Some games from the past play a lot worse in hindsight than others. What recent, decently-liked video games do you expect to suffer this curse?

        • laziestflagellant [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          I guess I mean more in the critical view of the vanilla game (main story quest is insipid and nonsensical, mage progression is very badly balanced and unfun, leveling as a whole is a crapshoot, draugr deathlords and other boss enemies are unfun damage sponges, dragons are easily distracted idiots, world is comprised of 80% bandit population, etc).

          Honestly if Skyrim modding wasn’t so mature and (relatively) approachable, the criticisms would be harsher, but considering that these days you can download preassembled modpacks that turn the game into 4KHD SEKIRO COMBAT ENB GLOBAL ILLUMINATION PARALLAX NEXT GEN REALISM HDT JIGGLE PHYSICS AND HARDCORE SURVIVAL that probably makes the average player pretty unconcerned with what the vanilla game is like.

          • Sinistar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            I come back to the Skyrim modding scene every six months or so. There is so much high quality OC for that game that I don’t think I’ll ever be done playing it (especially because I play the really trashy OC lmao).

        • danisth [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Yeah as much as Skyrim is a weak point in the Elder Scrolls saga, I still look back on it fondly. Starfield will not have this legacy.

      • iheartneopets
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        10 months ago

        It didn’t take time to dislike Fallout 4; I’d say it was just the opposite. People didn’t like it almost as soon as it came out. It has taken time for many people to give it credit as a fun game just not a fun fallout game.

        In my opinion, though, that’s still a pretty damning criticism of a game called Fallout 4. But I digress.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        10 months ago

        You are way off on Skyrim. For starters, it’s already older than the entire range op asked about and it’s still a good game. Op asked for a game that’s come out in the last 5 years and will be looked at somewhat poorly in another 5 years.

        Well skyrim came out…2011. Over 12 years ago. And at this very moment, after 12 years, it’s ranked at 54th on steam for current player count.

        • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Honestly, among g*mers I know, Oblivion and Morrowind seem to get more praise than Skyrim, but that could just be nostalgia and contrarianism.

        • laziestflagellant [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          Oh, my bad, I was trying to make the point that vanilla Skyrim has been regarded as less of a good game in retrospect rather than trying to say it fits what OP was asking for.

          And yeah tons of people are still playing Skyrim. Vanilla Skyrim might not be a great game, but it’s a fantastic platform for installing mods. I’m literally in the process of setting up a modpack for it right now.

    • bazingabrain@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      that genre of games is utterly bizarre to me, bad writing, lame gameplay, grind, grind, and more grind. If I wanted to do something tedious and tiring i would go and chop wood, at least id get a bit of money from that

    • Tunnelvision [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      I didn’t even realize it was being made at all and that there was an entire ad campaign for it until I went to KFC one day (which is rare) and saw it. Was pretty mind blown because I remembered when Diablo 3 came out. Haven’t played it tho lmfao.

    • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      They took the worst parts of Diablo 3 and decided to maximize the amount of MTX.

      They can’t even allow you to purchase more stash/inventory space because they programmed it so that every player loads every other players entire inventory and stash as soon as they load into the same area.

      I understand I’m in the minority who just wanted a modern version of Diablo 2’s mechanics but Diablo 4 is really bland once you beat the story

  • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    I think that someday people are going to look back on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and go “what did anyone ever see in this soulless open-world sandbox mush”

    • FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Speaking personally, I love totk and botw because I never played an open world game with Ubisoft towers before they came out. And because the moment to moment gameplay is enjoyable in terms of game feel.

      Plus the glitches were mostly the exploitable, fun kind.

      • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        And because the moment to moment gameplay is enjoyable in terms of game feel.

        For me the moment-to-moment gameplay of BotW is significantly marred by the awful durability system, where fighting a monster is always a drain on your resources and basically never a good idea.

        Tears of the Kingdom has a much better gameplay loop in that regard, where fighting monsters gives you components to make better weapons to fight more monsters. However, it is also marred by an even wider and less defined concept, and just the whole existence of the depths in general, and also a focus on Just Cause style physics fuck-around gameplay that basically doesn’t interact with any of the core systems. In other words, Breath of the Wild doesn’t do it for me because the core gameplay loop sucks, and in Tears of the Kingdom the core gameplay loop was improved but all this other shit was tacked on that I don’t think serves any purpose.

        • FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          I’m never gonna argue in favor of weapon durability, but it wasn’t a huge issue for me.

          My main problem with totk was the sheer amount of time wasted in menus. Fusing a new item is such a chore for the first 20 times you use it until it rises to the top of the menu auto sort. But for me, the physics toybox aspect of it is what makes it more than a retread of botw, and I can play with a physics system a lot before I get bored.

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          For me the moment-to-moment gameplay of BotW is significantly marred by the awful durability system, where fighting a monster is always a drain on your resources and basically never a good idea.

          I am the complete opposite. The durability system for me makes the combat considerably more interesting because it prevents me from just finding 1 single thing that works and using that. It forced me to use whatever I had available and I really enjoyed the creativity that forced on me. It’s a game that asks you to adapt.

