Sly Reflex

There's no offline mode for EGS?

Maybe Cannon Fodder or something along those lines.

I think it's been a bit shit with sometimes an explosion of amazing stuff. Although, and I feel this might be controversial, I don't feel the jump was needed. I feel we're in an age now where gaming is very safe. We have teams of thousands of people and nothing risky ever gets done. It's just sort of bland. Nothing really stands out. That might be more on me than the games themselves. I can look at something like the last 2 Zelda's and appreciate them, but they're not for me. I think more interesting are the games that have been utter catastrophes, I feel like these are more and more regular now. I don't know if it's the penetration of social media or what, but I feel that a game only has to step a bit over the line on shitness and it gets dragged hard. As nice as it is, graphical stuff is fine now. But for joe average and a lot of people, this is how they yardstick games being "good". Doesn't matter if the games are engaging or are fun to play. Just as long as they look better than last time or better than the competition this is what drives that arms race. To me that seems pretty detrimental. Just endlessly chasing that power. And also I think the power creep has just made devs lazy as fuck too in the fact that nothing is optimised. Where does the blame lay here? I'm not quite sure. I'll let you lot theorise about that. But yeah, for me personally, it's a thumbs down overall. We find ourselves in a place where AAA games are nothing but greedy, morally and creatively bankrupt, full of empty promises that are full of bugs, issues and other fuckery. I sort of look forward to the day when it all goes bang and some of the big companies let off a load of people so they can get from under the boot of the mandated bloated corporate design philosophies and start doing what they got into the business of doing.

It's my favourite game series and I play no other games.

It's the 11th of November, you know what that means! 1. The Elder Scrolls Online 1442 hours Played once a week. It's never going to get knocked off number one now, is it? 2. Deep Rock Galactic 626 hours That's a lot of rocking and stoning 3. Snowrunner 542 hours That's a lot of getting stuck in snow and wondering what the fuck I am doing with my life trying to take logs to an oil refinery where they're trying to kick off space rocket launches. 4. PAYDAY 2 325 hours Starting to slip down the ranks now. I've got some of the later DLC for this but I've not played it yet. Plus the clusterfuck that is Payday 3 is out now, so maybe that'll feature at some point? 5. Skyrim 313 hours Hard stuck here, I have a better version to play. 6. Rocket League 303 hours That's 303 hours or more that I'll never get back. Fuck this game, the community it has and the company that own it now. 7. Creeper World 4 297 hours All those 1 hour sessions for the daily stuff add up. I am sure I'm the only person here that's played this. 8. Euro Truck Simulator 2 290 hours A bit back I said that the next DLC would be Russia and they would never touch the Balkans because of what happened there and the political stuff surrounding what belongs to who and what it's called. I couldn't have foreseen what was about to happen there, but Russia is not in the game and the Balkans are. Go figure. 9. Borderlands 2 261 hours Not sure I put more hours on this. I've played this game a stupid amount over my life time though. 10. Borderlands 3 249 hours I went through this with a close friend and smashed the achievements out, but we had to stop at one DLC because she didn't have it and it was reviewed terribly. I played this mode with @regemond a bit and my god it's shite. Do better Gearbox. Rest of the game's pretty good if you ignore the awful story. 11. Fallout 76 177 hours Not as bad as a lot of people put it out to be. Not as good as it should have been. 12. Skyrim Special Edition 167 hours Not played this since 2020, but maybe some day I'll do another Christmas special even including it? 13. Fire Pro Wrestling World 163 hours Speaking of special events, we're about to enter one. Expect more hours into this this time next year. L3WD will reign supreme! 14. Fallout 4 136 hours Never finished this. I should go back at some point, but I have a feeling it'll be a stream thing if I did. Maybe with mods. 15. MGSV: The Phantom Pain 121 hours Ironically the phantom pains we feel are the missing parts of the game. Best gameplay MGS ever made as well. Also if you have a PC, go check this version out, the performance on it is absolutely insane. A lot of other PC devs could learn from them. 16. Pinball FX3 120 hours My love affair died with pinball when Zen started acting like bell ends. 17. Mudrunner 118 hours The precursor to Snowrunner. I don't think Mudrunner was ever as infuriating as that game though, even people that never levelled up in Dark Souls have said it makes them angrier. 18. Stardew Valley 115 hours Not played this in years, but I think I am due a revisit just in time for Haunted Chocolatier to come out. And that's the wrap up for this year. There's games climbing up there but not quite on my cut off for inclusion. Any big climbers your side. Any surprises in mine you would or wouldn't have expected to find? Share your shit, you fucks.

