Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
When you get to the area with the bazillion spitting statues that respawn when you do, it became very clear that Fromsoft was out of ideas for making the game both interesting AND challenging.
Ubisoft style open world games. I honestly know I’m not built to enjoy them but I convinced myself to try and finish Horizon Zero Dawn and it was a huge mistake.
For a single player game, it vigorously wastes your time. The entire game is based around crafting but each time you need to gather something you need to come to a full stop, and spend a second watching the interact meter fill before you can gather each thing you see in the overworld.
The talent trees either contain things that are not meaningfully impactful on the core experience, ie tons of talents are slightly dressed up raw damage increases. Or they are things that are meaningful, but not surprising such as silent takedowns or bullet time. Overall it feels like Aloy was designed to be kind of fun and then they hamstrung her in a bunch of different ways to give a reason for the talent system to exist, and it takes the runtime of the whole game to undo this.
Many quests do not have anything to say about the lore or characterization of the world, whether it be for individual characters or the world overall.
Same here re: Ubisoft cookie cutter open worlds. I LOVED the first ~40 hours of Immortals and thought I was approaching the end until I realized I was less than halfway at the rate I was progressing. I have no idea how length estimates like the ones on How Long to Beat are accurate for this game; usually they’re pretty spot on for my “complete what I find fun and interesting and not much else” play style. I gave up on the game after briefly skimming FAQs to see what I had left.
Before I say this I do admit I am in the wrong, and that an overwhelming majority of people love this game, and I understand that on an objective level it was both ground breaking and excellent.
I cannot, for the life of me, enjoy breath of the wild due to weapons breaking. I played maybe 5 hours? I got excited when I found a cool sword, and then proceeded to never use it because I was afraid to “waste” it. (and repeat that with new weapons, to save which I have to go find some little seed people to have more inventory slots?)
I understand that they want me to try new things, but for me, for some reason, it just wasn’t fun. I want to be excited when I find new loot, not anxious. Maybe it’s because I grew up with Diablo-like games, where accumulating loot was the fun part, but I can’t seem to enjoy it when the game takes toys away from me.
I loved BOTW as a generic open world adventure game.
It was probably the worst “Zelda” entry outside of the CD-i games though.
I just pretend that it wasn’t one at all.
The weapons breaking thing along with incredibly repetitive and boring enemies made me avoid all fights not absolutely necessary.
The boss fights - few and far between though they were - were good.
I had hoped that the new one would fix all of the previous one’s issues but as people like us are in the minority it seems that they kept the formula the same.
I’m not sure if I’ll even play it.
Now weapons are all (mostly) shitty, but you can accumulate up to 999 each of powerful attachments to your weapons. If your powerful silver bokoblin sword broke, find another shitty weapon and attach one of the silver bokoblin horns to it that you have. Attaching also makes the durability significantly higher.
Thank you for sharing… but this doesn’t inspire confidence.
Better? Maybe. Good? Not really.
I’m sure I’ll eventually make my way to it, but I’m in no hurry to play it.
Maybe when the Switch 2 comes out?!
Maybe I didn’t explain it properly. I did hate the BOTW system but really enjoy the new one. You still feel like you need to switch your tactics up regularly but you don’t need to go hunting for good weapons anymore.
That’s a fair point, I just know it’s a common contrarian take and wanted to distance myself a little from that.
I meant that I am aware I’m in the minority on it, it’s not a purely bad feature, just one that doesn’t work for me.
Maybe not the most unfun game I have ever played (I’ve played games since the late 90s), but certainly the most unfun I have played in recent years: Elex.
I liked Piranha Bytes’ old Gothic series a lot despite its weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. The Risen games weren’t that great, but the reviews for Elex were pretty promising. So I gave it a shot, and tried for about 16 hours to find the fun in it. I stopped playing when I realised:
I couldn’t hold my own in almost any battle because I didn’t have good enough gear
In order to get better gear, I had to join one of the game’s factions
In order to join one of the factions, I had to perform a number of tasks for them
The factions were all just dickheads, and I didn’t want to do anything for them, much less their dirty work
Got into super breeding. Maxed out damage and health and got a lot into speed on my rexes. Its very rewardimg being able to 1 or 2 shot a 150 rex. Takes like a month+ to get anywhere with it. That rex with those stats took like a year of breeding
The thing is Ark isn’t a dino game, it’s a scifi survival/exploration game. You start from nothing and work towards conquering the island and discovering it’s secrets.
