A lot of video games, particularly multi-player games, use tie-ins from other games, films, TV, or other media to add more exclusive content to their games.

Sometimes it is for cosmetic purposes, sometimes they add new gameplay elements.

The most apt example that really uses this feature is Fortnite. Not only does it add a lot of tie-ins from other forms of popular media but it adds some gameplay elements as well like the Infinity Gauntlet for a brief period.

There was a brief period where these tie-ins were unlockables or easter eggs like the other gimmicky outfits in the old God of War games that had particular abilities but with the expense of playing Kratos look different or silly

Other than these two examples, tie-ins are sometimes added through mods where players can add whatever characters, cosmetics, gameplay elements and other things in their favourite games if they wish to do so.

But the question remains - do these tie-ins actually improve the gaming experience or are they just hype or another feature for the gaming industry to garner more income through microtransactions or paid DLCs or add-ons?

What about tie-ins which do not "fit" with the genre like Call of Duty skins that are not "military-like" or tie-in skins in Rainbow Six Siege like the Rick and Morty skins? Do they add anything or are they just unnecessary items?

TLDR

Crazy difficulty doesn't mean challenge, it often means unrefined design. Easier difficulty doesn't even need to be default. Compensating game design elements should be made available to ameliorate restrictive "difficulty" or more likely design

Summary

In the most basic sense, games are ultimately puzzles where players need to find the solution to complete the challenge. For shooter games, the solution is mostly straightforward, bullets hit the enemies till they die before the player does.

However, certain genres/games innately have a design that restrict the solution to such a narrow degree until they genuinely feel like actual Puzzle Games rather what they are meant to be

Games do not have to cater for everyone or all difficulties and sometimes the inherent design and vision calls for a level of challenge baked in, but some design really should be thought through better.

Game 1: Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade

Most people would actually be more familiar with Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade instead - or more easily identified as Fire Emblem GBA in the West. That's the easier game

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade however, is the game where at about ⅓ of playthrough, you could realize that you have effectively softlocked yourself from finishing the game.

For the uninitiated, Fire Emblem's (at least the GBA-era incarnations that I'm more familiar with) core gameplay is a Tactics RPG where casts of supporting characters (Fighter/Archer/Mage etc) are assembled to accompany the protagonists along their journey. Leveling via combat & inventory are carried over a set of mostly linear missions, only a selected handful of characters can be deployed to a mission from the cast and should a supporting character bite the dust during combat, they are permanently removed from the remaining adventure.

As the story progresses, the enemy types can get increasingly specialized, which needs certain classes of characters to more effectively counter them. But if those classes were neglected to be deployed in the earlier missions, then it's tantamount to a total Game Over as there is no way to raise their levels sufficiently to take on the existing mission as there is no backtracking.

This is often no fault of the player themselves, the starting supporting Character is likely the most powerful and able to hold out on his own, so there is always a direct and powerful incentive to continually throw him into the fray and he sucks up all the XP from the combat encounters. By the time the player realizes that he needs to level-up the other supporting cast at an even rate, he'd have progressed far too deep into the game to correct course.

And even if a player knows that he needs to distribute the combat encounters more evenly across the cast, it's often a laborious and tedious process of deliberately sending a very weak and fragile Mage to the front and constantly rotate him towards the rear to preserve his sorry hide. This is not helped by the fact that such characters are often saddled with poor movement range compared to a character with an actual saddle on-top of horseback. Yet this is necessary if the player wants to stand any feasible chance against the late-game enemies which specifically are more vulnerable to Magic

Later GBA Fire Emblem games gives an outlet by allowing level-selection and repeatable "grind" stages to farm XP. It's cheesy, but it does eliminate the softlock problem. I do not think Fire Emblem necessarily should change its system - maybe it already has by the Switch entries, but this is a cautionary tale of game design itself contributing to a difficulty that cannot be reasonably be anticipated by the (first-time) player which can totally kill the pacing especially for a linear story-driven experience.

Game 2: Advance Wars 2 GBA

The Advance Wars series are some of the most addictive battlefield tactics games of all-time. Raise and command a small army composition from Infantry to Battleships to breakthrough and holdout against the enemy army. The style of gameplay is smilar to Fire Emblem, but the units are now directly raised on the battlefield through resource-collection and base-capturing

Advance Wars 1 was the hook that probably drew a whole generation into such games as it featured a modern setting with infantry, tanks and planes - combined with a charming art-style that was very appealing especially for a handheld game. Advance Wars 1, until the final mission had sufficient leeway for players to strategize and plan ahead several moves to secure their victory once a path is viable.

The missions of Advance Wars 2 however, had so many additional restrictions slapped on-top of it as a sequel, it felt closer to a Tetris/Puzzle analogue rather than a strategic Tactics game.

Fog-of-war mechanics are nothing new in strategy games. In fact, it is necessary to obscure a perfect infomation horizon from players - especially in multiplayer, to create the tension & conflict needed for the upcoming clash. Advance Wars 2, however, took this idea to an extreme, by layering turn time limits on numerous of their missions, combined with extremely limited ability to raise additional units on those scenarios too - not that it matters as well, often the new units would be too far away to make it in-time or too wounded after skirmishing with the enemy to make it to the objective

A restart or two for difficult missions in video games are not uncommon or undesirable by itself. But when a mission seems to be designed to require numerous restarts just to glean advance-intel about enemy placement and composition, it distorts the fog-of-war mechanics from being a complementary system to one of annoyance. It results in there only being very little initiative from the player, often boiling down to just a singular path forward and taunting players to find it out - or just to consult a guide

Back in the early days of the internet, where GameFAQs reigned supreme, this might artifically pad out the game's runtime, though more likely it just serves to alienate & sap the goodwill of players who earnestly tried to engage with it.

