- Are we overreviewing/overanalyzing video-games? "How much is too much" when talking about criticism in the gaming industry? Is influencing people about certain games always the best option?
- Does anyone still read game reviews?
- "X game is a superior version of Y game so I won't bother playing/owning Y game" - thoughts on this mentality for video games?
- Is guilt what defines video games as an art form?
- Is there anything you enjoy about escort missions?
- Are there games that make "farming" fun?
- [META] Why does every third or so post have lots of upvotes and the other two have 0 or 1?
| Posted: 14 Jan 2018 06:58 AM PST
Greetings to you all, people of true-gaming. Yesterday, coming back from work, I was thinking about some reviews that I've watched. I really dig watching long commentaries of series like Dark Souls, Quake, Doom, Deus Ex and many other games - Some channels focus on long commentaries like these. Some of my favourites are:
And many, many others. There is something incredibly addicting about overanalysing video-games - Sometimes, by doing so, you end up discovering new and interesting things about the game - Dark Souls is a pretty good example of this, being overanalysed to the point of exaustion but, by doing that, we found a lot of interesting stuff about the game. But that brings another problem to the table: I usually play games blindly, before watching any reviews, and if the game interests me enough, I'll go and search for a commentary about it. Let's pick Prey, from 2017. I really enjoyed the game, the atmosphere, the mechanics and the little secrets that I've found. After that, I've watched some really in-depth reviews that talked mostly about the shortcomings of the game, showing me a lot of stuff that didn't bother me that much when I first played it. Same goes for Dark Souls - I remember really digging the entire game - (aside from Bed of Chaos and the Archers of Anor Londo), but after watching some commentaries about the game, I've """"discovered"""" that Lost Izalith is a badly designed area, that the last half of the game isn't as good as the first half, and so on, and so on - Problems that I didn't find on the first (or second, or third, and so on) time that I've replayed the game, but now I can't ignore it. Of course, as I've said before, sometimes overanalysing something can be good - You'll get an in-depth complete view of the product, and you'll know exactly what you got. You can also find a lot more appreciation from certain aspects of that game, discovering interesting secrets, or just finding out stuff that passed by the first time you played it. Thanks for reading - I'd really appreciate if you could share your opinion on this topic. [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone still read game reviews? Posted: 14 Jan 2018 03:08 PM PST I, like everyone else here, am an avid gamer. I'm also the owner of a game review site. Me and my team pump out articles daily about indie games, development, and anything in between. My question to everyone here is this: Do you still read game reviews? When I don't know a game or found a game that looks interesting I usually read the review. On Steam for example. I just scroll to the bottom of the page and check the kind/negative reviews, then base the census into a portion of what I expect of the game. More and more, however, I've just been picking up games that look interesting and forming my own opinions. Are game reviews still viable and do you read them? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 13 Jan 2018 10:11 PM PST In board games, this is called the Jones Theory by popular Boardgamegeeks: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/11157/look-jones-theory A lot of BGers subscribe to this mentality, but I don't hear as many thoughts from video gamers on it. For reference, I don't just mean dumping The Wind Waker (GameCube) for the better The Wind Waker (Wii U) or things like deleting Skyrim because I bought Skyrim SE. I mean things like "I love Etrian Odyssey V and it has way better gameplay than Persona Q/Etrian Odyssey IV so I'll never bother with those two" or something like "Mario Odyssey makes Yooka Laylee way inferior so I won't bother buying it" - that kind of mentality. What's your thoughts? Is this a good way to approach games? Is it too conservative/frugal? [link] [comments]  |
| Is guilt what defines video games as an art form? Posted: 14 Jan 2018 05:18 AM PST Hey, so I saw a rather interesting point raised by u/lolguy116 in this comment thread that I thought was worth a discussion on its own. I've been having trouble pinpointing exactly what it was that I loved about video games, specifically games like Undertale or Doki Doki Literature Club; it wasn't exactly the art--I think games like Ori and the Blind Forest, Hyper Light Drifter, or Shadow of the Colossus push gaming as a visual medium more, honestly--nor was it really the stories or characters, as good as they were. It wasn't even really the "meta" part of it, because there are many "meta" games out there that do mess with gaming as a medium, without really being games that you can really love, like that one platformer that forces you to mess with the size of the window you're playing it in - being "meta" has a sort of vapid novelty that wears off after the first couple exposures. None of these things are really what makes games special, I think, but I just couldn't figure out what it was. I realized that I put games like Dark Souls or Nier:Automata, which I love for reasons that really have little to do with being "meta" or having out-of-this-world story and character writing, on the same part of the "good" spectrum as Undertale and DDLC. These games have aspects in common with each other--Dark Souls and Nier share excellently developed combat mechanics, for example--but the only thing all 4 really have in common is an ability to force a player to feel guilty, to make a player's decision come back to haunt them later on. No other art medium can do this - books, movies, anime can clearly make viewers feel complex and deep emotions when executed correctly, but the fact that the "death flag" trope exists heralds the one huge difference that gaming's interactivity brings to the table; Undertale feels visceral specifically because you will notice death flags ingame, and if you try your best, you can prevent these deaths completely, and you will feel guilty if you inadvertently cause a character's death, followed by an attempt to reset it. It's up to you to determine what happens, not some sort of pre-scripted plot death that you have no choice but to suffer through - you can turn death flags, like a young rookie who can't wait to get home to see his wife, into happy moments where you actually get to see the young rookie reunite with his loved one. It's a pretty powerful use of suspension of disbelief, when used right. What do you guys think? Is there something else that defines games better, or is guilt--either feeling it, or taking actions not to feel it--the main reason why so many gamers value interactivity and actual decision-making in games? [link] [comments]  |
| Is there anything you enjoy about escort missions? Posted: 13 Jan 2018 04:58 PM PST I was thinking about this while doing an escort side quest in Fallout 4 and being genuinely surprised that such a recent game still casually has at least one escort mission in it. Escort missions for me have always been obnoxious. Whether it's the escorted NPC moving painfully slow, or getting caught on bits in the environment, or being easy killable, or just in general the idea that my character temporarily has to give up their agency to protect some programmed bit in a quest, I can't recall enjoying an escort mission, ever. But I figure, maybe there are those out there who get something out of it? It seems like there has to be, for it to have gone on this long. [link] [comments]  |
| Are there games that make "farming" fun? Posted: 10 Jan 2018 04:34 AM PST Not talking about actual farming, with crops and animals and stuff. But farming for resources, lives, XP, loot, etc. I'll admit I don't play a lot of games that require farming (because I really don't like the idea of farming), but I was wondering if there are any games that manage to make the experience fun. Or at least original in some way. Or if you have any cool ideas on how games CAN make farming fun, I'd love to hear them. EDIT: to try and define "farming" in this context: Performing essentially repetitive actions to gain more of a certain resource. Or performing tasks that might be considered "menial tasks" in order to easily gain more of a certain resource. That, at least, is how I see "farming" or "griding". [link] [comments]  |
| [META] Why does every third or so post have lots of upvotes and the other two have 0 or 1? Posted: 10 Jan 2018 07:37 PM PST This seems like a weird problem. I mean, if there was a lot of content of course you'd expect a lot of 0-1 threads. But when there aren't a lot of posts every day, and non 0-1 threads have dozens if not hundreds of upvotes with no threads that have 20-30 or even 5-10, it's just completely baffling. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from For those who like talking about games as much as playing them.. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
Post a Comment