The generation after. Mario Doesn't really matter which one, they moved the bar each time. I think I'd be tempted with 3 or World. Needs no explanation really. Because it needs to be present because... Sonic the Hedgehog Yeah, console wars and mascots coming really to the forefront of culture. Even the most blinkered person to gaming knows who Mario and Sonic are. We can argue about these games quality until the cows come up, but I think you'd have to live under a rock to disagree the impact they had on the industry as a whole. These two franchises define if you were a Nintendo kid or a Sega kid. Mortal Kombat II So I can't remember rightly what record this game holds, but it was the first to do something, I don't know if it was copies sold or if it was money made or something like that, but it holds some world first in that it hit a milestone way before anyone else managed to. Kind of laughable as well really when you look at it now with all the press it garnered. They were simpler times. Street Fighter II But not the version you're thinking of. I am talking about the hacked Rainbow Edition that sort of forced Capcom into balancing their game and making it competitive. I think some argue that this is truly where balancing for competitive games came from in some form or another, and because of that, it goes in the gallery. OK, 4 games from the generation after that one. Mario 64 I think you'd have to be wild not to have this featured. First full 3D Mario, full analogue controls all packed into one of the most feature laden games ever on top of it becoming the worlds most sped run game. Wipeout 2097 Did you expect this? Did you even consider it? Because you should. Sexy as fuck graphic design, super fluid air racing and all the licensed music you'd heard in the nightclubs of the time. What a banger of a game. Pokémon Gold/Silver To me the fact that they had 251 monsters, 2 huge maps and fuck loads of other stuff going in in this game that weighed in at a total of 710kb. I'm sorry, but that achievement is absolutely insane. I feel like Gold/Silver put a lot of games to shame for the time time and platform it came out on. It was shockingly good and a technical marvel. Metal Gear Solid Kept you waiting, huh? Yeah, I got to put this in. There's so many aspects to this game that stand out, the story, the characters, the sound effects, the music stings. The mechanics. The clever 4th wall breaking stuff that happens throughout the game. I think for me this was one of those games that really opened my mind to what entertainment could be, it was such a lap over everything else at the time that it was outstanding in its field. And because there's so many games I could have put here, I am going to list some honourable mentions. Crash Bandicoot. Final Fantasy VII. Castlevania SotN. Gran Turismo. Sega Rally. Nights. Goldeneye. Zelda OoT & MM. Resident Evil. Tekken. Tony Hawks Pro Skater. More later.

I didn't actually mind the end of TWD. I'm not entirely sure how they could have wrapped it up any different. It was what it was. I feel it's one of those things where they could have done something drastic, but doing so would have pissed a lot of people off so they went for the safest option. Also done Saints Row IV between the time I last updated. They massively painted themselves into a corner with this one, didn't they? I remember playing Gat out of Hell with Hendo back in the day and fucking hating it. This was like a remix of that, but mostly good. Not as good as SR III, but hey, can't win them all. Now we're streaming random shit until the Wrestle Event happens. Normal service will be resumed after.

So there's a few different ways you can look at this. One is that it's just really pretty. One is that it's culturally important. One is that it's a technical feat. One is that it's holding a message that's important, or a lesson that we could all learn from. With those parameters outlined I would say... The Space Invaders I think this is pretty iconic, people that don't even play games know what these are and because of that massive cross over I feel that it sort of has to be there. I know it's one of the worlds most basic games, but they did a lot with the pixels and sounds they were given. Pacman Another one that belongs in a museum. Iconic but simple gameplay. Cutscenes. Recognisable characters. Iconic sound effects and music. ET Might have been a terrible game, but it's massive cultural importance would ensure that a copy ended up so people could see it. Tetris Not just the game itself, but everything that came up around this is sort of fascinating and deserves to be front and centre in any display. Like with ET, sometimes the stories behind the games are just as impressive as the games themselves. I'll be back with another 4 games from the next generation when I get time to sit down and type.

