The Hot Topic Returns

[Maryokutai]

8 hours ago, Jimbo Xiii said:

I guess it depends on how we relate Citizen Kane to film and apply the same standard to games. For example Tetris could be the Citizen Kane of games. Timeless, highly regarded, influential, some people hate it, often imitated, ground breaking etc. But does it need to be something narrative driven to count? Maybe it could be a hot topic question

 

My immediate response was also Tetris, but Tetris was more of a cultural shift than a game design one. Tetris didn't help define other genres, nor is its presence felt in 3D games, or narrative-driven experiences etc. I see it like dwarf, there are multiple 'small Citizen Kanes' in gaming that did one particular thing which was revolutionary for their time, but not everything at once. Tetris was one of them for sure, but so was Mario 64. Or Doom. Or MGS. Or the first game with scrolling level design, which opened up worlds beyond the boundaries of the screen (no idea what game that actually was btw., nobody seems to make a big deal out of it).

[HandsomeDead]

The Citizen Kane of gaming is Legacy of Kane because they both have a guy called Kane in it.

[one-armed dwarf]

Legacy of Kane is the Night of the Hunter of games, because Soul Reaver rips its theme off for some reason

 

edit it's Legacy of Kain as well, pff. wrong on both counts

 

edit 2, wrt all the above, I think it's interesting to think of games as well as being somewhat of an extension of film. It's the medium which is the most indebted to film, both being visual. Horror games being particularly conscious of the hallmarks of film-making, at least the ones which used fixed camera angles. 

[shinymcshine]

"Giants: Citizen Kabuto" - is almost an anagram of Citizen Kane (with a letter missing, and a few extras....)

[one-armed dwarf]

3 hours ago, Nag said:

So no giant robots, explosions or gratuitous sex scenes?.... pffft, think I'll give that a miss all together then. 😉

If you want something like this, one of Orson Welles' final credits was lending his voice to Unicron in the Transformers movie

 

 

However, the robots don't do any fucking

[Nag]

 

Quote

Nag says - "In honour of some of the Suicide Squad chat this week... what do people do when they realise they aren't enjoying a game? Games are (generally) expensive to buy and can be a hefty time sink so what do you do when you realise you've bought a dud? Power through to completion anyway or bin it off?"

 

[AndyKurosaki]

I’ll bin it off. I rented Sonic Superstars recently, and after a few hours, I’ve decided to bail. It’s just not fun.

 

Life is most definitely too short. If I’m not enjoying something, I’d rather move on and play something else.

 

There are exceptions to that. I finished Suicide Squad recently, which was quite a chore. I was hoping it’d get better. Unfortunately, it gets worse right before the final boss.

[mfnick]

Used to power through. At some point I realised it’s not worth it. There’s not been any game I’ve not loved after 10-15 hours but did by the end. I’ve barely got time for the games I do like to bother with the ones which don’t click within that time. 
 

If it’s a game I’m not sure about I always buy physical or on sale anyway so the expense isn’t such an issue at that point. 

[Metroid66]

I don't think I'd power through, but the games I've jumped out of without finishing are few and far between and I've usually sort of had my money's worth in terms of hours played but the game has just become unreasonably repetitive (Tales of Arise, Fenyx rising, Tears of the kingdom) or incomprehensible (FF9)

 

There must be more, but the one game that springs to mind that I paid for and just didn't like so stopped playing was Nier automata.

[OCH]

I'll go for the controversial ones first: Dark Souls 1 and RE 4. Bought them both day one. Trailed off both after an hour or two. Only went back to them years later to finish. Still don't think very highly of either. Also, famously tapped out of Fallout 3 (unknowingly) in the final hour or so.

 

These days, I tend not to bin it but to move on and not be incentivised to boot it back up again. Munch's Oddysee, for example. I bought a while back on Switch. Whether a product of it's time or just missing the vibe of the Abe games. I just got bored with the (repetitive) gameplay and bland aesthetic. Last time I cleared some space on my Switch, it was definitely one of the casualties. 

[Maryokutai]

I also just put away a game I dislike. There's really no reason to fill up your free time with activities that don't have any positive impact.

