Recent gaming disappointments

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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cave hermit
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Recent gaming disappointments

Post by cave hermit »

Basically another venting/hot take thread, this one themed around your recent disappointments that have to do with gaming, modern or retro.

2 days ago the PC ports of the various Kingdom Hearts games released. On the Epic game store. That alone is disappointment for most, not really for me. Also each title is $50/60. Keeping in mind that these titles are available for pennies on consoles. Another disappointment for most, but hey, I figure high resolutions, high refresh rates, and modding potential should justify the price.

There was a 20% launch discount on the titles, so I picked up 1.5+2.5 remix for $40. Downloaded, and this morning I woke up early and decided to give KH2 a shot.

It hitched and microstuttered like crazy, zero smoothness. I'm on a RTX 3080 and a Ryzen 3900x. I looked it up and was told to ignore the in game vsync and to disable G sync if I had it enabled (I did). I made a custom nvidia control panel profile for KH2 (oh yeah, each game in the collection is its own separate exe, go figure) with g sync disabled. Didn't help. I tried driver level vsync, ingame vsync, unlocking the frame cap, limiting frames to 60 fps (oh yeah, here's a BIG disappointment, for the kingdom hearts pc ports before 3, refresh rates above 60hz actually just use interpolation rather than actual high refresh rates!), nothing really worked.

Had to refund it in the end.
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BryanM
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by BryanM »

The last time I paid money for a video game was a rage purchase of Titan Quest Anniversary Edition on Steam. On my XP drive. Loaded it up, stuff worked, logged out and tossed it on my queue. Cue ~3 years later when I was ready to play it, Steam no longer supported Windows XP. Requested a refund for my five buckeroos, got the standard roboreplay of "lol lol we've already got your money fuck you", and I've come to accept my fucking as my own fault. I never should have purchased anything with DRM.

Valve continues to falsely advertise "Windows XP" as a minimum requirement for all XP applications to this day. Maybe they've implemented legacy support, but I'd be seriously surprised if they did. And there was no excuse for giving them money in this case - there's an online store called Good 'ole Games that sells video games without the DRM.

My tale of butthurt will be relevant to some of you once they inevitably drop support for the 64-bit Windows os's in the future, and require Windows AssStalker edition, with its wonderful built-in OS ad n' hyperstalk system. Future's gonna be great.

Video games are still going to be exactly the same thing with a different skin wrapped around them, though.
Searchlike
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Searchlike »

Everything under the sun coming for PC except for arcade games.
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XoPachi
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by XoPachi »

100% of Nintendo's first party titles since the launch of the Switch. I've played everything on offer from them. Not one game has been enjoyable for me except kinda sorta Splatoon 2. But I only ever liked Splatoon's single player and even then, only for the platforming.
Splatoon's gunplay and movement as a shooter feels disgusting. It's all only tolerable when pretending the game is a platformer.

Also Ninjala. I thought it looked like a cool little Switch game. I gave it several matches and not one thing made sense or felt good. I could never figure out the *basics* of the game and it seems like a dice roll what happened in "fights".
Gamer707b
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Gamer707b »

XoPachi wrote:100% of Nintendo's first party titles since the launch of the Switch. I've played everything on offer from them. Not one game has been enjoyable for me except kinda sorta Splatoon 2. But I only ever liked Splatoon's single player and even then, only for the platforming.
Splatoon's gunplay and movement as a shooter feels disgusting. It's all only tolerable when pretending the game is a platformer.

