9 ms·

It really is incredible. I've been playing through my childhood games on retro handhelds, and recently jumped from <$100 handhelds to a Retroid Pocket Flip, and

It really is incredible. I've been playing through my childhood games on retro handhelds, and recently jumped from <$100 handhelds to a Retroid Pocket Flip, and it's incredible. Been playing WiiU and PS2 games flawlessly at 2x res, and even tackling some lighter Switch games on it.

reactordev 8mo ago
It truly is. My issue though, like in 2010 when I built an arcade cabinet capable of playing everything is you eventually just run out of interest. In it all. Not even the nostalgia of it keeps my attention. With the exception of just a small handful of titles. - Excite Bike (it’s in its own league) NES - Punchout (good arcade fun) NES - TMNT 4-P Coop Mame Version - NBA Jam Mame Version - Secret of Mana SNES - Chronotrigger SNES - Breath of Fire 2 SNES - Mortal Kombat Series SEGA32X - FF Tactics PS1 I know these can all be basically run in a browser at this point but even Switch or Dreamcast games were meh. N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.
- wahnfrieden 8mo ago
  The Demons Souls lineage titles are another valuable innovation (I understand the earlier inspirations it had but those aren't playable like these modern ones) For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros
- irishcoffee 8mo ago
  > N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters. I was a kid when ps1/n64 came out so I also have a lot of nostalgia about that era of gaming. However… There are a ton of great games out there from this era. Hell, the Uncharted series and Expedition 33 will get you 100-200 hours of excellent gameplay, Elden ring is another 200. Lies of P is a fantastic game, 50-100 more. The star wars Legos and star wars Harry Potter games are a lot of fun to play with kids, and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the Zelda games we wanted on n64 as a kid, I love those games. And they’re not a rehash, at all. There’s a lot of fun things out there to play if you poke around. Your local library might surprise you with the collection for completely free games you can borrow. Modern games even.
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    Money is not the limiting factor. I agree there are many games and tons of hours of content available. That is never my issue. There’s lot of games. Games I play. I see the same mechanics in all of them. Some of them because there’s no better way to do it given our current input scheme, others, because they did it. As my kids are now grown, I no longer play kids games like Lego or Zelda (although I do recommend you play them, they are fun) but my argument about peak gaming was that we were still pushing the boundaries of what was possible, hardware wise even. Today, it’s more standardized, polished, refined, as we developed PBR rendering pipelines to recreate realism. My hill I’ll die on is that after that era, it’s been mostly rehashed franchises and game design we have seen before. Yes we have new stories, new graphics, new characters, but you’re still “kill X monsters” or “loot X from Y” style task rabbits. I am jaded because I know we can do better, it’s just the people who hold the purse won’t let us. We have pushed technology but we have been limited in how far we can push narratives and reality. This gap is closing though. As for storytelling, there are some great stories out there, some predictable ones as well. The freedom of choice in games like Last of Us and Tell Tale Series helped push that a little further but we are still constrained to a linear timeline of events like it’s a movie or a book. Even games where it makes no sense to have it, has it as a way to tracking your level, or progress, or what areas you can visit. Some stories should be told linearly. Some stories shouldn’t be. There was a time when you were given just enough narrative to understand the world you were in, but nothing more. Your story was your own making.
    - erfgh 8mo ago
      You don't play Zelda because your kids are grown? What kind of logic is this?
      - reactordev 8mo ago
        I find the game design to be lacking. Not that they aren’t fun. Not that I dislike Link. It’s just child’s play. I mostly played those titles with my kids when they were little. My kids loved Zelda Breath of Wild and I told them about my childhood with the golden cartridge.
