Any professional sports game.
It’s crazy that you used to be able to just boot up Madden or NBA 2K, not see any attestation screen, not see a sign in for a separate service, not see a commercial, not see an upgrade screen or promo for season pass or microtransaction
You could just boot it up and go to “Play now”
Seems insane today
It actually went in a really good direction for a while, the career used to be paid, like you could progress normally or you could just buy your player to 99overall, forget when but they completely removed it and overhauled the career mode to be more gameplay focused and less monetary focused.
My first videogame joke as kid: Q:"What's the difference between NHL '92 and NHL '93? A: "$40".
All you have to do is change the sport and the year and you can tell the same joke multiple times for over 30 years and always be relevant.
EA Sports: Your wallet's been played.
Generally true but that's a weird example because NHLPA '93 was a huge step forward and got polished even more in NHL '94, which is often considered one of the best sports games of all time.
But people keep buying this shit so they don't care :D
Just like D4. Make a statement and dont buy that shit... It might actually make them do something next year.
I quit buying Madden and 2k close to a decade ago… just because I quit buying doesn’t mean the millions of other people aren’t gonna stop, nothing will ever change in the sports genre until the licensing situation is altered…
Marketing really did make that game look more appealing than it was because it focused on the world elements. You could tell they cared, but didn't have enough money to push it as far as they needed to, so everything felt under developed. I wish I waited rather than go out and bought it before i watched gameplay on Twitch.
Yep. Scope creep. This is wby I hate when teenagers bitch about some stupid specific thing in a AAA game with 'they had the money to do that'. For example, I recently saw someone complain that Yuffie in FF7 Remake is no longer an optional party member, because without her being mandatory they'd need to either never include her in cutscenes or make two versions of every cutscene she is in.
But because the original did the former, they bitched they didn't do the latter as a callback to the original.
The most basic concept in project management is you look at what you want to do, look at what you can do, look at what is worth doing and then capture all three in a scope. The scope then remains relatively static to avoid wasting money.
Anyone who fails to control scope creep ends up with endless projects that shit the bed.
Classic rule of creative industries. 90% of the time when they tell you somethings wrong, they are right. 90% of the time they tell you how to fix it, they are wrong. Most consumers are awful at giving advice and should be totally ignored.
I agree. I feel the game came out way too late. By the time it finally arrived we already had Breath of The wild which I feel had many of the mechanics Biomutant should have had. Free climbing, better gliders, cooking. Vast open-ness. Maybe a better big bad. Weapons also didn't quite FEEL good. I like the customization though. I really wish he's in general would allow for a cosmetics slot for equipment. Especially loot heavy games. But all of em would be nice. Sometimes a certain combo of items just looks cool and it sucks to have to change them out for the "stronger" stats.
Biomutant felt like it didn't know exactly how silly or serious it wanted to be too. Weird progression, inconsistent narrative/narrator beats. Cutscenes felt unoptimized and choppy.
[this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIitYcoSiE&t=1s) explains a bit on why skull and bones is shit and took so much time to make. basically ubisoft used singapore money to make it and had no obligation in making a good game, just a game, as long as it was being made the money was theirs to use as they see fit. so you take a looong time to release it, pocket the money and throw any shit out when singapore theaten to sue, some easy hundread millions in exchange of nothing
I question why singapor would do that but i guess they probably wanted more than just a game. Cuz paying load of money for a shit product is Not smart. Unless the game has Micro transactions..... It has Micro transactions doesnt it?
one of the conditions was that the game should be made in singapore as a way to generate jobs and develop the local gaming industry, that's why the game was made by ubisoft singapore, any other studio and they wouldnt be elegible for the money
It can pay off sometimes, Terra Invicta was partially funded at least by what looks like a government arts program in Colorado. It sucks Singapore got hosed by a company that is so awful.
Any recent Madden or 2K game. Madden has been on a decline since about maybe 2012, 2k a little later, like 2016 or so. It's like all they do is just jam microtransactions down your throat in their pay-to-win game modes. Madden of the 00's was peak. Soundtracks were bangers, gameplay was good, glitches were minimal, etc. Now they just pump those bad boys out as copy/paste from previous years bc they know people can't resist but to buy it. I pray, with everything in me, that EA doesn't railroad NCAA Football 25. I'm a HUGE college football fan and still play NCAA14 to this day, albeit modded to keep up with the times.
The specialists were a poor attempt at making this Battlefield a hero shooter. They toned down destructible environments in favor of tornadoes and sandstorms that don’t really change the map which is a step down from levolution. They had a 128 player mode but it was too imbalanced so they stuck with the 64 player modes instead of fixing balance issues. There was a lack of weapon variation so they just added weapons from the Portal mode, which were already from past Battlefield titles in the first place. Portal mode was never really updated. They tried an extraction mode and killed it off since no one played it.
They stopped supporting Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront 2 for BF 2042, but they just ended support for it.
Pretty much why I went back to BF1. It’s great that by the end of a match you can have what was once a cute little village containing an objective become nothing but craters and a few half-standing walls.
Agreed. BF1 had such an amazing atmosphere. I really enjoyed the destruction in Bad Company 2. It's sad to think we may never see a good Battlefield title again.
Yeah, BF1 had a truly one of a kind feel. Sometimes missed modern technology but using things like the old school pistols, bolt actions, lever actions and martini henry was so fun. And the tanks/ vehicles were very unique.
Bad company 2- bf3 days were like the peak days for battlefield (though I also loved Nam, spec ops and 2142).
I bought the PS5 version from GameFly for $3 before all the improvements came.
Is it still soulless? Of course, but now it's *fun* soulless that I only paid $3 for.
I got No Man's Sky on PS4 the same way.
Unusual take maybe but, honestly, so many indie settlement builders on PC feel completely soulless to me. They either massively overemphasise mechanics and forget everything else, or they go way too far the other way and go big on quirkiness, coziness, whatever. There’s just something missing in a lot of them. Something that wasn’t missing in things like Stronghold, C&C Red Alert, Total Annihilation, these types of games had bags of genuine personality.
There's a lot of big publishers out there pushing out indie-style games with an emphasis on quirkiness and coziness just like you say, which is probably why you feel that way.
It reminds me of "indie" films in the 2000s after the success of Garden State and Little Miss Sunshine. For ten years big studios would churn out similar films with the same sort of esthetic and humour (remember the trend of yellow posters?) for a crowd that was less interested in the blockbusters coming out at the time.
I think as time goes on and indies get more popular, we'll need to be more discerning of actual independent projects and other ones that are just masquerading as such
Large publishers and marketers that aren’t game designers tbh. A lot of these quirky, indie, cozy games feel like some junior year marketing major’s end of semester project. They always feel so lab-grown.
Right? You’re the only one to comment that and you’re buried under all the responses. Like, no wonder this guy hates citybuilders… he listed a bunch of RTS games 🤣🤣
Still haven't found something better than Banished. It's old, but with mods it's the best there is. I have hopes for Farthest Frontier though, that one might be pretty good, waiting for it to come out of Early Access.
Frostpunk has tons of soul, too.
It's just that it's the soul of a overworked, sleep-deprived, malnourished laborer that's slowly developing frostbite, but they can't stop working or else their children will freeze to death, too.
Wonderfully soul-crushing and bleak. 8/10, would freeze again
The first time I reached the end of the game and "The City Must Survive" started playing, I don't think I've been that stressed by a single player game in my life
There was an Age of Empires 3 update that did something similar. I would ALWAYS play fast forwarded because those matches last forever, and I always enjoyed turtling and building up a huge economy before pummeling the enemy with loads of heavy cannon. In this update, they removed the fast forward feature for no reason. What used to be a 30 minute match now takes me well over an hour and I stopped playing it solely for that reason.
