Games

Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t a good game. Everything is ridiculously time consuming, buggy, and slow for no reason. Painstaking attention to detail on insane things nobody will ever see or care to look at (like horse balls shrinking in cold weather) is not a good enough reason to be considered a good game.

People who get video game burnout or say gaming is dead or whatever are victims of AAA marketing.

Most of the time I see posts like this they complain that they bought all the newest games with great reviews and aren't having any fun. Normally it's Sony games and other cinematic experience kind of games. Or they are games that they put 100's of hours into. They are doing the same stuff over and over and getting bored.

Unfortunately critics care more about production values and polish than novel game mechanics. Plenty of interesting games get overlooked due to being a little weird or not fitting in modern game conventions. If you only play the big budget AAA stuff you are going to get burnt out because they all copy each other trying to be the next "big game". If you play games that get bad reviews, have weird mechanics, or do something different you won't get burnt out. I like to recommend the Gravity Rush games to people who have a playstation and are burnt out on the "cinematic" games. They typically have never heard of it and end up having a blast with them. Makes me sad when I see people still buying games based on metacrtic scores. They miss out on so much.

I always hated complex combo systems in fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter. Fighting games shouldn't be about being able to input 50 super precise key combinations in the span of 1.5 seconds. It should be about positioning, timing, improvisation... Guilty gear strive and super smash bros is proof of this. Every game that gatekeeps new players for not memorizing the built-in combo that takes 60% of your opponent's HP feels like it's still stuck in the 90's arcade game era. Most fighting game series refuse to move forward. There, I've said it.

Paradox Interactive is eventually going to release so many DLC that they eventually collapse inward from their own gravity and implode, taking the company's future with them.

The sentence "I lost my gear / They took my gear" has never been followed by a fun part in any videogame, ever

It's not a super-hot take, but art style >>>>> graphics when it comes to "beautiful" looking games. There are games coming out today that can run on a toaster that look far better than many AAA titles with all the fancy lighting effects and ray tracing that require you to dump 4-digit sums into a monster gaming PC to fully enjoy, all due to how the smaller games masterfully handle their art design.

Based on the sentiment I see online, my hot take is that Deep Rock Galactic is way over-hyped and is actually pretty shallow. It's a fine turn your brain off game, but I don't think it's as great as people make it out to be.

Games are for fun. If you're not having fun, stop playing. Don't spend effort on griping about the game; just stop playing and do something else. Do not go on the game forum and spend hours arguing about whether the game started sucking with the last release or two years ago. Just stop playing and do something else with your time & energy. Stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.

Software quality varies widely in online games; even for "simple" games such as abstract strategy board games. One of the highest-quality pieces of game software is lichess. Most board-game software, even for other abstract strategy games like Go, absolutely sucks compared to lichess. The best Go client is KGS; it's pretty good, but it's no lichess.

Regarding CCGs: Hearthstone is terrible. Magic Arena is okay. Eternal is fine but I stopped playing it when Magic Arena released for Android. Mythgard is pretty neat. Runeterra is probably okay if you're already into the League/Arcane characters.

Paying for games is fine, but consider your opportunity cost in both money and time. ("Opportunity cost" is an economist's way of asking, "What else could you be doing with this money and time?") Maybe you just want to go see a movie instead. Or go stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.

Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection is an astonishingly good collection of puzzle games that runs on pretty much any computer or device you use. You can install it for free on your phone. It's all open source, no ads, no bullshit, just puzzle games.

If the game you're paying for is pissing you off, consider whether you're paying for the service of being pissed off. Maybe just stop doing that?

Developers who lock the FOV of their games have no idea what they're doing.

Looking at you sea of theives...

Souls-like games aren't difficult, they just show you how impatient the average player is. Very rarely do those games actually challenge your ability or technical skill, and instead they just test your patience with annoyingly-defensive enemy behavior that encourages impatient players into aggressive, risky gameplay.

I'm currently playing through Breath of the Wild for the first time and I don't think it's an amazing game. I think it's decent and fun enough, but it has a lot of grindy BS and aimless wandering, plus a story that is a rehash of literally every Zelda game every made, but now with 100% more open world.

Seriously how many times are we going to beat Ganon? And good God the voice acting is cringe.

Also, I just freed the second divine beast and I still have no idea how to dodge or flurry rush.

People spend way to much time complaining about how games are not perfect in their eyes, instead of taking it at face value. They get literally outraged when a game doesn't function exactly how they want, instead of finding a game they actually enjoy.

Back in the day we'd just pick whatever looked cool at the store and hoped it was decent. People have the right to complain, but its gotten out of hand and modern gamers are whiney as all hell.

Edit: just want to clarify, I'm mainly refer to post launch and established games. If a game promises somthing and is released half baked, 100% people are in the right to complain.

My hot take: Skyrim is the most overrated game of all time. Not bad, but overrated. My phone hardcrashed while I typed out the reasons why I think so, so I won‘t anger the gaming gods further this time.

Most AAA games are boring. All the big games from the last few years are just plain boring. They found a formula back in the 2000's that they never expanded upon or really changed in any way shape or form. The focus is on visuals and story (and I gotta say, the stories are pretty fucking cringe a lot of the time unless you're a 13 year old) or skinnerboxes and psycho tricks to keep you addicted and the gameplay remains the same stale shit it's been for over 20 years. I feel like AAA games are games for people who don't play games, because the actual game part is always the worst part about them.