Also Ninjala. I thought it looked like a cool little Switch game. I gave it several matches and not one thing made sense or felt good. I could never figure out the *basics* of the game and it seems like a dice roll what happened in "fights".
Man are we complete opposites. At 46, I find myself enjoying less and less of those "epic, story, triple A" games and gravitate more toward the Nintendo first party stuff. Mario Odyessey was the first game I 100% completed in a very long time. Loved Zelda BOTW, Mario MAker 2 and so on. I used to be a Nintendo kid back in the 80s, then played the story based Playstation games ( can't stand them now ) and the last 5 or so years, I've come full circle back to the Big N. Lol. Nintendo for me, much like arcade games have that pure, raw gameplay that makes one smile and forget all your cares. No story B.S. or focus on "realism" or how the character's eyes are blinking during a cut scene. Just plug, play and have fun.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Gamer707b »

My recent games that I didn't vibe with are Freedom Planet and Panzer Dragoon both Switch games. I kept hearing that FP was this great 2D platfromer that was made by the main guy that did Sonia Mania. Love 2D platformers but this one fell flat for me. Played it halfway and I was like "meh". Not too pumped to go back to it. Love the Panzer Dragoon series and had to buy the remake. It was decent and played through it twice, but it just felt very shallow in the gameplay. They didn't add anything to it. Once you beat it, there's really no reason to go back to it. Hopefully, Panzer Dragoon Zwei will be better.
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Immryr
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Immryr »

Gamer707b wrote:Love the Panzer Dragoon series and had to buy the remake. It was decent and played through it twice, but it just felt very shallow in the gameplay. They didn't add anything to it. Once you beat it, there's really no reason to go back to it. Hopefully, Panzer Dragoon Zwei will be better.
it doesn't really sound like you 'love the series' if your reason for not liking the game was shallow gameplay and no reason to replay once you beat the game. it's exactly the same as the original in both of those regards.
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Stevens
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Stevens »

Lately? Everything post Wasteland 3. I can't get into anything.
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guigui
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by guigui »

Try New Vegas, fresh taste on Post-Apoc
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XoPachi
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by XoPachi »

Gamer707b wrote:Man are we complete opposites. At 46, I find myself enjoying less and less of those "epic, story, triple A" games and gravitate more toward the Nintendo first party stuff. Mario Odyessey was the first game I 100% completed in a very long time. Loved Zelda BOTW, Mario MAker 2 and so on. I used to be a Nintendo kid back in the 80s, then played the story based Playstation games ( can't stand them now ) and the last 5 or so years, I've come full circle back to the Big N. Lol. Nintendo for me, much like arcade games have that pure, raw gameplay that makes one smile and forget all your cares. No story B.S. or focus on "realism" or how the character's eyes are blinking during a cut scene. Just plug, play and have fun.
I wouldn't say we're total opposites because I don't care much for story driven AAA content either. Usually anyway. I can't stand Sony's first party stuff if it doesn't start with Ratchet or WipEout. But that's been a thing since like PS3. Nintendo is someone who even at their most unsuccessful, I would still love. Not the Switch (or the 3DS, but there were still a small chunk of titles for that I liked)...
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Gamer707b »

Immryr wrote:
Gamer707b wrote:Love the Panzer Dragoon series and had to buy the remake. It was decent and played through it twice, but it just felt very shallow in the gameplay. They didn't add anything to it. Once you beat it, there's really no reason to go back to it. Hopefully, Panzer Dragoon Zwei will be better.
it doesn't really sound like you 'love the series' if your reason for not liking the game was shallow gameplay and no reason to replay once you beat the game. it's exactly the same as the original in both of those regards.
Guess I should've said I love Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Orta. The first Panzer Dragoon is the weak link, but I was still hoping it wasn't a bare bones remake. They could've added something to it instead of a 1 for 1 remake.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by floralcateyes »

If I could code, I'd write a script that automatically posts "My last run." to this thread everyday.

More on topic: I played Trails of Cold Steel 3 last year. Enjoyed my time with it well enough; helped a bunch during the initial lockdown. Some time later, I looked back at my time with it and the two games before it, and I realized that I find that whole (sub-sub-)series to be thoroughly mediocre. I guess I played them out of a sense of duty. The Sky trilogy is far and away my favorite in the genre. Helped me through one of the worst times in my life, completely changed my opinion of JRPGs, helped me find Adios, etc. ToCS is just... not even close. Makes me even more hesitant to finally try out Ys 8, about which I've heard both promising and worrying things in equal measure. Not sure if "Falcom's recent output has been disappointing" is a hot or cold take around these parts. And I'm not prepared to endorse that claim, especially since I've yet to play Ys 8 or ToCS 4. But I'm leaning towards it.