SMW, LttP and Pokemon Gold/Silver.

It's absolute shite. Nonsensical story even by Resident Evil standard. Who the fuck are half of these people? Don't tell me. I don't care. Abysmal inventory management. I feel it's pretty bad over Resident Evil games overall really, but this one takes the piss. It's this weird mess of basic scrolling, but it scrolls both ways and you can fast swap weapons, but when you have a lot of weapons it make it so you're back and forth. The game also decided to pack your inventory out by giving you way too many throwables, but makes them a chore to use. Every so often you're best off just stopping and clearing them from your inventory. Controls are shite. It has this weird cover system that's a mix of something like Gear and Army of Two, but instead of copying one or the other and improving them, it takes the worst aspects from both of them. Vehicle sections are uniformly terrible. They even know this themselves because when you die it gives you full health from the check point. Game constantly has points where it wrestles the camera from you, or even anchors your view to something while you are in the action. The action doesn't pause. You will die because of this. It also has a weird habit of not letting you see what you need to see. Some parts are impossible if you are playing as a specific character in some hosting situations. You can become soft locked. When a player gets downed, the game takes control away from you while it fucking stun grenades your eyes with a negative flash. You can receive damage during this time, just like when it does the cinematic pans or focuses your camera on whatever it's doing. FOV feels like it's inside my eyeballs. No auto reloads when a magazine is empty meaning that you're often caught with your pants down. Terrible AI. Even in co-op you're stuck with AI doing shit that will just get hung up and cause you fails. "Puzzles". Generally you're only going to get stuck because the geography of the level is horrendous in parts. In fact there's a part in every single campaign where you have to do three of whatever in an area and these parts suck so much. Health system is garbage. Damaged received is inconsistent across the game. You can get stunlocked in certain areas of the game. The item drop rates are skewed as to be a bit of a headache. This is tied to the shit inventory I think, because you can get 100's of pistol bullets and can't use them fast enough to negate more pistol bullets dropping, but not getting anything for other weapons or vice versa. My co-op partner regularly has run completely out of ammo, sometimes through her own gung-ho nature, but sometimes just because the game insist on giving you xp. XP is pointless. The perks are pointless. I feel like some of them might as well be a placebo effect they aid you so little. There's so many situational ones that provide so little value there's no point in them existing. So many of them require you to kill 1000 enemies or whatever with a specific weapon. No thanks. It's never 100% clear what an area wants from you in some instances. Is it to survive? Is it to get the keys and escape? Do I need to do a puzzle to stop the waves? Is it a combination of all of the above? In instances of where the players get split up and must do something to progress the parts, it's barely clear on what needs doing, especially when you are at a whim of the co-op partner. Like, do I just stand and defend? Do I have urgency to do the objective to get them out of trouble? Also these parts are fucking shite to play when its you waiting on them. On said parts, holding to view what they are doing so you can see what they see only works part of the time. The characters are terrible. Leon and his sidekick are fine in isolation, but the rest of them are truly the worst of the worst. Jake in particular is to Resident Evil 6 as to what Poochie was to the Itchy and Scratchy show. The running away sections are shit. All of them. All of them are hampered with spinning the camera around and generally making them as unpleasant to experience as possible. Boss fights are shit. Boss fights in RE games have never been it strong suite, but they somehow managed to make them at best tedious and at worst agonising. Shit design throughout, such as bosses getting toppled out of reach where you cannot continue the attack that is needed to finish them. Constant QTE's. Ada campaign is for one player only, making it so that the co-op player is just there to be dragged along. Why make a game that's intended for 2 players and then do this? Instances of where you can be instakilled through no fault of your own by standing in the wrong position are too frequent. You could argue once is enough, but this game does it a lot. Ambulances, cars, trains, helicopters, floors collapsing, you name it, there's probably some bullshit there that will cause a kill screen before you even knew it was going to be there. Not even QTE failures, just BAM and you're looking at a you died screen. This game was released in 2012, the same as Borderlands 2, Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3, Dishonoured, Journey, Hotline Miami, Dragons Dogma, Diablo 3, Fez, Mark of the Ninja, The Walking Dead, Super Hexagon, Okami HD, X-Com, Dear Esther, Binary Domain, Anomaly, Super Brothers, Sniper Elite 2, Plague Inc, LEGO Batman, Spec Ops: The Line, Spelunky, Orcs Must Die 2, CS:GO, FTL, Torchlight II, Euro Truck 2, Halo 4 and Thomas Was Alone. I played all of these way after release, with only some being played on or thereabouts on release, and without a doubt Resident Evil 6 is easily the worst game. By a country mile. There's so many issues it faces or just gets wrong. Like, even when you look at the comparable AAA games from that year. BL2, FC3, Dishonoured, Dragons Dogma and Halo 4. Borderlands 2 has aged a bit like milk on the joke front, but it's still serviceable. The core part of it is fun even though it's starting to get rough edges. One of the best bad guys in gaming history. Far Cry was the big one that kicked it all off. Enjoyed it the years after it came out when I got around to it, even if it was a bit silly. Dishonoured was fucking excellent. Sublime from end to end with a few niggles I could overlook. Dragons Dogma is a cult classic. Yeah, it gets many things wrong, but the bit it gets is so so fucking right. Halo 4 was trying to tread old ground with a new face on. It wasn't awful or brilliant. Just a general stagnating franchise that's trading on past glories while trying to maintain the hook that people fell in love with. I cannot think of any good things to say about Resident Evil 6. Maybe it's made us laugh at how shit it is, but not in a kitschy way, just in a "This is absolutely fucking terrible" way. It's a complete embarrassment from Capcom. It's absolute shite. There's not a single aspect from this game that I can go "You know what, it did x or y well". It's fumbled its way throughout the runtime at best and at worst it's being absolutely diabolical. Even games that I've hated there's usually some aspect that I can admire, but this? Not a fucking chance. The last time I think I disliked a game this much was Dungeon Siege III maybe? The funny thing is I went into this game thinking that there's literally no way it can be as bad as people say it is, there has to be some hyperbole there. No. Not at all. This game is a complete void of quality. If I was to make a list of the 10 worst games I've ever played, this would take a spot.