Hideo Kojima's games are bad.

For context, when I was 11 my friend told me that MGS was incredible, so I went to his house to play it. It was fucking tedious. I spent hours shuffling around grey corridors, interspersed with painfully long dialog and cut scenes that were mostly about nothing.

Then, years later I decided to go back to MGS V and give the series another try. I had the exact same reaction to it as the original game. Endless waffle about characters and situations that meant nothing to me, uninspired modern military aesthetics, and boring locations.

They were clearly very well-made games, and I appreciate that people have massive regard for them. I just don't like them at all.

You can make a porn game thats both a good game and good porn. Its tricky as hell to balance, and you won't attract most players, but its possible.

The real issue is the stigma, which right fully exists. But I still want my triple A porn game.

Graphics don't fucking matter if only high end systems can run the game

Third-person shooters suck. The character model gets in the way of seeing and I don't need to see the super tacticool costumes. And the more decent third-person shooters switch to first-person for aiming down the sights anyway.

Cards in video games suck. Unless it's simulating a real card game. Otherwise we don't need powerup cards and such, use some other mechanic. My level 89 death knight doesn't need to be pulling cards out of his pockets.

Motion blur, vignetting, depth of field, lens flare, none of these should be the default. Show me the game world clearly.

@LeylaaLovee When you play a long game (i.e. 60+ hours) all the way through, it's hard to tell how much of it was genuine enjoyment over some kind of weird sunk cost situation.

Kind of like watching a show that goes on for a ton of seasons. You get into a habit and despite inconsistent quality, you keep going back and you're not sure why, especially after the really bad parts.

It's why I understand *some* of the 100+ hour playtime negative reviews, & am skeptical of positive ones.

Weapons, armor, equipment, upgrades, etc. in single-player games that have effects that have tradeoffs or very niche use-cases are unfun. I can understand it in multiplayer competitive games where balance is important, but effects like “provides 20% more defense versus ” or “increases range, but decreases damage” just deflate me when I get them in games. If I’m spending time playing a game, I want to earn things that make me objectively better as I progress. Developers of modern games seem waaay to preoccupied with holding back and not allowing things to be “broken” in games where it just doesn’t matter.

Whenever Soulslike mechanics creep into games in other genres, it makes the game less fun.

Headbobbing doesn't help with immersion but leads to me wanting to puke violently. Looking at you, east European first person games. At least let me turn it off, then we're cool.

Exclusives can be beneficial. By exclusives, I don't mean Sony/Microsoft pay the developer for exclusivity, that sucks. What I'm referring to is a developer picking a platform and developing a game using that platforms full potential. Games like Zelda, Crash Bandicoot, God Of War, Last Of Us all took full potential of their consoles architecture and brought pretty good games.

The popularity of skill based matchmaking decimated game design that allows people of different skill levels to play together and progress in a multiplayer setting. Most games actually punish you for playing with better players on your team instead of allowing you to help somehow without being a liability. And when you are, the game is no longer winnable and people get extremely pissed off ensuing you won't get to play with them again.

My true hot take is that despite all the moaning in gaming communities about the death of gaming, we're in pretty much the golden age of gaming. There's so many good games constantly coming out that I haven't been able to play nearly as much of them as I'd like to and my backlog keeps growing.

Sometimes I'll notice that I keep postponing some indie game that I put on my list because it looked like a lot of fun over some newer indie and realize that I'll maybe never end up reaching that far down in my backlog that I'll actually play it.

Breath of the Wild is merely okay.

It's kind of tedious, the weapon durability system is annoying, and the visuals are held back by the Switch's weak specs.

VHS/TV static, scanlines, and tracking filters are obnoxious and developers need to stop using them. You can't just slap a shit filter over bad graphics and be like "It's the 80s/90s!"

I get the aesthetic and that a lot of developers are pandering to my generation, but it's become the hallmark of shit games for me. Do something innovative.

Real-time with pause is superior than turn-based for CRPGs, especially given how many encounters there are in the games.

Turn based wins out the less encounters there are.

Every console shooter should come out with well-implemented gyro aiming that is turned on by default. It’s ridiculous how much you gain in precision by using it after only a little bit of practice

We don't need bigger open worlds. I'd rather have a Far Harbor sized Fallout every other year than a FO4 sized game after 8.

People have no right to complain about wanting more Team Fortress 2 updates and should be grateful that it's even still being supported when very few developers would keep up with a 15+ year old game.

Nintendo games are great FIRST games.

If Zelda is the first action RPG you ever played, it will forever hold a warm spot in your heart.

Same for Smash Brothers and fighting games, Mario Kart and racing games, or Pokemon and turn based RPGs.

But if you aren't 10 years old or have played literally any other games, they really aren't very good.

IMO Final Fantasy is not good. I’ve tried playing several of the games but every time the story is so cliche and overly complicated. I’ve been told “oh just try a different one. This version is better!” If I have to try that hard to enjoy a franchise it’s just not for me.

My hot take: VR is an amazing technology, but it's no good for games - at least not the best majority of games we originally developed for flat screens.

We need to create entirely new styles of entertainment to fully use this medium, instead of modding existing titles or bolting on VR modes.