I really hope you like it. To me it is best played with friends on a private server, or a server with good rules and active admins.
Most of the games of my childhood - they exclusively came from the <$5 bin 🙃 at least we had a PlayStation 2 but Crazy Frog Racer 2, Frogger: The Great Quest, Zathura, Animal Soccer World, and Street Vert Dirt are noteworthy “highlights”.
In recent memory the two that have stood out to me are Risk of Rain 2 and Halo 4. I thought some 3rd-person action in the former would be fun but I found the core loop and overall shooting boring after a couple run attempts so I guess it just didn’t click for me.
Now Halo 4… I think gameplay in that title is an exercise in tedium. Add on (what is in my opinion as:) poor AI, a bit too much melodrama, dumb retcons, “do X three times!” a bit much and I got a campaign that felt like a chore and haven’t touched it since I left off at the level with the Mammoth. The Prometheans are a pain to fight and I felt funneled into making do with Forerunner weapons to take ranged potshots at Watchers above all other targets and then rushing to kill the one Knight I was targeting before it regenerates, also above all other targets. Yuck. (Update: Coming back here since it occurred to me that I could sum it up as: my ability to make mid-combat decisions and play in the sandbox was kneecapped by poor enemy and maaaybe level design respectively.)
The thing about the From Software games is that they’re (mostly) fair. Most action games give the player a huge leg up compared to the enemies - the boss has a glowing weakpoint that can be revealed with the item you found in the dungeon - or you’re a badass cyborg assassin vs rank and file goons.
In Dark Souls, you’re just a stubborn dude with a sword - and even the lowliest enemy can take you out if you get careless. But everyone is playing by the same rules, it sucks when an enemy staggers you and hits you while you can’t move - but you can figure out how to do the same to them. And the bosses really are doing everything in their power to make you dead.
The satisfaction of Dark Souls comes from meeting those challenges head on and beating them at their own game - or being clever enough to bypass or weaken the obstacle. It’s not for everybody, and it’s certainly not for anybody all the time - but it’s pretty awesome when you get to be David finally taking down Goliath.
I just wrapped up the last one on my list: Sekiro.
It wasn’t as hard as everyone makes it out to be but that could be due to my having previously gone through Bloodborne and learned how to be aggressive.
All of their games are superbly fun but it did take me a lot of tries for it to click.
I started out terrible at them - and frankly am still nothing special - but am super glad that I persevered.
While I have other favorites as well, the Soulsborne will always rank at the top of my list for gaming perfection.
Stardew valley - it sells itself as a harvest moon inspired farming Sim but as someone who grew up playing a lot of harvest moon, I really can’t help but be super disappointed in it. Harvest moon games have a complex and more importantly moving relationship system - you start to go after one marriage candidate, the others will pair themselves up and have kids alongside you. People move in and out and you need to really get to know people in order to progress the game and unlock things. Stardew valley? Super flat in comparison. All the candidates you don’t marry feel super flat once you lock yourself out of them. There’s not much locked behind friendship so there’s less reason to get out there and really work on befriending everyone.
Also fucking combat - it’s a supposedly nice and peaceful farming Sim, yet combat is an unavoidable part of the game. I didn’t sign up for combat! It’s not fun it’s just annoying.
I actually have a mod for Stardew where the other NPCs have relationship progression with each other if I don’t get in the way!
I’ve been doing a challenge run on Stardew where I never ever engage in combat or go into the mines. Going pretty well, actually, except for the part where I get stuck on acquiring any quartz. Aside from that I think I completed the rest of the Community Center and a lot of what the game has to offer. It’s possible to avoid combat and still have game to play.
Still, don’t force yourself to play if you don’t want to—this isn’t an “I addressed all your concerns about why you dislike the game, so you have to go play it now with the mods I mentioned for your dislike to be valid anymore” type comment (and I didn’t address the part about Harvest Moon requiring you to develop relationships to progress and unlock things while Stardew doesn’t absolutely require relationships to progress… although relationships will also unlock things). I’m not trying to insist that you have to try Stardew with 384828 different permutations of mods before you’re allowed to say it’s not for you.
