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  • Sonic and Dr. Robotnik are codependent. They don't actually want to defeat each other. That's why Robotnik is always building these elaborate bases that, for some reason, have a bunch of perfectly Sonic-sized tubes for getting around in. And it's why there's always that moment at the end where Sonic is chasing Robotnik but doesn't catch him.

    • This is true for a lot of hero villain combos. Batman and Joker come to mind immediately.

  • Miyazaki hasn't really innovated since Demon Souls. The other games are slight variations on the same gameplay and design. Sekiro is the biggest change, but the overall design is still very similar. The rest are just "more aggressive / faster" or "open world/metroidvania" in comparison. There are other differences, but the core experience is basically the same.

    Fumito Ueda, while similarly iterating on similar ideas, was far more ambitious in his game design between Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. Ico was very different to mainstream gaming at the time. SOTC pushed animation and scale to the limits of the hardware while doubling down on "design by subtraction". Guardian, while similar in concept to Ico, was a bold move in relying on a "true to life" creature and developing your relationship with that creature as gameplay design. Each were far less mainstream than Miyazaki's design which is why, as acclaimed as they are, you will find more division about them from so called "core" gamers.

    He's the more important auteur in the medium. You don't get Dark Souls without Ico.

  • Homefront: The Revolution is actually a super fun game. Dare I say...a hidden gem?

    It has an atrocious metacritic score for a few reasons. Mainly, some of the enemy AI was broken on release, which is fair, but it's long since been fixed. The other big issue is that it's a sequel to a genuinely bad game and most people didn't bother playing it, and most who did came with the goal of trashing it.

    However, this game is fun if you want something kind in the modern Far Cry style vein, but set in urban environments. It run on the Crye Engine and the gunplay is rock solid; the shotgun in this game is fantastic. The guns all have absolutely preposterous alternate fire modes. The assault rifle has its upper swapped out to turn it into landmine launcher.

    The story and setting is a complete reset compared to the first game. It isn't just a lazy "Red Dawn but China North Korea". There is an elaborate alternate history backstory going back to the 1950s that sees North Korea take the role of the high tech manufacturing hub for the west, eventually becoming what some in the west in the 1970s feared Japan would become- a powerhouse of tech that was rich and had a grip on all western nations because of it. Then this cyberpunk reimagining of North Korea takes over a poor and downtrodden USA after the U.S. had made so many bad choices that NK could plausibly send "international peacekeepers". Absolutely nuts plot, but so weird and strangely high effort. Also means the bad guys are coded so cyberpunk and have all kinds of drones and stuff.

  • Pixel graphics is not a selling point. I will tolerate pixel graphics if the gameplay is good (Deadcells, Stardew Valley, The Last Spell), but if I see pixel graphics that is already a mark against the game.

  • Starfield is actually a good game.

    Starfield has excellent gunplay. Difficulty levels get unbalanced in late game without mods. If you enjoy feeling like a superhero cool, otherwise download a simple mod to rebalance things. It has weapon customization too. The only other space game that has weapon and spacesuit customization that I know of is No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky's ship combat is half decent, it's ground combat isn't for me. There's like 1 "gun" in the entire game and there's not enough diversity in what little ground combat there is. I want to have to infiltrate a station full of bad guys not shoot at an occasional angry girrafe or flying drone.

    Elite Dangerous has excellent ship combat but that is it's only strength. It's a compete grindfest, they regularly patch every new way of making fast money, and I cannot fucking stand it. Maybe the lower playerbase has forced them to be more generous recently but I'm not booting up the game to find out. Starfield's ship combat is basically the same, maybe a little better balanced, or at least balanced in a way that's more enjoyable.

    The rpg elements of Starfield are actually enjoyable except for a few dumb quests. Starfield is the only Bethesda game I've completed the main quest in and I thought the multiple universe thing was executed well. Starfield's ship customization is superior even despite the No Man's Sky ship customization update. I think they missed the mark on the different part classes (why is a large reactor 3x as large as a small reactor the same amount of power for example) but that's easily fixable with mods.

    Tldr all games of this genre have problems but at least most of my issues with Starfield can be fixed with mods. I just hope theu continue updating Starfield despite the internet constant rage. I'm glad we got Starfield instead of Elder Scrolls 6 and I'm not sorry.

  • Convenience is a bad thing. Or, at the very least, convenience isn't useful while inconvenience is.

    The most recent discussion about it is about pause buttons; having a pause button isn't bad, but it doesn't add anything while being unable to pause can. Fast travel is a classic, it stomps over gameplay and enables bad design from developers, it's actively detrimental to many games. Weapon degradation is another big point in favor of inconvenience; when done well it gives a steady resource sink and forces you to plan ahead.

    The obsessive need for everything to be quick and convenient is down right counter to the very idea of a video game and over stimmed children need to chill out.

    • having a pause button isn't bad, but it doesn't add anything while being unable to pause can

      I was playing a game recently and was fighting a boss whose gimmick was controlling time. I paused the game and the boss quipped at me and then unpaused the game. It was impressive and amusing in the moment, but very quickly became an issue of "no seriously, I need to be able to pause".

      If work calls, someone knocks on my door, or my cat knocks something over I need to be able to set the game aside and not have it demand my attention. Having pause doesn't add anything because we've become accustomed to it, not having pause is noticeable because it subtracts, not because it adds. I've never had a gameplay experience that would have been better by not having pause available to me.

      Gameplay should be about overcoming challenges, not overcoming inconvenience. If my equipment degrading just means I need to stop playing the game for 5 minutes to do the digital chores of collecting wood and stone that is not adding to the experience, it is just padding the playtime.

      When World of Warcraft removed portals to "make the world feel big," which ultimately results in players pointing their flying mount in a direction and waiting longer to get somewhere that doesn't improve the game. It is ultimately a design problem, but the fault is not in the convenience tools, it's in the lack of meaningful gameplay without them.

    • I agree with the fast travel but not the pause. There has to be a pause. Stuff happens in real life. What if you get a phone call, someone rings the doorbell or you have to take a shit? Unless you're doing really basic quick stuff like a sudoku puzzle or an online match that only lasts a few minutes, or playing a really really slow game, that's just not reasonable. It may not be realistic to have a pause function as we don't have a pause in real life but sometimes liberties have to be taken be taken to make it more accessible to people.

  • Adding ancient eldritch gods into Fallout, with such large and sprawling plot lines was a huge mistake.

    People will say, "Yeah but what about the ghost in Fallout 2?" Yes FO2 had one side quest with a ghost. It was a one off, with no huge backstory propping it up, it wasn't constantly revisited. It didn't change the whole vibe of the world. It was one side quest that made you go "Huh that was weird." and was quickly pushed aside.

    In comparison, including eldritch horrors in a front and center way, with quests like the Cabot questline being the most egregious. There is also the Dunwich building, the Dunwich mine, the cult and eldritch creature in FO76, and more.

    Any one of these, one their own, as a one off isolated thing might be alright. The Dunwich building especially works as a weird unexplained oddity. It is the dose that makes the poison though, and now there is so much Lovecraftian stuff packed into Fallout that it has changed the texture of what Fallout is. The more the Lovecraftian stuff is added, the more of the original "an apocalypse of our own making" 1950s militarist, corporatist setting gets diluted.

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