 

But it's also relatively rare that it comes to this. Normally I can kind of evaluate whether a game is for me or not and then go in with the proper expectations and have fun with it/enjoy it. Games today are so set in specific genres and gameplay types that's it's very easy to get a feel for them without even playing them. It's just the more indie oddball stuff you kind of have to give a shot and hope for the best.

[Maf]

Generally when I dislike a game I drop it, come on here and moan about it, play it again a year later, and go actually this game is all right 

[one-armed dwarf]

Bad games are whatever, maybe I turn around on them or often not. What I struggle with sometimes is when a FOMO hype bubble pops up around a game, I play that game and find it impossible to understand what makes it blow up. Twitch causes this a lot with things like Valheim and Palworld. I got Valheim and Sons of the Forest cause they exploded in viewership, which makes you think there must be something incredible there, but there's imo not necessarily any direct correlation between games that happens with and their specific appeal outside of some titles are better at pulling an audience. So with Palworld I just dodged the hype altogether (and nobody seems to be talking about this game anymore so maybe there wasn't much there to begin with), although I feel like Helldivers 2 might just be the same thing again wrt flavor of the month type stuff.

 

The thing is you want to be sure you're not missing out on something, but after a while you kinda just start filtering out these games by their genres. Roguelikes, played a lot of Hades and did not like it so I won't bother with this genre again. Survival sims, as above. It's hard to chase away the feeling sometimes though that you might turn a corner on something.

[mfnick]

6 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

It's hard to chase away the feeling sometimes though that you might turn a corner on something.

I struggle with this too. I keep trying games in genres I know I’m not keen on or due to FOMO hoping they’ll click but usually don’t. 
 

Baldurs Gate 3 is a recent one. I banged my head against that for far too long. I’d have quit much sooner if it wasn’t for all the talk. Same with the 2 Switch Zelda’s. I’m currently looking at buying Helldivers 2 just because of the current hype even though it’s not for me and same with Pacific Drive as that’s getting a lot of extremely positive press - but it’s a survival game and I detest those! Doesn’t stop me thinking of trying it though. Games like Palworld I have no problem ignoring though. Don’t know why that’s different. 

[Maf]

I think Palworld is still big. I thought I saw the other day they hit 25 million players. Incredible success.

 

I just think you’re right in Helldivers 2 has taken over as flavour of the month so it’s pushed it out of both the main stream press cycle and…I don’t know what to call the Twitter people? Performant, desperate, give me the next thing to get clicks cunts? What;s short for that?

 

I guess Palworld has fallen in to the circles it was always meant for which is Twitch & children. Which I think for most of us these are circles we don’t see 

 

@one-armed dwarf

[Nag]

I get the whole FOMO thing but i still try to stick with games i'm most likely going to get on with... admittedly i bit on Baldur's Gate and I'm still working up to even starting the thing, I can see that being Summer at the earliest. 

[DANGERMAN]

I try to finish stuff where I can, I think it's just been drilled in to me over the years. Cocoon is probably the most recent one, at no point would I say that I was enjoying it, but I wanted to tick it off. It was useful to see the game come together. I'm not enjoying Dave the Diver, but I'm going to chip away at it (played it a bit this morning in fact), granted I wouldn't do that for a game as long as Yakuza I don't think 

 

It pays off sometimes too, I wasn't loving Doom Eternal but I loved it when I went back 

[one-armed dwarf]

2 minutes ago, Maf said:

I just think you’re right in Helldivers 2 has taken over as flavour of the month so it’s pushed it out of both the main stream press cycle and…I don’t know what to call the Twitter people? Performant, desperate, give me the next thing to get clicks cunts? What;s short for that?

Hype merchants. See also 'social media reactions to a blockbuster film premiere'. Can't listen to any of that cack.

[Maf]

Maybe I’m old but I don’t typically get FOMO from social media and stuff like that, I get FOMO from review scores. A game called Shiren the Wanderer got a 9/10 the other day (and I guess backed up by game devs I follow on Twitter who were excited by it so maybe some social media) but I know that game is a procedurally generated dungeon crawler but ooh 9/10 maybe I should play it 

[Nag]

Tbf it's mostly from here I'll get it... when you guys are bigging something up. I'd like to get Helldivers myself cos of you lot but all my pennies are spent for the foreseeable.😭