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The fan base is earned.
This is what I have a problem with. The fan base WAS earned but now is taken for granted.
You can’t just pretend that online play isn’t important for multiplayer games. It’s a huge knock against the titles you mentioned.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land tries so hard to keep gameplay smooth that any enemies more than like 15 feet away drop to 8fps and it still dips when there’s too many effects on screen. Breath of the Wild simply banishes mobs that get too far away (or just run for too long) to keep the memory functional (and many things don’t even render at the edge of bow range). Super Mario Odyssey also aggressively culls actors and gets a bit sad when you force too much on screen (high up in Metro Kingdom, for example) It might not matter to you but it impacts the game enough for me to notice it.
I simply don’t think that you can trust a Nintendo game to be worth the day 1 cost.
Nintendo makes pretty good games but nothing about their product is “top tier”. The online experience is terrible, their flagship games suffer from framerate dips, pop-in, and stuttering because they don’t invest in better hardware, and speaking of hardware they went with the same will-break-down-and-drift sticks because they’ve been coasting for ages. Meanwhile they’re suing fan projects into the dirt and growing increasingly out of touch. (Sony and Xbox are hot on their heels, the big three could really do with some outside competition)
Pretty much for as long as online games have gotten updates. DOTA kinda codified it with the Battle Pass system but WoW battlegrounds/arena had seasons way before that. They’ll wait and do content/balance updates in chunks and that effects the meta in waves defined as “seasons”.
It’s everywhere now. It can be weaponized FOMO or a clean way to provide regular novelty without being tied down to legacy content.
It’s set in the Titanfall universe, there’s lots of lore scattered around. People work hard to integrate a narrative into the level and character designs, to imply plot in incidental dialogue or cinematics, or just literally write text entries that the majority of gamers will never read because only shooting and rare skins trigger their dopamine.
You leave 8 alone! It’s not turn based (in a strict sense) and Draw/Junction is the foundation of the entire game, mechanical and narrative. The scaling is a little weird because there’s two main experience bars and only one of them makes enemies tougher and it’s not explained, but so be it. All I want is the Japan exclusive Chocobo World and updated graphics without changing the visual style and maybe a soundtrack that doesn’t sound so MIDI.
“My position is so tenuous yet so important to my identity that I will not tolerate the slightest challenge.”
Alternatively, “That’s why my favorite book is Moby Dick, no frou-frou symbolism. Just a good simple tale about a man who hates an animal.”
Psychonauts is about trauma. Fallout is anti-war. FFVII is environmentalist. Samus as a woman was an intentionally subversive choice. Video games have had socual commentary for as long as it’s been able to be expressed.
Almost everything you said is why I prefer Morrowind and replay it more than any other Elder Scroll. I don’t like how hand-holdy and forgiving most modern games are.
The AI is obviously dated, some of the systems are underdeveloped, but stuff like the quest journal and athletic skills and how hard it is at the beginning if you aren’t careful or attentive are all major plusses for me. I want the weapon variety, I want the freedom to be anything but without the wishy-washy “you can be everything” style Skyrim has because they’re terrified of locking a player out of any content.
Yeah, it’s a more immersive and interesting world. I also prefer the quest journal over map markers, make you actually read and interpret shit instead of fast travelling to the nearest pip. You also can’t just be the boss of every faction, they have incompatible goals.
And it does say when you break a main quest so you can revert your save. Just don’t be a murderhobo.
Sorry I’ll be explicit: I’m making fun of how pretentious you sound and can’t take anything you say here seriously. I actually agree that a monster sound system can greatly enhance a movie or game experience, but the difference depends on the specific media. I saw Fury Road three times in the theater because I knew my home system would never match the experience. Something like Star Trek TNG or My Cousin Vinny or, as the topic of this post, Kirby’s Air Ride hinges far less on the audio quality to deliver the intended content. Gatekeeping enjoyment behind speakers makes you a colossal ass.
“Roguelike” has also become very watered down. I see “roguelite” used less often, though it’s more accurate, but there isn’t a good alternative term right now. Turn-based-dungeon-crawler-with-permadeath is historically accurate but there’s a tendency to lump action games like Rogue Legacy and Enter the Gungeon in that needs to be accounted for.
(And no I haven’t played Rogue but I did play a bunch of NetHack)
As a PC gamer from the 90s, much of my technical literacy came about from trying to coax games to work.
Kids these days have no idea how easy they have it. Tracking down a driver update or patch (that you just moved to an unencrypted folder) on a dial-up connection? Re-installing your OS from a series of floppy disks because something broke, again? Limiting clock speed because so many things were tied to CPU cycles and wouldn’t function on new hardware?
PC gaming was a nightmare but you put up with it because StarCraft or Quake 3 online was dope as hell, we had Diablo and Myst and Half-Life and Doom and Putt-Putt Goes to the Goddamned Moon so it was all worth it.
That’s one of the reasons Mario 64 still holds up. Despite being so early in 3D platforming it did a really good job with the controls and camera choices. It’s a real mixed bag to go back to that era of gaming, Generation V, but I kinda like that. There wasn’t preconceived notions of what 3D games should be so they tried everything.
That part is like only like five fights against humans and robots, the only tricky part is the kicky robots will ruin you if you save them for last. And you’ve been without Yuna for a bit by that point so somebody (Kimahri or Rikku) should be filling in the healer role already. It is a weird and kinda weak story sequence but I think the game starts improving after that point.