I'll probably still play ToCS 4 because I'm swine.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Stevens »

guigui wrote:Try New Vegas, fresh taste on Post-Apoc
I am starting to wonder as I drift from game to game if it simply WL 3 I really want to be playing.

I also forgot I did play one RPG post WL 3 - Shadowrun: Dragonfall, which I quite liked a lot. I picked up Hong Kong at the same time, just haven't started it yet. Presumably I will dig it based on what I have read since I liked the other one.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Mischief Maker »

Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2

In a world where I'd never played Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock, I would probably be over the moon about this game. Instead it's giving me flashbacks to Star Trek: Starfleet Command, and not in a good way.

In short, it's a turn-based boardgame converted into a realtime strategy game, and manually controlling all the board game active skills for each and every ship in real time is a frustrating mess.

You've gotta chase around each individual ship and make sure they're activating their stance skills, special weapon skills, boarding actions, etc. Many skills like torpedoes need to be manually fired, by which you need to manually turn the ship to the correct facing and hit the "fire" button at the exact perfect moment. Did the enemy board you? Oh dear, activate the call to arms skill. Meanwhile what happened to that tech priest ship that wandered offscreen?

And I mean it when I say you need to "chase" your fleet around because the default attack AI circle strafes their selected enemy and will happily wander offscreen and into a minefield. It's doable, it's winnable, but the interface makes this otherwise average complexity tactical game way more frustrating to control than it needs to be.

The ship models are amazing, and the weapon effects are great, but to play the game properly you've got to play at such extreme distance that all your ships just look like little triangles. Boy would this game have benefited from BSG:D's dynamic camera battle-replay option. But even if you do zoom in and play by the seat of your pants, you'll quickly discover that this isn't a simulator and the visual effects are all abstractions of dice rolls, like seeing a boarding action start to take effect onboard a ship before the assault craft even touch down.

Again, I don't hate this game, but BSG:D does everything this game does better, with a plot that doesn't feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. And at over 40GB of hard drive space, Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 isn't worth keeping around just to admire the ship models. Oh well!
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Marc
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Marc »

I'd say Cyberpunk, but I'm still somewhat baffled as to why I thought I'd like it anyways.
Sega ending the AGES series with no OutRunners.
Devil Engine - not for me this one.
Not recent, but of all the Switch stuff I've played, I couldn't get into BotW at all.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

The lack of a modern port of the arcade version of Outrunners, one of the best sprite scaling racers, is a damn shame. Can you imagine it with online multiplayer?

The fact that Outrun 2006 is no longer being sold also sucks. The closest we got was Outrun Online Arcade which stripped half the tracks, leaving only the Outrun 2SP tracks. Where's a modern release that also includes the bonus tracks from Outrun 2's Xbox port? Why does Ferrari licensing have to suck so much? I'd honestly be okay with a sequel that strips all the Ferrari branding and uses made up/generic cars like Outrunners if that makes it easier for it to remain on the market.

We also have yet to get a port of the Wangan Midnight: Maximum Tune games. :(
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by blazinglazers69 »

