it a try. Or perhaps 4e, which I have read does a better job of clearly defining its gameplay mechanics.
3.5 does use d20, but lacks advantage/disadvantage in favor of doing a lot more math every moment of every round of combat. This is the biggest appeal of 5e, it’s approachable and keeps the games moving.
I wouldn’t recommend 4e, it strongly suffers from the aforementioned “everyone can do everything and feels samey” much more than 5e.
Pathfinder 1e is basically just dnd 3.5, and as others have mentioned, PF2e is more of a middle ground
Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you’re not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you’re looking for.
As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it’s a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don’t feel like you’re just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you’re left with is the only thing of value.
I liked 4e the best.
4e did some really cool stuff while also going a bit off the rails for me. I think overall I like 5E more, but we played a ton of 4e and I’ll always remember it fondly. I was really into the more defined roles, and how classes were a bit more self contained so they could just keep making more and more niche ones
All the souls games. I don’t get it, they’re just no fun 🤷♂️
Also, never finished doom eternal, far too busy. Dark ages was great tho
There was a time when I could not have imagined liking those kinds of games. My partner got me Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition and I hated it. Hate may be too kind a word for how I felt. I’ve always loved metroidvanias and the style seemed right up my gothy, witchy alley, but I couldn’t get past the first basic zombie.
Then we watched a bunch of videos and realized that the game was designed to be played slowly and deliberately. There were no “junk” enemies and paying careful attention at all times was the game. When it clicked, it clicked, and now From Software games are my favorite.
I had a similar experience. Went the wrong way in DS1, headed straight for the catacombs, went “oh. This isn’t hard. This is punishing.” And dropped off. Later a friend gave me some guidance and some pointers on what the game did/didn’t expect of me and I’ve been a giant fan ever since.
Sekiro took me a little time to figure out what it expected from me, too, but now I absolutely adore that game. That’s more of a mechanical “what should I be doing in combat” statement of the fact that the game expects you to act aggressively while focusing on defense. Though
All the souls games. I don’t get it
They’re memorisation timesinks
It depends on person and skill, a lot of people manage to beat a majority of bosses 1st try.
Also, personally, I just like using magic which makes some parts easier.
Honestly I think a lot of people miss that these games are full of soft difficulty options. Magic, in particular pyromancy, summons, there are lots of ways to make the game easier, and that’s a good thing!
I recently replayed Dark Souls 1 and tried a Strength build to see how it goes.
Full Havel’s straight up lets you face tank Artorias, and you’re taking almost a 1/15th of his health with just a hit.
Armor was nerfed after that, but still, it was rather hilarious. Magic was nerfed too by the virtue of bosses getting more gap closers and ranged attacks - by Elden Ring, magic is far from the boring “stay back and just spam attack” idea, but on the contrary, the cheesiest tactics I used when needed were Greatshields or dual jump attacks for stunning bosses. There’s videos out there of people beating Malenia by just shield poking her to death with a spear, and I certainly used that when I wasn’t having fun with Rellana. It’s crazy to me how most people just grab a greatsword and only use that the whole game, then say the game’s shallow or too hard.
I really struggled when I tried magic, and then in DS2 I picked up an ultragreatsword and great shield and the game just felt right to play. Like, every boss timing seemed to be perfectly in line with my speed, where before it was always a struggle to refrain from trying to get one last button mash in with the faster weapons.
Souls games didn’t make sense to me until I saw Giant Bomb play through Demon’s Souls. Mechanics that I didn’t know were there were explained in plain English, and then I could better understand where I went wrong when I died.
My first attempt was Dark Souls 3. I went in expecting challenging but rewarding battles, and a mysterious world to explore. Unfortunately, I found myself bored within an hour every time I played, and gave up on it after maybe a dozen sessions.
I tried Elden Ring maybe a year or two later. I stuck with it for longer, but the experience was roughly the same. The combat felt tedious. The art and animation didn’t appeal to my tastes. The world seemed big, but desolate. The controls somehow made me feel awkwardly disconnected from my character. Nothing about the game made me care about it at all. The biggest challenge was in keeping my eyelids open.
