Am I too Cynical about Video Games?

Thread: Am I too Cynical about Video Games?
nominedomine said:
I watched plenty of anime and played plenty of Japanese games there ain't going to gaslight me into pretending it isn't filled with weird shit.
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The intent behind me posting that image is because it I find it funny since I like both Anime and Western Animation and I like to drag weeaboos because they need to lighten up. This isn't directed towards you, it was an opportune time for me to get some cheap laff's if only from myself.
 
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nominedomine said:
It doesn't matter how cheap the games are, that is almost irrelevant to be honest. I don't mind at all to pay to play a great game day one like Elden Ring, TLoU or God of War, I wish there were more game like that where I'm confident getting day 1.

To me it's absurd that reviewers factor price when giving game scores or that people think "well, it's not that bad because I got it on Gamepass"...
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Price doesn't factor into my feelings about a game, but it does sometimes factor into whether or not I will give a game a chance that I otherwise wouldn't. I'm happy to take chances on outliers or things I otherwise wouldn't if there's a great deal, and that sometimes leads to happy surprises. But if not, hey it didn't cost much.
 
nominedomine said:
RE4 and SH2 remakes are a good example of a game that is hard to tell if I'm going to like or not based on the trailer.

I don't like the original RE4 game at all but the team behind this remake made the RE2 remake that was great and for SH2 is the other way around, I have no trust in the team making the remake.

But for the vast majority of games I can tell with a very high degree of precision if I'm going to like it or not by watching a few minutes of gameplay.
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As long as they learned from the mistakes made with RE3make, they should be okay. RE2make was an excellent template, they nailed the merging of old and new there. But I've got no idea what they're going to do about the more "fun" elements 4 had, like melee attacks. They might not have been to your taste, but when you get down to Mercenaries mode the melee attacks are essential. That's a fundamental shift in gameplay if they strip those out entirely, but they do seem to be going for a more serious tone. Isn't there a stream later today? Maybe our questions will be answered.
 
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synchronicity said:
Price doesn't factor into my feelings about a game, but it does sometimes factor into whether or not I will give a game a chance that I otherwise wouldn't. I'm happy to take chances on outliers or things I otherwise wouldn't if there's a great deal, and that sometimes leads to happy surprises. But if not, hey it didn't cost much.
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To be fair I do that too with stuff like Gamepass and PS+ but I try not to let that affect my judgment and if anything it just makes it easier for me to drop games rather quickly since I wasn't all that invested to begging with.
 
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I agree with the video entirely. AAA gaming, and sports gaming in particular, has become a cynical, manipulative, corporate wasteland. Gaming journalism is now little more than an extension of the social-engineering agenda. Real innovation and growth is all but dead in those spaces.

I said this on GAF not long ago, and I'll reiterate it here:

In the Golden Age, we played video games. In this one, the games play us.
 
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nominedomine said:
Ratio of good to bad indies is just as bad as AAA games if not worse, so many of the acclaimed indie games are extremely overrated as well. Ain't nobody has time to be mining through indie trash to find out what is really worth playing.

Doki Doki literature club, let me see...

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it a shitty fake weeb game made by a bunch of fat white sweaty incels.
 
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Online gaming has ruined gaming. Where we are now was always the path that online gaming put us on. Kind of like DLC put us on a path to microtransactions. It was always going to come to this and THIS isn't even as bad as it will get in the future.

Remember when Day One patches were considered bad? Now it's expected.
Remember when on disc DLC was considered bad? Now they announce and sell DLC before the game even launches and no one bats an eye.

No doubt there are many more examples that don't come to mind right now but needless to say, this industry is a mess. Atleast it is for the consumer, good for the corporations I imagine.

We are now at a point where the full priced game is really just the base game. Your $70 will get you the base game but if you want the complete game available at launch, you need to pay more for the Digital Deluxe Edition. That on disc DLC model at work. On top of that, the game will probably have microtransactions too.

