It's a momentum from early 2000s. Rockstar (or was it Take 2 by that time?) set a lower moral line in the gaming industry and published games like Man Hunt and GTA III, where you can commit crime without much consequences. The gaming experience was nouveau and a thrill.

I can see that, if the style of humor doesnt click with you, then it's got a pretty repetitive mission formula which can get boring.

I think GTA 6 is (and will be) very overhyped. I dont see it living up to the previous titles at all.

I don't really like games that are overly realistic, or a simulation of real life. GTA falls into that group. Like, I'm playing games to get away from reality, not revel in it.

Actually spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing gta5 with my friends after school. Getting thrown into a city with your 5 best friends and finding your place amongst the total anarchy of 30 players all fucking around was so much fun. Add on to that the various mini games, heists, vehicles, attire, weapons and customisations for all of those things and yeah. Pretty good game.

You run over hookers and get your money back.

I really like GTA 5 except most of the plot.

GTA without some greasy greasy plot and without sadism would be great.

I tried to play it like a normal RPG and remember just trying to walk around the neighborhood to find every random person I tried to talk to would just beat me up for getting close to them so I noped out of it

It's my favorite game, but that's because it does a very good job of immersing me in the world, characters, and story. I can see how if you just want to get to the next bit of gameplay it would be annoying, but I really like to soak up a game and feel like I'm living another life in it, so it's perfect for me.

Spoilers?: My biggest gripe too..I finished it, and the ending I chose felt like a 20 min long unskippable cut scene. Never mind the actual 20min long unskippable cut scene in the middle.

Heavy on cyberpunk. Don’t get the hype. Vague mission instructions, horrible driving control, and just an overall boring game to me.

I'm told I didn't even get out of the tutorial even though I played it for a good while. A lot of the dialog between the player character and whatever the first guy's name is felt like they were written by people who had only a vague idea of what the other person was saying.

"We have to keep moving! Let's stop here." :|

Most overrated game of the last 5 years. Technical failure, sold on lies, bugs upon bugs, illusion of choice, horrible combat and an empty world.

Absolutely. Got it for Xmas one year, played until there was a god awful fuck scene that was....really something, and unexpected. Like, ok, I get that there are people that this is their only sexual outlet but can you fucking warn a guy?

It really reminded me of an updated Perfect Dark (360 version), which was....just stupid.

For me, the most boring aspect of Balatro is the first couple blinds. Holy shit am I tired of "you MUST play a flush or straight."

Not that quickly that you dont get your money's worth though. Balatro is a good mobile game honestly, for a quick run when you have time to kill, but I wouldnt find myself sat at my PC playing it.

Thank you, this really describes my feelings towards that game well. The first few runs were great with experimenting and stuff but then you try for higher stakes and quickly fall into the optimal strat flow where it's kinda boring unless you get ridiculous runs but i don't wanna wade through meh to get that one god run that's actually fun.

All games are spreadsheets if you look hard enough

Some people like spreadsheet sims.

Interesting that you say hades has that intuitive randomness, one of my biggest complaints for hades 1 is that you can basically force whatever run you want every single run. It felt like a roguelike for people who hate roguelikes. Isaac otoh I totally agree, its my most played game by far really love it.

I've always thought that BotW was a good game, but a terrible Zelda game.

BotW and TotK are such weird games to me

They built these big beautiful worlds, and designed some really cool mechanics

And just kind of did nothing with them.

TotK was a bit better, but still fell pretty short.

Also it's so weird that TotK is clearly a direct sequel to BotW, but there's almost no actual continuity between the games. There's a handful of characters that are missing without much of an explanation, and other characters from the previous game act as if you've never met them before. I get that for gameplay reasons you kind of have to start things over from square one in some ways, but it just felt weird.

And the weapon degradation never really felt fun to me. I feel like at the very least once you get the master sword and recharge it to its full power or whatever you should have that as an option that just doesn't wear down, even if other weapons that do break might be better suited for the task.

And having to go out and farm a thousand different fish and master parts and whatever else to upgrade your armor is just bullshit.

Same. I love LoZ, but I cannot for the life of me get into BoTW. The weapon breakage is infuriating and overall it's just kind of... boring.

Welcome!

This is what I felt like when Ocarina came out on the 64.

The cycle repeats

That happened to me with halo infinite.

The only way to win is not to play.

A strange game.

I'd say it's a... Hot topic.