Marc wrote:I couldn't get into BotW at all.
I got the part with Gorons (last beast thing) and just stopped playing. The world is very boring after a few hours, I find the food system boring and cumbersome, and loot isn't exciting or rewarding since all your stuff breaks. Meh.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Downloaded Shockman for the TG-16 on the Wii U virtual console (yep, still rockin' that baby in 2021). I was kinda prepared, because every review of it ever is "it's Mega Man with rough controls." What I wasn't prepared for was how laggy the Wii U VC version is. Most stuff on there is fine, but some really split-second demanding games are pretty much unplayable if they didn't optimize the emulation well, like Zelda II or Punch Out. Shockman seems to fall into that category; it's not even necessarily that demanding, but the combination of bad jumping controls and bad lag combine to have me taking unnecessary hits all over the place. Even the section with the crumbling buildings right at the very beginning is Mario endgame Star World-hard.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Marc wrote: Sega ending the AGES series with no OutRunners.
Sega ending it period was tragic. I bought tons of them, they're great and there were still so many avenues to explore. But I'm guessing their beancounters decided mini consoles paid better or something.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Marc »

Sengoku Strider wrote:
Marc wrote: Sega ending the AGES series with no OutRunners.
Sega ending it period was tragic. I bought tons of them, they're great and there were still so many avenues to explore. But I'm guessing their beancounters decided mini consoles paid better or something.
Even the ones I was dubious about I still had fun with - the last thing in the world I expected was to spend an entire afternoon stuck in front of G-Loc!

There's just such a large part of their arcade history left unexplored. The Astro City Mini at least threw a few bones with the likes of Dark Edge, Arabian Fight, Death Adder, Cotton and Rad Mobile, but the number of racers in particular that have never had a home port makes me sad.
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XoPachi
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by XoPachi »

Marc wrote:I couldn't get into BotW at all.
I would play it over SS but it's in my bottom 3 Zelda's for sure.
blazinglazers69 wrote:loot isn't exciting or rewarding since all your stuff breaks. Meh.
I don't get the contrived justifications for the game *taking* your items from you that people would only make for a Nintendo game.
"Forces variety so you aren't always using the same thing because no other game figured this out".
You mean the variety of hoarding multiples of the same kind of powerful/fun item because you know you'll lose it? Is it the variety of marking farming spots on the map because while they want you use different things they didn't make loot spawn randomly to facilitate that? Is variety not wanting to even use certain things out of fear of losing it (not that anything in the game is challenging besides Lynels)? Is the variety in the 9 total unique enemies that just really make you switch up those deep melee tactics?

Hearing people say they "like" the game taking things from you is always funny because they never would ask for this of any other game. Imagine DMC fans saying they wish the game took Sparda from Dante because you used it a lot. Or Borderlands 2 players wanting their Interfacers to shatter in their hands during a Voracidous fight. Or demanding Slayer throws away his Ballista when it ran out of cells.

"It's just an ammo system."
No, it's not. An ammo system is Juno switching from a low ammo Tri-Rocket Launcher and replenishing the weapon's stock as he's using the Plasma Shotgun. You switch weapons in Wild, it will never restore itself except for this game's bitch made variant of the Master Sword. Gotta travel 40 miles of empty fields to get to your farming spots and grab another one of the weapon you're about to lose so you can get back to fighting the same 6 enemies the game offers. None of which are in the "dungeons" btw. :]

The game is constantly at odds with itself with nearly every major design element I can think of.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Honestly I prefer it when melee weapons are not subject to constant breaking; I've played plenty of games which don't bother with a durability system and I have never thought to think "gosh I wish my weapon could break". If it does have to break in an RPG style setting, at least make finding a way to repair it realistic. I struggle with games in general that have a valuable, limited resource, but don't provide you with fun or effective ways to conserve that resource. Resident Evil games achieve this by making dodging zombies fun and effective (and the knife's actually good in several games). RE2's remake not giving you an infinite melee option (until you unlock the infinite knife) is an unusual choice in the series and not one I'm sure I agree with.

The first two SaGa / Final Fantasy Legend games have several limited use, one-of-a-kind weapons, but shops have decent equipment you can purchase to have something to use in easier random encounters, thus saving your cool toys for the really serious fights. The limited uses on weapons in general means you have to be careful about resource use during expeditions, but without making it frustrating thanks to access to shops, or character classes that use rechargeable abilities you can recover by sleeping at an Inn.