I wonder if I would find soulslikes more appealing if I had grown up on console games. They’re clearly popular, but it seems they just aren’t for me.
I actually bought DS3 twice, For the PS4 the first time, and couldn’t do anything. I’m not a console person by nature. Then I found out it was on PC, my jam, got it and OMG is that port shitty
I’ve enjoyed a lot of Soulslikes, but none of the ones made by FromSoft. Their style of providing poor explanations of mechanisms just makes no sense to me, even if you want to give players those moments of self-driven discovery.
Now I’m wondering, which non-From Soulslikes did you enjoy?
Another Crab’s Treasure, Stellar Blade, Jedi: FO and Survivor, Hollow Knight, Tunic, and lately Steelrising.
Some of those games are a bit easier but also have harder moments. To me, it’s about having a better-structured difficult curve.
I love the fuck out of dark fantasy. The problem is that while souls-games and Elden Ring, are drenched with dark fantasy elements, the game execution itself just didn’t appeal to me at all. I just don’t like the idea of tediousness mixed with a scale of difficulty where all and any progress of mine are just dashed because a slight misstep.
I enjoyed Blue Prince, I’m exactly who it was made for, but it was definitely much worse than people would lead you to believe.
The game makers had no respect for players’ time. You solve one of the large, run-independent puzzles and it all clicks, then it could take you several hours to playtime to luck into the conditions to actually test your solution. Everything takes longer than it should. It’s obvious that I’m going to toggle security settings every time I’m in the Security Room, why do you make me go through this slow as hell PC every time? It’s not for realism because no PC back then had such fantastical functionality, so why not make the PCs load screens faster? How does the slowness enhance the experience? Why not just put buttons on the wall you can toggle for the security settings, at least? There were times where I figured something out, and rather than spend ten hours trying to actually do the thing, I just looked up that part of a walkthrough to get the next info.
Really interesting game, but I did some napkin math and I wasted 25 avoidable hours during my playthrough (long unskippable loads and such) that could have been spend completing an entire different game.
The game makers had no respect for players’ time.
I don’t know that game, but the importance of respecting the player’s time cannot be overstated.
I wish more game makers understood this and prioritized it accordingly.
It’s a huge part of why I quit Destiny 2 entirely. A game that doesn’t respect the player’s time and pads it with RNG on top of RNG to extend playtime feels awful.
I absolutely agree with you, I got to a point where I had solved the “main” puzzle, but was struggling to complete other puzzles (that I knew the solution to) simply due to room draws.
I wanted to love the game, but it held itself back on the RNG design. It can be so detrimental to the game that I wouldn’t recommend it to most people.
I bought into the review hype, bought the game, then realized about two hours after the Steam refund window expired just how tedious this game felt to play.
I really wanted to like it, but it stopped being fun and started being so tedious that I uninstalled it.
I bought it ages ago but finally decided go give it a go. From the first day I could tell it wasn’t gonna be a game for me. Note-taking is basically mandatory, and it seems so easy just to get fucked out of a run by RNG.
Narrative seemed interesting but I feel like the whole “ability to decide what room you’re going into” thing should be weaved into the story off the bat.
Neat concept but not for me, but I think since I’ve owned it for so long I’m outside of the refund window.
Check out Seance of Blake Manor, doesn’t have the rng
It’s funny, I literally downloaded that one last night.
Same. The game is fantastic but the RNG is only cool on paper and falls apart just a few hours into the game. The methods they give you to influence your luck are just not enough to do much at all.
It’s really frustrating when you are trying to do something but you constantly have to do something else because that’s what the game is giving you.
I cheated at the end and gave me infinite rerolls for rooms so I could create the layout I needed in that moment. Much better that way.