I legitimately feel like ER is one of FromSoft's weakest titles. It doesn't come close to the DS trilogy for me, and unironically I feel like Nightreign is a better game in the same vein, as the faster paced sandbox works far better for the fast, clusterfuck bosses ER is known for.

I thought that was just the point of the game? that it's a fighting game with some minor open world aspect to it between "levels"

honestly I know fuck all look about dark souls and the videos of gameplay that I see give me this impression

what's clunky? I would agree they have some clunky elements, mainly the targetting will sometimes cause problems, but I don't recall much else being necessarily clunky.

Dark Souls and Bloodborne are the only games I prefer to watch other people play. I love the look and atmosphere but can't stand how they feel to play.

New maps! And skins! You can buy them, you know!

Old ones die or dont have friends on em. Ideally everyone would play zombie panic source

I mean, 82 hours... I'd say you got your money's worth.

If I may ask, which aspect of it bothered (or bored) you?

There are diehard fans of this game with less hours than you lmao

82 hours!

It took me like 3 tries to get into it, and even then, I respect it more than I enjoy actually playing it, these days. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing.

Did you get into the relationship building part? Not trying to convince you to, just curious. I got pretty bored with it because I was neglecting that whole side because it seemed hard. I kept giving Linus what little food i had and he hated it. Also I missed Qi's side quests completely my first play through

It's like Dota but more accessible!

I really like League and by extension other mobas but can't really say why. I come from an RTS background, so I guess just something about that style of pvp.

I had to stop playing because the matchmaking system is so ass it drained the competitive enjoyment out of me, but if that was fixed I'd be back.

This is the one for me. Felt like a string of QuickTime sequences and story that is dull and plodding. Just didn’t click for me at all.

There's definitely some nostalgia glasses.

And I dunno where you started, but I've been playing BGS since Oblivion, and couldn't even get through an hour of Starfield. It played like a upscaled Xbox 360 game, with all the jank, yet none of the charm, more filler, all the loading screens, yet somehow ran like molasses. I have no idea what folks see in that game, despite the premise basically being made for me.

They have a bit of a "if you've played one you've played them all" problem

I think most are carried by their modding communities at this point which can be so involved they fundamentally change every aspect of the game.

Same. Though I did love split-screen black ops zombies on the 360.

Have you played it?

I found the story intriguing, but the time loop is way too short. Every time it gets interesting, the world resets, you have to get back into the rocketship and fly back to the place you've been before. It's an absolutely unneccessary padding mechanic.

I have played it multiple times and it has never hooked me. I keep meaning to go back, but I don't know if I will

I also dislike deckbuilders, but slay the spire is the exception. It skips the tideous deck management a lot of games have and you aren't playing against an other deck which is a big part of what I hate.

I couldn't stand it either, and I grew up with NES/SNES JRPGs and thought it would be right up my alley but for whatever reason the humor didn't reach me in the slightest and I couldn't be bothered to finish it.

More recently I tried Afterplace which also has a meta theme but the gameplay is more like a simplified Zelda and I really loved the writing.

I think the game's good side doesn't really show until you beat it. And with the context that moral choice game systems were a trend and up to this point extremely shallow (infamous series, army of two etc).

I couldn't get into it either though to be honest, but I enjoyed reading about the lore and the games it inspired.

Pokemon for sure. Think Zelda's pretty cool though

They were good in the 90s. I think Nintendo is just selling nostalgia at this point.

I used to religiously pre-order Zelda games, but I have yet to even bother with ToTK. I couldn’t finish BoTW either. On the other hand, this year, I’ve played through KCD2 twice, so guess my tastes have changed.

Probably won’t get a Switch 2 and will wait for a decent emulator. Nintendo’s litigiousness puts me off and I don’t really want to give them any more money.

Battlefield 6 is just another modern era BF game. They killed the squad mechanic and made the series all about 'Battlefield moments' it's just chaos now.

Arc Raiders, I think is all hype, Extraction shooters are an uncomfortable experience that most players don't enjoy, the honey moon era it's going through at the moment with peaceful single player lobbies is already showing cracks, it'll turn into Tarkov soon.

I don’t think Silksong is a AAA game. It’s a $20 game made by an indie developer with a relatively small team. It just happened to have a lot of hype because it’s the predecessor to the insanely popular Hollow Knight.

What games are you into then?

I find when people don't like any of what AAA has to offer, its usually because they've found a subgenre or niche that is extremely their jam, and the big budget games usually aren't aiming at that market.

Silksong isnt AAA. But yes, every triple A game is shit. The marketing is just very good, people are told they are good games and they should enjoy them. Truth is, all the good games are indie games.