Game 3: XCOM2, specifically, without its addon War of the Chosen

XCOM and its earlier forebears in the series, is extremely popular and with good reason; the thematic layer and persistence between alien interception deployments, combined with the Soldier/Squad progression to tackle the alien threat is genius.

The modern incarnation of XCOM has had decades of reference in design, both within its own franchise and outside of it. There should be an expectation of a more balanced game design for wider viability of play - and for the most part it is available, just that the early-game curve is way too steep & relies again on frequent restarts and hampered by a below-average UI in the strategic layer.

Thematically XCOM 2 takes place in the canon where Humanity of XCOM 1 were unable to beat back the initial alien invasion & 20 years have passed and XCOM has now morphed into a Resistance network aboard a stolen Avengers flying mothership

On the tactical gameplay level, what it means is that the Rookie soldiers of XCOM end up having terrible aim, low health bars, poor weapon damage against enemy forces and suffers from debilitating conditions even upon survival from a Mission. Meanwhile, the enemy enjoys numerical superiority, reinforcement deployment and psychic abilities from the get-go.

There is a reason why most such games offer a decently-powered bodyguard character to start them off before the rest of the squad gets up to speed. A few unlucky dice rolls means that the initial squad is good as toast and that's it for XCOM as the strategic layer is its own boondoggle.

One of the loudest and earliest gripes about XCOM2 is about the restrictive turn-timers - fail to finish the Mission objective within a set number of turns and it's a loss. This countdown system also applies on the strategic layer where is is a constant Doomsday clock counting down, adding constant stress onto the entire experience.

So not only does the tactical missions have a frustrating high-probability of overall failure due to the need to rush towards the map objective, experienced and good soldiers can & do get gravely incapacitated, the strategic layer is also putting a everpresent looming threat above your head while being starved of resources and recourse with just a few bad moves & dice rolls in the early game.

Worse, the UI on base-building is rather subpar. This is only apparent after a few runs, but there are actually several very optimal placements for certain room upgrades or certain sequence of room builds are extremely critical. This is however, poorly telegraphed to the player and a few wrong clicks could spell a spiral to an inevitable defeat.

It fits the theme of the setting, maybe. But this is another variant of the Fire Emblem softlock problem which thankfully isnt as dealbreaking.

There are ultimately ways around it, but the game truly opens up alot more once players mod away the annoying elements to their liking themselves, which suggests that more options and parameters offered by game itself would have gone a long way to make the game much, much more enjoyable for alot of people.

Hello all,

A few months ago, a coworker of mine gave me Nier Automata to play, he had an extra copy. I haven't had a bunch of free time to play until this week due to having time off of work. I completed route A, and I must say I don't have much of a desire to play through the other routes. I've put about 20 hours into it and it's starting to feel like a chore. I do like the combat and the story isn't too bad, but I'm not hooked in so to speak. I feel guilty because my coworker/friend swears by the game and wants me to finish but I don't know if I want to. I wanted to know has anyone else felt like this before with a game. How long do you give a game before you stop playing?

Edit: removed numbers from paragraphs because I could not figure out how to have both numbers and spaces between paragraphs. I guess if your paragraphs start with a number you can't just press enter twice to have them spaced out. Anybody know a workaround for this?

It seems that every couple years or so, a new class/hero based shooter comes out that can basically be summed up as “tf2 but esport!!!”, and while these games are generally pretty decent, I think their designers could've benefited from taking a look at how TF2's competitive community curated the notoriously casual shooter into a fun competitive game.

competitive tf2 is a grassroots community with little support from Valve, so one of the first things the competitive scene did was a decide on a format and which game modes would be played. Before long, they settled on 6v6, class limits of 2 (1 for medic/demoman) and the main game modes being 5cp and KOTH. This format encourages people to play the generalist, flexible classes (scout, soldier, demo, medic), the vast majority of the time as both modes require you to be ready to switch from attacking to defending in an instant. The other classes are still used, but mostly for defending last points, surprise plays, and to break stalemates. Most of the time though, both teams will be running 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, 1 demo, and one medic.

Here are several reasons why this cookie cutter line up is so fun to play as and against.

Everyone (besides medic lol) is "dps". However, each class has very different strengths and weaknesses and is better at putting out damage in different situations. Soldier with his burst mobility and rocket launcher is amazing at initiating fights and controlling doorway, Scout is excellent at cleaning up kills and shooting airborne players, and demoman is great at controlling space and high ground. All of these classes soft counter each other in different situations and environments and none truly hard counter each other.

Each of these classes has a radically different primary weapon. Shotguns, rocket launchers, and grenade/sticky launchers all have very different properties, excel in different situations, and must be reacted to in vastly different ways. ADADADAD spamming works well against scouts, but from the perspective of a soldier and his rocket launcher you are essentially standing in the same place. This results in players having to really think hard about how they should move and position themselves in response to who they're fighting.