- mlyle 8mo ago
  For the oldies but goodies in my list: - Any one of the 194_ games - Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past - Super Mario World - Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX - Chrono Trigger (agree) - Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition - Metal Gear Solid 1-3, MGS: Peace Walker But I think there's been good stuff since. - The Super Mario Galaxy games - Super Monkey Ball - MGS4, MGS5 - Witcher 3 - The Bioshock games - Minecraft-- probably the game with the most replay value of anything of all time. I don't know what will stand the test of time. I don't want to play any of these games now, since I've burnt them out, but at some point I'll likely want to play them again... - Undertale - Bravely Default - The Octopath games - Dispatch - AstroBot - Clair Obscur
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition (whichever was the one with the most characters) as well as Street Fighter Alpha were great for the arcade machine. Most of my buddies at the time would come over, have a beer, immediately hang it on the boat-coozy cup holders (the ones that gyro) and go to town shoulder to shoulder playing SF2. The cup holders gyro would prevent the beers from spilling as the arcade cabinet rocked back and forth from two grown men having a virtual fist fight. Best times.
  - sbinnee 8mo ago
    Playing Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of my fondest memories I cherish. I could play it only at Taekwondo gym I was attending to. I couldn't finish it because I only had a couple of hours at the gym and I could play only during break time. Oh and I was always waiting for the break time!
- Novosell 8mo ago
  Outer Wilds, Baba is You, Blue Prince, Hades 1&2, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Clair Obscur, What Remains of Edith Finch, 1000xResist, Return of the Obra Dinn, Roboquest, Rocket League, Dark Souls, etc. I could go on, and on, and... Not rehashes. Original, phenomenal games covering damm near every genre and if there is a genre you're missing, I can find a modern game to match. Do you actually engage with modern games?
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    Ok, I’ll give you Rocket League. That’s an entirely new spin on a genre I didn’t see coming. The rest are just RPGs or platformers you like. Good games, but not innovative. Yes, some new franchises have been born and some successful indie titles have been launched but most of the market share in the games industry is held by the top 5. Yes, I have over 1,000 games in my Steam library going back to 1999. I engage in most games that make the top 500 and have so since I was a teenager making games myself.
    - mietek 8mo ago
      So, is Outer Wilds a RPG or a platformer?
      - reactordev 8mo ago
        Open world game but also a mystery game as we’re a couple others mentioned above. Those go back to Carmen San Diego and Sherlock homes series. Open World, we’ve seen plenty of those.
        Rohansi 8mo ago
        Comparing Outer Wilds to Sherlock Holmes is way too big of a stretch for me. There are mysteries in both, yes, but it's the mystery of the (game's) universe vs. crimes. I'm curious if you think this way about movies/TV too. It's very strange to me to just dilute things down to their genre(s) and then expect innovation to come out as new genres.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  Paradox of choice. When you were single digit/low double years old, and you only had 3 games, you had to play the shit out of them. With every game available at your fingertips, there's no such compunction.
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    Blockbuster and Funco Land gave me all the titles I could get my 7 year old fingers on.
  - surgical_fire 8mo ago
    Renting games was a thing. I had about 30 SNES games, and likely played more than 200. What really happens when talking about retro games is that people remember the remarkable stuff. There were plenty of shitty games back then, they are just rightly forgotten.
- techpression 8mo ago
  What? Dreamcast was a marvel when it came to games, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, Power Stone, Jet Set Radio, Grandia, SoulCalibur etc.
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    SoulCalibur was better on PlayStation. Dreamcast’s only hit was Crazy Taxi.
    - egypturnash 8mo ago
      Jet Set Radio Spiritual Sequel is getting to be its own genre at this point.
    - ahartmetz 8mo ago
      I've heard great things about Shenmue from a friend. Probably not my kind of game, but very highly rated by critics.
    - Grazester 8mo ago
      Say way? Crazy Taxi? The Dreamcast had an amazing library! Sonic Adventures Shenmue(1,2), Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia, Virtua Tennis, Entire 2k sports series, Samba de Amigo, House of the dead, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive 2, Jet Grind Radio, Test Drive LeMans, F355 Challenge, Rez, ...the list goes one The weird yet cool games Roommania, Segaga, Seaman Of course many of these games got ported over later on the other consoles or had sequels release on system after the Dreamcast's demise
      - techpression 8mo ago
        The Dreamcast had some of the most innovative games by far, Samba de Amigo and Rez was unheard of in your home before DC and laid the foundation for many games. We also got dance mats for the home. When someone says Crazy Taxi was the only hit I can only assume they haven’t played much at all, or is using some weird sales metric, by which all games were terrible on the DC because of how terrible SEGA did marketing.
