Anything Soulslike
I had to work all through COVID-19 because of my job status. So while I understand people had time to sit around and play video games and “git gud”… I ain’t got the time.
I much more appreciate Animal Crossing. Also a pandemic game (the one on Switch) but it respects your time. Sort of. I mean you can just pick it up for an hour and run around catching bugs or fishing (I’d only do this in handheld mode, the lag with any controller and the HDMI connection make it impossible to catch 3/4/5-star rarity fish), so it’s a fun little chill game. And it’s not like you have to start over if you miss a fish on your lure. Or even if you get jumped by a scorpion or tarantula or wasp (yes you can “die” in Animal Crossing, but really, you just get knocked out and you return to your house and lose nothing except the chance to catch the bug and sell it to the little raccoons in the shop).
Do I “suck at games”? Eh, maybe. I got no excuse, I’ve been gaming since the 80s. I played NES games. I played computer and Atari games before that (and many computer games since). I’ve really got no excuse for sucking at hard games except I have a full time job, but the truth is… I just don’t care. I can beat Bethesda games. I can beat Cyberpunk. There are games I can play and I enjoy them. I haven’t beaten Blue Prince yet (that one is also very hard, but not punishing… you just aren’t advancing without a lot of luck and/or a very specific strategy… but a “losing” run is still fun and can still teach you something… a thing I think Soulslike games could learn from. They don’t have to be easy if a losing run is still fun. The difference is, the Soulslike is repetitive because you have to do repetitive things very well (blind QTEs to parry and dodge, for example), whereas Blue Prince is a highly randomised puzzle game you’re not going to win unless a very specific order of cards (blueprints) are drawn for you. You CAN manipulate the pool, but not enough to guarantee a win.
Zelda or pokemon
Counter strike.
Any version of it.
Fucking meaningless piece of work.
I mean, it’s a really simple game, but it’s only because of the players’ skills that the game has kept making it one of the most played games of all time.
So, there’s no depth to it. No story. Just a bunch of racially-insensitive idiots shooting at each other.
The CS “2”, is again an iterative. Looks pretty, got new maps and shit and a truck load of gambling-training transactions.
I cannot see the reasons why such a stupid game can keep players coming back to it. Been doing my “research” since I sprouted wispy beard, I can now tell how cold the weather would get just from the pain in my knees, so don’t even think about coming at me, I’ll knife you with my Karambit before you even load, punk!
All hail our Lord and saviour, father Gabe!Baldurs Gate 3: people hype it up as the best CRPG ever. When in fact it’s not even close. It loses in every category that matters to several dozen contenders (including Baldurs Gate 1 & 2): build diversity, story, writing, the UI.
Sorry to say but Stardew Valley for me – and it is not for a lack of trying, I’ve put in a bit over 82 hours into it, but a fair amount of that was forced and it quickly got stale. Maybe I just played it wrong or the game simply isn’t for me.
If I may ask, which aspect of it bothered (or bored) you?
I couldn’t exactly put a finger on it but I am guessing it was just the repetitiveness of it. I didn’t feel like there was anything inherently wrong with the game, it’s just that I was hoping for the moment where it would hook me so hard that I wouldn’t be able to stop playing, but this never really happened.
To be fair, I think you were expecting something from it that isn’t part of its core.
I don’t play it myself, but I have several friends and family that do, and they all cite it as their comfy, repetitive (by design) game that they play for a half hour at the end of a day to unwind and shut their brain off. From what I can tell, THAT seems to be the goal of the game, and it sounded like you wanted the opposite from it.
Yeah, that could very well be true. The reason I had this expectation is probably because I’ve seen reviews of other people, some of them having hundreds of hours on it and I probably had the impression that I might be doing something wrong and it’s just a matter of getting ‘hooked’. That’s why I kept playing even though I didn’t find it very fun. While I do remember some slight annoyances about it, I do not think it is overall a bad game.
Pretty much every flash in the pan game that the whole gaming sphere seems to obsess over for a few weeks and then never talk about again
I’ve found the ‘wait at least a week after release’ method has saved me a lot of money for this reason.
Most of them. They quieter ones are often better.
Elden Ring. It’s like they just glued inconsistent creature ideas next to each other. Every couple of hundred ingame meters you come across a different biome with different creatures that appear nowhere else and has a boss that visually and equipment-wise completely out of place. It feels like fighting your way through dozens of puzzle-pieces forced next to each other without any explanation why. You have to try to make your own story as to why things are the way they are and any criticism of the game is shot down by the worst stereotypes of gamers.