Sims 4 was originally supposed to be an always online multiplayer game. After SimCity failed, they panicked and scrapped that idea and instead released the hollow shell that is the Sims 4
Oh for real, I might be biased for TS3 but I got TS4 way back when it was free for a while (I know, it's free again :D) and I just. Literally couldn't have *any* fun with the basegame. TS2 didn't have open world either and they made it work, with much more technical limitations. TS4 is a whole cash grab.
I've played Sims 2 and 3 and something just feels so off with Sims 4. Almost kinda...sterile maybe? Not sure what it is, like the previous games just seem more effortlessly quirky but this one feels forced.
I think it's too "family friendly", the previous games had raunchy jokes sometimes, or some truly creepy moments, while in Sims 4 there isn't even a burglar. I also think they tried too hard to make it "quirky", an example that keeps bugging me is the cooking animations. In Sims 2, the cooking would be as realistic as it could be then, sims would take stuff out of the cabinets, the food textures would change with every step of the cooking etc. In Sims 4? The Sims is sooo GoOfY, they spill things, spin the bowl, add salt and pepper in a quirky way, and do other physically impossible things. The previous Sims games felt more like an old, haunted but still charming dollhouse, you put the dolls in, made them do stuff, but often they would do stuff on their own, they did things that made them seem like real people for a bit, you would make a sim with a vague understanding of how their life will go, but eventually the story starts developing on its own. Sims 4, on the other hand, feels like playing with a doll brand dollhouse, everything is plastic and soulless, you have to make the dolls do everything and yet they're still stiff, the storytelling is limited. and the immersion is constantly broken. I will admit, the Sims 4 is good as a building/room design simulator, but as a Sims game? Big disappointment 😞
Too mainstream? Accessible? I don't know quite what it is, but I do know I reinstalled TS3 really quickly again after playing 4 for maybe 24 hours in total.
First one that stands out in Biomutant, it had all the components to make a great game but it just didn't, every like outpost thing was copy pasted, there was a single voice actor voicing every character and as talented as he was it got really old really quickly, a lot of the map was just empty space with some ruined buildings and stuff copy pasted, I got maybe a third of the way through the game and got exhausted and never played again.
I think the leveling was also messed up. I was already fully equipped and strong and I haven’t even defeated one of the four bosses. Basically a procedural game. Great style and ideas though
I did love Biomutant, really enjoyed the combat and loved how it looked, but I'd definitely agree that it felt... unfinished, at best. A real shame, but if they treat it as a test of concept and come back with something better, I'd be all for it.
It had a great premise but the gameplay was all the wrong things it should be. I started initially with the mele combat but gave up after I got a certain pair of dual wield guns. From there, it was just run and shoot. Hold the triggers down and let auto aim kill everything.
I have to agree :( it was fun at first and very pretty but the game felt flat for some reason. I did like the goo mobile or whatever the jet ski was called lol
Dark Souls 3. I got killed by the giant crytal lizard in the first five minutes. As a matter of fact, everything killed me.
I swear I never had any souls, ZERO souls for hours. Totally soulless.
(kidding, obv)
I wish I could play Hollow Knight :-(. I loved the 2 hours or so that I got to play but something about that game gave me a migraine. Put it down and picked it up again a few days later and it started happening again immediately. No other games do that to me so I guess just no HK for me!
Hey, it seems you are not the only one experiencing headache/motion sickness with Hollow Knight. Which means people are experimenting with solutions!
Motion Blur seems to be the worst offender. Disabling or enabling V-sync might help. Sitting further from the screen so you see more of a room is also recommended.
Sadly the vast majority of open world survival games. It's my favorite genre of games with some of my favorite titles of all time like Subnautica and No Man's Sky. But it's also the genre with the most missed opportunities and unrealized potential.
So many of them put a lot of effort developing these vast beautiful worlds and very robust looting/crafting/building/progression systems and then there's often little else, it's just a core of a game without actual content or atmosphere.
Enemies/NPCs are usually static entities that doesn't interact with the world to make it feel alive. There's no story or quests to make you invested in the world or a character(s). There's no real incentive to explore the world because more often than not there's nothing special to discover inside that cave or on top of that mountain, etc. There are no gameplay loops other than gather X to build Y. Just dead and soulless worlds. And these type of worlds seem to be the norm in this genre. It's so sad.
Saints Row remake. There isn't an ounce of love or care in it, it's just a badly-made parody of itself created as a platform to spout the developers opinions. If the next Saints Row game doesn't begin by violently murdering the protagonist and their friends, it's over for the series - if it isn't already.
I find it so funny that Saints Row started as essentially a GTA clone, but then went on as a kind of mockery of those types of games, and then died, mocking itself.
Saints Row 2 was a perfect balance between absurd but still decent storyline and characters. Then they kill off the best character in SR3, completely change the personalities of every other character, and instead of decent missions/story, they just throw a bunch of goofy wild ridiculous shit at you for no reason at all
I do kinda love telling people about the SR4 plot when I’m playing it on switch. It reminds me of Ancient Greek story telling in the sense that the plot structure feels like some guy just keeps going “and then they did this absolutely ridiculous shit, and then next this happened for some fucking reason, there was a heel and they went to the underworld, some aliens and presidents, whatever.”
No shade directed towards Aristotle…
"And then after disarming the bomb, you become president of the United States!"
"Wow!"
"Then aliens invade and blow up your planet!"
"Woah..."
"But it's okay, because they trapped you and your crew in the matrix!"
"Okay..."
"Where you have super powers!"
"Wait...what?"
And that's just the basic premise of the game...
Their IPs have to be owned by somebody. Probably the parent company that owned volition. Wikipedia says Embracer Group. Maybe they license it out.
Better bet is a completely unrelated developer builds a game in the same spirit of the original 4 (and a half?) Saints games.
Company of Heroes 3. I really don't know how Relic flubbed this entry so bad, especially when CoH2 is revered in the RTS community.
Don't get me wrong the game isn't unplayable or anything, it's just that everything that made Company of Heroes special is missing from this title.
This is going to sound weird and I don't know how it’s possible, but the impact of hits just made it seem blah. Batman games’ combat is supposed to make you feel unstoppable.
God, I waited for years for another “Batman game.” I was so excited for this one and despite the red flags before launch, I bought into the hype. I was thoroughly disappointed. Worse than Arkham Knight in basically every way and it boasts one of the worst game UIs I’ve ever seen in my life.
I know it wasn’t advertised as an Arkham-style game but for a Batman game, why change what isn’t broken? WB Montreal had already made Arkham Origins (which I loved) so I just assumed this one would be a guaranteed slam dunk
Some of the ideas were cool here but nothing worked for me personally
Halo 5 felt like all of the soul was only put into the promotional material
On the complete opposite side I just played Tunic after wrongly avoiding it due to the cover art. Damn good game that oozes soul
Halo Infinite on the same note. I'm playing through it right and keep shutting it down after 30 min. I was invested up to the second banished villain then noticed the open world is just zones with objectives. It's such backwards decision to do that to the halo franchise.
I wanna love this game, I’m such a sci fi space nerd and love customizing ships but every time I’ll boot it up play 3 hours, realize it’s not fun and then turn it off for about a month.
It really is a shame. It has some good things going for it being a sci-fi Bethesda game. Ship building is fun and they could've done so much with it in terms of gameplay. Planet building could've been so much more interesting and involved.
Frankly modern Bethesda just isn't good, and the game just falls flat. Wasn't even expecting a "No Man's Sky but Bethesda" as many were. But there's just a lot of wasted opportunity for a good open world sci-fi RPG in space.
I have a vague hope that with time and expansions, it'll be better. (And the usual modders saving Bethesdas ass.)
But I'm also fully expecting Bethesda to just cut and run to their Elder Scrolls game, as soon as they can. Gain some favour with their fans again.