Games usually have to grab me pretty quickly, or I just drop them, so I don’t play a lot of unfun games for a long time.
Some exceptions were Final Fantasy 13, and to some extent the most of the Trails series (Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel).
Final Fantasy 13 I just tried a bunch of times, put in a combined 40h over the course of like three attempts, I don’t know why, but it was just mediocre at best. During the final one last year, I made it about halfway through, and actually got turned off from gaming altogether for a few months. The story sucked, as well as the characters. I thought the combat could be interesting, even with the auto-battles, since you’d have to decide what “stance” your characters were in, but it was just lame for the most part.
The Trails series is a bit different. I actually liked the gameplay (turn-based JRPG combat is fun), but the story and especially the villains are just complete garbage. Two years ago, before Cold Steel 4 came out on PC, I sat down and played through all the games in like two months. While Trails in the Sky is trash, I was actually surprised to really, really like Zero and (to a little bit lesser extent) Azure. Those gave me hope, but Trails of Cold Steel just goes back to being terrible. I might still go back and play Cold Steel 4 and whatever other games continue or maybe finally finish the story, just because I’ve invested too much time at this point.
I began playing it after so much praise from all over the place and it just uses predatory tactics to hook the gamer. I only had fun with the game for maybe a day or so but overall clocked in many more hours of hate-playing. The only good thing is that the developer (who’s background is developing gambling games) does not use those tactics for microtransactions.
Once I deleted the game, I was never even tempted to go back.
What’s the difference between predatory tactics to hook people into a game, and “normal” gameplay, whatever that is? If neither cost any money or have microtransactions in any way?
Is Diablo 2 using predatory mechanics? Is Counter Strike? Is Factorio?
Games are artificial constructs. If you deconstruct them entirely, unless they got some story to tell as the center point of the game, their mechanics and goals are entirely artificial and constructed to get you to keep playing, be engaged, and have fun, whatever that means and implies.
Because, well, in the end, games do not have a grand purpose. Their purpose is entertainment(or be art, but not all games have that goal). And so if vampire survivors keep you engaged and enjoy the game… Is that really that much different to other games? Another example to this are idle/incremental games, as a pure distillation of what games are. Are they predatory? Is there really much difference from the very core of other, more “proper”, games?
A game can offer an experience that leaves the player feeling satisfied or at least content with how they spent their time. There is a large space of possible interactive experiences that extend far beyond the simple dichotomy of fun vs educational or productive.
A game can certainly be considered predatory if it exploits psychological vulnerabilities to hook someone on engaging gameplay that gives the player very little in return in terms of fulfillment or mental recovery. Whether or not it takes the opportunity to swindle the player on top of that is a matter of degree in severity. Wasting a player’s time (or worse, induce stress or other harmful mental states for no good reason) is not a particularly nice thing to do.
Really? I guess you could consider the game’s visual flair to be predatory that way but I always felt that stuff was a joke because it doesn’t have microtransactions
Predatory usually implies that you’re being lured in to buy something, but the game has no microtransactions. At its worst the mobile version (which is free) has the option to watch an ad to get 1 revive per run. Don’t watch the ad? The game is the same as the console/PC version.
I think the lights, sounds, slaughtering massive hordes of enemies with overwhelming damage, and constant dopamine rush from them could certainly be predatory in nature if they were used to bait you into buying microtransactions, but that’s not the case here. I see where they’re coming from, but I can’t necessarily agree.
Sure, he worked in the sector, but that’s because he couldn’t find better jobs. What you’re implying here is really unfair, especially considering there aren’t even any microtransactions in the game. As far as I know, he just made a game that he felt was fun.