I'd be a lot less troubled by Monolith's recent DLC update and its rebalanced (i.e. more scarce) ammo system if you had a way of retaining your current weapon such as a button to use your basic peashooter to preserve ammo when you wanted to save your big gun for a boss. You're always forced to use whatever weapon you have with no way to conserve it, unlike other roguelikes where the player has more freedom over when and where to use their big guns. This results in unavoidable weapon losses eventually due to the ammo running out, especially in the Temple (previously you could hang onto weapons in Monolith by simply killing minibosses while at full HP, giving players a skill based means of reliably getting max ammo refills).
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Marc
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Marc »

XoPachi wrote:
Marc wrote:I couldn't get into BotW at all.
I would play it over SS but it's in my bottom 3 Zelda's for sure.
blazinglazers69 wrote:loot isn't exciting or rewarding since all your stuff breaks. Meh.
I don't get the contrived justifications for the game *taking* your items from you that people would only make for a Nintendo game.
"Forces variety so you aren't always using the same thing because no other game figured this out".
You mean the variety of hoarding multiples of the same kind of powerful/fun item because you know you'll lose it? Is it the variety of marking farming spots on the map because while they want you use different things they didn't make loot spawn randomly to facilitate that? Is variety not wanting to even use certain things out of fear of losing it (not that anything in the game is challenging besides Lynels)? Is the variety in the 9 total unique enemies that just really make you switch up those deep melee tactics?

Hearing people say they "like" the game taking things from you is always funny because they never would ask for this of any other game. Imagine DMC fans saying they wish the game took Sparda from Dante because you used it a lot. Or Borderlands 2 players wanting their Interfacers to shatter in their hands during a Voracidous fight. Or demanding Slayer throws away his Ballista when it ran out of cells.

"It's just an ammo system."
No, it's not. An ammo system is Juno switching from a low ammo Tri-Rocket Launcher and replenishing the weapon's stock as he's using the Plasma Shotgun. You switch weapons in Wild, it will never restore itself except for this game's bitch made variant of the Master Sword. Gotta travel 40 miles of empty fields to get to your farming spots and grab another one of the weapon you're about to lose so you can get back to fighting the same 6 enemies the game offers. None of which are in the "dungeons" btw. :]

The game is constantly at odds with itself with nearly every major design element I can think of.
Ah man, virtual round of applause, you summed it up far better than I ever could.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Mischief Maker »

I recently uninstalled Horizon Zero Dawn maybe 20% complete or so.

I'm in love with the concept of open world games, but the reality always seems to be a mediocre action game with a commute between levels.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by BryanM »

Mischief Maker wrote:I recently uninstalled Horizon Zero Dawn maybe 20% complete or so.

I'm in love with the concept of open world games, but the reality always seems to be a mediocre action game with a commute between levels.
The scenery is very much all they can currently provide - I consider Genshin Impact a "sunrise / sunset viewing simulator". It's really good at that, as well as some moody spaces with rain. If you're not into being chill and enjoying the scenery then it's not a good walking simulator. (Solar Sands had a good video on transient spaces, along with a followup on fake liminal spaces.)

It's a subject I've been thinking about a lot since playing Persona 4 last year, a problem I had with my own random dungeon generator in my game prototypes - manmade spaces in the real world all have a purpose. They're not just random hallways and closets filled with pinatas and loot. And even in a fantasy space, they should still have an in-world purpose for being.

Warren Spector was really into this idea, with his ideal being a "City Block simulator". With current limits being what they are, a small scope is best for depth. Like say, the town in Persona 4. Which is a highschool about 15 screens big, with the rest of the places you can go in town collectively being around 15 screens altogether.

Even in real life, if you went into a forest or the top of a mountain, there isn't much to do. Dig a hole for a swimming pool? Strip the bark off a tree and eat the wood? Those are all things you can do in your backyard. Hunting, fishing, camping, or goofing on a lake, that's about all there is.