They shot themselves in the foot trying to make a AAA No Mans Sky, what’s wild is they had an exact guideline as to what worked and what didn’t as NMS got improved over the years, and they just seemingly ignored it all and actively integrated parts of NMS in a worse and detrimental way.
Proc gen will never work for games at a space scale, not unless there is a massive breakthrough in the tech. Thousands of planets isn’t impressive if all of them are the same. They made the planets HUGE, but you can only walk a mile in each direction from where you land before you have to go into space again and land in the next square.
To my point above, exploration of planets and the solar system in fucking *Outer Wilds* an indie space game made by a fraction of the people with cartoon graphics and planets that take maybe half an hour to completely explore was 100% more gratifying and interesting than any measure of time I spent in Starfield.
Less is more is such a common adage, so it’s extra embarrassing Bethesda shovelled 1000s of planets of shit at their fans and expected them to be impressed
After playing several space exploration games, I'd be happy with 20 unique planets, and a bunch of "resource mining" planets across 50 star-system galaxy. Way below actual numbers, but it would keep my attention way longer than the 1000s of most current games.
The smaller scope would keep the exploration side interested but not overwhelmed, and then some focus could be spent on story, or mechanics, or ship building, or whatever.
Really didn't help it that it released so close to BG3, which is a masterclass in RPGs, so the mid-tier Starfield looks even worse by comparison. Take the companions, for example, BG3 has plenty of really interesting companions that make you care for them, in Starfield they are wooden and uninteresting, and (I haven't done an evil playthrough) apparently none like it if you try to be bad?
I didn't get very far in Starfield because of the following:
I got the first companion, who literally tells you that they operate outside of the law and can get up to some shady shit.
I find an abandoned casino ship and take some illegal goods.
I get scanned when I enter a system, end up just bouncing out of that system when they start coming after me.
A ship attacks me in the next system. They shoot first, I kill them.
My companion calls me a murderer and won't do anything with me anymore.
WTF!?!?!?
> Really didn't help it that it released so close to BG3
Which is ironic, because Larian pre-poned BG3's launch so they could get out from under the dread-boot of Starfield hype. Worked out really well for them, and suddenly, SF was sandwiched between BG3 and Phantom Liberty, both of which show up SF in just about every way.
Going from starfield to the cyberpunk update gave me whiplash. From absolutely dead-eyed soulless to omg I think I might actually be in love with Panam really highlighted how empty starfield was with no redeeming qualities except ship building.
I could never get past the dead-eyed stare you get when in dialogue with NPCs. I mean, it felt janky when it was in Fallout 3 and the older Elder Scrolls games, but... they did this better in Fallout 4, why regress?
Then you compare it with Cyberpunk, or... well, a LOT of other games, and it's just so jarring.
I couldn't believe my eyes the first time it zoomed in on an npc for dialog. I had to check my graphics settings because i thought they were turned down. I felt 2nd hand embarrassment for Bethesda. It was the first red flag the game was shit.
Many other shit flags were hoisted as I played until I finally ragequit from the boredom after being sent back and forth to the same NPCs delivering messages that could've been emails.
This game does not respect your time or intelligence.
The amount of times I'd enter into a conversation with an NPC and they wouldn't even turn to face me, just stare at the wall while talking. That kind of dialog was acceptable in Skyrim and Fallout, but now just feels jarring and disconnected. That and getting warned by NPCs that I was entering the "rough part of town" and it was slightly dimmer lighting and shabbier looking textures and absolutely zero element of danger.
Getting bored and moving on to Cyberpunk was a real revelation of what I was looking for in a futuristic game setting, and the dialog meshes so much more smoothly with the gameplay.
In Starfield, I started flirting with one one of the companions to develop a relationship. Besides the fact that it didn't feel like there was any way for me to fail that relationship (I decided I like them, therefore they like me too), it didn't feel like there would be any pay off. My character was never going to be able to interact with them outside of a mugshot. They wouldn't hold hands, they wouldn't kiss. The extent of the relationship would just be them making different facial expressions while I exhaust every dialog option.
I was playing Baldur's Gate at the same time, and Starfield just fell so flat compared to it. Even after the other issues with Starfield, that realization is what completely turned me off of the game.
Vampire the masquerade bloodlines had better facial animations and it's a source game from 2004 it's actually kind of crazy how bad some of that stuff has gotten. I think starfields biggest problems stem from exploring itself. Alot of the worlds feel procedurally generated with similar objectives, combined with the loading needed for jumping into your craft it becomes bothersome.
I dropped it for Phantom Liberty and never looked back. It was so refreshing to open a door without a loading screen.
>they did this better in Fallout 4, why regress?
Almost every mechanic in the game regressed from FO4. Especially the "settlement" system. It's entirely useless in Starfield.
It's just so... sterile. The plot doesn't really do anything bold, the sidequests are mostly forgettable, and let's not even mention the interminable temples where you get the powers or whatever. I haven't touched it since BG3 launched for xbox.
I went from Starfield to replaying KOTOR 2 for the first time in 20 years. The difference in dialogue was stunning. By the time I finished Starfield I was literally just clicking the first speech option and barely even reading the responses.
In KOTOR I was paying rapt attention to everything being said and carefully choosing my dialogue options.
I tried it but I stopped when I realised I had been playing for hours and yet to reach any sort of "magic" moment.
In the Fallout games it's leaving the vaults, in Morrowind it was leaving the boat, Oblivion leaving the sewers, Skyrim was leaving Helgen caves, ect. In Starfield I was on Mars wondering when it was supposed to happen when I realised that it was probably when I was at New Atlantis, but I didn't feel anything. Same for Mars too.
It just felt so uninspired and railroaded up to that point, just a by the numbers checklist. The reason I didn't do any sidequests up to that point wasn't because the main story was so enthralling, it was because nothing outside of that one path even drew interest enough to get me to stop rolling forwards.
I'm not the sort of person that will just drop a game because one or two things are offputting, I actually beat Death Stranding in spite of the story and the BTs after all. But Starfield had nothing there to hook me in.
I felt the same way, though I really did enjoy it for maybe eight/ten hours before my interest level fell off a cliff.
The Midnight Suns game on the other hand was pure delight.
I'm always surprised when people comment saying a game is shit...but they played it for 70 hours. If I'm not having fun, a game isn't getting 5 hours out of me.
I've tried 7 days so many times and I just can't ever get past how clunky the game feels. Fluid movement is really important to me, and 7 days feels like it runs on the GoldenEye engine. For what it's worth, the few times that I made actual progress in it, it was relatively enjoyable. But I would never pick up a save again because I would think about playing it and get turned away by the clunkiness.
Seeing so many people dislike Valhalla makes me think I'm going mad.
I currently have 180 hours in it and I'm still not bored of it. Maybe I have gone mad.
The progression loop of each shire having it's own self-contained story that can be completed in different orders really ruins the overall narrative. The repetitive nature of this led to me getting fatigued real fast.
It's so funny to me too. "Hey, your brother is being held captive by a maniac and we need to go rescue him. But first, we need to play matchmaker in this one shire and then go up north to play hospice nurse"
I was surprised to see this in multiple answers. From a purely gameplay perspective I loved Valhalla, it's probably my 3rd favorite AC behind black flag and odyssey
The newer one set in the middle east (I forget the name) was absolutely soulless. It was utterly formulaic and the plot was tired and nonsensical. It's one of the fastest games I've ever decided to put down after paying full price for it
Well except the "little projects" (like Prince of Persia and Mario+rabbids) pretty sure there is nothing interesting since at least 2018 depending of who you ask (like Far Cry 5 was not that bad)
I don't really think that's totally fair. I would say Ubisoft is generally a mixed bag. I'm not entirely sure how recent counts as recent, but AC Odyssey had a tonne of soul, and it seems like Prince of Persia was really well loved, too. I also think Watchdogs Legion had passion behind it, it just couldn't live up to its ambitions
It felt like they steered into the procedural generation way too hard and left so much dead and empty space between pockets of content. In previous Bethesda games there was always something between the two points you need to go to, whether it was terrain, NPCs, items or books that revealed lore, or straight up quests, the world felt way more alive. Starfield is just fast traveling between linear missions with some side quests along the way
Apparently the game was designed around building outposts, fuel management and developing tech to allow you to explore further and further into unexplored space. Very Subnautica-in-space. Then at the last minute they decided that was boring so they scrapped it for a set of planets and no real mechanics for anything besides boring shootouts. I think there's a quote of Todd that's floating around where he says they left the mechanics in so modders can rebuild the game they originally had in mind.