- haunter 8mo ago
  >The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died lol There are countless already classic modern story driven games which pushing the boundaries of video games forward. I know nostalgia is a very strong drug and I also love the games I grew up with in the 90s but it's pure ignorance to say that 1, "storytelling died" 2, no innovation happened in video games in modern times (whatever that even means)
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    You are misconstruing my love for nostalgia games for when you think I believe storytelling died. It didn’t die in the 90s, it died in 2010s. Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line or it didn’t ever materialize to begin with.
    - gambiting 8mo ago
      >>Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line Be honest- you guessed the plot of Claire Obscure before you got to Act 3? Or the plot of Death Stranding 1 & 2 before you finished them? What kind of games have you played since 2018? Because yeah, there is a lot of predictable cookie cutter AAA games out there, sure. But each year there are games which are surprising in their storytelling, same as somehow there are still new and surprising films despite film being much older than gaming. Not to mention books.
      - reactordev 8mo ago
        Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t. By Act 2 the story was already falling apart. The game just leaves you feeling depressed. I guess since you felt something that makes it GOTY.
        gambiting 8mo ago
        >Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t. Ok, so you haven't played it then. I mean just say so, instead of making things up?
- RGamma 8mo ago
  Baldur's Gate 3 has awesome story telling for video game standards. Plan 100+ hours for a reasonably complete first playthrough though.
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    My least favorite story of the Baldur’s Gates. Sorry. I gave it a 6/10 on Steam.
    - RGamma 8mo ago
      Guess I'll have to play the other BGs next...
  - vunderba 8mo ago
    Glad to hear the love for BG3. Grew up playing Black Isle games (BG1 and BG2) so it was nice to play against a substantially more intelligent AI that couldn't be cheesed nearly as hard due to the new turn-based combat as well. For reference in case anyone "@" me on that cause rose-tinted glasses make people blind: No one remembers using Animate Dead (a third-level priest spell with no summon limit) to summon a skeletal warrior and walking them up to the enemy's camp/ambush? Enemy wizards proceed to waste EVERY memorized spell on a f###ing summon - and half the spells are charm/control spells that are completely ineffective against undead anyway. Isn't intelligence supposed to be the prime ability score of a wizard? :)
    - RGamma 8mo ago
      To be fair BG3 is not without its AI problems. Be it stupid companions walking into danger or getting stuck or enemies that do nonsensical things. It also has a ton of glitches as detailed in the excellent bg3.wiki or shown by speedrunners. It's a complex game and I don't mind that whatsoever. With games I like I generally tread a careful path to not accidentally break it too badly (though there's also intended ways to break the game, like sacrificing Gale to BOOOAL and having the world blow up in three long rests, or destroying an important book in Gauntlet of Shar). Crashes have been few. Also, without the wiki I wouldn't have enjoyed my first playthrough thus far as much as I do as it's really easy to miss things. Kinda intrigued by BG1/2 now.
- chongli 8mo ago
  If you're struggling with keeping your attention, you ought to try making a list of games you never finished (or never played) and commit yourself to playing through them in order. I have been doing that with NES games and really enjoying it. I alternate between RPGs/adventures and action games, to mix things up a bit. Recently, I have played through Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior, Blaster Master, and am now working through Fire Emblem (translated from Japanese).
- bluescrn 8mo ago
  It's called getting older. As a grown adult, nothing can recreate the feeling of exploring a new game as a child/teen. Especially during the 80s/90s, where gaming as a whole was new and rapidly-evolving. But revisiting old favourites for the nostalgia can still be enjoyable.
