I’ve bought a copy but the interface isn’t very Steam Deck friendly so I’ve barely played it.

Looks like your optimizer link didn’t make it into the post. Good shout on Cemu, btw, as I’m wondering if I’d like BotW.

I gave the build a go and it was great fun!

Yeah, the previews I saw massively put me off. It looked uninspired if we’re being generous.

I’m rather a fan of Apogee’s Secret Agent. I loved it back in the day and then enjoyed the HD remaster of it a few years back.

I’m still waiting on the killer titles for the current generation of consoles. I’m frankly amazed that games have become so difficult to make, given how the graphical improvements aren’t leaps. Build a stylish lighting system, make sure your textures and geometry aren’t too ropey, and then make something creative.

I know it’s not that simple, obviously, but I was playing through a fifteen year old FPS yesterday and the difference between now and then is just not that big. It’s not nothing but the Gameboy philosophy of doing more with less would go a long way.

But… but… the line has to go up! Don’t you understand? It’s not going up! Panic!

I agree that the original is tighter, but I love the free-form adventure of 2.

Did you ever play it modded? The Restoration Project, Updated has two amazing addons that add more talking heads and more voice acting and they’re both of phenomenal, basically seamless quality. It’s really like putting on a fresh coat of paint on the old thing.

Played it? I voiced a talking dog in it!

Fallout 2 is probably one of my favourite games of all time. Absolutely amazing game, if a bit sprawly. I’ve played through it many times and expect I will do again.

Red Alert 2 - the pinnacle of the isometric RTS genre. Bordering on too silly but without tipping into absolute farce. Mechanically very strong, the art is lovely, and even has nostalgia for me.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Massive game but a run can be completed relatively quickly. I always disable the music because I don’t like games that try to scare and intimidate me. I’m pretty good at the game so it tends to be pretty relaxing for me, if a bit fugue-state-y.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2: the apex of the Battlefield multiplayer games for me. The others have plenty going for them, but BFBC2 was the best compromise between destructibility, player counts, etc. for my tastes. Sniping took significant skill and one couldn’t go prone - it meant that open areas didn’t feel like a death sentence (looking at you, later BF games!).

Assassin’s Creed: Origins/Odyssey two open world games with beautiful maps and locations to explore. I think I preferred the setting of Origins but the story of Odyssey. A bit of escapist fantasy, I suppose. I loved the Ezio trilogy too, mind you.

As long as you’re enjoying your gaming time, you’re doing it right!

Optimising the fun out of it is an own-goal.

That only holds true if the price doesn’t vary over time.

I have something in the region of a thousand games collected over about twenty years. If the price is good and it looks like I might like it (and I can afford to fritter the money away) then I buy it.

That’s a thousand (ish) opportunities for entertainment, not a thousand (ish) obligations.

I buy games to have a library to pull from when the mood takes me. If I finished them all then I would no longer have that, which seems bad.

The reward for finishing a “backlog” of games is having nothing more to play. That’s like trying to finish a meal in a restaurant quickly to get to the after dinner mint.

I despise treating gaming as an obligation like this. I have a collection of games, not a “backlog”.

Sounds like I’m never going to have a reason to buy a current generation console.

I watched the video they released the other day and stopped half way through. It looked rather dull and also ugly, unfortunately.

How is there no middleware available for NPC movement? It looked tremendously stilted. Similarly the lighting and environments looked worse than things I was playing fifteen years ago. I don’t need cutting edge but it looks distractingly ugly to me.

Mechanically I like 64. I’d like a few more tracks, particularly for the battle mode. The later versions add far too much cruft for my tastes.

Unfortunate for fans of THPS4 but fortunate for me!

I absolutely adore THPS3 but bounced off THPS4 pretty hard. I might actually properly play THPS4’s content in this remake.

I really hoped I’d like Superliminal but ultimately I found it lacking in charisma and was tired of it by the time I reached the end. 6/10 is about what I’d rate it. Serviceable but mediocre.

Isn’t that what the Skate series is for?

Do your best.