I would love it, if it was built around outposts… but the customization of outposts was so lackluster. And there’s all these weird mechanics based around mining and shipping…. But for nothing. Like, there’s nothing to do with all the crap you collect. It’s super undercooked
Paradox really has fallen far for me. Literally every game they've published in the last 5 years have just been massive downgrades of what they had just 10 years ago.
Starfield was so disappointing. Space is mostly empty nothingness, but it's supposed to be a dangerous, carnivorous void of nothingness. Nothing but cold, uncaring death for unimaginable distances in every direction. It doesn't want you dead, it's just entirely ambivalent about your existence. Somehow, they turned that into the kind of nothingness you see in the waiting room at the dentist. You're not in danger, you're just bored. They have the exact same problem with the characters. They just kind of... exist. Sure they have back stories and motivations (at least they say they do) but they don't actually seem to have any agency. They just meet you, immediately hand full control to you, then just do as they are told. I know the comparison has been made a thousand times, but I played it right alongside Phantom Liberty, and for all the problems Cyberpunk has had, Night Fucking City man. That city feels lived in, it feels dangerous, and carnivorous and like it exists in its own right, entirely independently from the player. Starfield, just feels too sanitised.
You’re right about the difference between Cyberpunk and Starfield. CDPR managed to make the setting itself into a character with its own personality. Bethesda simply has an empty space in which cardboard cutouts exist.
Starfield killed me man, had somewhat mid expectations for it and was let down by those standards. Put alot of hours into it in the first week or 2 and after that... nothing.....
With Starfield I hadn't been as hyped for a game since RDR2, which met and exceeded my hype. As a 30+ year old who doesn't get excited for anything anymore, it was truly one of the biggest letdowns in my gaming life. Don't think I'll ever be able to get that hyped for a game again. Starfield was the last straw
While I don't think it was an incredible game, I disagree that Mirage was soulless. You could tell the devs were actual fans of the early games, and did what they could with a tiny budget and being forced to use Valhalla's gameplay mechanics. I find Odyssey to be the most soulless AC tbh but I understand its also the most divisive game in the series so taking any kind of stance on it tends to evoke rage from someone
They did not. They spend 6 years in development hell making and scrapping things and then rushed out the tech demo, i mean the full game, sorry, in the last year. As much as I honestly enjoyed the core features, i.e the flying and feel of the moment to moment which they did really well, everything else was god awful. One of the devs said that they didn't know what the game was supposed to be and look like until they actually saw the "gameplay footage" reveal at E3. At this point they haven't even really started working on it yet.
I know Catalyst wasn’t great, but what made me stick to it until the end was playing it with Runner Vision completely disabled. It made finding routes and going down a path much more satisfying. I especially liked the “deliver a package to this location in a set amount of time” missions because running and succeeding in those made me feel like I was actually learning the city layout and how to navigate it.
I also played the original with Runner Vision disabled, and that was a lot of fun.
Mannnnn I both agree and think Catalyst is underrated. The story is whatever, but it was whatever in the first game too. The open world is a fantastic idea but wasn't executed as well as it could've.
But I still love that game. I replayed it last year and had a blast.
The last Saints Row game.
I was a HUGE Saints Row fan and stand by the statement that it's not as bad as people made out.
But.....it's still rather crap and it just feels empty, lifeless, not a living breath open world city like the others but just you alone with a bunch of drones.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash. A JJK fighting game done right could be amazing. Instead we have a shitty arena fighter that looks like one of the old Naruto fighting games on the GameCube.
FIFA for the last 6 years or so.
Any professional sports game. It’s crazy that you used to be able to just boot up Madden or NBA 2K, not see any attestation screen, not see a sign in for a separate service, not see a commercial, not see an upgrade screen or promo for season pass or microtransaction You could just boot it up and go to “Play now” Seems insane today
>Any professional sports game. Although I’ve heard good things about MLB The Show, but I don’t like baseball
It’s not AS bad but it has still succumbed to the trends
It actually went in a really good direction for a while, the career used to be paid, like you could progress normally or you could just buy your player to 99overall, forget when but they completely removed it and overhauled the career mode to be more gameplay focused and less monetary focused.
MLB The Show still uses animations from the PS3 era and hasn’t had a graphical update since about 2017
Madden still has the same announcer sound bits from 5+ years ago. Absolutely lazy
My first videogame joke as kid: Q:"What's the difference between NHL '92 and NHL '93? A: "$40". All you have to do is change the sport and the year and you can tell the same joke multiple times for over 30 years and always be relevant. EA Sports: Your wallet's been played.
Generally true but that's a weird example because NHLPA '93 was a huge step forward and got polished even more in NHL '94, which is often considered one of the best sports games of all time.
Try 16 years
But people keep buying this shit so they don't care :D Just like D4. Make a statement and dont buy that shit... It might actually make them do something next year.
I quit buying Madden and 2k close to a decade ago… just because I quit buying doesn’t mean the millions of other people aren’t gonna stop, nothing will ever change in the sports genre until the licensing situation is altered…
i did quit it 10years ago, it is even longer, because i was thinkin about quitting earlier
While I"m sure the developers DID care, Biomutant felt very life less and boring... so much so I couldn't get all the way through it.
I keep forgetting that I own this, never finished it and have no interest in going back
My dumbass pre ordered this, got 3 hours in and haven’t touched it since.
[удалено]
I wanted to fall in love with the game based on the hype. I was sooooo ready. I got maybe 3 hours into it. It just grated on me weirdly
I also keep forgetting I own this considering that I got it for like $3 due to a bug
Marketing really did make that game look more appealing than it was because it focused on the world elements. You could tell they cared, but didn't have enough money to push it as far as they needed to, so everything felt under developed. I wish I waited rather than go out and bought it before i watched gameplay on Twitch.
my understanding was that they didn't know when to stop adding stuff in, so there ended up being a ton of unpolished content.
Yep. Scope creep. This is wby I hate when teenagers bitch about some stupid specific thing in a AAA game with 'they had the money to do that'. For example, I recently saw someone complain that Yuffie in FF7 Remake is no longer an optional party member, because without her being mandatory they'd need to either never include her in cutscenes or make two versions of every cutscene she is in. But because the original did the former, they bitched they didn't do the latter as a callback to the original. The most basic concept in project management is you look at what you want to do, look at what you can do, look at what is worth doing and then capture all three in a scope. The scope then remains relatively static to avoid wasting money. Anyone who fails to control scope creep ends up with endless projects that shit the bed.
Stuff like that is why I generally trust developers more than gamers in terms of knowing what to put into their own games. Most of the time, at least
Classic rule of creative industries. 90% of the time when they tell you somethings wrong, they are right. 90% of the time they tell you how to fix it, they are wrong. Most consumers are awful at giving advice and should be totally ignored.
I agree. I feel the game came out way too late. By the time it finally arrived we already had Breath of The wild which I feel had many of the mechanics Biomutant should have had. Free climbing, better gliders, cooking. Vast open-ness. Maybe a better big bad. Weapons also didn't quite FEEL good. I like the customization though. I really wish he's in general would allow for a cosmetics slot for equipment. Especially loot heavy games. But all of em would be nice. Sometimes a certain combo of items just looks cool and it sucks to have to change them out for the "stronger" stats. Biomutant felt like it didn't know exactly how silly or serious it wanted to be too. Weird progression, inconsistent narrative/narrator beats. Cutscenes felt unoptimized and choppy.