These weapons encourage teamwork. Soldiers are great at starting a fight and doing a ton of damage, but they only have 4 rockets, 1 of which was probably used to rocket jump, so finishing a kill is often difficult. The enemy can also use your rockets to explosive jump away from your effective range. This means that as a soldier, you are often reliant on the scout with his hitscan shotgun to shoot players out of the sky like clay pigeons and to finish players off. The demo with his arcing projectiles is excellent at shitting out damage from mid range, but is very vulnerable up close, so scouts and soldiers help him out by keeping enemies away from him. As a soldier, a scout on high ground can really shut you down, so you need your demo friend to shoot stickies there to knock him off of his perch. It is important to note that tf2's crazy map design with all sorts of wacky geometry is a huge part of why these different weapons have these different roles if the maps were flat and lame. https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/e/e9/Sunshine_main.png is a pretty good example of the sort of map geometry that makes tf2's weapons so interesting.

The game is not based around the the tank/healer/dps trinity. Heavy and engie are effectively tanks, but they only come out regularly while defending the last point, which is interesting because it adds a new "problem" players need to solve while pushing the final point. The soldier does have a strong health pool, but he uses that health pool to rocket jump into the enemy, which creates space for his own team to get through an entrance. This is both fun for the soldier as he gets to play extremely aggressively, and also fun for the enemy as they get to try their best to kill him before he can get his damage out. This scenario is much more engaging than shooting at a tank with 9 million hp walking through a choke point with a force field. Tf2 is a bunch of fraggers and a guy who heals them and is not a world of warcraft party imported into a shooter.

The game is not about counter swapping. In competitive tf2, you will basically never switch classes to counter another class. If you do switch classes, it will be to counter a situation. If both teams are stalemating, you might switch to spy or sniper to get a pick on their medic. If you're defending last, you'll want an engineer and a heavy. Pyro is excellent when their medic is going to have ubercharge before your team.

There is only one ult and the ult is deep. The medic has the ability to make people invincible for a short period of time after he has charged his uber by healing teammates The entire metagame revolves around keeping track of which team will have ubercharge before the other team. This concept is known as Uber advantage. It decides where you should stand, what your goals should be, what classes you should consider playing. If a team is going to get their uber 7 seconds before the enemy, theyre going to use that uber to kill the medic as quickly as possible. However, if they have a 25 second advantage, the uber will be utilized for taking space and killing anyone out of position. If both teams have uber, teams will often engage in what is known as an uber exchange. Invincible player vs invincible player might seems stupid, but uber has a bunch of intricacies that make this scenario really interesting. Every time the medic switches the target of his ubercharge, the faster his uber charge runs out. As soon as multiple players get involved figuring out who has the real advantage in these exchanges requires a lot of communication and awareness. Ubercharged players also have increased knockback, so there are also opportunities to win the exchange by manipulating the position of the enemy. Choosing the right class(es) to uber is also a fairly interesting choice on its own. Ults are complained about a lot in these games, and I think a less is more approach to them suits the genre better, as it shifts the focus from using all of your ults at the same time, to everyone using your team's single ult as effectively as possible

Mobility between classes is implemented in a way that encourages teamwork. Soldiers use their mobility to initiate fights for their team. Scouts use their mobility to control high ground and clean up players, and even the medics relative lack of mobility helps by giving the team a predictable anchor to center themselves around. The medic's heals also help him play a part as they allow soldiers and demos to be more mobile. One really interesting example of everyone using their mobility as a team happens during ubers. The standard offensive uber starts with ubering the demo as he sticky jumps into the enemy team. the medic runs at the speed of whoever he is healing, so the next step is for the scout to ferry his medic to the demo so that the medic can keep the demo ubered while the scout finishes off everyone the demoman hurt.

Tf2's mobility system and arsenal compliment each other well. Airstrafing's viability midcombat is greatly enhanced by most weapons being single shot, as this means you can afford to move your mouse around to airstrafe between shots. A lot of games have powerful movement options, but they end up being used more as shortcut enablers than direct combat tools because they arent flexible enough or put you on too predictable of a path.

Overall, I think a lot of of what makes competitive tf2 so interesting and fun is how it works against the tropes of class based shooters. its not about counter swapping, healing your tank, or other ideas imported from other team based games. The team is essentially a single quake player split into multiple people who must come together with their different weaponry to take control of the map. It really plays to the strengths and appeal of the genre. There are fair points to be made about competitive tf2's meta being stale and predictable, but I think the foundation is really solid and should have greater influence on how competitive class based shooters are designed. Tf2 has undoubtedly had a huge influence on a bunch of recent shooters, but I think the developers often into the pitfalls of trying to turn the conceptions of casual tf2 into a competitive game, instead of looking at the work the game's competitive community has done to turn a 12v12 spamfest into a 6v6 fast paced esport.

For those interested, here is a match that should help you understand how all of this comes together: https://youtu.be/77WKlpCr8n4?si=qygQQOd1ba9r366e&t=5284

I’ve been following a lot of the discussions about Elden Ring Nightreign, and there seems to be a lot of concerns about the potential over-use of pre-existing bosses from games like Dark Souls.

In addressing those concerns, a lot of people will argue that the practice has been well-established for decades and that people should just accept it. They might cite fighting games as a popular example, where multiple characters are almost 90% the same (“palette swaps”, “clones”, “echo fighters”, etc.). They will also reference games like Monster Hunter, where almost all of the bosses use one of five basic templates or “skeletons” that have the exact same animations.

I feel like a lot of the comparisons are not particularly strong for three main reasons:

1. Lore Explanations: Even in fighting games, there are some fairly reasonable justifications for having multiple shoto-type characters. In Street Fighter for example, Ryu, Ken and Akuma are all practitioners of the same martial art and have a shared history with one another.

