The Hot Topic Returns

[one-armed dwarf]

Psycho Patrol R. It received a massive update and I'm looking forward to checking it out. It's an immersive sim that combines Deus Ex, Armored Core and Dark Souls and looks like a badly designed 1990s web page and is about a transnational police force combatting shampoo conspiracies

 

That said, I still recommend people try out Cruelty Squad (developer's previous title in a similar visual style). Even if you don't like it, it's so strange that there's something worth checking out there. There's a lot beneath the surface, but most people will hate it. The last level in the normal ending is a fucking nightmare, like Bubsy 3D combined with Pacman. Great stuff 

[DANGERMAN]

recently, Scritchy Scratchy. It's not difficult or esoteric, it's just pointless and caught me when I was in the right mood. It's a scratch card clicker game, where the point is to make things really efficient to earn the most money and eventually scratch the life or death card

 

Going further back, The Cat Lady. I found it fascinating, but it's so horrible and bleak I can't think of a single other person I know that I'd be sure would feel the same

[Maf]

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot is an objectively bad game, which I really like 

 

Death Stranding is a game that on paper takes a bunch of typically bad and boring video game ideas and somehow defies logical assumption. I could never turn to someone and confidently say “you should spend money on that”, though 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think I probably would recommend Death Stranding to people who find the idea of a long hike invigorating, cause that's what that game is. 

 

I'm put off by the sequel from hearing people say you can just do all the deliveries with a truck, way to miss the point

[shinymcshine]

Arkham Horror - Mothers Embrace (2021), based on the Fantasy Flight Games AH Files game series, it's pretty much a videogame game take of Mansions of Madness, animating and voicing the game characters in turn based investigations.

 

It was a mid price ~£20 release, it looks fine, and plays okay, but unless you really likes the FFG AH games then you'd probably see it as a bang 5/10 and pass it by - but I kind of love it, and still give it a run through every so often.

[mfnick]

No More Heroes 3. I loved it. For most people it’ll be too weird & random though.

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

What game feature became common that you still haven't fully accepted or won't accept at all?

 

[DANGERMAN]

Still don't like finite saves, hopefully that doesn't come back. 

 

And the Souls thing where you lose your experience/currency on death and have to recover it. I've never played a game that does that and felt it added something positive 

[shinymcshine]

Learning complex button combos - just can't be bothered with that stuff anymore.

[retroed]

Crafting.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think boss runbacks stopped being novel when the bosses became more complex and no longer a capstone on the challenge of the runback itself. Although, having said that, they seem to be less common now anyway, but I think it's one of those things Silksong could have relented on a bit, particularly in Bilewater.

 

Also I'll mention again I was a day 1 hater of how Sekiro made parrying the main interaction of everything in combat, over other things like spacing and varied offensive and defensive options. Its influence has destroyed combat in modern AAA games and made it flashy but 1-dimensional

[Sly Reflex]

I think it's FOMO for me. However it lands via timed events or season passes. I really cannot be fucked with any of that. 

[Maryokutai]

As for stuff 'outside' the actual gameplay, yeah, season/battle passes are the absolute worst. To this day I have no idea why that became successful, considering you basically pay for the opportunity to kiss your life goodbye for a month or two.

 

As for more ingame features, I think it's mostly when games copy certain elements from Souls titles without any second thought as to whether they make sense or not. I think one of the most egregious examples I've came across were respawning enemies in Jedi Fallen Order whenever you rest at a checkpoint. It's extremely immersion-breaking – you fight your way through an abandoned settlement with only a few Stormtroopers left, but as soon as you take a little break the Empire just magically detaches the exact same amount of enemies to the area again. The risk-reward isn't there either consider the game is too easy for that, so it's really just a very lazy 'me too' kind of thing.

[shinymcshine]

If buy 'feature' you mean the inevitable patches and DLC, then that put me off buying new games, and instead waiting several months until I could play a 'complete' (or at least glitch free) edition, in most cases.

[mfnick]

6 hours ago, retroed said:

Crafting.

1000%!!!
 

Also loot vomit in games. I’d rather get 1-10 noticeably better pieces of equipment throughout a game rather than 20 pieces after each encounter which I’ve got to sort through all having +/- 2% stats everywhere. Does my nut in. 
 

& yea, Battle Pass shit can get in the bin too. Paying money for the content then it being impossible to get if you don’t play enough in a certain timeframe is insanity to me. 

[one-armed dwarf]

On complex button combos, this is something that had me drop NG3 Razors Edge really quick when I tried it. The combo list goes on forever and ever, way longer than any game I've ever seen, and it was too different to the Itagaki games in control for me to stick with, which had more manageable combo lists

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

What's the biggest gaming myth you believed that turned out to be completely wrong?

 

We all know which specific one is going to come up a lot, but I am sure there's many more. 

[DANGERMAN]

I'm struggling with this, I think I always knew that you weren't going to be seeing Chin Li or Laura Croft naked, but I probably did believe some story about a secret character in Mortal Kombat or whatever 

[shinymcshine]

Pretty sure I read something about the PS2 Emotion Engine, pre release, and that it was so advanced that games would adjust and adapt to your gameplay style, giving almost infinite variability and replayability.

 

And that the 3DO was going to harmonise gaming, removing the platform specific barrier and becoming the standard for console gaming

 

And 95% of what Peter Molyneux said about his games......

[one-armed dwarf]

FFVII 1997 had lots of ones about stopping Aeris getting killed, people made fake guides for it on gamefaqs about ways to make Tifa get stabbed instead, assholes

 

FFVII Rebirth spoilers

Spoiler

the ending of Rebirth felt like a meta-commentary on these myths, with the reality splitting stuff and the weird wish fulfillment nature of it

 

I can't think of any other than this, which I'm presuming is the obvious one mentioned. Maybe Mew under the truck but that was always kinda obvious baloney. 

 

Another myth I thought of, there was a brief moment earlier this year playing Resident Evil 6 where I sort of thought it might actually secretly be a good game, but this myth was dashed pretty quickly for me.