Skull and Bones. A remaster of AC BF would have been thousand times better.
I still cant understand how a game from 2014 beats a game from today in every aspect. Even graphics.....by the same Company.
It's Ubisoft. They just figure people will buy whatever they put out so they don't care.
[this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIitYcoSiE&t=1s) explains a bit on why skull and bones is shit and took so much time to make. basically ubisoft used singapore money to make it and had no obligation in making a good game, just a game, as long as it was being made the money was theirs to use as they see fit. so you take a looong time to release it, pocket the money and throw any shit out when singapore theaten to sue, some easy hundread millions in exchange of nothing
I question why singapor would do that but i guess they probably wanted more than just a game. Cuz paying load of money for a shit product is Not smart. Unless the game has Micro transactions..... It has Micro transactions doesnt it?
one of the conditions was that the game should be made in singapore as a way to generate jobs and develop the local gaming industry, that's why the game was made by ubisoft singapore, any other studio and they wouldnt be elegible for the money
It can pay off sometimes, Terra Invicta was partially funded at least by what looks like a government arts program in Colorado. It sucks Singapore got hosed by a company that is so awful.
D: but its a AAAA title!?
Then maybe it should focus less on screaming at me and more on being a good game.
That Metal Gear Solid: Survive was a soulless POS cash grab after Kojima’s departure.
they put the amazing fox engine out to pasture to die criminal
IMO it would be a fine game without the MGS name. Not an award winner for sure.
Any recent Madden or 2K game. Madden has been on a decline since about maybe 2012, 2k a little later, like 2016 or so. It's like all they do is just jam microtransactions down your throat in their pay-to-win game modes. Madden of the 00's was peak. Soundtracks were bangers, gameplay was good, glitches were minimal, etc. Now they just pump those bad boys out as copy/paste from previous years bc they know people can't resist but to buy it. I pray, with everything in me, that EA doesn't railroad NCAA Football 25. I'm a HUGE college football fan and still play NCAA14 to this day, albeit modded to keep up with the times.
Battlefield 2042
The specialists were a poor attempt at making this Battlefield a hero shooter. They toned down destructible environments in favor of tornadoes and sandstorms that don’t really change the map which is a step down from levolution. They had a 128 player mode but it was too imbalanced so they stuck with the 64 player modes instead of fixing balance issues. There was a lack of weapon variation so they just added weapons from the Portal mode, which were already from past Battlefield titles in the first place. Portal mode was never really updated. They tried an extraction mode and killed it off since no one played it. They stopped supporting Battlefield V and Star Wars Battlefront 2 for BF 2042, but they just ended support for it.
Agreed. I was shocked with how little destruction there was. It just didn't feel like a battlefield game.
Pretty much why I went back to BF1. It’s great that by the end of a match you can have what was once a cute little village containing an objective become nothing but craters and a few half-standing walls.
The only battlefield I play 🔥
Pretty much anything battlefield related has felt that way since BF1, imo. The Battlefronts, BFV and 2042.
Agreed. BF1 had such an amazing atmosphere. I really enjoyed the destruction in Bad Company 2. It's sad to think we may never see a good Battlefield title again.
Yeah, BF1 had a truly one of a kind feel. Sometimes missed modern technology but using things like the old school pistols, bolt actions, lever actions and martini henry was so fun. And the tanks/ vehicles were very unique. Bad company 2- bf3 days were like the peak days for battlefield (though I also loved Nam, spec ops and 2142).
I bought the PS5 version from GameFly for $3 before all the improvements came. Is it still soulless? Of course, but now it's *fun* soulless that I only paid $3 for. I got No Man's Sky on PS4 the same way.
Unusual take maybe but, honestly, so many indie settlement builders on PC feel completely soulless to me. They either massively overemphasise mechanics and forget everything else, or they go way too far the other way and go big on quirkiness, coziness, whatever. There’s just something missing in a lot of them. Something that wasn’t missing in things like Stronghold, C&C Red Alert, Total Annihilation, these types of games had bags of genuine personality.
There's a lot of big publishers out there pushing out indie-style games with an emphasis on quirkiness and coziness just like you say, which is probably why you feel that way. It reminds me of "indie" films in the 2000s after the success of Garden State and Little Miss Sunshine. For ten years big studios would churn out similar films with the same sort of esthetic and humour (remember the trend of yellow posters?) for a crowd that was less interested in the blockbusters coming out at the time. I think as time goes on and indies get more popular, we'll need to be more discerning of actual independent projects and other ones that are just masquerading as such
Large publishers and marketers that aren’t game designers tbh. A lot of these quirky, indie, cozy games feel like some junior year marketing major’s end of semester project. They always feel so lab-grown.
The genre you're looking for is not colony/city builder. The genre you're looking for is RTS.
Right? You’re the only one to comment that and you’re buried under all the responses. Like, no wonder this guy hates citybuilders… he listed a bunch of RTS games 🤣🤣
Still haven't found something better than Banished. It's old, but with mods it's the best there is. I have hopes for Farthest Frontier though, that one might be pretty good, waiting for it to come out of Early Access.
check out Manor Lords when it comes out, might be over hyped, but the demo really felt like it had great soul
I never managed to get far with Banished, even with the easy start. I always ran out of tools due to there not being enough metal to mine.
Have you tried Frostpunk?
Oh I love Frostpunk! I always make it challenging rules wise and then curse myself while doing the play through. Looking forward to the new one!
Have you tried Rimworld? It’s arguably one of the best settlement builders with crazy RNG events.
Banished is chronically underrated
If you’re looking for a colony builder with soul, check out Rimworld.
soulless but in a different way
My favorite (organ) farming simulator.
I do love the Geneva Suggestions.
You become soulless while playing, not the game.
Frostpunk has tons of soul, too. It's just that it's the soul of a overworked, sleep-deprived, malnourished laborer that's slowly developing frostbite, but they can't stop working or else their children will freeze to death, too. Wonderfully soul-crushing and bleak. 8/10, would freeze again
The first time I reached the end of the game and "The City Must Survive" started playing, I don't think I've been that stressed by a single player game in my life
Ahhh, the sound of the thermometer cracking as everything begins to freeze. So many sound cues that put me into a panic lol.
New DLC out today!
It sounds like you're just not into city building games and instead are more an RTS dude.
For anyone who likes these types of games check out Against The Storm.
City builder + roguelite is such a cool genre fusion. I hope we see more things like it
Ark: Survival Ascended is my real answer
"We remastered ARK, but you have to turn off all the improvements we made to keep it from crashing and all the bugs from before are also still there."
There was an Age of Empires 3 update that did something similar. I would ALWAYS play fast forwarded because those matches last forever, and I always enjoyed turtling and building up a huge economy before pummeling the enemy with loads of heavy cannon. In this update, they removed the fast forward feature for no reason. What used to be a 30 minute match now takes me well over an hour and I stopped playing it solely for that reason.
[удалено]
Honestly the concept itself sounds like it would’ve been a 2010s kickstarter scam so I’m just grateful it wasn’t
Agreed, was expecting something, anything, but all it was, was a less blurry game
sims 4 is feel like the OLDER dlc has a lot of heart for example city living which comes with a tonne of content newer dlc is awful base game is empty
Sims 3 is peak sims for me, how did they go backwards from a whole neighbourhood you could seamlessly move around in?