Hotline Miami 1 was such a fantastic game. Frantic, high energy, fun, good art style, a confusing at best story but that’s not why you played it. HM2 was full of off-screen instant kill bullshit that you literally could not prepare for in any way other than to die to it a handful of times before you memorized enemy positions off-screen. In the first game, you could always see threats before they could kill you. Not the case in the sequel. “You died and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it” is a bullshit mechanic in any game.
most multiplayer shooters to me, they’re typically filled with the most vile shit you’ll ever hear coming from an 8 year old, and the adults are just as bad and should know better.
competitive shooters like Rainbow Six Siege or Counter Strike are also really bad in casual modes, especially if you’re a new or lackluster player. You’ll be flamed, team killed, and your teammates will try their absolute best to ruin your entire day over a hobby
competitive shooters like Rainbow Six Siege or Counter Strike are also really bad in casual modes, especially if you’re a new or lackluster player. You’ll be flamed, team killed, and your teammates will try their absolute best to ruin your entire day over a hobby
I would be fine with all of that if they didn’t also have the power to kick you from the match
Trying to get into those as a newbie is miserable dor all those reasons and also because, unless maybe if you get in right when the game first comes out, your competitors will be far more comfortable with the mechanics and have memorized the maps and so on. It’s especially bad if you’re a newbie to multiplayer shooters a whole, even if you’re good at single player shooters. It becomes and exercise in: spawn, die, respawn, die… Super frustrating to begin with. And then people insult you. Noooot something I find worth bothering with for a thing that’s supposed to be enjoyable in my free time.
You see other people playing it and think “wow, that’s cool. I wanna try it”, only to be welcomed by what you just described. Your success then depends on whether you have a hard skin to endure the bullshit, or if you’re social enough to have others play with you that won’t dismiss everything you do so easily. More often than not we don’t have the patience/ability for either.
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I’d say Dark Souls 2.
When you get to the area with the bazillion spitting statues that respawn when you do, it became very clear that Fromsoft was out of ideas for making the game both interesting AND challenging.
it’s dark souls 2, so there must be 2 of everything!
Dark souls 2 was definitely the weakest of all From games, this coming from someone with ~4000 hous in ds 1, 1-2k hours in ds3 and Sekiro
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Ubisoft style open world games. I honestly know I’m not built to enjoy them but I convinced myself to try and finish Horizon Zero Dawn and it was a huge mistake.
For a single player game, it vigorously wastes your time. The entire game is based around crafting but each time you need to gather something you need to come to a full stop, and spend a second watching the interact meter fill before you can gather each thing you see in the overworld.
The talent trees either contain things that are not meaningfully impactful on the core experience, ie tons of talents are slightly dressed up raw damage increases. Or they are things that are meaningful, but not surprising such as silent takedowns or bullet time. Overall it feels like Aloy was designed to be kind of fun and then they hamstrung her in a bunch of different ways to give a reason for the talent system to exist, and it takes the runtime of the whole game to undo this.
Many quests do not have anything to say about the lore or characterization of the world, whether it be for individual characters or the world overall.
The first thing I do in games like that is Zerg Rush to all the towers needed to open the map and unlock fast travel.
Once you do that, the rest of the game becomes a lot easier.
Yeah basically open worlds that exist purely to have tons of repetitive tasks.
Same here re: Ubisoft cookie cutter open worlds. I LOVED the first ~40 hours of Immortals and thought I was approaching the end until I realized I was less than halfway at the rate I was progressing. I have no idea how length estimates like the ones on How Long to Beat are accurate for this game; usually they’re pretty spot on for my “complete what I find fun and interesting and not much else” play style. I gave up on the game after briefly skimming FAQs to see what I had left.
Before I say this I do admit I am in the wrong, and that an overwhelming majority of people love this game, and I understand that on an objective level it was both ground breaking and excellent.
I cannot, for the life of me, enjoy breath of the wild due to weapons breaking. I played maybe 5 hours? I got excited when I found a cool sword, and then proceeded to never use it because I was afraid to “waste” it. (and repeat that with new weapons, to save which I have to go find some little seed people to have more inventory slots?)
I understand that they want me to try new things, but for me, for some reason, it just wasn’t fun. I want to be excited when I find new loot, not anxious. Maybe it’s because I grew up with Diablo-like games, where accumulating loot was the fun part, but I can’t seem to enjoy it when the game takes toys away from me.
I loved BOTW as a generic open world adventure game. It was probably the worst “Zelda” entry outside of the CD-i games though.
I just pretend that it wasn’t one at all.
