The Hot Topic Returns

[Nag]

^^hahahaaa that's fucking brilliant.😂

[Sly Reflex]

9 hours ago, Maryokutai said:

Isn't that true for so many long-running IPs? God of War had to be re-invented after four games already because it started to grow stale, I think you were also complaining about Gears 5 for that reason and there's a multitude of other examples. There are very few old games still around that manage to avoid that trope, but just like Tomb Raider or Resident Evil I think Nintendo's games are the best at staying fresh within the confines of what made them beloved in the first place.

 

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. 

[OCH]

Adding another dormant IP name to the mix. Nintendo had their own, unique 3D Fighter on N64 - Fighters Destiny. Two games, although not outstanding, both were well received. The groundwork was there for a marque Fighter, alongside Smash. But nothing for 23 years now.

[Nag]

 

Quote

Readers discuss whether modern video games, particularly open world titles, have become too bloated and difficult to find time for.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Goulash, who asked whether video games are getting too long and if you have trouble fitting them into your life. This year has already seen multiple high quality games that can take 100+ hours to beat but is that asking too much of people?

 

Most were torn on the subject as while they, in general, enjoyed the freedom and variety a giant game offers they struggled to find the time to take advantage of it, with a single title taking months to complete.

 

I think it's kind've a double edged sword tbh... on the one hand a game costing 70 quid that has a runtime of 5 hours and is a one and done seems a little on the overpriced side... then you have that same priced game that's literally filled with bloat and overstays it's welcome by 20 hours... I suppose in the long run it's how much fun you get out of a game and whether you have ability to bin a game off when it goes too far.

 

 

[shinymcshine]

It's a weird gaming attitude (demonstrated in the letters section of Gamecentral) where people are like "Oh I don't have time to play anything more than 15 hrs, as then I'd miss out on playing xyz new release on day one..."

 

Do people do this with other forms of media (movies, books, TV shows) ? 

 

As above, so long as it's enjoyable it takes as long as it takes - and if that means you play 6 games a year rather than 60, then so what !?!

[mfnick]

Already kind of answered this a few times. Basically yes they are too big and bloated and full of pointless filler shit to make them longer than they deserve to be. Especially open world games - which is the majority today. 

[OCH]

If you're going to have an open world, the majority of it has to mean something. Hulk Ultimate Destruction, Destroy All Humans etc had open worlds wherein the map had purpose. If your open world is 10% main story and 90% side quests. That's a failure in pacing and/or design.

[Maryokutai]

You can't really generalise it like that. If you look at Breath of the Wild, I'd take a guess that even less than 10% of its world is related to the 'main' quest but what that means is it gives you more options as to how to approach it and how complete you want it to feel it when the credits roll. In fact, if you have an open world and the main quest sends you basically everywhere, why even have one in the first place? It renders exploration fundamentally unnecessary.

 

As for the time question, for me it's less of 'how long does this take me to complete it?' but 'how small can the portions be?'. Very recent example but I enjoyed Starfield quite a bit while I was off-work but can't really bring myself to boot it up now because it doesn't work at all if you only have 60-90 minutes per evening to play. On the other hand, something equally massive like AC Odyssey was very 'fractionable' in the sense that, yes, I could just play it for 60 minutes and get the feeling of achieving something. This doesn't mean one is better than the other, but games where progress is measured in hours instead of minutes are becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy for me. I'll probably never pick up Starfield again because by the time my next free week rolls along I'll have forgotten everything about it.

[Metroid66]

55 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

it doesn't work at all if you only have 60-90 minutes per evening to play

 

I often don't get even that, but have never seen it as an impediment to enjoying open world RPGs. Plus I tend to jump out after a certain point and take a month or two off. With Starfield I'm going to finish out the main quest then close it down. When I come back I'll have the factions to do, which are usually self contained stories anyway.

 

That's how I do it. Currently I have the two DLCs on the Witcher 3 waiting for me after finishing the main campaign. But I think I might dig out Cyberpunk and get my corpo playthru going so I can take on that new DLC.

[shinymcshine]

A slight twist on this is : 

 

How many games do you have on the go at once ?

 

I don't mind lengthy games, as I tend to only play one thing at a time, so recently I've put around 100 hrs (and still going) into Pathfinder:WotR but have been playing it since end July (when I finished Arcade Paradise).

 

I preloaded Starfield but haven't touched it at all.

 

I do find it odd when folks started BG3 then Starfield then MK etc and are juggling the different ongoing games - but hey whatever works for you.

 

(Just seen @Nag post in the Gaming Shout thread.....)

[Nag]

3 minutes ago, shinymcshine said:

How many games do you have on the go at once ?

 

 

Generally 2... one on Xbox, one on PlayStation.

 

Although recently that's crept up to three or four which I don't like as it seems I'm spreading myself too thin and not giving the games the attention they deserve.