          I get really bored in other combat systems once I’ve established a winning formula. It just becomes repetition. There’s no more cerebral element.

          • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            It’s not like any of the weapons in Breath of the Wild are actually different from one another though. You mash the same button with all of them until the enemy dies. BotW weapons aren’t like Dark Souls weapons or something, they’re more like ammo in an FPS. There’s never a situation where the solution is anything but “select highest damage weapon, mash Y”

        • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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          10 months ago

          where fighting a monster is always a drain on your resources and basically never a good idea

          Thank you. I wasn’t able to put my finger on why I hated it so much, after awhile.

          In my explore and fight monsters game, I want to be rewarded, not punished, for fighting the monsters!

          • booty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            Right, I did. That’s the problem with the game. They put the fights there, and there’s no reason to participate in them so I didn’t. Then they put loot around the map, but there’s no reason to go find it so I didn’t. They put story around the map, but there’s really not much reason to go find it so I wish I hadn’t.

            There’s really nothing in either of these games that actually feels productive to do aside from walking into the final boss room and smacking the final boss to death with a variety of funny sticks. Everything else is chores.

            • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              I don’t want to be productive. I wanna fuck around and see things. Tears of the kingdom is an excellent fuck around and see things game.

          • AlpineSteakHouse [any]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            Just avoid the parts of the game that are fun and enjoyable because the design discourages it.

            Imagine if you create an awesome combat system and then most players had to avoid it because of resource management.

    • SuperZutsuki [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Those are some of the only decent ones, though. Nearly every other sandbox/survival/open-world game will be relegated to the dustbin of history, though. Can’t wait for the survival fad to die.

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, they’re quite possibly the only open world games that made traversal and exploration fun. In 5 years the only difference will be BOTW haters seething at it appearing in every top 100 of all time list.

    • invo_rt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      I played and completely beat (minus korok seeds) BotW and TotK and I just cannot understand the hype around these games which bothers me (me not understanding, not the hype itself) because I wanted to like it. I’ve spent too long trying to figure out what I didn’t like about those games.

      Long-Winded Thoughts
      • Open World: After over a decade of similar game design, I’m completely burnt on the concept. Inevitably, I’m going to run straight to as many towers as possible to fill the map out and then fast travel across the map as needed because it’s the most efficient thing to do, which is what it did for both games. Traversal in TotK was a cop to that, I feel, because the overworld was recycled. Everything from the towers flinging you into the sky to being able to build vehicles was to increase the speed you could explore. Unfortunately, upgrades to the battery were behind such a grind, it forces you to be efficient in your designs which always means the two fan-and-control stick combo.

      • Progression: Completely lacking. One of the things I love about other Zeldas is going through the dungeons and accruing power ups that open up new methods of traversal and increase Link’s power throughout the game. BotW and TotK both give you all the tools you’re going to get in the first two hours and then tell you to enjoy the other hundred. There is gear, but the environmental effects in a lot of zones strongly encourages you to wear what’s required. Upgrades are behind quite a grind.

      • Time vs Reward: There’s a lot to explore in these games and the sight of a far off platform that requires some kind of solution to reach draws me in. I’d spend a good 5-10 minutes getting to it only to be rewarded with 5 arrows or I’d look in yet another cave just to break two weapons digging through a bunch of rocks for a bunch of amber and a sapphire. Eventually, I just stopped doing it because the rewards never justified the time I’d spend doing it.

      • Story Delivery: For me, a good story can outweigh gameplay I don’t like, but both games miss the mark for me here as well. The open world design they went with is at odds with story delivery because you can possibly go anywhere. Memories made sense in BotW, but the tear drop system in TotK is really confusing. Being able to get the story out of order (which I ended up doing), really defuses what little narrative tension the game has. I don’t know why they couldn’t just play the next cutscene when you get the next drop. It is also perplexing that finishing the dungeons in TotK ends with you getting the same exact sage cutscene telling you the same exact information with a little bit of vocal inflection depending on character.

      • Dungeon Design: Recycled ___blight Ganon in BotW was a real letdown compared to past fun boss designs. In TotK, it was real disappointing that the dungeons all had the same fundamental design – unlock four locks and fight the boss. It was fine the first time I saw it, but when I realized that was all the dungeons were going to do, it sucked the enjoyment right out of me. Also, I understand that the journey of getting to the dungeons is part of the experience, but in both games, they were so lackluster and few in number that it felt like a waste of time.

      • Shrines: The shrines are so fire and forget I question why they were even there beyond padding out the map. I would’ve vastly preferred breaking the total into groups to make the dungeons into proper dungeons or at least consolidating them into shrine complexes that were more meaningful rather than a timesink.

      • Weapons: Yes, the durability system. I don’t have an issue with it per se, but its design encourages habits. What it encouraged me to do is hang all the cool race specific weapons on the wall because I couldn’t afford to replace one if they broke. I never used them. Also, the Master Sword running out of juice makes my eyes roll back in my head.

    • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Nah. I don’t think that their reputation will increase (the gaming landscape is just way too fractured for that and “gamers” have shown they are fine just eating slop) but both of those games have given me joys and wonder that no other game has since I’ve stopped being a teen.