The weapons breaking thing along with incredibly repetitive and boring enemies made me avoid all fights not absolutely necessary.
The boss fights - few and far between though they were - were good.
I had hoped that the new one would fix all of the previous one’s issues but as people like us are in the minority it seems that they kept the formula the same. I’m not sure if I’ll even play it.
They did address it in the new one.
Now weapons are all (mostly) shitty, but you can accumulate up to 999 each of powerful attachments to your weapons. If your powerful silver bokoblin sword broke, find another shitty weapon and attach one of the silver bokoblin horns to it that you have. Attaching also makes the durability significantly higher.
Thank you for sharing… but this doesn’t inspire confidence.
Better? Maybe. Good? Not really.
I’m sure I’ll eventually make my way to it, but I’m in no hurry to play it.
Maybe when the Switch 2 comes out?!
Maybe I didn’t explain it properly. I did hate the BOTW system but really enjoy the new one. You still feel like you need to switch your tactics up regularly but you don’t need to go hunting for good weapons anymore.
Well that sounds a lot better!
You are not in the wrong for not enjoying a video game. A person’s level of subjective enjoyment can and will differ from objective quality.
That’s a fair point, I just know it’s a common contrarian take and wanted to distance myself a little from that. I meant that I am aware I’m in the minority on it, it’s not a purely bad feature, just one that doesn’t work for me.
I rented Sim Earth for SNES and it didn’t come with instructions. I had no idea what to do, and it was confusing and frustrating.
Maybe not the most unfun game I have ever played (I’ve played games since the late 90s), but certainly the most unfun I have played in recent years: Elex.
I liked Piranha Bytes’ old Gothic series a lot despite its weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. The Risen games weren’t that great, but the reviews for Elex were pretty promising. So I gave it a shot, and tried for about 16 hours to find the fun in it. I stopped playing when I realised:
So yeah, no fun to be had with this one.
I bought ARK because dinosaurs. That is the only thing it has going for it. The core gameplay loop is watching a progress bar fill up.
I also got ARK for the dinosaurs. I’m fine with watching a progress bar fill up, so I hope I didn’t waste my money.
Got into super breeding. Maxed out damage and health and got a lot into speed on my rexes. Its very rewardimg being able to 1 or 2 shot a 150 rex. Takes like a month+ to get anywhere with it. That rex with those stats took like a year of breeding
I have 2,500 hours in Ark.
The thing is Ark isn’t a dino game, it’s a scifi survival/exploration game. You start from nothing and work towards conquering the island and discovering it’s secrets.
I really hope you like it. To me it is best played with friends on a private server, or a server with good rules and active admins.
Most of the games of my childhood - they exclusively came from the <$5 bin 🙃 at least we had a PlayStation 2 but Crazy Frog Racer 2, Frogger: The Great Quest, Zathura, Animal Soccer World, and Street Vert Dirt are noteworthy “highlights”.
Crazy frog and its sequel were genuinely good racing games for the time. I enjoyed them a lot. Split screen was awesome.
In recent memory the two that have stood out to me are Risk of Rain 2 and Halo 4. I thought some 3rd-person action in the former would be fun but I found the core loop and overall shooting boring after a couple run attempts so I guess it just didn’t click for me.
Now Halo 4… I think gameplay in that title is an exercise in tedium. Add on (what is in my opinion as:) poor AI, a bit too much melodrama, dumb retcons, “do X three times!” a bit much and I got a campaign that felt like a chore and haven’t touched it since I left off at the level with the Mammoth. The Prometheans are a pain to fight and I felt funneled into making do with Forerunner weapons to take ranged potshots at Watchers above all other targets and then rushing to kill the one Knight I was targeting before it regenerates, also above all other targets. Yuck. (Update: Coming back here since it occurred to me that I could sum it up as: my ability to make mid-combat decisions and play in the sandbox was kneecapped by poor enemy and maaaybe level design respectively.)
Good music though.
I tried Dark Souls once, I think it was DS3. I can’t figure out what would make it fun for anyone.
The thing about the From Software games is that they’re (mostly) fair. Most action games give the player a huge leg up compared to the enemies - the boss has a glowing weakpoint that can be revealed with the item you found in the dungeon - or you’re a badass cyborg assassin vs rank and file goons.