- leguminous 8mo ago
  I disagree. There are some new (sub-) genres and great games since that period. * Roguelites have proliferated: Hades is the most obvious example, but there are a variety of sub-genres at this point. * Vampire Survivors (itself a roguelite) spawned survivors-likes. Megabonk is currently pretty popular. * Slay the Spire kicked off a wave of strategy roguelites. * There are "cozy" games like Unpacking. * I don't recall survival games like Subnautica or Don't Starve being much of a thing in the PS2 era. * There are automation games like Factorio and Satisfactory. * Casual mobile games are _huge_. * There are more experimental games, sometimes in established genres, like Inscription, Undertale, or Baba Is You. Not to mention that new games in existing genres can be great. Hollow Knight is a good example. Metroidvanias were established by the SNES and PS1 era, but Hollow Knight really upped the stakes. I'm sure I'm forgetting things and people will have some criticism, but I really don't believe games have stagnated in general.
  - jerf 8mo ago
    "Roguelites have proliferated" I know it's easy to feel that this is people chasing trends, but I've really come to appreciate roguelites over many of the PS2 era games because they give me real progression in a single play session, but also, that single play session is discardable. As an adult this is a very compelling proposition. In the PS2 era, while you can find some early roguelite-like-things, you tended to have either the games that have no interesting progression (arcade-like) and the you would just play the game, or you had very long scale games like JRPGs that slowly trickle out the progression but are also multi-dozen-hour games. Compressing the progression into something that happens in a small number of hours, yet eliminates the "I'm 50 hours into this game that I stopped 2 years ago, do I want to pick it back up if I've forgotten everything?" has been very useful to me. This has been a fairly significant change in gaming for me. I still have some investment into the higher end JRPGs but the "roguelite" pattern across all sorts of genres has been wonderful overall. I don't even think of it as a genre anymore; it's a design tool, like 'turn based versus real time'.
    - YurgenJurgensen 8mo ago
      Roguelites are the worst thing to happen to video games since microtransactions. It’s an extremely attractive option to the cash-strapped indie dev, as it promises infinite ‘content’ for little development effort, but what it’s really done is turned every game into a combination of cookie clicker and a slot machine. The fact that you think arcade games have “no interesting progression” shows just how toxic the roguelike design pattern is. The progression in arcade games is you getting better at the game. If a game needs a “progress system” to communicate a sense of accomplishment to the player, that’s because the gameplay is shallow.

reactordev 8mo ago

It truly is. My issue though, like in 2010 when I built an arcade cabinet capable of playing everything is you eventually just run out of interest. In it all. Not even the nostalgia of it keeps my attention. With the exception of just a small handful of titles. - Excite Bike (it’s in its own league) NES - Punchout (good arcade fun) NES - TMNT 4-P Coop Mame Version - NBA Jam Mame Version - Secret of Mana SNES - Chronotrigger SNES - Breath of Fire 2 SNES - Mortal Kombat Series SEGA32X - FF Tactics PS1 I know these can all be basically run in a browser at this point but even Switch or Dreamcast games were meh. N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.

wahnfrieden 8mo ago
The Demons Souls lineage titles are another valuable innovation (I understand the earlier inspirations it had but those aren't playable like these modern ones) For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros
irishcoffee 8mo ago
> N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters. I was a kid when ps1/n64 came out so I also have a lot of nostalgia about that era of gaming. However… There are a ton of great games out there from this era. Hell, the Uncharted series and Expedition 33 will get you 100-200 hours of excellent gameplay, Elden ring is another 200. Lies of P is a fantastic game, 50-100 more. The star wars Legos and star wars Harry Potter games are a lot of fun to play with kids, and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the Zelda games we wanted on n64 as a kid, I love those games. And they’re not a rehash, at all. There’s a lot of fun things out there to play if you poke around. Your local library might surprise you with the collection for completely free games you can borrow. Modern games even.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  Money is not the limiting factor. I agree there are many games and tons of hours of content available. That is never my issue. There’s lot of games. Games I play. I see the same mechanics in all of them. Some of them because there’s no better way to do it given our current input scheme, others, because they did it. As my kids are now grown, I no longer play kids games like Lego or Zelda (although I do recommend you play them, they are fun) but my argument about peak gaming was that we were still pushing the boundaries of what was possible, hardware wise even. Today, it’s more standardized, polished, refined, as we developed PBR rendering pipelines to recreate realism. My hill I’ll die on is that after that era, it’s been mostly rehashed franchises and game design we have seen before. Yes we have new stories, new graphics, new characters, but you’re still “kill X monsters” or “loot X from Y” style task rabbits. I am jaded because I know we can do better, it’s just the people who hold the purse won’t let us. We have pushed technology but we have been limited in how far we can push narratives and reality. This gap is closing though. As for storytelling, there are some great stories out there, some predictable ones as well. The freedom of choice in games like Last of Us and Tell Tale Series helped push that a little further but we are still constrained to a linear timeline of events like it’s a movie or a book. Even games where it makes no sense to have it, has it as a way to tracking your level, or progress, or what areas you can visit. Some stories should be told linearly. Some stories shouldn’t be. There was a time when you were given just enough narrative to understand the world you were in, but nothing more. Your story was your own making.
