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I couldn’t finish it.
This is certainly on me, but I just couldn’t handle the story. Without too many spoilers, the game’s story includes a tragic death, and when I played the game I was actively dealing with a recent death in the family and when I got to that part of the story… I just couldn’t go any further.
And while this is a special case, it’s also typical for how I play games, I play to escape the emotional social dilemmas of my life. Give me a strategy game, a puzzle game, a factory game. Give me some abstract puzzle to solve, a system to optimize, an army to outmaneuver; the last thing I want is a deep story with complex characters. Emotions just add weight to the experience, and my whole objective is to try to shrug off some of that weight for a while.
I hate Battle Royale shooters, all of them.
There is nothing I find more unpleasant than inventory management under pressure. I don’t even have time to look at what I just picked up and figure out what it does before people are shooting at me. I say just pick a lane, you can be a competitive shooter, but skip the loot. Or go maximum inventory management, like borderlands or stalker, but not in a competitive multiplayer game.
Well it sounds like you’re not that into this sort of abstract puzzle game. That’s fine, to each their own.
It’s interesting, perhaps it’s something about my personality, but I find that often I’m looking to escape from any sort of emotional engagement, so the last thing I want are deep characters. But interesting puzzles, a complex system with a definite solution, that’s my jam.
I played a game once called Firewatch, a truly beautiful walking simulator style game with a whole lot of story and dialogue. As the story went on your character is building a relationship with a coworker, and at some point she starts to confess about being involved in something truly tragic, like no joke it got heavy as hell. And despite mostly enjoying the game up to that point, I just couldn’t go any further. It was like, it’s a walking simulator, I can’t “lose” this game… but still, this feels too hard to play.
Side note, if these puzzle games aren’t for you, probably skip Return of the Obra Dinn, also Tunic
Here’s the secret to Balatro, there are basically two strategies that work. Focus on flushes, or focus on two pairs.
Also, if you get that joker that makes all red cards the same suit and all black cards the same suit, then a 9 card hand always has a flush.
Likewise, two pair is extremely reliable, it’s hard not to have it. Just get a bunch of blue seals and pump that two pair up to level 20+.
Finally, jokers that give you flat bonuses are fine, at least early on. But you really want jokers that have increasing bonuses, that get better every round.
And that’s all totally true. Though there is a way around that trap… Don’t buy the dlc!
That’s my secret, I treat the base price as the only price, and if the game doesn’t stand on its own without dlc, it’s a bad game. And I will 100% say that out loud, I’ll give it a bad review, I’ll avoid buying it in the first place. If a game needs pricey dlc to be worth playing, it isn’t worth playing at all.
So there’s my hot take.
This may sound crazy, but hear me out… $70 might just be relatively cheap right now, when considering historic prices and inflation.
So about 20 years ago, I used to work at a game shop and at that time all new AAA console games were all $50 and I believe the switch to $60 happened just shortly after I left.
That said, a quick web search says that there’s been 65% inflation since 2005. $50 x 1.65 = $82
So at least when compared to other products, $50 to $70 is not a huge price jump.
Now all that said, this does not account for the added cost of micro transactions and paid dlc which didn’t really exist in 2005. So the actual lifetime cost of a top pricing tier game may actually be higher than $70. Honestly, I have more of a problem with that than with the higher base cost, hidden costs are deceptive.
Edit: I looked it up, the switch to $60 actually happened in 2005, I was probably still working there when it happened. If we were to do that same calculation starting with $60, that’s $60 x 1.65 = $99. So there’s food for thought
You know, I recall playing this at a friend’s house decades ago and being totally, utterly, stuck on the first level for like… many hours.
So yeah, you may be right about that.
Was there like, a maze in that level? I think I remember a maze that ultimately led to a smaller area of open water, where you were just like “well fuckin’ now what?”
Yeah… this seems pretty on brand really.
Actually, it seems really well themed, a messed up reality show is exactly the kind of thing you might find in a vault. The thing to remember though, is that Vault-Tec is supposed to be satirical… Bethesda should not become Vault-Tec because that would be unethical… Right Bethesda… Right?
Ok sure, but how much of the game will actually be generated by dolphins?
This will probably be just another example of HUMAN appropriation when plenty of dolphin developers are struggling to even find work in this industry. Maybe when dolphins are literally the subject matter of the game we could consider inclusivity in its development?
#dolphin_life #Phins_In_Gaming #NotMyEcco
If you like his taste you should totally listen to his podcast, triple click.
It’s basically the only way I find out about new games. And it’s honestly super insightful.
If you like building things, I’ve been playing the hell out of “Mars First Logistics”.
Basically, you build custom mars rovers to move increasingly ridiculous shipments across the red planet. And the whole game has the visual style of a Lego instruction manual
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I bought it a while back on a friend’s recommendation. I should actually play it again solo, but at the time, I totally hated it; I just couldn’t connect with it. It was way too dark, hard to see what was even going on. And I couldn’t care less about the character I was playing or the gameplay mechanics. To me, it was just a fantasy reimagining of left4dead, but without the fun characters, with unintuitive level design, and just generally feeling kind of sloppy.
I might be being unfair, it’s been a long time since I played it.
Hey, if I’ve offended you, I do apologize for that, it truly wasn’t my goal. But I do strongly disagree (which is allowed).
And I think it’s pretty obvious that microtransactions could never, ever, possibly be more lucrative for Valve than selling games. It’s just a numbers thing. I mean, dlc can sometimes make more money than game sales for some titles, that’s a fact. But Valve has what, a dozen games that they could potentially sell dlc for? That’s a pretty hard limit. Whereas they also make money on every title sold in the store, and there are currently over 10,000 titles available from the steam store. That’s just like, a lot more than a dozen…
Um, no?
I guess this must be surprising to hear, but it’s just easier to sell content of actual value than bullshit. Yeah… some people will buy bullshit, and yeah, one can take advantage of those people, but having actual products is still a better business model.
But hey, if you’ve got these things all figured out, totally start your own game studio/global digital distribution system. Go make bank on microtransaction garbage.
You know what, I remain not at all sold on Firewatch, or Edith Finch. I get that it’s a new genre, but they just didn’t do anything for me. Weirdly, Come Home did work for me a bit more, despite not being all that different.
Oxenfree on the other hand, I thought that game was really brilliant. It really evoked that feeling of being 16, hanging out with friends trying to be cool, sussing out who likes who, etc. There’s a sense of adventure and terror in being that age, and with the addition of just a little bit of creepy mystery, you’ve got a real great recipe for a unique experience.
I also really liked their system for interrupting characters’ monologues and being able to get back to them later with a quick “oh, what was I saying?”, it’s essentially like being able to pause a cutscene, actually play the game for a bit, then return to it.