ShreddieMercury

Game of the year no question.  The fact that this exists at all is a miracle, let alone that that they seemingly knocked it out of the park in every respect.

This sounds like my impression of playing Mario Galaxy for the first time, which is my favorite ever game.  Mario is video games.  Everything else really pales in comparison to experiencing a new mainline Mario release.

Yeah the light gun games are great on the system.  I still think it's got the best controller and control scheme of any console.  The pointer is genius and wasn't really used to it's full potential outside of Nintendo's first party games.

I'd be looking at either model really.  I don't have any gamecube stuff (sadly).

Bummer.  He's responsible for a handful of my favorite games.  I'd wager that he doesn't want to make live service stuff, which it sounds like is where Platinum (and most other developers) are trying to pivot.

I've been thinking about getting another Wii as I still have several games but no system at this point.  I could go the eBay route but would rather not if I can get it from somewhere more reliable.

Sounds healthy to me.  You could also try older games, which are fun.  Most new games are depressing skinner boxes solely designed to eat your life and then make you feel empty.

Uhhh, the UI is totally fine and takes about 30 seconds to understand.  You can go into settings and set the console to completely shut off rather than remain in standby when you turn it off, which you will then do by holding the central Xbox button... and selecting shut off... just like the other consoles.  You should absolutely do this, as it conserves energy, and the console will still download things in this state.

Xbox had an absolutely incredible backwards compatibility program.  Tons of amazing games have been enhanced visually, and in some cases have had frame rates boosted/stabilized.  If you have an HDR capable television, I would go into settings and enable both HDR10 and Dolby Vision (the latter works and looks better).  Most older games have had auto-HDR applied, which offers a significant visual improvement from my experience.

The other thing you will notice is quick resume, which keeps games suspended so that you can hop between several at a time with only a few seconds of loading.  This is the best feature on any of the current consoles.

Modern games generally haven't been able to reconcile their desire to tell stories with the fact that the player has agency and that the gameplay needs to be fun.  The less they try to tell stories, the better video games are in my opinion.  I think "interactive entertainment" is actually great branding for Sony, because I don't find what they put out at this point to really fit the definition of a "game".

2 hours ago, stepee said:

It’s so annoying because you have to remember which Yakuza games have which arcade games you want to play. I don’t know why we can’t just get a model2/3 collection. Make like 4 collections and charge $60 each just do it FUCK.

Agreed.  I don't really understand why they haven't perpetually released these games.  Is it really time consuming/expensive to just swap assets?  Music licensing isn't a problem because it's all (incredible) in-house tracks, so it's just the car models and names at this point. 

Outrun 2 deserves its own special re-release with all of the content from the various iterations of the game (Xbox original, Outrun2 SP, Coast 2 Coast, etc.).  For a collection, my dream would be Sega Rally Championship, Daytona USA 2, and SCUD Race. 

44 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Should've been Outrun 2

Didn't know you were a fan!  Have you played with the FXT mod?

Huge news that is amazing and also somehow sucks.  Daytona USA 2 is one of the greatest arcade racers ever, and it never received a console port.  It is supposedly emulated inside of the new Yakuza game, titled "Sega Racing Classic 2".  I know we are not sharing twitter links but it was confirmed this morning.  I'll take what I can get, but I'm still waiting on the day that we get enhanced ports of Sega Rally, Outrun 2, and Scud Race.  All have licensing issues, but it seems Daytona USA 2 was likely the easiest to navigate since the name is only referenced in the title screen, and the cars are generic.

My favorite definition of art is that it's anything that moves you.  But the distinction itself is fairly meaningless.

I also find that the more self-consciously artful games try to be, the less effective and interesting they are.  I've found myself moving farther and farther away from games that are reaching for prestige.  Games like God of War being so self serious is very amusing, and they ring hollow for me.  It seems like lots of modern games want to escape what makes them great, which is that they're games and not movies. 

4 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Why don’t you want to play it?

I have more limited time for games now with a young daughter, and find myself gravitating towards simpler games and stuff that I can hop quickly in and out of (lots of racing games at the moment).  I also find my patience and energy dwindle when I'm presented with extensive menus, stats, and skill trees, so these big RPG's are tough for me at this point

I understand the complaints about the minute-to-minute gameplay systems in Bethesda's games, but the sum of these parts has always (for me) resulted in some of the most immersive and fun experiences across all of games.  It's easy to pick apart Skyrim in a granular way, but much harder to articulate how epic and fun the experience of playing the game is once you sink into it.

This game looks incredible.  I won't be playing it, but I'm happy for people who love big, meaty RPG games.  These seem rarer now, and between this and BG3, it's an amazing year for the genre.

11 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

This is not an indictment of anyone in this thread. 
 

Just wanted to say people freaking out over a numbered score to a game they have not played is some of the most loser shit ever to me. 

Agreed, and it's wild to me how far back this goes.  Browsing reviews from 20 years ago will give you the same exact kind of comments and arguments, with the difference being that they're even more vitriolic and higher in volume now.

22 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I don't think games are more layered than other works of art or literature, many of which have been the subject of critical analysis for decades or centuries. Even if we assume that's true, there is plenty of focused criticism that doesn't endeavor to look at the totality of a body of work and zooms in on a specific setting, character, or motif. When places do that, again, gamers inevitably pivot to the, "you said you like waffles, clearly you've neglected pancakes," perspective despite it being perfectly okay for someone to JUST talk about the gaming equivalent of waffles. I could go on but while I think gaming is unique because of its interactive nature I don't think it's that way to the extent to invalidate traditional critical analysis.