  - erfgh 8mo ago
    You don't play Zelda because your kids are grown? What kind of logic is this?
    - reactordev 8mo ago
      I find the game design to be lacking. Not that they aren’t fun. Not that I dislike Link. It’s just child’s play. I mostly played those titles with my kids when they were little. My kids loved Zelda Breath of Wild and I told them about my childhood with the golden cartridge.
mlyle 8mo ago
For the oldies but goodies in my list: - Any one of the 194_ games - Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past - Super Mario World - Final Fantasy VI, VII, IX - Chrono Trigger (agree) - Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition - Metal Gear Solid 1-3, MGS: Peace Walker But I think there's been good stuff since. - The Super Mario Galaxy games - Super Monkey Ball - MGS4, MGS5 - Witcher 3 - The Bioshock games - Minecraft-- probably the game with the most replay value of anything of all time. I don't know what will stand the test of time. I don't want to play any of these games now, since I've burnt them out, but at some point I'll likely want to play them again... - Undertale - Bravely Default - The Octopath games - Dispatch - AstroBot - Clair Obscur
- reactordev 8mo ago
  Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition (whichever was the one with the most characters) as well as Street Fighter Alpha were great for the arcade machine. Most of my buddies at the time would come over, have a beer, immediately hang it on the boat-coozy cup holders (the ones that gyro) and go to town shoulder to shoulder playing SF2. The cup holders gyro would prevent the beers from spilling as the arcade cabinet rocked back and forth from two grown men having a virtual fist fight. Best times.
- sbinnee 8mo ago
  Playing Metal Gear Solid 2 was one of my fondest memories I cherish. I could play it only at Taekwondo gym I was attending to. I couldn't finish it because I only had a couple of hours at the gym and I could play only during break time. Oh and I was always waiting for the break time!
Novosell 8mo ago
Outer Wilds, Baba is You, Blue Prince, Hades 1&2, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Clair Obscur, What Remains of Edith Finch, 1000xResist, Return of the Obra Dinn, Roboquest, Rocket League, Dark Souls, etc. I could go on, and on, and... Not rehashes. Original, phenomenal games covering damm near every genre and if there is a genre you're missing, I can find a modern game to match. Do you actually engage with modern games?
- reactordev 8mo ago
  Ok, I’ll give you Rocket League. That’s an entirely new spin on a genre I didn’t see coming. The rest are just RPGs or platformers you like. Good games, but not innovative. Yes, some new franchises have been born and some successful indie titles have been launched but most of the market share in the games industry is held by the top 5. Yes, I have over 1,000 games in my Steam library going back to 1999. I engage in most games that make the top 500 and have so since I was a teenager making games myself.
  - mietek 8mo ago
    So, is Outer Wilds a RPG or a platformer?
    - reactordev 8mo ago
      Open world game but also a mystery game as we’re a couple others mentioned above. Those go back to Carmen San Diego and Sherlock homes series. Open World, we’ve seen plenty of those.