You know, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I’d say Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is worth playing for a lot of reasons, but I think it’s got huge fundamental issues in both its combat and narrative design; it’s still on the short list for most outlets’ game of the year awards this year. Hades just got a sequel, and I didn’t even care for the first one. For many people, those two games are just about the only roguelikes or -lites they’ve ever played, but I don’t think they’re even good ones of those; the level generation is so limited that you’ll have seen all their permutations quite quickly, and the bonuses from boons just about all feel superfluous and interchangeable. Hollow Knight holds this legendary status among metroidvanias, and Silksong followed suit. I thought Hollow Knight was just fine, but I was surprised to find that this was the game with that sort of following. When facing the possibility of playing Silksong this year or about 5 other video games that came out this year, I don’t think Silksong is making the cut.
But your mileage will absolutely vary. These games have hype for a reason: a lot of people love them. You might, too.
A big part of the appeal of Hollow Knight and Hades are their respective art styles. They are both genuinely gorgeous games, and it really improves the experience. I would rather open up Hades again instead of, say, TBoI for exactly that reason, despite my thinking that TBoI is the better roguelike.
Admittedly I can’t bring myself to enjoy Hollow Knight at all, but that’s just an issue of me disliking metroidvanias.
hades’ strength is its narrative; hk’s strength is its worldbuilding.
it’s very difficult to stand out on pure gameplay in the 21st century.
I agree regarding Hollow Knight… It was fine. I don’t really get the hype though, people would make you believe it’s the best game ever made.
I’d go for CO:E33 too. Its a decent enough game but I don’t understand the absolute hype it receives. Probably a 5/10 game for me.
I can answer this for you. So imagine a genre of game that you grew up playing, loved, and sunk possibly thousands of hours in. Now imagine for like 15 years they only made the most dogshit version of that genre of game. Then someone comes along and makes a decent, even passable, modern version of that game.
It’s like giving dirty water to a dehydrated person. Is the water good? Fuck yeah in the moment it’s fantastic. Is the water the greatest water you’ve ever had? Well technically no, but please don’t take away the dirty water please.
continues playing trails games in the corner
The worst part is, that decent game isn’t even in the same genre. E33 is too damn heavy on parrying. Imagine if all 2000-2015 Zelda games were garbage, and Breath of the Wild was the first good one. I’m sure some OoT fans wouldn’t be too thrilled, while a majority of gamers would be.
As a JRPG fan though, I concur, most JRPGs suck ass, and it’s often for the most obvious, easy to fix problems like slow combat speed, or throwaway random encounter design.
All of the games you listed here were pretty under hyped IMO except for perhaps Silksong.
I understand this is all subjective, but I think you’re leaning toward like indie gaming hipster material with this comment…and that’s my opinion.
I leaned toward games that came highly recommended that I actually played.
I played E33 for about 4 hours. The combat system is atrocious. It feels like I’m playing a turn based RPG but with elements of Dark Souls? The almost necessity of dodging in combat made me give the game up.
I just played it on easy difficulty then it became enjoyable for me.
Was it good though? I imagine you’d be AP starved until you get the Picto for AP on hit, and then it sounds like the opposite where you can spam costly skills.
I already said in my comment that I enjoyed it?
To clarify, I meant gameplay, because you can (and a lot of people do) turn on easy mode just to ignore it and focus on everything else.
The easy mode could win battles for you automatically and most people would “enjoy” it all the same, but I hardly think anyone would love it.
Edit: The context was explicitly combat, but, I feel there’s still a difference of enjoyable combat and actually engaging combat. Is parryless easy mode challenging enough?
Easy mode doesn’t mean you can ignore parrying in this game so yes I still enjoyed it.
Deep Rock Galactic. I was really excited to play it and I tried to like it. The colors and graphics were 10/10 awesome, I just found it to be extremely boring and repetitive.
Very fair, I had a lot of fun with it as a casual game to relax with. Not so easy it’s trivial, not so hard it needs a lot of thinking.
Man I LOVE drg. A good team on a call made this the most fun I’ve had playing in recent years. Unfortunately, the population is lower and one may have trouble finding new players. Veterans are usually happy to help, but you’d need a patient one.
For me, deep rock really shines when you’re playing the higher hazard levels. Seeing a wall of the cave move because it’s covered in enemies, and then hitting them with a fat boy gave me happy chemicals.