I legitimately feel like ER is one of FromSoft’s weakest titles. It doesn’t come close to the DS trilogy for me, and unironically I feel like Nightreign is a better game in the same vein, as the faster paced sandbox works far better for the fast, clusterfuck bosses ER is known for.
Opportunity to promote !askgaming@piefed.social
Any of the Dark Souls. They’re hyped up for being difficult, but the only thing that makes them difficult is the clunky controls.
Like, I could make Pokemon Yellow equally difficult by taping a dish sponge to a Gameboy and requiring the player to operate the buttons through an inch of fluff.
The story’s kinda there if you dig for clues, but it comes off as random bullshit if you don’t.
They are fucking gorgeous, I’ll give em that.
I’ll never understand the ‘git gud’ circlejerk… I 100%'d DS2, and made it a good chunk through Elden Ring (think I was about 80% done before finally saying fuck it). I ‘got gud’… But DS never got fun.
I absolutely love the style, setting, visuals, and music - I really wanted to like DS… but the combat and clunky controls absolutely murder the experience.
For me at least… to each their own.
what’s clunky? I would agree they have some clunky elements, mainly the targetting will sometimes cause problems, but I don’t recall much else being necessarily clunky.
I’d say the only bad thing in the dark souls controls is jumping. Elden Ring has no issues.
GTA
I just don’t get it.
I don’t really like games that are overly realistic, or a simulation of real life. GTA falls into that group. Like, I’m playing games to get away from reality, not revel in it.
If it was GTA with spells, it would be more interesting. But guns (and by extension melee weapons) just feels too boring
I tried to explain to my friends but they don’t get it. Like it’s too grounded in reality
It’s a momentum from early 2000s. Rockstar (or was it Take 2 by that time?) set a lower moral line in the gaming industry and published games like Man Hunt and GTA III, where you can commit crime without much consequences. The gaming experience was nouveau and a thrill.
The game series also mixed in a lot of mafia movie vibes and satire.
Then Rockstar realized you can release a lot less content by pushing online gameplay, stopping the release of single player content.
I can see that, if the style of humor doesnt click with you, then it’s got a pretty repetitive mission formula which can get boring.
I think GTA 6 is (and will be) very overhyped. I dont see it living up to the previous titles at all.
League of Legends
It’s like Dota but more accessible!
All contemporary multiplayer FPS games. I went through a phase where I had 5-digit frag counts on Quake more from time spent than talent, and I got tired of it, but people just pour ENDLESS hours into multiplayer FPSes…
Multiplayer co-op FPSes, on the other hand, are freaking fantastic. There’s a reason why my friend group gaming rotation is primarily composed of Deep Rock Galactic, Left 4 Dead 2, and Vermintide / Darktide.
Balatro. It becomes a spreadsheet sim very quickly, in my opinion. I think part of the reason Binding of Isaac and Hades feel much more timeless to me is that every run has this sort of intuitive randomness vs this just full rng you have to counter with math. Balatro feels solved, and while I guess you could count Hades max heat run as “solving” the game, the replayability of it feels much higher because builds feels more dynamic than “make number go up faster”.
Some people like spreadsheet sims.
For me, the most boring aspect of Balatro is the first couple blinds. Holy shit am I tired of “you MUST play a flush or straight.”
Try plasma, it upends the whole formula.
Thank you, this really describes my feelings towards that game well. The first few runs were great with experimenting and stuff but then you try for higher stakes and quickly fall into the optimal strat flow where it’s kinda boring unless you get ridiculous runs but i don’t wanna wade through meh to get that one god run that’s actually fun.
Not that quickly that you dont get your money’s worth though. Balatro is a good mobile game honestly, for a quick run when you have time to kill, but I wouldnt find myself sat at my PC playing it.
Agreed. I didnt get into it until I played on the phone.
Sadly a lot of popular indie games, I really like a game where I can feel like I’m living another life in it, get to be someone else for a while, and that just isn’t a thing in most indie games because of the limited scope that comes with a small development team. There’s games like MotorTown or Stardew Valley, that have what I’m looking for, but those are unfortunately rare so I often have to turn to AAA games and damn it’s hard finding a good one of those.