I've not actually played this for a long time. I got to Amur and fuck me sideways. Even getting out of the base is 10/10 difficulty. I can see why people complained about that DLC a lot because it's merciless. You do get a very specific game breaking vehicle to unlock in that area, but it's not like it's the automatic win button everyone says it is. It might be everywhere else in the other parts of the game, but Amur is something else.

You say streamlined, but I disagree. It's such an obstructive PoS game. It commits so many cardinal sins when it comes to game design, it's like the people that made it never played a game in their whole lives. Absolute fucking rubbish. Each time you think you reached the bottom it just keeps going and plumbing the depths even more.

Gots to get them tyres. The start ones are pretty much uniformly awful. Although when you get the super grippy balloon tyres, the trade off is they handle awfully on asphalt and level and dry dirt.

I am playing this currently, just seeing out the last of the final campaign and honestly I think it is easily in the running for the worst big game of last decade. It's absolutely horrific. I don't really know why people defend this. Even if it wasn't wearing the Resident Evil branding it'd still be wank.

I don't think I've seen a physical game since before Covid. Division 2 and Anthem. Two absolute logs.

I had this with MGS4. I was close to the end and was like I've got about 10 minutes and then I can go to bed, I've work in the morning. Like an hour later it finished. The end of that game goes on forever.

Yeah, but think of all the bonuses the EGS top brass can give themselves now? It's a win/win.