Who is to blame though? Greedy publishers? Needy consumers? Both, I would say but mostly the latter. I have said it before (as unpopular as it is) and I will say it again, some gamers act like drug addicts begging for their next fix and publishers use this to their advantage. Gamers getting excited over the day that PRE-ORDERS open. They just can't wait to give their money away for a product that doesn't even exist yet and hasn't been reviewed by anyone. Gamers begging for the next game in the series like they NEED IT NOW and they have no shame. Gamers who say, 'I'll buy this game anyway (even if it reviews poorly) so that maybe they'll make another game in the series'. Publishers see these needy consumers and take advantage.

Products cost what the market will bear, and many gamers show publishers that they are willing to pay $70 for just the base game (and extra for the rest of the game) so that's what the publishers do. Gamers showed their disinterest in NFT's and killed them, but will gamers show their disinterest in the increasing cost of gaming?
 
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lock2k said:
This.

I hate when games treat me like I'm retarded. If the tutorial overstays its welcome, I usually quit and never get back. Fuck this kind of shit.
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Back in the day I would start an RPG (SNES and PS1 days), learn the ropes and then restart knowing more about the ins and outs of the game. Today, you just can't do that because you would have to sit through the tutorials again. It's painful.

I miss the days when games weren't stuffed full of meaningless loot. You open a chest, you get something immediately useful, not some crafting material that you need to collect until you get enough to craft something useful. Need a healing item? Sorry but here's a piece of that healing item and when you get back to town, you can craft that healing item if you have the other pieces! Hate that crafting has invaded every RPG.

Example, recently I tried to play an indie RPG named Ara Fell. I was having fun and when I got the chance to go to a shop for the first time I was looking to upgrade my gear. All I see are what looks like crafting recipes. "Oh damn..." I said and turned it off. I just don't like crafting, like at all.
 
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I'm proudly cynical and have been since I was a bloody teen.

Most games are shit and always have been, but it's been getting worse for over a decade and just unbearably bad today, with the steady shrinkage of the AAA market and evaporation of B tier games almost entirely, meaning the number of those previously rare gems, that were 1 in 10 games if you were lucky, is almost zero.

Sony is probably my biggest source of annoyance on that front.

Sure, their big budget titles are still mostly good, but even just last gen it was their weird little niche titles, like Hohokum, Bound, Concrete Genie, their VR games or even smaller spin offs like Uncharted Lost Legacy and Infamous First Light that were the exciting, lower key, passion projects that I bought their systems for.

Now everything's a safe bet, big budget, known winner. Endlessly Remastered and ported with conveyor belt like corporate mediocrity.

It's not just risk aversion, it's an industry wide loss in vision, passion, creativity and I'd even argue hope, since no one with any power or control is even capable of imagining what used to be the norm: taking risks because the people doing so simple believed that new innovations, new markets and new ideas would inevitably come with time. That a failure or two was not the end of an idea, but a step on the path to eventual success.

Now we only really get that in the indie space, but the problem there is the overabundance of idiots, normies and charlatans, who can too easily use the tools available to create dogshit, so the good games there are 1 in 100 at best.

So yeah, I still love gaming, but there's a good reason I barely buy any new games these days, and it's not because I'm too cynical.
 
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I 100% Spyro 1 in one day. :) In that same timeframe, I would be lucky if I got past the toturial stage in today's games. Call me an old grump, but I really hate how long games are today. Fuck "value" and get to the good shit
 
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Everything's been done a hundred times, and it's hard to get excited for the xth sequel.

This console gen is also basically PS360 - 3rd iteration.
SF6 will be SF4 3rd iteration.
GTA6 will be GTA3 4th iteration.

It's just the same thing we had since at least 15 years now with prettier optics.

I mean, it's still fun, but how are you supposed to get excited about this, when you lived through a time when really new things happened, like playing Maniac Mansion for the first time, or Doom, or Quake, or Mario64, or even Demon's Souls, which was a frigging 13 years ago. Or experiencing "that Journey moment".

Stuff just isn't innovative anymore, only iterative.
We have done everything that could be done with the medium.

And I am fine with that, it's just the way it is.
 
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