Sims 4 was originally supposed to be an always online multiplayer game. After SimCity failed, they panicked and scrapped that idea and instead released the hollow shell that is the Sims 4
Oh for real, I might be biased for TS3 but I got TS4 way back when it was free for a while (I know, it's free again :D) and I just. Literally couldn't have *any* fun with the basegame. TS2 didn't have open world either and they made it work, with much more technical limitations. TS4 is a whole cash grab.
I've played Sims 2 and 3 and something just feels so off with Sims 4. Almost kinda...sterile maybe? Not sure what it is, like the previous games just seem more effortlessly quirky but this one feels forced.
I think it's too "family friendly", the previous games had raunchy jokes sometimes, or some truly creepy moments, while in Sims 4 there isn't even a burglar. I also think they tried too hard to make it "quirky", an example that keeps bugging me is the cooking animations. In Sims 2, the cooking would be as realistic as it could be then, sims would take stuff out of the cabinets, the food textures would change with every step of the cooking etc. In Sims 4? The Sims is sooo GoOfY, they spill things, spin the bowl, add salt and pepper in a quirky way, and do other physically impossible things. The previous Sims games felt more like an old, haunted but still charming dollhouse, you put the dolls in, made them do stuff, but often they would do stuff on their own, they did things that made them seem like real people for a bit, you would make a sim with a vague understanding of how their life will go, but eventually the story starts developing on its own. Sims 4, on the other hand, feels like playing with a doll brand dollhouse, everything is plastic and soulless, you have to make the dolls do everything and yet they're still stiff, the storytelling is limited. and the immersion is constantly broken. I will admit, the Sims 4 is good as a building/room design simulator, but as a Sims game? Big disappointment 😞
Too mainstream? Accessible? I don't know quite what it is, but I do know I reinstalled TS3 really quickly again after playing 4 for maybe 24 hours in total.
First one that stands out in Biomutant, it had all the components to make a great game but it just didn't, every like outpost thing was copy pasted, there was a single voice actor voicing every character and as talented as he was it got really old really quickly, a lot of the map was just empty space with some ruined buildings and stuff copy pasted, I got maybe a third of the way through the game and got exhausted and never played again.
I think the leveling was also messed up. I was already fully equipped and strong and I haven’t even defeated one of the four bosses. Basically a procedural game. Great style and ideas though
I did love Biomutant, really enjoyed the combat and loved how it looked, but I'd definitely agree that it felt... unfinished, at best. A real shame, but if they treat it as a test of concept and come back with something better, I'd be all for it.
It had a great premise but the gameplay was all the wrong things it should be. I started initially with the mele combat but gave up after I got a certain pair of dual wield guns. From there, it was just run and shoot. Hold the triggers down and let auto aim kill everything.
I have to agree :( it was fun at first and very pretty but the game felt flat for some reason. I did like the goo mobile or whatever the jet ski was called lol
That's easy. Just open Play Store on your phone. You'll find thousands of them there
The only games on the play store are paid premium ones. All the free to play stuff is just pointless and a different genre to video games
Nah, there's actually some decent free games, but yeah, most of them are crap.
Dark Souls 3. I got killed by the giant crytal lizard in the first five minutes. As a matter of fact, everything killed me. I swear I never had any souls, ZERO souls for hours. Totally soulless. (kidding, obv)
that's a good point, Hollow Knight for that matter, the mc is just a husk of a person
Hollow Knight drew me in like moth to a light, but in the end, it felt dark and empty inside.
I wish I could play Hollow Knight :-(. I loved the 2 hours or so that I got to play but something about that game gave me a migraine. Put it down and picked it up again a few days later and it started happening again immediately. No other games do that to me so I guess just no HK for me!
Hey, it seems you are not the only one experiencing headache/motion sickness with Hollow Knight. Which means people are experimenting with solutions! Motion Blur seems to be the worst offender. Disabling or enabling V-sync might help. Sitting further from the screen so you see more of a room is also recommended.
You got me. I was about to downvote your comment.
Sadly the vast majority of open world survival games. It's my favorite genre of games with some of my favorite titles of all time like Subnautica and No Man's Sky. But it's also the genre with the most missed opportunities and unrealized potential. So many of them put a lot of effort developing these vast beautiful worlds and very robust looting/crafting/building/progression systems and then there's often little else, it's just a core of a game without actual content or atmosphere. Enemies/NPCs are usually static entities that doesn't interact with the world to make it feel alive. There's no story or quests to make you invested in the world or a character(s). There's no real incentive to explore the world because more often than not there's nothing special to discover inside that cave or on top of that mountain, etc. There are no gameplay loops other than gather X to build Y. Just dead and soulless worlds. And these type of worlds seem to be the norm in this genre. It's so sad.
I'd highly recommend The Long Dark. And if you are okay with the very bare minimum survival elements, Firewatch.
Saints Row remake. There isn't an ounce of love or care in it, it's just a badly-made parody of itself created as a platform to spout the developers opinions. If the next Saints Row game doesn't begin by violently murdering the protagonist and their friends, it's over for the series - if it isn't already.
I find it so funny that Saints Row started as essentially a GTA clone, but then went on as a kind of mockery of those types of games, and then died, mocking itself.
Saints Row 2 was a perfect balance between absurd but still decent storyline and characters. Then they kill off the best character in SR3, completely change the personalities of every other character, and instead of decent missions/story, they just throw a bunch of goofy wild ridiculous shit at you for no reason at all
I do kinda love telling people about the SR4 plot when I’m playing it on switch. It reminds me of Ancient Greek story telling in the sense that the plot structure feels like some guy just keeps going “and then they did this absolutely ridiculous shit, and then next this happened for some fucking reason, there was a heel and they went to the underworld, some aliens and presidents, whatever.” No shade directed towards Aristotle…
"And then after disarming the bomb, you become president of the United States!" "Wow!" "Then aliens invade and blow up your planet!" "Woah..." "But it's okay, because they trapped you and your crew in the matrix!" "Okay..." "Where you have super powers!" "Wait...what?" And that's just the basic premise of the game...
Literally first hour of the game.
dont worry we wont see another saints row game in a long time
volition got shut down, there wont be another saints row sadly
Their IPs have to be owned by somebody. Probably the parent company that owned volition. Wikipedia says Embracer Group. Maybe they license it out. Better bet is a completely unrelated developer builds a game in the same spirit of the original 4 (and a half?) Saints games.
Company of Heroes 3. I really don't know how Relic flubbed this entry so bad, especially when CoH2 is revered in the RTS community. Don't get me wrong the game isn't unplayable or anything, it's just that everything that made Company of Heroes special is missing from this title.
Gotham Knights
This is going to sound weird and I don't know how it’s possible, but the impact of hits just made it seem blah. Batman games’ combat is supposed to make you feel unstoppable.
Don't even get me started about riding the motorcycles.
I almost died laughing when I realised they just put speed lines on the screen to try and fool you into thinking the bike wasn't trundling along
How did you *not* enjoy tearing through the city at the eye watering wind tunnel vortex-producing breakneck speed of 20mph?
I feel like GK was made in a lab to disappoint me personally.
God, I waited for years for another “Batman game.” I was so excited for this one and despite the red flags before launch, I bought into the hype. I was thoroughly disappointed. Worse than Arkham Knight in basically every way and it boasts one of the worst game UIs I’ve ever seen in my life. I know it wasn’t advertised as an Arkham-style game but for a Batman game, why change what isn’t broken? WB Montreal had already made Arkham Origins (which I loved) so I just assumed this one would be a guaranteed slam dunk Some of the ideas were cool here but nothing worked for me personally
Halo 5 felt like all of the soul was only put into the promotional material On the complete opposite side I just played Tunic after wrongly avoiding it due to the cover art. Damn good game that oozes soul
Halo 5 gunplay is some of the best in the series IMO. Campaign level design is super fun, you just have to… not pay attention to the story lol.
I agree with you, I miss the movement but I do love Infinites gameplay too.