I've found the 'wait at least a week after release' method has saved me a lot of money for this reason.

For real. Like come on guys, among us? Really?

Same. Honestly I’m most excited for when Billie bust up comes out. It’s sort of got a Spyro the dragon feel to it plus some musical elements to the boss fights , it’s cute and light and I don’t care that the target market is children.

They have some promotional demos up on a few sites but it’s mostly been community and word of mouth spreading it. No obnoxious and invasive ads. And it’s super effective to me since I stumbled across it rather than had it thrust in my face screaming “BUY ME!”

Hmm... In my opinion you can't really compare Balatro and Brotato. You're right, both games are about making numbers big but the way, they scratch that itch is completely different in my opinion.

Of course the gameplay loops are different and when you're more into the action oriented approach of Brotato, Balatro just might not be for you, but that's not my point: In my opinion in Brotato you build your character and when everything goes right you reach a point where you begin to scale and roll and become pretty much unstoppable for the rest of the run. In Balatro you have more RNG caused variance in the main gameplay loop so you might have a rounds where you barely win and rounds where you draw just the right cards and destroy the Blind.

For me, a Brotato run feels kinda more "linear" while a Balatro run has more ups and downs even when going well.

Criminal!

The crafting survival indie games have been good to me for that. Subnautica, zomboid, Ark, rimworld, my dino survival simulators. I have a hard time finding AAA games that do that outside of Red Dead Redemption.

I literally want to claw my eyes out because of how popular indie rogue-likes are. And that people can argue with a straight face that these are not just as good, but preferred to a big budget game, will forever baffle me. I get that everyone has their own tastes ... But it feels like they are taking the piss.

Honestly I don't even like fantasy CRPGs (hence I don't have the reference of 1/2), but BG3 kinda blew me away.

It's incredibly cinematic. The world design is tight and reasonably interconnected, voice acting great, and I thought the script was fine.

UI and build choice was... alright? I can see room for improvement there. A lot of mods seem to be going for that.

Playing baldurs gate 3 at the moment and one of the best things about it is hearing that it's actually one of the weaker games in the genre.

I'm not into Baldur's Gate, but my partner explained the retcons in 3 to me, and I find them offensive. Why not just make an original character instead of altering an existing one beyond recognition?

It's okay to be bad at games without bashing people who are better at games. Many of us worked through covid, and are still working believe it or not, and were still able to beat difficult games.

I don't care about the story, but when I played it when it was free on PS Plus, the gameplay is bad to me as I constantly get lost in the building. The protagonist has superpower but in the game it really doesn't feel like so. I can throw stuff at enemies, then what? There is a fight where in the beginning I fight two or three enemies with guns, and it sucked because I don't know where they are when I'm hiding behind cover. And taking two or three shots I'm dead. It's a shitty FPS game in disguise of a Sci-Fi action game.

I appreciate it for its atmosphere and art style, but yeah the characters and the plot a are quite meh.

I found the characters pretty flat as well. Neat atmosphere, though. I'm not really into that type of game so it was something new and interesting to me.

I also finally made the time to play it at a rough time in my life, and oh boy, let me tell you, your personal circumstances at the time of playing have a huge effect on how the game makes you feel if you give in to it. I actually found it pretty helpful, tbh. It helped me process some shit because it gave me the opening to think about some stuff I was kind of ignoring, even though I thought I'd processed it.

anyways yeah that's how I found myself crying half drunk in my basement alone playing a video game

still. the writing was meh. it was neat, but it was meh, and honestly, the mehness is kind of part of it. it's not some big crazy thing. it's just some average people doing average people things, nothing special about them, and it allowed me to think about my own stuff instead of the characters' stuff.

Gta2 was hella fun. Went downhill from there.

I got myself a retro handheld from Anbernic. Costs about the same as a AAA game and has pretty much become my main gaming device.

for someone that only played 3: what did you like better in 2?

Do you not understand competition? There are plenty of games out there that are competitive, not to mention sports in general.

Isn't the whole game around 1.5 hours long in total? oO so you returned the game after you finished it?

I've only played the OG Super Mario Bros on an emulator, and it was pretty fun imo. Short and sweet.

Haven't played anything else

I find this tends to happen as your gaming tastes age over time. You start to find what you really like and then fall into a niche where you start to know the space really well and then all these big game marketing hype cycles just become noise.

I dropped that one and never picked it up again

"People didn't like it?" Who, and how many percent? Most people enjoyed Hollow Knight also enjoyed Silksong.