Horizon: Zero Dawn. I have yet to finish it but apart from robot dinosaurs, it feels so generically open world… Admitedly, a very pretty-looking open world. Can‘t really get into the story so far either since it takes itself so seriously while I‘m having a hard time not thinking too much about how ridiculous its world is. So apart from sight-seeing, there hasn‘t been much in this game for me thus far.
Edit: This comment section is a treasure trove of hot takes, so many of my beloved games mentioned making me go „What the fuck…,“ I love it
It’s absolutely a generic open world game, bit that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The formula is fun if it’s done well, which I think it is for Horizon Zero Dawn. The combat style is also uncommon and provides a satisfying loop of stealth and bullet time mechanics.
Dude. I have tried like 3 times to get into the horizon series. Just can’t do it. It’s so generic, just pretty.
I liked both games, but combat is ruined in the second. Literally just constant spamming of massive AOE attacks. All the nuance of the first is literally nuked from orbit.
Are you playing with gyro aiming? I also loved the gameplay of the first one and was disappointed by the second. My hypothesis is that aiming without gyro was too tedious so they updated the gameplay to require less aiming. Not that the game tries to be realistic anyway but the combo/special attacks and the time spent in the inventory/wheel kinda break the immersion/flow for me.
Took me awhile to get into it. I did eventually finish it. My criticism of the game was more that the dungeons aren’t really all that challenging and are mostly just places where the story advances. Not many puzzles or fights. You just do your fighting out in the open world. Also, eventually the fights are easy as you learn how to fight each type. Eventually you just avoid confrontations because they’re just time consuming.
I had a great time with that game with the difficulty turned up a few notches. It really makes you use the tools in your tool belt, plan ahead for weaknesses, and lay traps. Without that stuff, I likely would have found it to be a generic open world, too. The story will always be ridiculous, but even taking itself seriously, there’s a payoff toward the end of the game where taking itself so seriously is still satisfying and makes sense, even with a world filled with absurd robot dinosaurs.
I don’t think it was quite as generic at the time of release, but yeah I tend to agree
Elden Ring. It is good for what it is, probably the best in its genre, but after so many Soulsbornes, it just feels like more of the same. Formulaic. I’ve tried it three separate times and it never grabbed me.
To me, the Souls combat does best in a tightly knit and highly curated environment. I really enjoyed Elden Ring but I do not think it was a step forward for the series. Open World worked to the detriment of the game IMO.
I echoed this in another thread. I honestly feel like ER is the weakest “Soulsborne” game they’ve put out. It feels like a lot of conflicting design philosophies at once.
The lore and worldbuilding are phenomenal but gameplay-wise it falls short of what made their past games shine.
I (re)play Soulsborne for builds, and I think that’s necessary to appreciate ER. Trying out all the spells and different weapons is most of the fun, the rest being trying them out on bosses.
It’s definitely not the best in its genre, if only because they did away with the level design ethos that makes their other games so good.
This is something that gets completely lost in the translation to an open world game. The DS trilogy, Bloodborne, and even the original Demon’s Souls feel hand-crafted and carefully structured without being completely linear. ER loses a lot by leaving that formula behind.
On top of that, the boss/enemy design is imo some of the worst they’ve ever done. The past games (with DS2 being the one with the most exceptions) typically give you very fair but challenging fights. Telegraphs are clear without being slow and obvious. Particle effects and such are generally kept to a minimum to prevent visual clutter from taking over the screen. Bosses hit hard, but very few hits or combos, if any, would one-shot most builds outside of challenge runs. ER throws all of that out the window - bosses tend to hit like trucks, are visual clusterfucks (either enormous models with a terrible camera, tons of particle effects blasting out the ass, or both). I feel like the final boss of the DLC as an example is the most egregious example of this sort of design philosophy. Hell, Nightreign works so much better with the exact same designs because it’s such a faster-paced game where getting knocked down once or twice isn’t usually the end of a run.