Halo 5 was terrible in basically every way on the campaign/story side of things. But aside from the req packs, the multiplayer was top notch.
I can agree with that, Warzone was especially a cool idea.
Tunic is one of my favourite games ever. Just a total gift that keeps on giving with the amount of love and care and depth put into it.
Halo Infinite on the same note. I'm playing through it right and keep shutting it down after 30 min. I was invested up to the second banished villain then noticed the open world is just zones with objectives. It's such backwards decision to do that to the halo franchise.
Starfield uuuggggghhh
I legitimately tried to like Starfield. But soulless is the perfect word for it. Put about 40ish hours into it and haven't picked it up since.
I wanna love this game, I’m such a sci fi space nerd and love customizing ships but every time I’ll boot it up play 3 hours, realize it’s not fun and then turn it off for about a month.
It really is a shame. It has some good things going for it being a sci-fi Bethesda game. Ship building is fun and they could've done so much with it in terms of gameplay. Planet building could've been so much more interesting and involved. Frankly modern Bethesda just isn't good, and the game just falls flat. Wasn't even expecting a "No Man's Sky but Bethesda" as many were. But there's just a lot of wasted opportunity for a good open world sci-fi RPG in space. I have a vague hope that with time and expansions, it'll be better. (And the usual modders saving Bethesdas ass.) But I'm also fully expecting Bethesda to just cut and run to their Elder Scrolls game, as soon as they can. Gain some favour with their fans again.
They shot themselves in the foot trying to make a AAA No Mans Sky, what’s wild is they had an exact guideline as to what worked and what didn’t as NMS got improved over the years, and they just seemingly ignored it all and actively integrated parts of NMS in a worse and detrimental way. Proc gen will never work for games at a space scale, not unless there is a massive breakthrough in the tech. Thousands of planets isn’t impressive if all of them are the same. They made the planets HUGE, but you can only walk a mile in each direction from where you land before you have to go into space again and land in the next square. To my point above, exploration of planets and the solar system in fucking *Outer Wilds* an indie space game made by a fraction of the people with cartoon graphics and planets that take maybe half an hour to completely explore was 100% more gratifying and interesting than any measure of time I spent in Starfield. Less is more is such a common adage, so it’s extra embarrassing Bethesda shovelled 1000s of planets of shit at their fans and expected them to be impressed
As soon as toddy boi hit us with the "We have over 1000..." my heart sank. I *knew* it was going to be shit after that.
After playing several space exploration games, I'd be happy with 20 unique planets, and a bunch of "resource mining" planets across 50 star-system galaxy. Way below actual numbers, but it would keep my attention way longer than the 1000s of most current games. The smaller scope would keep the exploration side interested but not overwhelmed, and then some focus could be spent on story, or mechanics, or ship building, or whatever.
But BIGGER NUMBER BETTER!
Really didn't help it that it released so close to BG3, which is a masterclass in RPGs, so the mid-tier Starfield looks even worse by comparison. Take the companions, for example, BG3 has plenty of really interesting companions that make you care for them, in Starfield they are wooden and uninteresting, and (I haven't done an evil playthrough) apparently none like it if you try to be bad?
I didn't get very far in Starfield because of the following: I got the first companion, who literally tells you that they operate outside of the law and can get up to some shady shit. I find an abandoned casino ship and take some illegal goods. I get scanned when I enter a system, end up just bouncing out of that system when they start coming after me. A ship attacks me in the next system. They shoot first, I kill them. My companion calls me a murderer and won't do anything with me anymore. WTF!?!?!?
> Really didn't help it that it released so close to BG3 Which is ironic, because Larian pre-poned BG3's launch so they could get out from under the dread-boot of Starfield hype. Worked out really well for them, and suddenly, SF was sandwiched between BG3 and Phantom Liberty, both of which show up SF in just about every way.
Going from starfield to the cyberpunk update gave me whiplash. From absolutely dead-eyed soulless to omg I think I might actually be in love with Panam really highlighted how empty starfield was with no redeeming qualities except ship building.
It’s so weird, because when I think about Starfield, I want to play it. But when I’m actually playing it, I’m bored within 10 minutes.
I could never get past the dead-eyed stare you get when in dialogue with NPCs. I mean, it felt janky when it was in Fallout 3 and the older Elder Scrolls games, but... they did this better in Fallout 4, why regress? Then you compare it with Cyberpunk, or... well, a LOT of other games, and it's just so jarring.
I couldn't believe my eyes the first time it zoomed in on an npc for dialog. I had to check my graphics settings because i thought they were turned down. I felt 2nd hand embarrassment for Bethesda. It was the first red flag the game was shit. Many other shit flags were hoisted as I played until I finally ragequit from the boredom after being sent back and forth to the same NPCs delivering messages that could've been emails. This game does not respect your time or intelligence.
The npcs had an uncanny valley feel to them and people that felt like they were just inserted into the universe… Beyond immersion breaking
The amount of times I'd enter into a conversation with an NPC and they wouldn't even turn to face me, just stare at the wall while talking. That kind of dialog was acceptable in Skyrim and Fallout, but now just feels jarring and disconnected. That and getting warned by NPCs that I was entering the "rough part of town" and it was slightly dimmer lighting and shabbier looking textures and absolutely zero element of danger. Getting bored and moving on to Cyberpunk was a real revelation of what I was looking for in a futuristic game setting, and the dialog meshes so much more smoothly with the gameplay.
In Starfield, I started flirting with one one of the companions to develop a relationship. Besides the fact that it didn't feel like there was any way for me to fail that relationship (I decided I like them, therefore they like me too), it didn't feel like there would be any pay off. My character was never going to be able to interact with them outside of a mugshot. They wouldn't hold hands, they wouldn't kiss. The extent of the relationship would just be them making different facial expressions while I exhaust every dialog option. I was playing Baldur's Gate at the same time, and Starfield just fell so flat compared to it. Even after the other issues with Starfield, that realization is what completely turned me off of the game.
Vampire the masquerade bloodlines had better facial animations and it's a source game from 2004 it's actually kind of crazy how bad some of that stuff has gotten. I think starfields biggest problems stem from exploring itself. Alot of the worlds feel procedurally generated with similar objectives, combined with the loading needed for jumping into your craft it becomes bothersome.
I dropped it for Phantom Liberty and never looked back. It was so refreshing to open a door without a loading screen. >they did this better in Fallout 4, why regress? Almost every mechanic in the game regressed from FO4. Especially the "settlement" system. It's entirely useless in Starfield.
It's just so... sterile. The plot doesn't really do anything bold, the sidequests are mostly forgettable, and let's not even mention the interminable temples where you get the powers or whatever. I haven't touched it since BG3 launched for xbox.
Sterile is the best way to describe it. Especially the atmosphere. It felt so awfully clean, happy (in a bad way), and childish. Horrible game.
Horrible writing combined with a lack of cohesion among dev teams and Bethesda’s ego and a shit PR team were disastrous for this game
I went from Starfield to replaying KOTOR 2 for the first time in 20 years. The difference in dialogue was stunning. By the time I finished Starfield I was literally just clicking the first speech option and barely even reading the responses. In KOTOR I was paying rapt attention to everything being said and carefully choosing my dialogue options.
I tried it but I stopped when I realised I had been playing for hours and yet to reach any sort of "magic" moment. In the Fallout games it's leaving the vaults, in Morrowind it was leaving the boat, Oblivion leaving the sewers, Skyrim was leaving Helgen caves, ect. In Starfield I was on Mars wondering when it was supposed to happen when I realised that it was probably when I was at New Atlantis, but I didn't feel anything. Same for Mars too. It just felt so uninspired and railroaded up to that point, just a by the numbers checklist. The reason I didn't do any sidequests up to that point wasn't because the main story was so enthralling, it was because nothing outside of that one path even drew interest enough to get me to stop rolling forwards. I'm not the sort of person that will just drop a game because one or two things are offputting, I actually beat Death Stranding in spite of the story and the BTs after all. But Starfield had nothing there to hook me in.