In Monster Hunter, it’s not unreasonable to assume that monsters belonging to the same class would exhibit similar anatomies and behaviors. Elder dragons behaving like other elder dragons makes sense, though I would probably prefer a little more variety in that particular case. The 2nd Gen Elder Dragon skeleton seems particularly overused.

1. Strong Distinctions in Style and Strategy: Even slight differences in move sets can dramatically alter the feel of a fight. Iudex Gundyr and Champion Gundyr in DSIII are pretty strong examples. They are probably 80% the same, but a few alterations to a few key attacks totally changes the dynamics of the battle. Compare this to a few of the repeat bosses in Elden Ring. Aside from HP, I could not ascertain a single difference between Astel 1 and Astel 2. Half of the Ulcerated Tree Spirits feel identical to each other. If Nightreign employs a similar approach to their bosses, I’m not optimistic about how they will treat the Souls bosses.

2. Even if it’s an established practice, it’s still not great: Over the years, I feel like devs have become increasingly reliant on recycled assets. I just played Spyro Reignited Trilogy recently, and I was struck by just how unique and varied the enemies are. Most games since the early 2010s seem to use the same four basic enemies, but with different outfits depending on your progression. Fromsoft themselves have always recycled bosses to some capacity, but Elden Ring really took it to the next level. The impact of Godrick and Astel was dramatically reduced by their clones in my opinion.

Overall, I think it’s okay to reuse certain assets if it makes sense in the context of the game’s story/lore and there are enough distinctions to make the secondary fights memorable on their own. But reuse should be a last resort, and if devs find themselves doing it too often to save time and resources, then they should probably reassess the scale of their game and their overall goals.

It sounds contradictory but indeed, most popular shooters have this intention in mind to implement both Twitch mechanics and some of strategy.

For example, COD is the most obvious example of being a Twitch shooter since the idea of teamwork, communication and so on are not strong elements of the franchise. Some COD games implement some form of strategy here and there that not everyone might use.

Things such as leaning to get better angles, the new omni-movement mechanic in BO6, or even the hardcore mode for more "immersion".

Battlefield, Counter-Strike, Valorant and Rainbow Six Siege have the same element.

They are more focused on communication and class-based teamwork but they have Twitch mechanics too because some of them like Battlefield, you start by sprinting left and right and some players try to get ace for limiting a lot of players or the entire enemy team by themselves.

Yet these games are recognised as the more "tactical" field, even there are indeed shooters that are really meant to be played with tactics in mind such as the ARMA series, Squad or Insurgency.

(Doom is sort of the same. It has fast-paced shooting mechanics but it also has strategy because the different require different methods and different blends of enemies require the implementation of different strategies)

So how can games, particularly shooters, have this balance between Twitch shooting and tactical shooting?

Something that appears to be not mentioned a lot whenever we look at reviews or in-depth analysis of video games is the UI (or even sometimes the lack thereof if it is meant to be that way).

We tend to take the UI as something that we take for granted yet in the art of video games, it is a crucial part of video game design and even has an impact on the immersion of video games and the art and design of the UI can have an impact on the quality of life like.

So much so that there are those tiny instances where the UI is complained about for reasons where

• -the design behind it is either improved such as with mods (like most Fallout 4 mods have UI redesigns since one of the main complaints was that the UI was too complicated and/or did not display all the necessary information at a glance);
• or because the design behind the UI is too complex or too detailed compared to the rest of everything else (for example, a complaint that can be mentioned is the use of the UI when it comes to all the items that you can pick in an RPG where each item is designed with a complex amount of colours that can make the details too much in a highly detailed game. Games such as Rust or PUBG fall under this criteria

One can probably mention several examples where the UI had an impact on how the game subconsciously communicated intricate amounts of information not just in a direct way but also in a clever manner as well:

• - the most obvious example is that of the Dead Space series where not only the UI is integrated with the game
  • instead of it displaying like you have a camera, but the elements of the game that need to be communicated are done in-game
  • as well like the health is on the spine of the character,
  • the ammo counter is a holographic HUD on the weapon, making it look like an improvement of the weapons' designs to appear futuristic;
  • and the "ammo" count for the stasis ability
• - one element that one can instantly see where the UI makes a difference is how long amounts of information are displayed in RTS games. Not only do these games need to convey the information for the long list of buildings and characters that the players can spawn, but they also have to do in ways where the UI can communicate this information in an instant.
  • For example, Starcraft uses a mixture of concept art to separate a list of basic building opportunities as opposed to the more advanced ones, but also tiny pieces of art for the units that make the art detailed enough to convey the information necessary to separate each one from one another to instantly display with is needed for the money when the decisions quickly.
  • On top of that (and this goes for a lot of other RTS games), the HUD is designed separately per race, as if each race has its own feel
• - some games design the UI as if the HUD is a part of the game itself.
  • For example, the Halo games design the UI as if the player is wearing the Spartan helmet, adding to the immersion.
  • Other games do the same such as Metroid Prime, Borderlands
• - sometimes, the design behind the UI makes a difference as this adds to the immersion of the art style behind the games in general.
  • For example, the UI in Darksiders is designed with a tiny bit of added detail as of the images are stamped behind what appear to be ancient stones or displays of magic. This adds to the games' art styles because the characters are meant to be as old as time but as magical and ancient as these are part of divine races separate from humanity.
  • Some games do the same thing to add to the immersion of the game like Alien Isolation where the text and display look like the 80's aesthetic, making the UI similar to the art style behind the 80's aesthetic of the Alien franchise
• - certain concept arts are not only immersive enough to convey what they mean to the player but also artistic enough to have their flair behind them, as this concept art is like products are meant to look distinct or cool.
  • Things like the different themes of the perks in Call of Duty or the Zombies mode, or the designs behind the different plasmids/vigours in the Bioshock games