In Dark Souls, you’re just a stubborn dude with a sword - and even the lowliest enemy can take you out if you get careless. But everyone is playing by the same rules, it sucks when an enemy staggers you and hits you while you can’t move - but you can figure out how to do the same to them. And the bosses really are doing everything in their power to make you dead.
The satisfaction of Dark Souls comes from meeting those challenges head on and beating them at their own game - or being clever enough to bypass or weaken the obstacle. It’s not for everybody, and it’s certainly not for anybody all the time - but it’s pretty awesome when you get to be David finally taking down Goliath.
I just wrapped up the last one on my list: Sekiro.
It wasn’t as hard as everyone makes it out to be but that could be due to my having previously gone through Bloodborne and learned how to be aggressive.
All of their games are superbly fun but it did take me a lot of tries for it to click.
I started out terrible at them - and frankly am still nothing special - but am super glad that I persevered.
While I have other favorites as well, the Soulsborne will always rank at the top of my list for gaming perfection.
Stardew valley - it sells itself as a harvest moon inspired farming Sim but as someone who grew up playing a lot of harvest moon, I really can’t help but be super disappointed in it. Harvest moon games have a complex and more importantly moving relationship system - you start to go after one marriage candidate, the others will pair themselves up and have kids alongside you. People move in and out and you need to really get to know people in order to progress the game and unlock things. Stardew valley? Super flat in comparison. All the candidates you don’t marry feel super flat once you lock yourself out of them. There’s not much locked behind friendship so there’s less reason to get out there and really work on befriending everyone.
Also fucking combat - it’s a supposedly nice and peaceful farming Sim, yet combat is an unavoidable part of the game. I didn’t sign up for combat! It’s not fun it’s just annoying.
I actually have a mod for Stardew where the other NPCs have relationship progression with each other if I don’t get in the way!
I’ve been doing a challenge run on Stardew where I never ever engage in combat or go into the mines. Going pretty well, actually, except for the part where I get stuck on acquiring any quartz. Aside from that I think I completed the rest of the Community Center and a lot of what the game has to offer. It’s possible to avoid combat and still have game to play.
Still, don’t force yourself to play if you don’t want to—this isn’t an “I addressed all your concerns about why you dislike the game, so you have to go play it now with the mods I mentioned for your dislike to be valid anymore” type comment (and I didn’t address the part about Harvest Moon requiring you to develop relationships to progress and unlock things while Stardew doesn’t absolutely require relationships to progress… although relationships will also unlock things). I’m not trying to insist that you have to try Stardew with 384828 different permutations of mods before you’re allowed to say it’s not for you.
Games usually have to grab me pretty quickly, or I just drop them, so I don’t play a lot of unfun games for a long time.
Some exceptions were Final Fantasy 13, and to some extent the most of the Trails series (Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel).
Final Fantasy 13 I just tried a bunch of times, put in a combined 40h over the course of like three attempts, I don’t know why, but it was just mediocre at best. During the final one last year, I made it about halfway through, and actually got turned off from gaming altogether for a few months. The story sucked, as well as the characters. I thought the combat could be interesting, even with the auto-battles, since you’d have to decide what “stance” your characters were in, but it was just lame for the most part.
The Trails series is a bit different. I actually liked the gameplay (turn-based JRPG combat is fun), but the story and especially the villains are just complete garbage. Two years ago, before Cold Steel 4 came out on PC, I sat down and played through all the games in like two months. While Trails in the Sky is trash, I was actually surprised to really, really like Zero and (to a little bit lesser extent) Azure. Those gave me hope, but Trails of Cold Steel just goes back to being terrible. I might still go back and play Cold Steel 4 and whatever other games continue or maybe finally finish the story, just because I’ve invested too much time at this point.
Vampire Survivor.
I began playing it after so much praise from all over the place and it just uses predatory tactics to hook the gamer. I only had fun with the game for maybe a day or so but overall clocked in many more hours of hate-playing. The only good thing is that the developer (who’s background is developing gambling games) does not use those tactics for microtransactions.
Once I deleted the game, I was never even tempted to go back.