Some pretty poor writing in S4. Not really sure what they were going for in all honesty. Feels like they wanted to involve Clem without you actually playing as Clem. Into the final season now. I can't help but feel it's all going to be a massive let down.

We're into the fourth game now. It took a severe jump in quality production wise, but I just cannot find myself caring about any of the new cast. Clem is basically the character is all hinges on. The craziest thing is all the stuff that happens in 1 and 2 is basically wrapped up by 4 so it all feels a bit fruitless. Jane was in it for a bit but not for long before she went out of the storyline. I'm not really sure where they're going with this, but at least it's going at a fair old lick. I should have it all over and done with in a few more streams.

I think there's a few ways of looking at this. I feel like bloat is a weird way to put it, because that would convey that what they are putting in games is content, when really it's not. You know how some games come along and they are a complete paradigm shift in that they alter games even outside the genre they're competing in? I think CoD is a good one for this, before this we didn't have prestiging in games, or more the case, we didn't have it as widespread as we did have, then suddenly we have it all over. Same with numbers being flashed all over our screens, before you'd get a kill and that was it, but here in CoD world you have the du-du-du of hit markers and then a number or chain of numbers pop up on your screen, people really liked this and eventually it made itself into more and games. I think with games wanting to keep people in the game, or logging back into the game, MMO's brought the daily quests stuff to the fore, a dead easy way to go and get people to go kill whatever where ever. it's a line of code that's randomly kicked off that sends you out to areas you've not been to for a while to do whatever. So in something like Elder Scrolls Online it would be Clear MP dungeon or go to x area and y z. Go to Rimmen and pick flowers. Go to Morrowind and kill bug. Go to Summerset and mine minerals. It's a bit of code that uses the date to find what the seed is and then sets it for everyone. The purpose being you can go do this thing, get a little reward and be on your way, you get some trinkets or whatever. The purpose form the devs side is they want to keep an even spread of people in those areas. When you are a live service game everyone is going to gravitate to the later areas and then you are left with all the rest of it barren, so from that aspect you can sort of see why they want people milling about the world. It stops the world from feeling dead and makes it so that people farming for mats in dead areas are not doing it uninterrupted. plus it gives passing traffic for world bosses and to some degree buggers the bots about that are there to farm nodes and sell gold. That's all well and good in MMO's, but it started spinning off into other games as things to do when there was nothing to do. I feel like Skyrim has to take a bloody nose here because it did the thing where you'd pick a thing up and go do a whatever to get a doohicky to go and deliver and get your reward. Destiny, Division and Fallout 4/76. I'm gonna be frank here, bounties and dailies are not content. Anything like that that's a little bit of code to go do pointless busywork is just that. The maps are there, the enemies are there, the nodes for harvesting are there. It's just you seeing a bar go up and ticking it off. Your reward is you got entertained for a bit. Or not. Your mileage may vary. To me I think that content like this is fine as long as it's all the game has to offer. For example I feel like that the Skyrim and Fallout 4 offers players that are not sure what they should be doing next an opportunity for the game to roll the radiant quest dice and see where it ends up sending you. If you are a newer player or on the start of your adventure, it's going to lead you past stuff you may not have noticed before which you might get distracted by. In those sandbox worlds where weird stuff can happen at any juncture, getting you out and about and allowing the game to give you those experiences that are bespoke to you are the thing that it's actually doing here. Like for real, nobody wants to do all the Thieves Guild stuff