Interestingly, the UI is a part of the game's overall design that is important to convey information to the players in an instant yet we tend to take the UI for granted because these are expected elements that we are meant to see in video games but it is interesting to note that UI can make an impact in not what information is given to be player but also how the information is given

Interestingly as well, there are possibilities that the UI can be implemented incorrectly, whether it is bad UI design artistically or even mechanically. For example:

• while the UI in the Witcher series is great, for an unfamiliar player it can look overwhelming.
  • you have the health and adrenaline meter, the map, the items that you have, the controls, and when the information of a lot of characters that you will find on the map displayed as text
• sometimes multiplayer games fall victim to this too
  • COD games have the ammo counter, the mini map, objectives, the kill count and points, the health (in Warzone), pop-up information like medals or points or even the ongoing information of the game mode
  • Battlefield games have the same problem
• Assassin's Creed games, especially the maps when you pause the game display tons and tons of icons all at once. Not only terms into decision burnout but it can make decisions to go from A to B to C and so on feel like a chore
• MOBA or MMORPG games like League of Legends or World of Warcraft have a problem of having to display so much information in one go that make focusing on such information in the blink of an confusing and a chore.
  • You have text, the map, your enormous amount of abilities, numbers that display whilst fighting, the distance characters with their own list of information like who they are what attacks or abilities that they are using, the chat, and so much more

Hello, I hope you all had a nice christmas and whatever else you celebrate. I wanted to talk about this for mainly 2 reasons. 1: I feel that graphics are starting to become more important than gameplay (again), and 2: I feel that gameplay is taking a backseat to presentation now. Feel free to disagree with me and explain why in the replies. Recently I tried the new Indiana Jones game and I just got so... bored with it before I even got a full hour in. The graphics are great and the voice acting and presentation is phenomenal, but when I got to play it, I was just met with cutscene after cutscene with little specs of gameplay, which makes me ask the question; if all the story is told in the cutscenes with little interesting gameplay in the middle, why isn't this just a movie? I got the same feeling in the last of us, which had a great story, probably one of the best, but the moments in between the cutscenes, where I was actually playing the game just felt like an absolute slog to get through. I still finished the game because I liked the story enough but again I asked the same question why isn't this just a movie? It wasn't taking advantage of the fact that it's in an interactive medium, it was just a show where you press buttons sometimes to me, and that speaks to the success of the last of us streaming series, it couldn't only be told in a game, it could also be told in a book or a movie or a show, It wasn't unique to its medium. Metal Gear Solid 4 also does this, but it takes advantage of the fact that it's a game by letting you interact with the cutscenes with the flashbacks and first person view moments. Now on the contrary half life 2 just feels so seamless in its design, by not having any cutscenes and having you experience the story by itself through the eyes of gordon as he's rushing along to complete his mission, that story is something that I feel can only be told by a game. It may not be the best out there but it takes advantage of and is unique to its medium. Thanks for reading me ramble on and please give me your perspectives on this. Obviously there's more I could mention here but I didn't want to make this post too much longer.

It’s not unusual for gamers to complain about journalists that aren’t very good at the games they play. But a common and recurring theme of the discourse revolves around this assumption that game reviewers should only review games from series/genres that they are either familiar with or already fans of.

Not sure if this is a good take. Isn’t there value in hearing an outsider’s opinion? Shouldn’t we appreciate the lower risk of personal bias? Or should we expect reviewers to be veterans of every game they play?

Something that a lot of games nowadays, especially open-world games (as most games nowadays are designed in an open-world format) are designed to have the mini-map displayed as part of the HUD so that they can convey the information for the player where they need to go and to not get lost.

However, there is a paradox here - most open-world games are made with a deliberate attempt to encourage players to explore the maps.

This could be to immerse themselves in the world and its details but also to collect secrets or other items that the players may need along the way.

Yet more often than not, most games have these mini-maps, quite literally, displaying all the information that they need as if they are pointing the players exactly where to go which minimises the need to explore or travel in paths that are not part of the main roads or the paths chosen by the game.

These are mostly path-finders and while they make sense in case the players need to go from one place to another on a very large map, this minimises the need to explore and look at whatever secrets or other information there are within the world because it makes the pathfinding too easy for the players if the games themselves directly point to the player exactly where to go.

The regard to challenge this design is to make a compass instead of a mini-map and some games to implement this feature.

While it omits players from having all the necessary information at once, it provokes critical thinking skills which adds to the immersion of the game but also allows the player to traverse within the games' worlds however they please and may even stumble upon activities or secrets that the games have, sometimes without even knowing it.

This can be useful for both single-player and multi-player.

Using the worlds' designs - the maps, the pathways, the different doors or windows that the players can test to see if they can pass through; these elements can be utilised to make the players a part of the world that they are navigating in instead of making the traversability all too easy and just giving all the information to the player.

Some games already do this whenever there are hubworlds like Deus Ex or even the recent Indiana Jones game or in the recent Assassin's Creed games.