I picked up Vampire Survivors, played one round, and was like yeah I think I’m done here.
I picked it up and thought “this is so stupid,” right before spending many hours playing it.
Try out Magic Survival, the (way better) game VS was copied of
I don’t know how I managed to have gone through the game as long as I have. I got it for free when it was a giveaway on Epic. I feel that’s exactly the right price because really, it’s just an almost do-nothing but move slightly and just pick options kind of game. Got boring fast.
It started being really ridiculous when I got one character, a skeleton that threw bones, up to the point where all I see were just numbers, gems and other flying things from the abilities I picked. It just got comically stupid but still boring at the same time.
This game’s entire premise, was that it’s supposed to give you feel-good moments without having spending money like you normally would on mobile games. It behaves like a mobile game without MTX. But I think its problem is that it retains the other problems that mobile gaming has than just MTX, such as time-wasting, cheating you of your dopamine and all that.
Cyberpunk 2077.
It’s okay, but it’s a far cry from giving me the feelings of a cyberpunk world in my opinion and I’m a massive fan of blade runner and the like.
Why am i spending so much time wandering at the street level where everywhere just looks and feels the same. Travelling is so boring.
And the voice acting of V (I played female) is so overreacted, it’s one of the cringiest performances in gaming, considering it’s meant to be all serious and whatnot.
Why am i spending so much time wandering at the street level where everywhere just looks and feels the same.
What game are you fucking playing?
“Looks and feels he same”!?
What are you even going on about? Every neighborhood, every nook and cranny, looks and feels different and has it’s own personality and story to tell!Night City is the real protagonist of the game! I could spend hours upon hours just walking those streets, experiencing the city (and have), and I’m far from the only one…
And the voice acting of V (I played female) is so overreacted, it’s one of the cringiest performances in gaming
I’m sorry, what? Cherami Leigh got a well deserved BAFTA nomination for that performance!
(Lost to Laura Bailey for her work as Abby on The Last of Us Part II.)What, were you playing with your eyes closed while listening to something else…?
To me every nook and cranny just looks bland with nothing to do there. Everywhere just had the same sidewalks and railings. There’s no way i could ever navigate that game without waypoints.
And with the acting the emphasis she puts on certain words in a sentence just don’t match the situation and the others she’s talking to, and it feels like she swaps between extreme emotions on the same dialogue and it’s like tonal whiplash to me. There was no nuance to lay in between, and nothing to unpack for the listener. You know when she’s angry because she has her 110% angry voice on and so on.
Unless the situation is heightened and dire, it just never fit in my opinion. Her performance fits a stage play more than what’s meant to be an immersive video game in my opinion.
Jackie’s and Keanu’s voice acting though was stellar.
My problem with Cyberpunk is it feels like all style and no substance. Night City is probably the best looking city I’ve ever seen in a game. The world designers did a phenomenal job with the visuals and atmosphere.
But it just doesn’t feel like there’s enough to do in the city or ways to interact with it or the NPCs. There should be more buildings you can enter and more activities to do. For me that’s what sets GTA and Red Dead apart from Cyberpunk. They have much more to do when you’re not on missions.
The game is definitely too sparse and spread out. It should’ve taken more inspiration from the likes of yakuza than gta and made a smaller but more dense world to play in where every nook and cranny ACTUALLY meant something rather than giving the illusion of doing so.
I agree. It feels like it would have benefitted more from being a linear game than an open world game.
To be fair style over substance is one of cyberpunk’s (the style, not specifically the game) main design philosophies…
But yeah, sure, the game could stand some more fleshing up. Most games could.
That said, there’s a lot of stories going on in Night City that you won’t get through quests, but are told bit by bit through messages, notes, minor encounters, and environment design… more than in most similar games I’ve played.
Would it be nice to be able to enter every building, take a job at any random hot dog stand, ignore the quests and, I don’t know, infiltrate Biotechnica and leak all their ugly business to the world…? Sure, but that’s not something V would do (without getting paid), especially once they’re on a timer, the engine probably wouldn’t be able to support, and, most importantly, we’d still be waiting for the game to come out.
