delitomatoes

Finished my first BG3 run, man the acting is great, especially at the when characters get their big emotional moments. I'm thinking "that's acting!", also recognised Omni Man immediately.

Now I'm on to Alan Wake 2 and omg I can't take the dialogue and voice acting. It feels jarring. The prior game I played was Silent Hill 2 and I remembered it was OK, the MC was very chill in a horror game but its kinda explained by the story

The battery on my Cycle 7 stopped working suddenly, it still works wired, but no power when unwired, not sure if I inserted the plugs upside down or something

I started at 7 and looked forwards to every iteration of the series since then, 8 was more of the same with a weird story, 9 was cute and a good throwback, then I went back to 6 which was a masterpiece, 10 was emotional and beautiful, 12 wasn't great but had cool worldbuilding, being a FFT fan.

Here is when it starts to diverge a little. I would call this the start of 'modern' FFs

I actually liked 13's battle system, it worked out many of the kinks of old systems, like healing after each battle and focused on each interaction as a puzzle to be solved. The story was OK and then the sequels kinda tried to do something different. Lightning Returns had terrible reviews, possible due to the time limit, which is why I never tried it

14 had a bad start and did a reboot to become a well loved MMO, but starting in the first world is such a chore with outdated MMO mechanics as someone who started later

15 was ambitious and unfinished. the first time I was truly disappointed in a FF game.

Then, we have the FF7 remakes, which are amazing, it seems that all the effort, the team members who have passion all signed up for this and it shows, but there's a strong nostalgia bias to it.

Now reading the reviews for 16, it seems there's no real reason to give it a try. At this point, I'm not sure what comes after the final FF7 game, is there a way to make 17 something people would care about?

In a switch you get on/off, but a button returns to the original setting.

Neva recently triggered this post, for those who don't know Neva is by the same studios that made Gris, a sort of 2d walking simulator/puzzle platformer through gorgeous art. While the balance between gameplay and aesthetics is a subjective choice, it just shows the range where interactive media and games can appeal to different people and how it doesn't appeal to me particularly.

Neva - I'm just at the early stages of the game and they are slow in introducing gameplay mechanics, even though there's an airdash involved, early enemies have throw or dash patterns but by the first hour of Hollow Knight you've already experienced much more. I don't fault them, the studio is known for beautiful environmental art and non verbal story telling, you do have to hug a dog a lot.

Dynasty Warriors - If it ain't broke don't fix it, DW series did evolve beyond the early days of button mashing from 1-4, adding dating sims, stamina bar and just a lot of content, but the combat did not really update itself to modern times until DW:Origins, the new base line of skills tied to shoulder button, parry/dodge and controllable armies really amp up the fun factor thematically, it would be a great "Kingdom" game if that happens, but I wished there was a dating sim. It is certain that their next 4 games will follow this formula until it gets stale again.

Last of Us 2 released in 2020, a year after Death Stranding, I think it added Prone as a gameplay mechanic. Kojima pretty much created the most mechanically full sandbox in MGSV and took some of the ideas to Death Stranding, if the marketing had called it a hiking-sim rather than walking-sim it would have sold better, the async online coop similar to Dark Souls also added a layer of thematic layering to the game. LoU 2 on the other hand focused heavily on the story but mechanically it was still stuck with the same tools it had in 1, which was strange because Uncharted forced itself to iterate each sequel, with the free swinging grappling hook being a big draw in the final game.

Modern Assassin's Creed - I never played the modern AC, starting from Origins, but from what I can tell, there is loot grind and levels aimed at microtransactions rather than improving the experience. Mirage launched with less features than Black Flag. Right now early comparisons between Shadows and Ghost of Tsushima shows how much baggage Ubisoft has, they cannot extricate themselves from map based chores, no way of reimagining each Era according to the themes when you have to constantly pay and maintain hundreds of employees to prepare for the next launch. The last time people praised Ubisoft for innovation was AC1, ability to climb anywhere! social stealth instead of crouching! multiple ways to achieve your goals!

So this problem started back in 2023 as in still occurring. Dead Space Remake, Jedi Survivor and Silent Hill 2 are some of the offenders. All these games were highly rated on gameplay and graphics

Basically, even if you have a 4090, the stutters and poor fps still exist due to the way the game is designed.

Its exceptionally frustrating because open world devs do optimise for performance while corridor type REMAKES like Dead Space and Silent Hill forget the work their predecessors did on worse hardware years ago

Was just watching old comedies from that era which don't exist anymore. Old School, Office Space and the premise was that people had normal lives which were exceptionally boring, they went to work in drab offices, this also brings to mind the Matrix/ Fight Club

Then obviously something amazing happens that introduces the story.