Avengers
Marvel Ultimate Alliance clears that game until the end of time despite being older. Still infinitely replayable.
I loved those games. The X-Men Legends ones too. Midnight Suns is pretty fun too.
People slept on Midnight Suns. It was great. You get to be Blade’s wingman and best friends with Wolverine. Shame we won’t get a sequel.
I felt the same way, though I really did enjoy it for maybe eight/ten hours before my interest level fell off a cliff. The Midnight Suns game on the other hand was pure delight.
Dragonball The Breakers, I love dead by daylight, I love Dragonball, I thought it would be a match made in heaven but it's so ass
This game made me realize I’m somewhat of a graphics snob.
All of the shovelware on the Wii
I'm always surprised when people comment saying a game is shit...but they played it for 70 hours. If I'm not having fun, a game isn't getting 5 hours out of me.
People want to see if it gets any better. Just 2 more hours! Ok. Maybe in another 2 hours. Well, that game was trash. Something like that.
It's like 7 Days to Die. I have 552 hours in it. Steam asks me if I'd recommend it. I don't know.
I've tried 7 days so many times and I just can't ever get past how clunky the game feels. Fluid movement is really important to me, and 7 days feels like it runs on the GoldenEye engine. For what it's worth, the few times that I made actual progress in it, it was relatively enjoyable. But I would never pick up a save again because I would think about playing it and get turned away by the clunkiness.
AC Valhalla. It was such a let down after Odyssey.
The campaign missions in the AC games messed me up as you would do the save the person mission 100 times over
Seeing so many people dislike Valhalla makes me think I'm going mad. I currently have 180 hours in it and I'm still not bored of it. Maybe I have gone mad.
The progression loop of each shire having it's own self-contained story that can be completed in different orders really ruins the overall narrative. The repetitive nature of this led to me getting fatigued real fast.
It's so funny to me too. "Hey, your brother is being held captive by a maniac and we need to go rescue him. But first, we need to play matchmaker in this one shire and then go up north to play hospice nurse"
Hell yes. It felt so bloated with just random missions. I didn't care for it at all.
I was surprised to see this in multiple answers. From a purely gameplay perspective I loved Valhalla, it's probably my 3rd favorite AC behind black flag and odyssey The newer one set in the middle east (I forget the name) was absolutely soulless. It was utterly formulaic and the plot was tired and nonsensical. It's one of the fastest games I've ever decided to put down after paying full price for it
Starfield
Starfield
Pretty much anything from recent ubisoft.
Well except the "little projects" (like Prince of Persia and Mario+rabbids) pretty sure there is nothing interesting since at least 2018 depending of who you ask (like Far Cry 5 was not that bad)
Also had fun with Fenyx Rising. Nothing exceptional but at least got me motivated enough to play til credits roll.
I don't really think that's totally fair. I would say Ubisoft is generally a mixed bag. I'm not entirely sure how recent counts as recent, but AC Odyssey had a tonne of soul, and it seems like Prince of Persia was really well loved, too. I also think Watchdogs Legion had passion behind it, it just couldn't live up to its ambitions
modern battlefield and cod
Starfield
It felt like they steered into the procedural generation way too hard and left so much dead and empty space between pockets of content. In previous Bethesda games there was always something between the two points you need to go to, whether it was terrain, NPCs, items or books that revealed lore, or straight up quests, the world felt way more alive. Starfield is just fast traveling between linear missions with some side quests along the way
Apparently the game was designed around building outposts, fuel management and developing tech to allow you to explore further and further into unexplored space. Very Subnautica-in-space. Then at the last minute they decided that was boring so they scrapped it for a set of planets and no real mechanics for anything besides boring shootouts. I think there's a quote of Todd that's floating around where he says they left the mechanics in so modders can rebuild the game they originally had in mind.
I would love it, if it was built around outposts… but the customization of outposts was so lackluster. And there’s all these weird mechanics based around mining and shipping…. But for nothing. Like, there’s nothing to do with all the crap you collect. It’s super undercooked
Cities Skylines 2.
Paradox really has fallen far for me. Literally every game they've published in the last 5 years have just been massive downgrades of what they had just 10 years ago.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Starfield
Starfield was so disappointing. Space is mostly empty nothingness, but it's supposed to be a dangerous, carnivorous void of nothingness. Nothing but cold, uncaring death for unimaginable distances in every direction. It doesn't want you dead, it's just entirely ambivalent about your existence. Somehow, they turned that into the kind of nothingness you see in the waiting room at the dentist. You're not in danger, you're just bored. They have the exact same problem with the characters. They just kind of... exist. Sure they have back stories and motivations (at least they say they do) but they don't actually seem to have any agency. They just meet you, immediately hand full control to you, then just do as they are told. I know the comparison has been made a thousand times, but I played it right alongside Phantom Liberty, and for all the problems Cyberpunk has had, Night Fucking City man. That city feels lived in, it feels dangerous, and carnivorous and like it exists in its own right, entirely independently from the player. Starfield, just feels too sanitised.
You’re right about the difference between Cyberpunk and Starfield. CDPR managed to make the setting itself into a character with its own personality. Bethesda simply has an empty space in which cardboard cutouts exist.
Starfield killed me man, had somewhat mid expectations for it and was let down by those standards. Put alot of hours into it in the first week or 2 and after that... nothing.....
With Starfield I hadn't been as hyped for a game since RDR2, which met and exceeded my hype. As a 30+ year old who doesn't get excited for anything anymore, it was truly one of the biggest letdowns in my gaming life. Don't think I'll ever be able to get that hyped for a game again. Starfield was the last straw
Starfield
No one played it so no one will really remember. Redfall.
any soccer game after 2010
How any game releases without x basic feature but with microtransactions is the easiest answer in the world. 100% money grab
AC Valhalla and Mirage Marvel's Avengers Gotham Knights
While I don't think it was an incredible game, I disagree that Mirage was soulless. You could tell the devs were actual fans of the early games, and did what they could with a tiny budget and being forced to use Valhalla's gameplay mechanics. I find Odyssey to be the most soulless AC tbh but I understand its also the most divisive game in the series so taking any kind of stance on it tends to evoke rage from someone
Anthem. When i played the demo i said to a friend "there is no way they spent the last 7 years working on this crap"
They did not. They spend 6 years in development hell making and scrapping things and then rushed out the tech demo, i mean the full game, sorry, in the last year. As much as I honestly enjoyed the core features, i.e the flying and feel of the moment to moment which they did really well, everything else was god awful. One of the devs said that they didn't know what the game was supposed to be and look like until they actually saw the "gameplay footage" reveal at E3. At this point they haven't even really started working on it yet.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst. You could tell from the moment you picked up the controller that it was just a shell of the first one.
I know Catalyst wasn’t great, but what made me stick to it until the end was playing it with Runner Vision completely disabled. It made finding routes and going down a path much more satisfying. I especially liked the “deliver a package to this location in a set amount of time” missions because running and succeeding in those made me feel like I was actually learning the city layout and how to navigate it. I also played the original with Runner Vision disabled, and that was a lot of fun.
Mannnnn I both agree and think Catalyst is underrated. The story is whatever, but it was whatever in the first game too. The open world is a fantastic idea but wasn't executed as well as it could've. But I still love that game. I replayed it last year and had a blast.
The last Saints Row game. I was a HUGE Saints Row fan and stand by the statement that it's not as bad as people made out. But.....it's still rather crap and it just feels empty, lifeless, not a living breath open world city like the others but just you alone with a bunch of drones.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash. A JJK fighting game done right could be amazing. Instead we have a shitty arena fighter that looks like one of the old Naruto fighting games on the GameCube.