In multiplayer, this can be useful as well. There was the idea to omit the mini-map in CODMW 2019 but the fans disagreed with this (except that you can play without the mini-map in Hardcore mode) the idea was to force the players to use their skills and knowledge of the maps to traverse during matches, making the players having to use their skills to find another way to go the objective or face their enemies instead of having the mini-map (or even the map instead if it was designed with clear angles and roads) telling them exactly there to go.

Three multiplayer games that use the compass design over the mini-map design are the ARMA games, Insurgency and Rainbow Six Siege. Not only these games are heavily designed to invoke communication but this makes it a lot harder for players to find where the enemies are which invokes critical thinking.

Where they are, how to find them, what to do, why they are there and so on.

Other elements within these games are specifically designed to be utilised over the mini-map design like the sounds or even the distinct colour schemes behind characters like what kind of characters there are, friend or foe, what they are wearing, whether armour or no armour, what weapons they are using.

Instead of telling the mini-map or even the map's UI telling the players exactly what these are (like for example when you use the Eagle Vision or the literal eagle in the latest Assassin's Creed games or even the recent Far Cry games since Far Cry 3), you are instantly shown what enemies you have and where they are, the player to figure what the information themselves.

I recently played an old version of World of Warcraft and then I played the new version of Classic Wow, with some graphical improvements, and something bothered me in the new version. I messed around with the options a little and realized that what bothered me most was the current shadows. I was only satisfied when I set the shadow to low and it looked similar to the original version of the game, with vibrant and highlighted colors, and lighting that, despite being less realistic, makes the atmosphere more fantasy-like. I noticed that the modern shadows make the game lose its magic and dull the colors, and it looks like a strange middle ground between something realistic and something fantasy.

I've noticed this because no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to like almost any current game. I feel extremely bored and sleepy after just a few minutes of playing, or I get lost in so many menus and intense camera movements that I become stressed and anxious. On the other hand, old games capture my attention as always and have a relaxing and calming effect on me. This satisfying effect is the combination of low-resolution textures, subtle camera movements and epic soundtracks. This is the well-being I seek. That's the feeling I want to have.

I think this combination causes an effect on the brain that is as if the mind completes the image, as if it stimulates the brain to look at a castle with textures in low resolution and the mind is forced to use more imagination, something different from seeing something ultra realistic and full of details but it will stay on the screen for 10 seconds and you will walk and change to another scene with a lot more details. There's something different about how the mind processes old graphics compared to modern ones. It's as if the first causes relaxation, as if you were sleeping and having beautiful dreams, and the second causes exhaustion, tiredness and stress.

Dont get me wrong the games coming out now from AAA and indie are great but my question is there reason why AAA games must be big open world games with rpg elements like loot and equipment filled in the world. If big studios make smaller games then they can get great games out the door quicker while being fun and unique and not sacrificing much graphics. If they are worried about losing too much money would it not be better to get the game out in 2 to 3 years compared to big open world games that take 5 to 7 years.

Is there reason AAA devs dont make level based games like ghostrunner, prince of persia, splinter cell and the jedi games or similer to ps2/ps3 era games with but with better/prettier graphics?

PlayStation and Xbox consoles are extremely similar nowadays, having relatively the same online functionality/features (...and prices for online play... why can't we go back to the PS3 days, haha), having the same kind of storefronts, having pretty much the same tech specs, and even now cross-play in just about every online game nowadays.

So, the only real hook to buying a console nowadays is the exclusive games, but what about the people that don't play the exclusive games? Pretty much all of my friends play multi-platform online cross-play shooters like COD, Apex, Fortnite, Siege, etc. but they still all bought a PS5, even though they didn't buy any exclusives, and they didn't have to buy it 'just because their friends have it' because there is cross-play in every game now. I mean, hell, one of the most popular 'exclusively-played' games on PlayStation that people specifically buy a PlayStation for is not God of War, or Spider-Man, or Ghost of Tsushima, but rather Call of Duty.

So... what is the hook? What is PlayStation doing right here? Even though there is cross-play, is it still just a case of 'my friend has a PS5, so I'll get one too'?

First of all, and since I know that this kind of subject can quickly be considered malicious, I want to clarify that this topic is not an attempt to create chaos or conflict, but rather the opposite.

Because the more I dig into the bits of history around Yasuke or the way he is portrayed in a lot of manga, anime or video games. So in pop culture the choice is pretty much made. As for history, apart from some very vague stuff, nothing is really affirmed from what I believe I understand.

The more I have the impression that the great conflict on the internet around this subject is above all a great symptom of protest because we can protest easily. I see a lot of people debating the truth of Yasuke's rank as if it were the key point of the case (where ultimately Yasuke is often portrayed that way or at least getting close to it).Obviously this is another thing to classify as Nobunaga's eccentricities.

Yes Ubisoft made the mistake of focusing on a real character for one of its playable characters, but isn't the rest of the reactions an exaggeration? Why do people suddenly seem to consider Ubisoft games as things that must 100% respect real story.

With all the recent discussion in gaming after the trailers for The Witcher 4 and Intergalactic at The Game Awards, I’m curious: do you care about how attractive the main character is, or do you prefer them to look more realistic (even if that means they’re not conventionally attractive)?

I’m not here to argue - everyone has their own preferences, and that’s completely fine. I just want to share my thoughts and hear yours.

Personally, I prefer realistic looking characters. Their attractiveness doesn’t matter to me at all. Immersion is what I value most in games, and for me to feel immersed, I need believable characters. What’s most important is how well the character fits into the world and story.