This is something that still disappoints me despite all the updates made to add immersion. The street food vendors just kind of hang out and stare at you. That and how every vendor interaction is just popping open their inventory and grabbing things.
I remember Postal 2 having a really clunky attempt at customer to vendor speech interactions where both were NPCs. Not as cool as a ridable metro system, but still.
They could have at least given us some:
“What news from the provinces?”
“I’ve heard others say the same”
“Be seeing you”
deleted by creator
Agreed. I have bounced off this game a few times for similar reasons. For a game that is about a cyberpunk future, it felt so much like a gta clone. Having played the ttrpgs, I think I just have a different version of the world in my head, and the games version just feels off.
Yeah seriously, V gets so worked up over fucking everything and I just couldn’t give a fuck. Calm the fuck down and take your Xanax, V. She’s stressing me out over nothing.
After Jesse died my motivation to continue dropped off a cliff. All the other characters are so boring and uninteresting. I cringe everytime johnny silver hand shows up. Also the driving and gunplay feels really really bad. Its got skyrim-like clunkiness without the flexibility and interesting world to make it worth while.
Not to mention the bombardment of phone calls and messages while trying to "mourn’. Awful pacing.
Yeah ok im glad to hear someone say that about cyberpunk 2077. Its been only just ok, but I want to like it more, but I don’t so far lol
Fallout 4. I could never bring myself to finish it. The furthest I ever got was just before the Mass Fusion mission between the Institute and the Brotherhood, with the Railroad already dead. I just couldn’t summon the will to continue. In every playthrough after that, I rush to Nuka World, finish a few parks there, and call it quits again.
Being on the patient side of things, two games I’ve played in recent years and didn’t enjoy were:
God of War (2018) - it just felt like AAA slop to me. Meaningles upgrades, tons of obvious puzzles at any corner - never throwing in even a single brain teaser, boring combat - the best option was almost always to throw the axe, that thing were you start walking at a snails pace to mask loading and/or play a cutscene and on top of that your god powers being mostly cutscene exclusive. Just your bog standard AAA game with no ‘friction’ - boring.
Factorio - it just feels like work to me. On top of that, going in blind, I just didn’t enjoy building something up just to tear it down again because I’ve unlocked something new changing the requirements. Once again, feels like a job in IT. Also, resource patches being limited just gave me the weirdest kind of anxiety despite never actually seeing one run out.
I feel both of these strongly for the same reasons, also GoW had all the sluggishness of a Souls-like which immediately made it not fun to play.
I absolutely love Factorio. I even bought the DLC the moment it came out.
I’m also absolutely rubbish at the game. I’ve never managed to finish the game on my own, and usually struggle to get blue science producing at all, much less at the correct ratio.
I do have fun with trains though, so I’ll often jump into friends’ games and just optimize (replace) their train networks.
Agreed. New GOW was much better.
Factorio’s the awakening for a lot of people on certain ends on the spectrum. My AuDHD makes it crack for me. I will say though, while the tutorial teaches you some essentials, it just throws you into the deep end once you start a real game.
I only discovered all the tips and quality of life from videos online, and there are some troubles in the game you can solve on your own but good fucking luck (belt balancing).
Might not be your kinda game, but if you ever feel like giving it another chance, check out some vids online for beginner tips (: It’s a game about stimulating the Eureka! part of our ooga booga caveman brains and it feels amazing.
I feel vindicated. I have the exact same feeling of factorio feeling too much like work, having to refactor everything because the requirements change is one of the more frustrating parts of software engineering imo, and the game feels tailored specifically to invoke that frustration.
I imagine that part gets better after the first hundred hours where you basically know what’s coming. I don’t have the patience to learn the tech tree though, given that I don’t even enjoy the game.
I’m curious how you play factorio because when I played there was very little refactoring, just adding more and more onto the assembly line.
That being said, that genre of game is absolutely not for everyone.
