BG3 is one of my favorite games, but there is nothing technologically groundbreaking about it. As hardware improves, studios often prefer to use the new leeway to neglect optimization, which is a nightmare scenario for consumers who are forced to upgrade endlessly for no reason. It’s understandable that smaller studios may need to make that sacrifice, but there should be SOME penalty for it or it will get out of hand. The series S parity requirements provides some small penalization that I hope continues for generations to come.
Left 4 Dead is like Animal Crossing. The sort of game that tricks devs into thinking “oh yeah that’s so simple, i can do that easy,” without understanding all the effort put into the little details that made the original shine.
Would former l4d devs understand that better? Maybe. But I’ve thus far been unimpressed with game offerings from “the team behind [bigger game]” projects.
Yep, I’ve been holding off on it for awhile because of this. It feels like it’s maybe never going to happen at this point.
They dropped verification cans. Instead you have to play an elder rift in diablo immortal to log in to SC3.
There are plenty of games I thought were good but couldn’t get into, or games where I got distracted and fell off them. So I’ll limit this list to games where I got really far along and then made a conscious decision to stop.
Persona 4 Golden, at the start of the Golden content. I wanted to be done and it was too much to ask me to do another, even longer dungeon.
Zelda: The Wind Waker. I acknowledge it as a good game, but I just did not like sailing around.
Very recently, Age of Wonders 4. I really disliked the last story map and how many factions were running around.
Metal Gear Solid V. Reused missions in the second act, nuff said.
That’s a great list of games for this question. Several good games on there with pacing issues in the middle, the kind that would make you drop the game.
Only one I don’t relate to is Witcher 3.
I should put “accessibility” in sarcastic quotation marks. Here, it doesn’t mean adding options or features to assist someone with different handicaps or needs. It means making the game so easy that anyone, even a toddler or game journalist, can finish it without having to learn from mistakes or think about what they’re doing.
Particularly with regard to excessive guidance. Varying degrees of “mobile game that makes you click exactly what it says for 30 minutes to prove you played the tutorial.” Those games may be the worst offenders, but less-dramatic hand holding happens in console and PC games too.
People are going to be pedantic about this one, because it’s not ALL games, but what you’re seeing is real. Game design, especially corporate design, has changed to accomplish two things:
- Engagement
- Accessibility
Games are designed to be playable by as many people as possible for as long as possible. Some would say this is just Western AAA games, but lots of anime games have been doing this nonsense for decades - games with 10 hours of baby’s first JRPG tutorial and 80 hours of grinding and filler. Many of them critically acclaimed games that fans would flog me for if I actually named one of them.
There are indie games that help you escape this, but many take that accessibility-first approach that requires everything to be very structured and corral you toward the right direction.
Again, I think people are going to be dismissive, but you’re right. It’s a tough world out there for someone who just wants to play a game and not be suckered into a live service engagement trap, or ladder system that hides your real MMR to keep you grinding up an imaginary points system. It’s not like the old days when you can just pick something popular, you have to discriminate and carefully judge what you buy now.
Direct reference to yesterday’s Zero Punctuation?