      - Rohansi 8mo ago
        Comparing Outer Wilds to Sherlock Holmes is way too big of a stretch for me. There are mysteries in both, yes, but it's the mystery of the (game's) universe vs. crimes. I'm curious if you think this way about movies/TV too. It's very strange to me to just dilute things down to their genre(s) and then expect innovation to come out as new genres.
fragmede 8mo ago
Paradox of choice. When you were single digit/low double years old, and you only had 3 games, you had to play the shit out of them. With every game available at your fingertips, there's no such compunction.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  Blockbuster and Funco Land gave me all the titles I could get my 7 year old fingers on.
- surgical_fire 8mo ago
  Renting games was a thing. I had about 30 SNES games, and likely played more than 200. What really happens when talking about retro games is that people remember the remarkable stuff. There were plenty of shitty games back then, they are just rightly forgotten.
techpression 8mo ago
What? Dreamcast was a marvel when it came to games, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, Power Stone, Jet Set Radio, Grandia, SoulCalibur etc.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  SoulCalibur was better on PlayStation. Dreamcast’s only hit was Crazy Taxi.
  - egypturnash 8mo ago
    Jet Set Radio Spiritual Sequel is getting to be its own genre at this point.
  - ahartmetz 8mo ago
    I've heard great things about Shenmue from a friend. Probably not my kind of game, but very highly rated by critics.
  - Grazester 8mo ago
    Say way? Crazy Taxi? The Dreamcast had an amazing library! Sonic Adventures Shenmue(1,2), Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia, Virtua Tennis, Entire 2k sports series, Samba de Amigo, House of the dead, Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive 2, Jet Grind Radio, Test Drive LeMans, F355 Challenge, Rez, ...the list goes one The weird yet cool games Roommania, Segaga, Seaman Of course many of these games got ported over later on the other consoles or had sequels release on system after the Dreamcast's demise
    - techpression 8mo ago
      The Dreamcast had some of the most innovative games by far, Samba de Amigo and Rez was unheard of in your home before DC and laid the foundation for many games. We also got dance mats for the home. When someone says Crazy Taxi was the only hit I can only assume they haven’t played much at all, or is using some weird sales metric, by which all games were terrible on the DC because of how terrible SEGA did marketing.
haunter 8mo ago
>The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died lol There are countless already classic modern story driven games which pushing the boundaries of video games forward. I know nostalgia is a very strong drug and I also love the games I grew up with in the 90s but it's pure ignorance to say that 1, "storytelling died" 2, no innovation happened in video games in modern times (whatever that even means)
- reactordev 8mo ago
  You are misconstruing my love for nostalgia games for when you think I believe storytelling died. It didn’t die in the 90s, it died in 2010s. Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line or it didn’t ever materialize to begin with.
  - gambiting 8mo ago
    >>Everything since 2018 that I have played has been relatively easy to guess the plot line Be honest- you guessed the plot of Claire Obscure before you got to Act 3? Or the plot of Death Stranding 1 & 2 before you finished them? What kind of games have you played since 2018? Because yeah, there is a lot of predictable cookie cutter AAA games out there, sure. But each year there are games which are surprising in their storytelling, same as somehow there are still new and surprising films despite film being much older than gaming. Not to mention books.
    - reactordev 8mo ago
      Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t. By Act 2 the story was already falling apart. The game just leaves you feeling depressed. I guess since you felt something that makes it GOTY.
      - gambiting 8mo ago
        >Yup, town plagued by supernatural, everyone depressed, just another Ubisoft title they could have had but didn’t. Ok, so you haven't played it then. I mean just say so, instead of making things up?
RGamma 8mo ago
Baldur's Gate 3 has awesome story telling for video game standards. Plan 100+ hours for a reasonably complete first playthrough though.
- reactordev 8mo ago
  My least favorite story of the Baldur’s Gates. Sorry. I gave it a 6/10 on Steam.
  - RGamma 8mo ago
    Guess I'll have to play the other BGs next...