the game insists you do to rank up each hold. They're wank, by the time you've done a few of each you've seen enough and the game is designed in such a way that you're basically at the whim of accepting and refusing quests to progress the storyline. It's not really about the money or XP at that point, it's a massive time waster. I think Preston in Fallout 4 has a huge reason for existing if you are a certain type of player. For me personally, I found a lot of those camps myself, but outside of that using his radiant quests gave me a beeline towards something I'd never discovered before, or were completely unaware I could even get to that. The issue is he never stops, there's only so much content and then we're back to the whole treading water thing of nothing really mattering because it's back to go here and kill the things. So the parts where you are discovering are content, you are appreciating something new, but the defence things are not, they are just regurgitating. You do it once or twice and then fuck it off, it's not worth your time. When I look at it when you go into a game you are sort of pestered to do these things to 1. Engage with the game and 2. Elongate your time with the game by playing the padding when you could be playing the actual meat of the game. This is especially frequent when they need you on the servers to make it look busy. They cannot sell cosmetic items if there's nobody about to see the cosmetic items. Speaking of which, bring cosmetics back out from under the paid for thumb. It's absolutely fucked to me that bac then we'd have all sorts of ways to decorate and express ourselves and now all the best stuff is withheld. Conversation for another time. The other thing is filling the world with collectable stuff that is in areas you wouldn't naturally go to. I feel like we're falling between stools here as some games do this really well, whereas others just go "Ah fuck it, that'll be fine" and we swallow it up. I look at games like GTA that rewarded you for finding all the secrets by making the game a bit easier to play, it allows for an escalation in risk because at the start if you get caught you get your weapons taken off you, but once you are deep into the collectables you can just go pick the grenades and assault riffle up and go wild. It's rewarding. Similar to games that have little lore dumps in their collectables. Sure, you might not be interested, but picking up those recorders in Bioshock gave you something to listen to and build up the world in your mind when you were rooting through the levels in between the combat. Some games put levelling up behind these as well like in Just Cause and Crackdown. Some companies have valid ways of going about it and making it something that you might want to do, instead of going "Hey, lets get them to pick up 500 things scattered all over the map and give them an achievement if they manage it". I feel like achievements sort of stole a lot of stuff from us in regards of content as well, I know myself I have tried to do achievement lists, when in reality when you look at them they are just fixed quests that anyone that peruses over your profile can look at. Not to say I hate them, I don't. My relationship with them has changed over the years. Again, a conversation for another time with that topic. What all this hinges on really is how you consume them. You are under no obligation at all to do any of this. Let us be honest, you're under no obligation to play the game in the first place. I do feel like that a lot of people would be much happier if they cherry picked the bits of the game they liked out of the stuff they play and quite frankly fuck the rest. Bollocks to the Korok seeds, the feathers, the pigeons and all the other nonsensical things like picking up clothes or caps in pseudo-MMOs. All this stuff is just a way to fill out the running time of you 100 percenting a game. I feel if I was a kid with an unlimited summer holiday or never ending nights where I had to entertain myself, this is something I would have agonised over because I didn't have the unlimited access I have to games then that I do now. It's dead easy for me to fuck a game clean off now if I don't like it and boot something else. Life is way too short to get worried about shit that you don't need to do. Set your own goals and once they are done they are done.