 

Besides I think it's vitally important to talk about the "often unintentional" political implications. Implicit biases, specific ethnocentric perspectives, etc.,  SHOULD be challenged or at the very least be called out. It says something when gamers get bent out of shape when people of color show up in Eurocentric fantasy settings but not when potatoes and tomatoes are all over the place. It says something that space exploration games often imply or overtly state that entire planets or star systems exist solely for obviously Western styled space programs to colonize, conquer, and plunder. That indigenous lifeforms mainly exist to slaughter for crafting resources or as a barrier to civilization.

 

I play and enjoy plenty of games like this, but the default gamer response to a lot of this criticism is that, "games need conflict," which is telling that we often see shooting people in the face or taking their land and resources as the "default" ways to make conflict. That SHOULD be looked at.

 

You are right on, and the sinister colonialism that's part of basically all western game design now deserves a serious look.  Also guns.  The difference I'm trying to draw here, and why I think games are more nuanced, is that they can contain both Tetris and Life and Strange, Rez and Papers, Please.  In some of the best games (and my favorite) in the entire medium, the interactivity alone is the game.  In others, that same tactile, core interactivity is not integral (or is at least secondary) to the experience.  How can you reconcile that with the exact same critical approach?

You've written very articulately in the past about games like The Last of Us, which are desperate to be taken seriously and think they have something to say, only to be gamified outside of their cutscenes by collectibles and achievements that are discordant with their themes. 

I think that's why game criticism is in a tough spot.  Anything is possible within games, which makes them amazing and worthwhile while also terrifying and often disappointing.  But effectively criticizing something as multi-dimensional as a video game from all possible angles, including whatever embedded societal and economic oppression they may represent, seems an impossible and thankless task in an environment where the general audience is terminally online and misinformed.  Not that it shouldn't be done, and often, but I do think the context is important.

I've written all of this and don't even know if it's making much sense.  My main issue is with aggregate review scores, and my frustration with simultaneously how pointless they are yet how much weight they carry.  Games deserve better than this system, but it's not going anywhere.

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Recognize the limitations of the Steam Deck -- it is great as a handheld, and can play less demanding stuff at 1080p.

 

But, I wouldn't expect to play current AAA stuff on a TV with decent frame rates.

For sure.  I'm not interested in lots of new, AAA graphical powerhouse type games.  I mostly play older stuff, mixed with indies and emulation.  It seems like it would be a pretty great device for that stuff.

1 minute ago, Paperclyp said:

Eh I don’t think Starfield is in a particularly unfortunate spot. I mean, what exactly are the expectations that you don’t think it’ll hit? 
 

I think it's the fact that it can be argued as the first premier, first-party exclusive for Xbox after a severe dry spell, releasing at the tail end of a phenomenal year for games, in a genre (space?) where people's expectations are generally very unrealistic.  Maybe that's overblown, but it feels like the temperature of this game has been continually rising, and Microsoft surely has very high expectations for the game's performance given the long development cycle and extreme QA effort.

I'm honestly not interested in playing the game, and don't have the time for something this sprawling, but the conversation around it even pre-release has been quite the ride.  I expect the reviews to be highly dramatic, and I can't wait.

6 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

Yes as long as your monitor supports usbc you can just plug direct, but there is only one usb c port on the deck, so either way you’d probably want to get a dock.

Oh cool, I didn't realize there was a dock!  Thinking about getting one of these so I can play Steam stuff on my television.  I assume there is good controller support too?

77?

Can you plug a Steam Deck into a monitor or a television?

12 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

It exists to an extent, just rarely at mainstream outlets.

 

Besides, whenever one of the bigs publishes something that even has a whiff of "think piece" about it they immediately get dragged for "bringing politics into games" or some other such nonsense. If it's not grist for the hype mill, the market for it is small. We see that here, even, when someone like Polygon writes something about representation in games and people cop to not reading or say that the whole outlet has "an agenda."

 

 

True, but I also think that the problem is that games are so layered that it's a tall task to evaluate them in total, and too much is still misunderstood about them.  Some outlets are desperate to attach some grander meaning or theme to games (Waypoint was very guilty of this) while ignoring things that don't serve that purpose, and they only tackle games from this one specific angle.  Are we reviewing the story only?  The technical performance?  The (often unintentional) political implications?  God forbid, the gameplay?  I don't envy anybody covering games at this stage, because more than ever they deserve the type of nuance and critical thought that their general audience is either dismissive or outright hostile toward.

Starfield is in a very unfortunate spot.  If Microsoft had better handled the last generation and the start of this one in terms of first party output, there wouldn't be half as much riding on this game as there is now.  Given that it's Xbox's first high profile exclusive since the tremendously disappointing Halo Infinite, and that the corporate drama in between these releases has been astronomical, expectations are out of control and there is no way to meet them, no matter how good the game is.  I'm guessing that this will end up being a very good, bordering on great game in the typical Bethesda mold, but given everything up to now, its fate is to be an extreme flashpoint in the inane world of modern gaming discourse.

AAA video game criticism doesn't exist.  It's all marketing because gamers can't read.

The hullabaloo around this game is hilarious.  It's quite the inflection point for the console wars and it's glorious to behold.

On one hand, big cool mechs.  On the other, developed by Fromsoft.

Still waiting for a MechAssault reboot.

Definitely a few words here I don't recognize so I'll need to educate myself.