I played it when it was new and I’m afraid some people just don’t get the magic of the gameplay. I’m one of those people. The setting is gorgeous but the action side of things bored me. It felt like homework I had to do before the game would let me see the next bit of the setting.

I wouldn’t really call it a “trap”. If you’re buying a console when it’s new at full price, sure, you’re being taken for a ride, but give it a couple of years for stuff to be cheaper and it can work out reasonably well.

I used to be a major PC gamer but eventually the cost/benefit calculation went completely off the rails.

That said, I’ve not upgraded to the current console generation because I’m still waiting on something to justify it.

What would I even play on it?

I don’t think any of these nutters have experienced the things they rail against. I’m not in the US, but from where I’m standing you guys haven’t had any of that stuff since before Reagan.

I’m still waiting for enough titles to come out on either platform to make the jump from my Xbox One X.

: This Time it’s Poosonal.

I wish there was an option for “I’m in the UK - we don’t use SMS/RCS anymore”. Every time I open the text app it acts as if it’s Signal/WhatsApp and I’m suddenly going to start texting people like it’s 2003. I just want the 2FA pass code that was sent, you weirdos.

There are many things I’d spend more on, but gaming is something that I can spend a lot of hours on without necessarily enjoying. As in, the experiences are often weirdly compulsive and before I know it I’ve tanked eighty hours without really enjoying it all that much.

I collected all the submarine collectibles in GTA V - do I think that was more fun than a party with friends? Absolutely not. Did it take more time? Most definitely.

The only full price game I recall ever buying was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (back when £35 was the standard “full price” price point). Now that one was worth it, but no other AAA game that I can think of has justified the cost to me. Once we’re talking about that amount of money there’s a lot of other things I would get more enjoyment from.

I think I paid about £10 for GTA V. I’d maybe go to £15 or £20 these days, but beyond that I simply have other things I could play.

It’s metaphorical because we’re talking about any time a game makes a decision like this with relation to how they scale their game world, not just that one time that you measured it out to be 50m.

That might be what you’re choosing to talk about, but it is categorically not what I was talking about.

But the size of the world is a part of the game design. What’s too big for The Outer Worlds might be just fine for Mad Max simply because one of those games lets you drive a car.

I know! I understand!

That’s why I picked a specific example of where I feel the balance in some popular games is poorly implemented for my tastes. Some games manage this well, some do not, and I feel that this often errs on the side of “50m outside the settlement”. Based on your comments, that doesn’t bother you.

Great, I wish I was as lucky.

For me, an open world game that gets the scaling wrong is not very fun to explore. Whether that’s too big or too small. It seems lots of gamers aren’t fussed about this. Arguing with me that my preferences are wrong doesn’t seem worthwhile. I understand the game design principles, that was never the issue.

I posted this because I think it’s interesting to compare notes on the parameters of this element of game design. What sort of scaling is too big? Why? How many people should be visible in a settlement to feel right? That sort of thing.

I do think it’s worth examining why this is harder for you to suspend disbelief than other things in video games. You suspend disbelief every time your character loses or gains hit points rather than suffering actual injuries that need time to heal. You suspend disbelief any time you play a game in a real world city that isn’t represented in 1:1 scale (that’s basically all of them) like The Division or Spider-Man. So to the same end, I’ll take those supplies that are 50m away and it’s somehow too far for the quest giver to go get them, because it’s best for the design of the game, just like the scale of the world that they built.

I’m not sure what your point here is? That my brain is broken? As I said, if I was able to overlook it, I would. I’m pretty sure I also said that I wasn’t looking for 1:1 as it actively hampers game design.

There’s more options than 1:1 or Wannado.

I’m glad to hear it’s not just me (I mean, statistically that seems unlikely, but still!). It’s a little like modern cinema compared to '70s film making - let the story breathe, folks. Given that the tooling to make the world larger (but with the same amount of content) isn’t all that complex, I wish it was done more. The amount of content is fine - often excessive. But give me a chance to feel like I’m actually travelling.

I felt the scaling of Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey worked quite well in that respect. There was actual travel!

The criticism was frequently that they made 1000 planets but that it would have been better if they’d focused on making 5 good ones

I take zero issue with this! I think you’re misunderstanding my point.