Being able to toss around your video game carts in Duck Season seemed more fun than the typical "hold up and stare at your character's ass" offerings of the typical 'open world'.

Imo, the ideal would be a game where you can play other games - that's truly the best we can do without AI.

(Some ASCii pokemon generated by GPT-2. Randomly generated stuff still gets too samey, dialogue in AI Dungeon is really impressive in short bursts, tho!)
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by To Far Away Times »

Regarding BotW's weapon breaking, I think that aspect could have been handled better, but its inclusion makes sense given the type of survival game they were setting out to make. You aren't supposed to like that aspect, after all.

The early parts of BotW are some of the best and most refreshing hours I've ever experienced in gaming. Just like there are hardware generations, I think there are gameplay generations too, and BotW's interactivity, world physics, and game design are just so far ahead of all other open world games, it's as if they belonged to an entirely more advanced generation of game design. You get rewarded for trying things, and it feels like you can do anything in BotW and it'll just work the way it should. I love the design of it so much. So many little "Ah ha" moments in that game. It made all the open world games that came before it into "pre-BotW" games. And I think that's about the highest honor you can bestow on a game.
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by SuperDeadite »

Evil Within 2. First game was just perfect for me. Part 2 was really disappointing. Huge downgrade in gameplay, challenge, creativity, and fun. EW1's "match drop" is one of the most fun mechanics in a horror game I've ever played, and even that was removed from 2....XD
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Marc »

To Far Away Times wrote:Regarding BotW's weapon breaking, I think that aspect could have been handled better, but its inclusion makes sense given the type of survival game they were setting out to make. You aren't supposed to like that aspect, after all.

The early parts of BotW are some of the best and most refreshing hours I've ever experienced in gaming. Just like there are hardware generations, I think there are gameplay generations too, and BotW's interactivity, world physics, and game design are just so far ahead of all other open world games, it's as if they belonged to an entirely more advanced generation of game design. You get rewarded for trying things, and it feels like you can do anything in BotW and it'll just work the way it should. I love the design of it so much. So many little "Ah ha" moments in that game. It made all the open world games that came before it into "pre-BotW" games. And I think that's about the highest honor you can bestow on a game.
I felt exactly the opposite. Eight hours in, I was still waiting for something to happen, something that felt like I was doing more than looking for random trinkets, taking part in tiny single-puzzle dungeons, fighting the same group of enemies over and over while cycling through crap equipment, or watching a small green circle decrease in size every time I tried to climb something. The whole thing felt like busywork tied together with a map far larger than it ever needed to be. Hourses for courses I suppose.
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Mischief Maker
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Mischief Maker »

While we're busy slaughtering sacred cow BotW over weapon degrading, screw System Shock 2. One of my biggest lifetime gaming disappointments. Not only for the weapon degradation.

You took the Thief engine with the same patrol-and-search AI, already proven to power one of the scariest games of all time when the levels call for it, and put it on a haunted spaceship. This should be amazing, right? Oh wait, they took out the actual sneaking gameplay the AI is designed around (magic invisibility powers don't count) and frequently bottlenecked the game through unavoidable combat encounters where the Thief AI crumbles against gun weapons (assuming your weapon made from a futuristic play-doh don't crumble first).

And even if you play for plot, the true final boss battle and cliffhanger ending were so stupid! Here's hoping the System Shock 1 remake turns out well so people can finally see for themselves how monumentally overhyped System Shock 2 is.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Recent gaming disappointments

Post by Mortificator »

Thing is, System Shock 1 didn't have sneaking either. It's a first-person shooter with adventure game elements. If the first game didn't bring in Ultima Underworld stuff like talking to the monsters, it doesn't seem unusual for the second to ignore Thief stuff like hiding from the monsters. They're both adapting engines that were designed for other series to do their own fighting-with-some-puzzles thing.

Not gonna defend System Shock 2 from specific criticisms like weapon breaking or enemy performance, though.
RegalSin wrote:You can't even drive across the country Naked anymore
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