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Yep, it’s a byproduct of the “bit wars” in the gaming culture of the '80s and '90s where each successive console generation had much more of a visual grqphical upgrade without sacrificing too much in other technical aspects like framerate/performance. Nowadays if you want that kind of upgrade you’re better off making a big investment in a beefy gaming rig because consoles have a realistic price point to consider, and even then we’re getting to a point of diminishing returns when it comes to the real noticeable graphical differences. Even back in the '80s/'90s the most powerful consoles of the time (such as the Neo Geo) were prohibitively expensive for most people. Either way, the most lauded games of the past few years have been the ones that put the biggest focus on aspects like engaging gameplay and/or immersive story and setting. One of the strongest candidates for this year’s Game of the Year could probably run on a potato and was basically poker with some interesting twists: essentially the opposite of a big studio AAA game. Baldur’s Gate 3 showed studios that gamers are looking for an actual complete game for their $60, and indie hits such as the aforementioned Balatro are showing then that you can make games look and play great without all the super realistic graphics or immense budget if you have that solid gameplay, story/setting and art style. Call of Duty Black Ops 48393 with the only real “innovation” being more realistic sun glare on your rifle is just asking for failure.
Odd to say Veilguard was a success when from what I can tell, one of the few things uniting the very fractured and divided gaming community this year was that the writing in Veilguard was horrible. And you know that’s true when the various members of that community can give their own varied reasons why the writing was horrible and they would all be valid.
The only time I was really caught off guard by a game like that was Darksiders II. I went into the final area expecting a gauntlet of challenges, beat the first big boss enemy in there… And final cutscene and credits. That guy was the final boss. Made me literally put down the controller and say “That was it?” I’ve always known long games were going to be long going in to them.
Sounds a lot like Hypnospace Outlaw, which came out a few years ago and had you exploring a fictional Internet from the mid/late-90s era on an OS designed to mimic Windows 95/98 (with an upgrade to an XP-like desktop later in the game). You were basically a mod/censor who went around and busted people for copyright infringement and stuff. Also a real nostalgia trip if you miss that kind of aesthetic.
You have a narrow taste in games and that’s perfectly OK, nothing to be ashamed of at all. Enjoy what you like. You have no obligation whatsoever to play the newest, most popular thing just to keep up with the gaming Joneses. The list of popular games I haven’t tried myself is MUCH longer than the list of them I have played, either because they don’t appeal to me or I just don’t have the spare time or money, and I am 100% fine with that. I buy the games I know I’ll put time into and enjoy and don’t worry about the rest.
Checks out. I’m the same as others have mentioned, after work I’d rather just tune out and watch someone play a game (or have it on in the background) than actually build up the mental strength to play one myself, or at least a game that has any challenge to it, most days. If I play a game on an evening after work, I’m usually just cruising the Paldea region in Pokemon hunting for shinies or some other interesting pokemon to catch. I can just shut my brain off, move my character around, and look for a different colored pokemon.
Believe it or not, the Catholic Church is far less into the “Satanic Panic” idea that anything that mentions magic and stuff is evil and should be avoided than most Protestant Christian churches, especially the Evangelicals. Pretty much the only thing they consider sinful outright in the media is porn, otherwise you’re just advised to avoid stuff that influences you to commit other sins. This includes things like Baldur’s Gate 3. If it’s not influencing you to sin, it’s not a sin to play. Same with Harry Potter and other stuff like that. It’s just some extreme folks in the Church, influenced by the Evangelicals, who push the Satanic Panic farther than the Church officially teaches and give the Church a bad name in that regard. Lots of priests are sci-fi/fantasy/gamer nerds, and Tolkien (author of Lord of the Rings) was a faithful practicing Catholic.
Exactly. This has much more to do with pirating games, especially before release, than any emulator crackdown. He’s the poster child of every reason Nintendo has used to go after anyone not using legit hardware. And frankly, I think more people than many are comfortable admitting are like this guy: they use emulators primarily for piracy. I’m not 100% totally against emulation, but that’s where we need to point companies like Nintendo who are hyper-aggressive with their IPs to the real target: illegal ROM sharing sites and other avenues of game piracy, instead of the emulators. People who are emulating just for backup/preservation of games, as many claim they are (and I don’t have a problem with), shouldn’t really have an objection to the real pirates going down.