- vunderba 8mo ago
  Glad to hear the love for BG3. Grew up playing Black Isle games (BG1 and BG2) so it was nice to play against a substantially more intelligent AI that couldn't be cheesed nearly as hard due to the new turn-based combat as well. For reference in case anyone "@" me on that cause rose-tinted glasses make people blind: No one remembers using Animate Dead (a third-level priest spell with no summon limit) to summon a skeletal warrior and walking them up to the enemy's camp/ambush? Enemy wizards proceed to waste EVERY memorized spell on a f###ing summon - and half the spells are charm/control spells that are completely ineffective against undead anyway. Isn't intelligence supposed to be the prime ability score of a wizard? :)
  - RGamma 8mo ago
    To be fair BG3 is not without its AI problems. Be it stupid companions walking into danger or getting stuck or enemies that do nonsensical things. It also has a ton of glitches as detailed in the excellent bg3.wiki or shown by speedrunners. It's a complex game and I don't mind that whatsoever. With games I like I generally tread a careful path to not accidentally break it too badly (though there's also intended ways to break the game, like sacrificing Gale to BOOOAL and having the world blow up in three long rests, or destroying an important book in Gauntlet of Shar). Crashes have been few. Also, without the wiki I wouldn't have enjoyed my first playthrough thus far as much as I do as it's really easy to miss things. Kinda intrigued by BG1/2 now.
chongli 8mo ago
If you're struggling with keeping your attention, you ought to try making a list of games you never finished (or never played) and commit yourself to playing through them in order. I have been doing that with NES games and really enjoying it. I alternate between RPGs/adventures and action games, to mix things up a bit. Recently, I have played through Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior, Blaster Master, and am now working through Fire Emblem (translated from Japanese).
bluescrn 8mo ago
It's called getting older. As a grown adult, nothing can recreate the feeling of exploring a new game as a child/teen. Especially during the 80s/90s, where gaming as a whole was new and rapidly-evolving. But revisiting old favourites for the nostalgia can still be enjoyable.
leguminous 8mo ago
I disagree. There are some new (sub-) genres and great games since that period. * Roguelites have proliferated: Hades is the most obvious example, but there are a variety of sub-genres at this point. * Vampire Survivors (itself a roguelite) spawned survivors-likes. Megabonk is currently pretty popular. * Slay the Spire kicked off a wave of strategy roguelites. * There are "cozy" games like Unpacking. * I don't recall survival games like Subnautica or Don't Starve being much of a thing in the PS2 era. * There are automation games like Factorio and Satisfactory. * Casual mobile games are _huge_. * There are more experimental games, sometimes in established genres, like Inscription, Undertale, or Baba Is You. Not to mention that new games in existing genres can be great. Hollow Knight is a good example. Metroidvanias were established by the SNES and PS1 era, but Hollow Knight really upped the stakes. I'm sure I'm forgetting things and people will have some criticism, but I really don't believe games have stagnated in general.
- jerf 8mo ago
  "Roguelites have proliferated" I know it's easy to feel that this is people chasing trends, but I've really come to appreciate roguelites over many of the PS2 era games because they give me real progression in a single play session, but also, that single play session is discardable. As an adult this is a very compelling proposition. In the PS2 era, while you can find some early roguelite-like-things, you tended to have either the games that have no interesting progression (arcade-like) and the you would just play the game, or you had very long scale games like JRPGs that slowly trickle out the progression but are also multi-dozen-hour games. Compressing the progression into something that happens in a small number of hours, yet eliminates the "I'm 50 hours into this game that I stopped 2 years ago, do I want to pick it back up if I've forgotten everything?" has been very useful to me. This has been a fairly significant change in gaming for me. I still have some investment into the higher end JRPGs but the "roguelite" pattern across all sorts of genres has been wonderful overall. I don't even think of it as a genre anymore; it's a design tool, like 'turn based versus real time'.
  - YurgenJurgensen 8mo ago
    Roguelites are the worst thing to happen to video games since microtransactions. It’s an extremely attractive option to the cash-strapped indie dev, as it promises infinite ‘content’ for little development effort, but what it’s really done is turned every game into a combination of cookie clicker and a slot machine. The fact that you think arcade games have “no interesting progression” shows just how toxic the roguelike design pattern is. The progression in arcade games is you getting better at the game. If a game needs a “progress system” to communicate a sense of accomplishment to the player, that’s because the gameplay is shallow.