[OCH]

1 hour ago, Maryokutai said:

You can't really generalise it like that. If you look at Breath of the Wild, I'd take a guess that even less than 10% of its world is related to the 'main' quest but what that means is it gives you more options as to how to approach it and how complete you want it to feel it when the credits roll. In fact, if you have an open world and the main quest sends you basically everywhere, why even have one in the first place? It renders exploration fundamentally unnecessary.

To me that exploration should add to the immersion. Fallout 3 was a good example of an open world where the world itself mattered to the narrative. Maybe not to Vault Dweller's personal story. But to the wider world of the Washington crater itself. The various Vaults, isolated settlements etc all painted a picture. 

 

Fetch-quest 1000 in identikit cave doesn't add anything beyond padding. Elden Ring for example, could have cut at least half of the legacy dungeons and nothing would have been lost from the overall experience.

[Metroid66]

1 hour ago, shinymcshine said:

How many games do you have on the go at once ?

 

One for me.

 

My small brain can get confused by different control schemes, and there's nothing worse than dying in a videogame for the sake of a mis-fingered parry.

[one-armed dwarf]

I usually focus on one at a time. Recently tho I've been putting things on hiatus, like Baldurs Gates 1 and 3. 3 cause i heard act 3 was a bit shit right now and 1 in its 5th chapter cause of Starfield. I'm usually able to get back into them easily enough. Sometimes I think a big game actually benefits from a long intermission so I dont actually see it as a bad thing to get distracted. I'll see to the Iron Throne eventually

 

 

[spatular]

I think some games are too long yeah, i dont mind when its optional so you can finish the game quicker if you want. Like i really like persona 4/5 but they are too long imo, they could make some of the combat stuff optional or something i dont know.

 

usually play 1 main game, like currently starfield, and i wont start the cyberpunk dlc till ive finished it (or given up). But im also playing some trombone champ, halo, and playdate stuff, which i can drop in and out of.

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

Readers discuss whether modern video games, particularly open world titles, have become too bloated and difficult to find time for.

 

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. 

[Nag]

 

Quote

Readers discuss older games that have aged so poorly they’re almost unplayable, and those that have weathered the years with more grace.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Sunny, who asked which games are you now unable to play because they feel too outdated? And was it the graphics, the gameplay, the controls, or something else that put you off?

 

In the majority of cases it was the controls, with many thankful for remasters and remakes that modernised them but left most other things the same.

 

[mfnick]

I can’t remember any specific retro games this applies to but the majority I fall off when I go back to them are usually down to Quality of Life issues. Stuff like terrible checkpointing, uneven difficulty and long load times. If we’re going proper retro as in 8-16th but days I usually just poor and unresponsive feeling controls. 
 

Graphics and odd controls I can usually get used to no matter what so that isn’t really an issue. 

[OCH]

I don't really see issues that make older games "unplayable". Play a few NES games long enough, you adjust to 8-bit difficulty. Play original RE long enough, you get used to tank controls. The onus is really on how adaptable the gamer is.

 

The bit I always remember as an example on this subject was a negative in the review for Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (2021): "Dated level design". It's an 8-bit platformer, you cretin😂

 

"OMG this game from 1986 doesn't play like a game from 2021"🤷‍♂️

Again, that's not a fault of the game...

[one-armed dwarf]

While I wouldn't put it quite the same way as that I think it's unfortunate when people drop an old game really quickly because it handles differently to modern stuff. Generally speaking, I think the way that old games control make a lot of sense if you stick with them for a bit, and IMO it's an interesting challenge to play something that feels really different to modern stuff (which is very homogenised) and try to understand the reason they are designed this way.

 

I play a good amount of old games and generally have a better time with them than newer stuff, mainly I find them easier to look at. I think the only one recently I've dropped is Daggerfall, which I picked up after Starfield to see what its approach to proc-gen was like. But it goes way harder into that stuff and it's very easy to feel rudderless in a world that feels like it's made out of air. No issue with the controls or systems tho, which seemed really interesting. Waaaay better character creator than any other TES or Fallout game I've played, so I've not completely sodded it off yet. Put it on the bench for a bit more like. It's worth installing just to see how the character creator works (it's a freeware game now)

 

I bought that bitmaps book recently which is all about old RPGs. Ultima Underworlds and the like, it's nice to pick up and quickly ready what some of those old games were about. They even have a list of recommended mods worth checking out tho I generally don't go crazy modding old games

 

Because the OP also asks what games have aged gracefully, I'm going to say I still find interesting things to discover in the original Deus Ex. Its individual systems might feel rudimentary, but their integration into a cohesive whole with level design that supports a very freeform approach still sets a high standard that most in the genre don't come near. Maybe Prey 2017 comes closest, I don't know

 

(As I think on it, I think a big reason I find older stuff easier to get into is cause I'm doing it on PC. So everything is automatically a 'remaster' already with high res and FPS out the box)