They already did this with the classic Sonic games (Sonic Origins) and removed them from any new Steam copies of the Genesis/Mega Drive Classics collection. I doubt they’re working on all the games in their library, but it may be enough of them that they just decided to pull the whole collection rather than leave it so gutted out. Sucks, but yeah, that’s the way it goes. That said, Shining Force remaster please? That would be awesome.
That’s the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Classics collection. I have it myself (bought several years ago). It’s just an official emulator/GUI wrapper (styled like a bedroom with a CRT) that comes with the games. If you have the collection you can find all the ROMs in the collection’s folder and play them with whatever emulator you want. If Steam ever threatens to take them away I strongly recommend backing that folder up somewhere.
To be fair, they’re both Japanese companies, but yeah, Japan’s patent/trademark/copyright laws, or at least the way they’re enforced, make America’s look like China’s. It’s a big part of how Nintendo can be the copyright bullies they are: they’ll do this, file suit in Japan, and steamroll anyone who dares oppose them in court. Because both companies in this case are Japanese, though, all the Japan vs foreigner stuff doesn’t really apply here.
And as a foreigner who lived in Japan in the past, I will say there’s some truth to the above, but it’s a bit exaggerated. Due to that homogeneity, 90+ percent of any racism anyone might experience there is due to stereotypes, not hostility or hatred. It’s still wrong, but more due to ignorance. That is, unless you’re Chinese or Korean. Japan, China and Korea HATE each other (each one hates the other two) for many historical reasons, and while the hostility isn’t as overt nowadays, it still simmers just under the surface. The US is basically forcing Japan and South Korea to play nice and be “allies” so that China and North Korea don’t run them both over. Otherwise, they would all be at each other’s throats.
Fun fact: at least in the Catholic Church, “cult” is a neutral word that basically means “popular following”. In the Church, it’s mostly used to refer to particular devotions or holy people that catch on in local communities and spread to a wider area, which the Church may look into for official " approval" for anyone to participate in or promote worldwide, or as a beginning sign that a holy person may become a saint. Even if the Church doesn’t officially canonize a person a saint, they may still say the person has a “cult” in a particular area.
EDIT: meant to post in reply to the OP, not the above comment, sorry about that.
Origins tends to be the “forgotten” title in the Arkham series since it wasn’t developed by the same studio and doesn’t feature many of the iconic characters/villains of the others (just Penguin, Deathstroke, Riddler and Joker), but IMO it’s still a very good game that can be held up with the others in the series and can introduce players to a variety of other members of Batman’s rogues gallery they may have not heard of before.
Ah, yes, that infamous barrel. Claims many a hedgehog’s life due to timing out. I did actually manage once or twice as a kid to get under it through fast and clever jumping, until I only learned in adulthood that you’re supposed to move the D-pad up and down to control it. Really doesn’t help that the game doesn’t show you before how to control a barrel like that, and that stage can push players to the edge of danger timewise with or without that barrel.
Competitive Pokémon tends to go back and forth between times of “stall” (turtling) and hyper-offense (aggression) dominating the metagame, depending on which strategies and team builds players will find. Whenever one becomes dominant, fans of the other will constantly hound tournament runners to change tiering or ban certain pokemon to change it.
As for a “fun” game to go hyper-aggressive with zero HP, max damage, I’ve seen some YouTubers attempt “Danger Mario” runs in the first two Paper Mario games, maximizing FP and BP and never taking HP when leveling, keeping Mario in the “danger” zone where lots of evasion or damage badges will stay activated. They then rely on those badges, items and partner abilities to avoid taking damage.