Factorio sucks for perfectionists. You have to be able to embrace the spaghetti, and not everyone can
Yeah I’ve seen people try to balance things perfectly in factorio, but my strat is always to overproduce and let belts getting backed up balance out the throughput.
Yeah same. I’ve seen other people stockpile intermediate resources to try and smooth out bottlenecks, but I think that’s wasteful. Build extra throughout, and have as little product sitting there as possible.
I’m fuzzy on the details, but it went something like this:
- I set up long resource lines of coal, copper and iron.
- I needed a thing#1 and built a neat little package to build it, exactly to order and on minimal space.
- I copy pasted that design 10 times left to right along my resource belt line.
- Then thing#2 came along. Needed the same stuff and combined with thing#1 into thing#3. So I wrapped my resource belts, designed a second package on minimal space and also copy pasted it 10 times. So I had pairs of thing#1 and thing#2 with a line in the middle to combine them and a belt to collect them. Worked nicely.
Then:
- Coal was replaced by electricity. I had no space for powerlines.
- I got other types of the grab thingies, potentially simplifying my setup.
- Suddenly I got sorting, making my belt setup a waste of space (I had one line per thing/resource).
- All belts needed to be replaced by better belts.
Oh and:
- Thing#4 came along, needing 2 of thing#1 and one thing#2 with some additional resources. Since I built to order, I basically had to start from scratch or severly hamper the production of thing#3. Also, my packages didn’t work anymore without wasting space and/or entirely fucking up resource belt management.
Therefore, I designed stuff from scratch to fit the new requirements.
That’s from the very beginning, but after repeating this pattern a few times, I gave up. Building it non-optimized felt even worse.
Interesting. Optimizing the factory for your immediate current needs sounds very tedious, because those needs change all the time. I instead optimize for expandability and adaptability. The factory game genre isn’t for everyone, but if you are interested in some tips:
My solution is usually something like:
- really long line of basic resources (usually a belt of smelted copper and a belt of smelted iron, eventually adding more stuff and adding more belts of iron and copper as supplies are needed)
- when I need thing 1, I make a little package that builds it, drawing resources from the line with splitters so the excess can continue down the line
- thing 2 is an independent little package farther down the line
- When it’s time for thing 3, I build copies of the packages for building thing 1 and thing 2 as necessary to feed the construction of thing 3, again as separate feeds splitting off the main resource line
- when it’s time for thing 4, its again independent of the production of things 1-3, except they are splitting off the same main resource belt
- If the resources on the main belt are insufficient to feed all of those machines, one of three things needs to happen: 1. Add more raw resource processing until your belt is full and backed up at the beginning 2. If that’s not enough, upgrade the belt 3. If you don’t have a belt upgrade available, build another main resource line and use splitters to rebalance it onto the main line
This construction allows for easy expansion without having to destroy anything. I typically don’t disassemble anything unless it’s actually a problem for some reason or I need the space. This is especially important because you often need some basic components like the level 1 belts even into the late game.
Also, once you unlock robots, you can literally copy-paste, just select an area to upgrade all belts/arms/etc. in, and a lot of other neat tricks that drastically speed things up.
And one last peace of advice: Overproduce everything and let belts backing up balance out the resource distribution. Then if you discover that belts that previously were backed up are now sparse, figure out why and optimize it, usually by adding more production of whatever the missing resource is.
Ultimately throughput is all that matters. Loss of throughput because you don’t need something isn’t wasteful. Loss of throughput because you aren’t producing enough of something is a problem to solve. Things that don’t affect throughput don’t matter and aren’t wasteful.
I played pretty much the same way De_Narm did. I tried caring less, though because I had no idea what would come next, it inevitably descended into spaghetti. I am stressed out about technical debt enough at work to be playing a technical debt simulator lol.
Dedicating the space needed to expand, ensuring everything you build is scalable, inevitably requires you to know a lot about what’s coming.
Yeah, if you know what you’re doing you can avoid these issues. I did not enjoy myself in the slightest, so after some hours of giving it a chance I decided that learning how to avoid these issues was not worth the pain. I’ll just stick to work instead.