Here’s a big question though
What’s the difference between predatory tactics to hook people into a game, and “normal” gameplay, whatever that is? If neither cost any money or have microtransactions in any way?
Is Diablo 2 using predatory mechanics? Is Counter Strike? Is Factorio?
Games are artificial constructs. If you deconstruct them entirely, unless they got some story to tell as the center point of the game, their mechanics and goals are entirely artificial and constructed to get you to keep playing, be engaged, and have fun, whatever that means and implies.
Because, well, in the end, games do not have a grand purpose. Their purpose is entertainment(or be art, but not all games have that goal). And so if vampire survivors keep you engaged and enjoy the game… Is that really that much different to other games? Another example to this are idle/incremental games, as a pure distillation of what games are. Are they predatory? Is there really much difference from the very core of other, more “proper”, games?
A game can offer an experience that leaves the player feeling satisfied or at least content with how they spent their time. There is a large space of possible interactive experiences that extend far beyond the simple dichotomy of fun vs educational or productive.
A game can certainly be considered predatory if it exploits psychological vulnerabilities to hook someone on engaging gameplay that gives the player very little in return in terms of fulfillment or mental recovery. Whether or not it takes the opportunity to swindle the player on top of that is a matter of degree in severity. Wasting a player’s time (or worse, induce stress or other harmful mental states for no good reason) is not a particularly nice thing to do.
Really? I guess you could consider the game’s visual flair to be predatory that way but I always felt that stuff was a joke because it doesn’t have microtransactions
I’m not seeing how anything in the game could be considered predatory in the slightest…super confused on this.
Aren’t vampires predatory by definition though?
Predatory usually implies that you’re being lured in to buy something, but the game has no microtransactions. At its worst the mobile version (which is free) has the option to watch an ad to get 1 revive per run. Don’t watch the ad? The game is the same as the console/PC version.
I think the lights, sounds, slaughtering massive hordes of enemies with overwhelming damage, and constant dopamine rush from them could certainly be predatory in nature if they were used to bait you into buying microtransactions, but that’s not the case here. I see where they’re coming from, but I can’t necessarily agree.
Sure, he worked in the sector, but that’s because he couldn’t find better jobs. What you’re implying here is really unfair, especially considering there aren’t even any microtransactions in the game. As far as I know, he just made a game that he felt was fun.
I’ve got one - Hotline Miami 2.
Hotline Miami 1 was such a fantastic game. Frantic, high energy, fun, good art style, a confusing at best story but that’s not why you played it. HM2 was full of off-screen instant kill bullshit that you literally could not prepare for in any way other than to die to it a handful of times before you memorized enemy positions off-screen. In the first game, you could always see threats before they could kill you. Not the case in the sequel. “You died and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it” is a bullshit mechanic in any game.
I loved the first one, but couldn’t get into the second. Didn’t really like the other characters too.
most multiplayer shooters to me, they’re typically filled with the most vile shit you’ll ever hear coming from an 8 year old, and the adults are just as bad and should know better.
competitive shooters like Rainbow Six Siege or Counter Strike are also really bad in casual modes, especially if you’re a new or lackluster player. You’ll be flamed, team killed, and your teammates will try their absolute best to ruin your entire day over a hobby
I would be fine with all of that if they didn’t also have the power to kick you from the match
Where baby’s first swear word becomes baby’s first racial slur! Does Mommy know you talk like that on the PSBox?
Trying to get into those as a newbie is miserable dor all those reasons and also because, unless maybe if you get in right when the game first comes out, your competitors will be far more comfortable with the mechanics and have memorized the maps and so on. It’s especially bad if you’re a newbie to multiplayer shooters a whole, even if you’re good at single player shooters. It becomes and exercise in: spawn, die, respawn, die… Super frustrating to begin with. And then people insult you. Noooot something I find worth bothering with for a thing that’s supposed to be enjoyable in my free time.
It’s like that with every competitive game.
You see other people playing it and think “wow, that’s cool. I wanna try it”, only to be welcomed by what you just described. Your success then depends on whether you have a hard skin to endure the bullshit, or if you’re social enough to have others play with you that won’t dismiss everything you do so easily. More often than not we don’t have the patience/ability for either.