For example, if I’m playing a Western, I want my character to look like someone from that time period, with all its flaws (like bad teeth, dirtiness, or rough features) and advantages (such as a strong physique from manual labor). If the main character is a warrior, I expect them to have scars, muscles, an appropriate haircut (and no makeup). Of course, this also depends on the art style and tone of the game.

In a stylized or less serious game, a conventionally good-looking character might make more sense. In anime-style games, exaggerated attractiveness is often part of the design. But when a game aims for realism - both in graphics and theme - I think realistic (even "ugly") characters are often more fitting.

A character’s appearance can tell a story on its own and add depth to the narrative. Take the new Fable game as an example: my theory is that the main character might have been made deliberately unattractive to support a Shrek/Cinderella-style story. That kind of narrative wouldn’t work as well if the character looked like a Hollywood star, right?

I feel like whenever people talk about the mass effect games they talk about the characters and story. People even lament that the changes between mass effect 1 and 2 made it less of an RPG, and while that may be true it's hard to argue with the results. Mass Effect 2 and 3 are just so fun to play. I am playing an Adept class in ME2 now and I forgot how fun the biotic powers are, more games should take advantage of physics based powers to throw around your enemies. There's nuance to the abilities that make them fun to learn too, like how you can curve biotic projectiles around cover by aiming to the side of enemies. There are so many gameplay moments that are just satisfying, lifting an enemy with a pull just to yeet them off the map with a throw, biotic detonations, using your squadmate to freeze an enemy before shattering them to pieces, I could go on. The variety of abilities is awesome, and each class feels fairly different to play, though all will be doing a lot of shooting. The choices you get for each powers final upgrade are meaningfully different to better help curate your playstyle. Then there's one bonus ability that can get from a companion to further spice things up.

All in all Bioware was really firing on all cylinders in 2010. I legit cannot believe that ME2 was released 14 years ago now and is still a blast to play. If you haven't tried the Mass Effect games yet, please take this as your sign to play them, or at least 2 and 3.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

It is interesting to see a lot of video games, even before the time when high-definition graphics or even high-quality games (in terms of gameplay, story and so on) , have these details in them that many developers and players alike appreciate.

It is an element that is how video games can portray messages to the players as an art form.

For example,

- many people revere the tiny details in the story of the original Deus Ex game where your actions can affect the story outcomes whilst playing like skipping story elements if you do certain objectives or get extra bits of dialogue if you do something different

- in the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot, gamers love to point out the tiny details that are added in the reload animations in order to make them realistic and authentic, even with the Sleight of Hand perk where the reloads are not just reloading the weapons in fast forward format

- certain UI elements implemented as part of the video game experience like Dead Space having a HUD that is literally a part of the game, or the Halo series having a HUD that is similar to that of protagonists' helmet details and information processing (even Metroid Prime does this too)

- some experts of HEMA revere the stances seen from Geralt that mimic authentic sword fighting (aside from the dance-like feature which experts think it is unnecessary or too random)

- some people appreciate the level of detail that is done on many video game mods like the graphics-based mods in Skyrim or the Fallout series

- the iconic ways in how sounds and music convey certain messages to the players like the shield rebooting sound in Halo or the item recovered sound in the Legend of Zelda series

- the effects on the environment that certain players can make with their actions like the environmental details in the Last of Us or Uncharted or even Breath of the Wild that can impact gameplay mechanics

And there are probably many more things to mention.

Yet, say that you have a player who is limited on time and does not have the luxury to take note of these details. Perhaps the gamer just wants to play multiplayer or the story for a short period.

So how can developers make these details in their games to make them noticeable and worthwhile for the players to appreciate them and show their respect to the developers for implementing such details in their video games?

I grew up monstly playing PS3 and the games that i played were Batman arkham, Spider-Man, Black Ops 1 and 2, DMC, Uncharted, Infamous and movie tie ins such as Avatar and Tron etc.

It's not until the PS4 gen i started playing games Skyrim, god of war 2018, darksiders 2, Horizon and Dragons dogma etc. God of war kind of brainwashed me into liking it at first for some time and platinum it because of the story and loot grind but i could not enjoy it playing it again because i found gameplay to be just ok. My personal view is that these games have so much loot, weapons and bloat because they dont have well designed mechanics that could engage the players for a long time and give you these lazy implemented elements. Plus even playing these games the first time it's tedius to constantly open chest full of loot and do customization in menu instead of playing a solid game.

I have played short games that i mentioned before as well as many more that have great gameplay designs and story multiple times because they aren't bloated and dont waste your time with these loot crap. Almost all single player games have these elements now and it's getting really annoying!

Hear me out before you get the pitchforks:

I've been gaming for a long time and to this day, I have never found a game that marries aerial combat with an RPG like Starfield does. Some of my favorite games have been Ace Combat and Hawx. The opening sequence in Starfield where you have to fight off the fighter jets or whatever is super memorable but more importantly fun. I think for this feature alone Starfield should be critically acclaimed. Remember that aerial combat in Halo: Reach? That's probably the best level in any Halo game and Starfield managed to recreate that feeling.

Now as for the engine, a lot of people are saying "well Elder Scrolls 6 is going to release on that old ass garbage engine"...what? This engine is freaking insane.

Look at this example of 0 gravity being simulated in Starfield: https://x.com/SynthPotato/status/1701537488718762416

If this is not one of the best engines in gaming right now, I don't know what to say.