Yeah. I could be better. I've not even claimed a load of my recent bundles either, I must have over 1000 games now once I redeem everything. I could also be a lot worse as well.

Sounds like a Tuesday night.

Looks kinda rough graphically, but then again this is not why I'll be playing it. As long as it plays fine and is full of content, I'll be all over this.

For sure, I don't think it's just Nintendo that are bereft of ideas. The industry as a whole seems to like coasting as long as it can doing as little as it can to keep rolling.

I don't think graphical grunt really matters that that much with the core Nintendo games either. Something like Waverace might benefit from looking lush, but it would also work with stylised graphics as well. You look at their portfolio. 1080* - Not had one in 20 years. Why? I have no idea. I feel like this should be a thing maybe every other generation. Animal Crossing - This is one of the biggest bug bears for me. There's been a lot of QoL changes, but the game sort of remains the exact same as it did 20 years after its inception. I feel like this series needs a right kick up the arse to get it back to being what it should be. Arms - I never played, so I cannot comment. Chibi Robo - Not had a game in nearly 10 years. Why? I feel like all the jumps in tech this game should be at the forefront of the catalogue. Daigasso - This was great, been absent for fucking forever. Reason? Donkey Kong - Six years since we had anything. The dude is in everything as cameos but can barely get his own game? Dillons - Little known series but I feel they could push something like this out in a quieter quarter and build the fanbase up. Earthbound - Might as well be vapourware. It's a huge pisstake we've not seen anymore from this series. Fire Emblem - This is going pretty well. I feel like we had bits and bobs but they kept that tap open and we got games for it. F-Zero - Another game we've not seen for coming on 20 years. Honestly this is one of the biggest spits in the face of gamers I feel. It's a fast paced racing game, how can you not have any ideas to make this a thing? Golden Sun - Over 10 years since anything. Why? Kid Icarus - Not really my thing, but it's been 10 years again here. Legend of Zelda - OK, so even though it wasn't really my cup of tea, this is the sort of evolution we should be seeing from Nintendo in regards of it leading franchises, the effort and thought gone into these last few games is sorely lacking in the rest of the marque we should be seeing out of Nintendo. Mario Kart - I think they're sort of out of ideas for this. MK8 is superb, but they've gone into areas that didn't need going into to try and make it different from the others. Some may like it, others may not. Mario Sports - Bundling them all in here, but surely there should be one of each on each platform. Metroid - I think they've done pretty well with 2D and 3D Metroid. I have often thought about how much of a pain it must be to design a 3D Metroid. I feel like Prime was that generations jump that Mario 64, Ocarina and now BotW was. I am not sure how you would make another leap forward here, but I am sure there is a way. Labo - Flash in the pan, waste of fucking time. Pocket Football Club - I am sort of surprised they didn't continue with this as a more consumable football manager game. Not everyone wants FM levels of complexity and I feel this struck a nice balance and would work well on Switch. Again we've not seen anything for 10 year. Pikmin - Essentially polishing the thing that was designed 20 years ago. I don't think there's being any huge jumps aside from graphical fidelity. Pilotwings - Should be a marque game. Isn't. Pokemon - This series is absolutely massive despite fuck all of note changing, if anything I think it looks worse now than it did back then. I think if anything needed a rest, this is it, but it won't because they make so much money off it that they've got to carry on making it even though it looks like the soul of it long left its body. Punch Out - Another missed franchise. I don't know whether Arms was meant to replace it or what. The absence of it for so long feels weird. Splatoon - I think this is great. Gives a kid friendly shooter with a twist. Still feels fresh. Starfox - They forgot about this shit. Should be a marque game but gets treated like absolute shite. This has so much potential with all the developments made in game design in the last decade, but all we've had are half assed rubbish shitted out. It really deserves better. It's repulsive how they have treated this franchise. Super Mario - I flip flop on this series, but yeah, I feel it's in a good place. Maybe less gimmicks though. 2D and 3D games always get a lot of love and attention, I feel like they're leading this field no matter what side of the argument you fall on Mario. They are simply the best at designing and crafting these types of games. Smash - Market leader again on this type of game. Could it be improved? Yes. Is anyone even close to being of the quality of Smash? Fuck no. Wars - I feel like they over egged this instead of refining. Also an unfortunate casualty of the war in Ukraine. I am sort of thinking that these games should be alternated with Fire Emblem releases. Wave Race - Technology has come so far since the last Wave Race. I feel that you could make a game that could be played once or twice as a throw away session of really put into and learned for the more hardcore on learning ebbs and flows and how tracks work. I feel like once you've played a lot of these games, the magic wears off. No doubt the quality is very high on something like a mainline Mario game, but once you've done it, you've done it. There's no amount of gimmicks or spins you can really put on it. I mean what can they do now? Bear in mind it has to be playable for someone that's super young. I know they normally have some stupidly difficulty shit in, but the mainline of it has to be able to be beaten by a young kid. where do they go to make that exciting for people that have been on this ride lots of times? Do you add a dark world into the next game? Or add time travel parts akin to what Braid did? I'm not sure. I'm not a game designer. I think this is part of why Nintendo is something we really enjoy for a period before moving on for the most. For me personally you go back and a bit more spark has gone. A bit of what made you love them has fragmented off. This doesn't just apply to Nintendo, it could be anything really. Like Battlefield for me. It no longer resembles the thing that it was when I was having the best times with them. And I guess that's fine. People move on. Wait, what was the topics question again?!?