Within console generations, change has indeed always tended to be gradual, but I think the point here is that we’re talking about the step up to the next console generation, for which the visual difference in graphical power used to be very large, you could do a lot more on the newer console than the older one, but has become more gradual over time. Many already didn’t see the need to upgrade to the new Playstation or Xbox from the PS4 or Xbox One, and a lot of their libraries were backported to the older consoles (granted, the consoles dropped during Covid so scarcity played a part in that but even after production picked back up they’re not doing as well overall). The only console that could still likely make a big visual leap to a new generation any time soon is the Switch to the Switch 2, and we still don’t have confirmation on whether Nintendo is even planning on such an upgrade. Just like the Wii, it sold like crazy while still being the least powerful in the generation because it had a knockout combination of utility and quality games. On the other hand, it is showing its age now, so if Nintendo doesn’t make that upgrade who knows if the fans will continue to support it.
I always thought Pokemon regions being inspired by real-world regions/countries was one of its neater aspects.
For those who don’t know:
- Kanto: Kanto region, Japan (Tokyo and surrounding area)
- Johto: Kansai region, Japan (Osaka, Kyoto, etc)
- Hoenn: Kyushu island and Okinawa, Japan
- Sinnoh: Hokkaido island, Japan
- Unova: New York City metro area, USA
- Kalos: France
- Alola: Hawaii, USA
- Galar: the UK
- Paldea: the Iberian peninsula (Spain, Portugal)
Then they come up with the rating system whose only enforcement is on the AO rating, and don’t bother to actually clean up their shit. As the post above yours mentioned, the problem is lack of enforcement anywhere outside the AO rating or even anyone involved actually caring. Devs and marketing teams push for M if they want to actually sell a game to kids above 7 years old, retailers will sell anything to anyone lest they lose out on the money, and parents who ask about it will just ask the kid who wants to buy the game and will lie about what the rating means. We can crab about movie ratings all we want, but at least most studios and theaters actually enforce the MPAA’s rating and parents know what movie ratings mean. Game ratings are basically like TV ratings, so irrelevant you wonder why they even bother.
Sounds like the community of every competitive (or coop campaign) multiplayer game I’ve ever been in. I prefer just to not play online multiplayer, I don’t have the time (or disposable income) to “git gud” enough to be able to even stand a chance against all the obsessed people who pour hundreds of hours into it in the first month and drive everyone else out.
Even the ESRB, another example of gaming industry self-regulation, hasn’t stopped gaming companies marketing M-rated games to kids or really slowed down sales or access to such games to underage players at all. If anything, they use the M rating as a direct marketing tool to kids: “your parents wouldn’t want you to play this so you totally should”.
EDIT: autocorrect is dumb
Most people don’t, or only throw something like 5 bucks at games like that here or there. But some F2P games are pushing 10 years or more in existence, so somebody’s paying to keep the servers running. The backbone of that industry is the small population of “whales” who spend their life’s savings to get the superior rare new cosmetic or in-game currency to gamble their life away to maybe pull enough copies to max out their waifu. Then they’ll use said cosmetic or waifu for about a month before the next super-ultra rare amazing once-in-a-lifetime hat or weapon comes along, or another waifu who totally eclipses their original one is released, then it’s rinse, repeat ad infinitum until the whale is flat broke and their life is ruined. But at least they maxed out their waifu and got to the top of the rankings in the leaderboard.
I’ve been a part of two different friends’ attempts to quit addiction to MMOs. A high school friend had a problem with Everquest back before WoW. His brother recruited us friends to help give him alternative stuff to do like movie and other game nights. We succeeded, and he was able to put the game down. Some college friends and I were not so successful in pulling one of my roommates away from WoW. Activision Blizzard have it literally down to the science of addiction.
I think I still have one of those. It was Logitech. I thought it was good unless I wanted to use the thumbsticks or triggers. I always thought the Sony design of putting the thumbsticks down in the lower-middle was really awkward, and for some reason, using the triggers on the Logitech controller sometimes felt a bit painful.
Aside from Microsoft selling it as one, there’s a reason the 360’s contoller design is basically the de facto basis for most PC controllers. It’s the most comfortable one I’ve used for 3D games by far. Everything you need is easy to access. Nintendo lifted essentially the same design for their Wii U and Switch Pro controllers.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, a few days ago. Been busy or just didn’t feel like gaming since then.