However, I will concede that maybe the story and plot were not amazing but I think Starfield will be remembered for the gameplay and engine.

We have all seen the discourse about how AAA gaming (not indie) is "dead". While I'm critical of the over-the-top negativity, I do get some of the obvious complaints about unfinished releases and other issues.

Instead of seeking more takes and complaints, I thought it'd be interesting to flip this around. To those that can relate somewhat to this feeling: Can you close your eyes and imagine an opening sequence that would truly captivate you? What would the first 10 minutes of a modern AAA game look like if it completely hooked you? How would it feel to play? What would make you think "Oh shit, this feels different, I want to keep playing"?

What would grab you? What would make you lean forward in your chair? Would it be the way it introduces gameplay, how it sets up its world, or something entirely different?

I'm curious to hear what you all imagine, especially those that are most negative about gaming. Not some rose-tinted memories of old games, not a list of things it shouldn't do (like microtransactions). Instead, what would a modern innovative AAA game actually do in its opening to capture that magic? It's a lot to ask, but I think those who feel gaming has lost its way often have a strong image of what they're missing.

Edit: I see some people in the comment section emphasizing the opening sequence aspect of the thought experiment. The reason I scoped it to the first few minutes was because I wanted to push imagining towards the moment to moment experience instead of answers about the overall game feel of many hours. I think more interesting concrete experiences will be imagined that way. But feel free to imagine any moment of a captivating game.

Edit2: Most comments did not really engage the way I wanted. I might have done a poor job of writing this post. What I see mostly is: Reference old games (like Oblivion/elden ring/botw) rather than imagining new experiences. Focus on what they dislike about modern games. General game design philosophy rather than specific opening sequences. Talk about entire games rather than moments. I will try to add a post of my own.

When it comes to reviewing video games, it is logical to judge it based on the released version. After all, this is the same as when a film is released, or a TV show or a book.

However, what makes video games unique as well is the post-release support due to most games nowadays have live service support.

So when people judge what it means or what it is like to play certain games, they will judge their decisions based on the reviews upon release and it would be logical to say whether the game is good or not upon release. This is especially the case that a lot of games, though not all of them, are released with poor quality or need certain patches upon release like Day 1 patches or graphics updates and so on.

Though there is a surprising amount of games that even though they were criticised for their poor release, they have had a decent amount of reverence long after their initial release due to prolonged support from the developers. For example, one game that comes to mind that had this level of support is No Man's Sky and many gamers see it as the video game that they were envisioned or were hyped at by the developers.

The same goes for other games like the Cyberpunk 2077 game, or even Fallout 76 and its DLCs or even Modern Warfare 3 and its multiplayer or Battlefront 2.

Indeed, some games do not get that same treatment. For example, Dawn of War 3 had a poor release compared to its predecessors and there was the promise of even more DLC and support but it was immediately abandoned by the developers after the review upon release.

And it would be fair to say that the developers abandoned their promises and the publishers pushed an unfinished product or one that is deemed as promised. This was the same No Man's Sky as well as Starfield.

But it is somewhat strange that games may be avoided because we judge them harshly because of how they were launched when some of these games had even more support, more downloadable content and quality-of-life stuff long after release.

So would it be fair to have reviews or observations towards games that were given more treatment long after release?

The only example that comes to mind is Cyberpunk 2077 again because IGN had its post-launch reviews for almost every single update of the game long after the release date and many people actually respect CD Project Red for their confidence in their ability to provide us with a game as it was promised although some are still skeptical about the Witcher 4 because we might get a game that will not be released in the same complete manner as the Witcher 3 did.

So should we keep having these post-release updates on the games that were promised to have post-release support or will be considered as too much resource by every reviewer to judge every game accordingly long after their release

A little late to this retrospective, but August 2014 saw the posting of The Zoe Post- an indictment of the behaviors of indie game developer Zoe Quinn by their spurned boyfriend. Almost overnight, this post seemed to ignite a firestorm of anti-feminist backlash that had been frequently tapped into to target feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, frustrations over real (or perceived) corruption within gaming journalism, debates over platform censorship and freedom of speech in the wake of widespread harassment via coordinated social media influence campaigns, discomfort with the changing nature of gaming demographics as the AAA industry broadened their appeals beyond traditional gamer demographics, and the nascent alt-right that saw political potential in the energy being whipped up. For months- if not years- following the peak of the GamerGate, gaming spaces were embroiled in waves of discourse, flame wars, harassment, and community in-fighting that to this day still leave scars in the community.

Depending on who you asked, GamerGate was any one of a million different things and we could spend forever rehashing it all, but a decade on, what impacts did it leave across the gaming industry and community?

The game is rated E, but for those players that are over 21 years old, they could use the livery of the Nascar Cup Series' #2 car (which was sponsored by the beer company Miller Lite back then) like what you see on TV in all of its glory instead of being censored.

I think for games that would put sponsorships from these companies (eg. gambling/alcoholic drink sponsors in football/soccer jerseys in certain leagues, certain sponsors for racing games like F1 and MotoGP, especially if they want to include the classic vehicles like those from the 1980s to the 2000s) this would be a very helpful way to retain some kind of authenticity without sacrificing the game's rating.

Why wasn't this kind of practice done in other games? My only guess is difference in regulations between each countries regarding sponsorships of these companies. But then the NASCAR game could do it even if it's mainly sold for the USA market.