Putting the metaphorical supplies 50m away is what they found led to the best pacing

I’m not talking about a metaphorical 50m, I’m talking in the game world 50m. It’s not an analogy for game design, I mean in a very literal sense that the worlds are a bit too small for my tastes.

I’m not talking about density of content or the number of locations in a game. I am talking about the level of size scaling that has been applied. Too small and I cannot get immersed, too large and it makes for a tedious play experience (that’s why I cited True Crime: Streets of LA, that uses 1:1 scaling for LA and as a result has a lousy overworld).

For my tastes the balance currently leans too heavily towards ludicrously small in many games. I quite liked the scale of the Watch_Dogs games, as a counter example.

Hell, it’d be cool if there was an engine that used something like content-aware scaling to adjust the distances to player preferences. Some people want a slog (that seems to be Death Stranding’s deal) and others want Wannado City.

so suspend your disbelief a bit

If this was advice I was able to act on then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If this was an option, I’d do it! Do you think I enjoy being frustrated at this?! No! I wish it didn’t bother me! It’s a nuisance and gets in the way of fun!

How are we defining “better”? For me it makes the experience worse because I lose all immersion. I’m trying to be immersed and my brain can let a lot slip (realism is not required!) but for me the limit is when it strains even basic credulity. Yes, 50m makes the quest less hassle, but if I don’t care about the quest due to the scope of the world then there’s a more fundamental issue.

In games where immersion isn’t a factor (e.g. The Binding of Isaac) that stuff doesn’t matter. In an explorable open world I content that it’s rather crucial.

I’d love the option in a tutorial that for “I’ve played plenty of this kind of game - tell me what’s specifically different in this game”.

I recently rewatched Rango and the size of the main settlement in that is about the size of those in RDR. Reflecting on that, I suppose I want the map to reflect the kind of scale and focus seen in other media. A film or TV show doesn’t show us every street (usually) but it gives a sense of the scale of the place. If a game map couldn’t be used for an establishing shot without looking daft then it doesn’t really work for me, I reckon.

It’s something I like about the overhead perspective used by games like Fallout and Wasteland - I perceive what’s on screen as the area of the settlement that’s relevant to me but with the understanding that there’s more off screen. A character might mention going somewhere, much like in a play, and then reappear. Perhaps the player can go there, perhaps they can’t even see it, but it makes the world feel larger.

I suppose, much like in reality, we rarely visit every location of a place, but it needs to feel like it might enter our narrative in some way.

I want worlds big enough that I can suspend disbelief. True scale is too much (True Crime: Streets of LA was awful to traverse, for example) but too small and it feels like being in one of those play parks for small children. It’s a problem I’ve had with Fallout 3+, where the scale makes no sense. I don’t necessarily need the additional space to be dense with content (if it’s supposed to be a barren waste, why is it full of stuff?!).

I want to buy into these worlds, but I struggle when things feel ridiculous. Oh are you struggling for supplies? Even though there’s supplies 50m away from your settlement? Come on!

The first Red Dead Redemption hit the spot for me, as did the native settlement in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The scale isn’t actually realistic, but it’s large enough that I feel like it could be. GTA IV wasn’t bad either, but GTA V was too compact in many places for my tastes.

I suppose it’s much like the theatre. If a scene is well written it feels fine, but if the play calls attention to the limitations of the medium too much then it starts to become a bit silly.

If memory serves, the charity hires GDQ for a flat fee. They’ve already been paid for the event and so donations that come in go straight to the charity. PCF for the winter event, MSF for the summer one.

Notable runs for me:

• Dick Tracy
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
• Fallout: New Vegas (All “Romances”)
• Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (from The Simpsons)
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Tightened Vice and Loosened Vice)
• Tetris: The Grand Master
• Crazy Taxi with Live Backing Band

I also enjoyed the various Kaizo runs but they kind of blurred together.

The Crazy Taxi run was off the chain. The atmosphere was electric!

I much prefer this approach. A feeling I’d like is “travel and escapism”. I like the Broken Sword series for that feeling, as an example.