In modern shows, people don't have the luxury of boredom. Mr Robot is constantly on edge, the internet, mobile phones means people are constantly entertained. Severance tries to bring back an ambiguous period but their work is weird and interesting.

First some definitions or my understanding of terms.

JRPG - Story heavy, narrative driven games originating mostly from Japan with anime tropes and featuring turn based character battles commonly

Core gameplay - The main gameplay element of a game, for example Dodging, rolling and spacing combat in Elden Ring, Monster Hunter. Character placement, team builds, XCOM, TRPGs

Sub system - Mini games or the social systems in Persona games, a secondary gameplay element that is different and unrelated to core gameplay

I've enjoyed Yakuza Infinite Wealth, FF7 Rebirth and Persona these few years which led me to think that I enjoyed "JRPGS" so I booted up old "Tales of" game (action battle) and am having a hard time pushing through

I then realised that the JRPGs I've played have a lot of investment into sub systems, Yakuza basically being a collection of minigames polished over several series. FF7 adding even more mini games than the original in a 1/3 installment and also having a non turn based system and Atlus' games having a large chunk of it being a dating sim on top of its flashy UI for the turn based battles.

I think the core reason is that other gameplay mechanics, from driving to shooting to RTS to combat have high skill ceilings such that people playing CS can transition to Overwatch and then to Marvel Rivals and maintain their level of training over years. RTS have high skill floors for PVP. Meanwhile for single player RPGs without deep builds and customisation, you should be able to complete the story and endgame with grinding or items or clever builds. The first 2 being the easiest and least 'fun'

This has led to mainstream JRPGs needing sub systems to support the price tag while CRPGs like Baldurs Gate 3 have builds and branching stories to make it fun and replayable.

On the other hand Dragon Quest 3 hd-2d remake sold like gangbusters so maybe I'm off on this

Personally 2024 was ok for me even though I was laid off and unemployed for 6 months. Ok maybe it's a little shitty.

If we're in the darkest timeline, what was the last point where it felt there was so much hope and joy in the world?

Some options commonly put out.

• The day Pokémon Go released July 2016. So prepandemic and we went outside and and a girl told me where to find Weedles. Yep I'm in a videogame

• The day before 9/11 or when Harambe got killed

• When Endgame released, culmination of 10 years of marvel moments into a single movie, people cheering in the cinema. Still pre pandemic, maybe there's a trend here

From Twilight Zone to X files to Fringe. Random sci fi concepts in a story with overarching plot. Did streaming kill it?

Got the gamepass deal for $1 again, somehow, different email? So I took the opportunity and holiday season to try out Black Ops 6 and Diablo 4. Obviously the main reason was to play Indiana Jones, but that's another story..

Here are some points I noticed

• The developers expect you to know the game, no more handholding and tutorial for the 22nd game in the series, you already know the buttons to shoot and crawl and sprint crouch. Zombies mode was a revelation, insanely complex since I played the first one and the tutorial only scratched the surface

• This ties in to new mechanics, new game, new things to do right? BO6 has a grappling hook, while not new(?) introduces some sort of proof of concept and different gameplay in a couple of levels which shakes things up, in Diablo, I didn't notice anything new, it feels like a mobile game now though.

• They have no time to chill, devs think Gen Z or whoever their audience is has no time to admire the view. In old Cod, MoH games, you could blow up some tanks and then admire the French countryside after saving the town, here its curated so tight that I don't even think 5 seconds is allowed for you to explore or relax, its crafted like a movie, every 10 steps there must be a guard standing still for you to stealth kill. In Diablo, you go into a field and there are 20 wolves there for no reason and a bear. I thought you started with a 'normal' amount of wolves and then move on to ridiculous numbers in the endgame or post game. You also level up so fast and get access to the entire skill tree

• Diablo's story is now entirely detached from its gameplay, the protag can see the villains cutscenes due to a plot device, no more clever writing to explain events after, you get rewards not from an NPC but from the menu from completing world events, and somehow there are localised areas of 100s of enemies just waiting for you to start a fight in a random spot on an open field, theres a GPS showing you the way to the next objective

Overall I played both for the story and B06 was short and serviceable and let the player control the amount of lore they wanted (they did rip a level right from Control though) The presentation was top notch and had enough themes to make things different, it was also polished to the point where there were no rough edges and dare I say no personality.

I was completely uninterested in anything Diablo talked about, the intro was interesting then it turned into a bunch of fetch quests

My short review on Indiana Jones would be the opposite of Veilguard "It's a good game but not a good dragonage game"

"Its not a great game but a good Indiana Jones game"

We know that certain games are big, like BG3 or Persona 5. But recently games like FF7 rebirth and Indiana Jones just kept going on and on past "Act 3". Also Rise of the Golden Idol seemed a little short to me

Are developers getting more efficient with generating content?