      • invo_rt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        both of those games have given me joys and wonder that no other game has since I’ve stopped being a teen

        I sincerely wish I understood this.

    • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      That was aged when it came out. I played the whole thing through games pass on launch, mostly because I just built a new pc and was trying everything. Boring gunplay, dated humor, overstayed its welcome. Mid-tier everything on top of being just not very fun.

    • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Oh jesus that game just felt like a smug bro comedy routine from the mid 2010s projectile vomiting in my face filled with unimaginable bathos humor (I fucking hate what Marvel and internet nerds have done to bathos humor).

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Strictly speaking it’s not from the last 5 years but Rockstar was milking it dry until very recently: GTA5. I really hope that someday GTA5 is looked back on as the boring, unfinished piece of crap it is. San Andreas is a better game by several leagues and that shit came out on the PS2.

    • Tunnelvision [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      I’m going through the story mode for the first time since release and it’s better than I remember but still hasn’t aged well overall. The radio sucks, the driving is worse than 4 imho, and Trevor is pretty much unnecessary as a character. The fact that the story was thrown to the wayside in favor of online also sucks.

  • bazingabrain@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Half life Alyx. Hey! wanna play this new and pretty triple A release from gambling addiction magnates and epic gamers of Valve? Guess what fucko, you need to spend your precious money on a big stupid headset, oh yeah you also need a room to play in so you dont trip on the cables or knock your stuff down, you also need to upgrade your puny computer so it can handle the glorious sauce 2 graphics engine with raytracing and real time vertex nipple twister simulations, breathtaking isnt it

    Yeah nah turns out the only breath you’ll be taking is right before you puke your guts out since VR is physically impossible to use for a significant amount of people, oh and that shiny headset we recommend for our brand new game? Yeah you need to shell out two months of rent to get one, thats another breath you’ll take when the tidy numbers of your bank account turn into a nice fat zero.

    So yeah, that game was a huge grift, and we havent heard a peep from Valve on VR ever since, comforting my opinion that VR as a whole is a stupid and wasteful grift that can’t work unless we come up with something like the matrix.

    • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Its still the only game I want to play in VR. Some of the other like, gun building type games look fun, but I’m not getting a VR headset until I get my pc upgraded to where I want it, and even then if I do, I’m sure as shit not getting valve’s headset for like 1.5k. I considered a meta quest but then I’d be giving zuckerberg money.

      • Shinji_Ikari [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        My buddy got a deal on a full sim racing setup on Craigslist and holy shit the difference between tv and vr headset is night and day. It’s very immersive.

        The one time I tried it for war thunder sim sucked because the resolution was too low to identify friend from foe and made it unplayable.

        I don’t own a vr headset, just borrowed them a few times because otherwise its totally not worth it.

        For sim applications, it is game changing though.

      • bazingabrain@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I agree, yet they still require a massive physical seat to simulate the interior of an aircraft/car to make it work. True full VR will likely never exist imo.

    • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      This is true for VR in general. I got caught up in a treat frenzy and splurged on an Oculus Quest 2. Some games were actually fun for a while but after a few months I just returned to playing normal ass video games and now I mostly regret buying the thing.

      Maybe I could see it having some staying power in those places with laser tag and stuff like that where you can actually run around with the headset but honestly I can’t see most people justifying the upfront cost for a gimmick.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      VR is the golf of gaming. Needlessly expensive, takes up too much space and resources, exclusionary, and shilled mainly by rich white dudes.

      Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

    • Sinistar [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      two months of rent

      My Valve Index cost $1000, which is half of what I was paying for rent at the time (and about 1/4 of what I would pay today in the same neighborhood)

    • raven [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      VRchat and gorilla tag are by far the most fun things on VR and are pretty accessible when it comes to processing power actually.

      I find that in VRchat the mic anxiety goes away when you’re talking to a 3d model of Dr. Eggman or a Skibidi toilet. Something about the presence I dunno.

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Elden Ring, Horizon Zero Dawn and it’s sequel forbidden west, Starfield, and every cookie cutter Ubisoft open world game and their clones. The new Call Of Duty and Battlefield games are also going to age really badly, just rebooting 10+ year old titles (modern warfare and 2042) will age poorly.

    Elden Ring is a great game, but it going to be a lot of people’s first experience with a fromsoft game, and they are not for everyone. The horizon games are more tech demos than video games, and the less said about cookie cutter open world games, the better.

    • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Granted I’m old and impatient, but I tried playing Horizon and I couldn’t get through 30 minutes. There were so many cut scenes that it didn’t feel like a game.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I really liked Horizon Zero Dawn but the story hook of the game is way too far in IMO, and the story is probably the only reason I finished it. Like, I was trying to find reasons to like the game and failing and about to give up before you encounter the big metal door, and then I was like “Huh, maybe this is actually an interesting game after all.” It just starts off really slow unless you’re really into quasi father-daughter dynamics, which I can’t say I particularly am. It is fundamentally a Ubisoft towers skinner box game with a Gamer Vision scanning thing and “Hm, guess I should go into that cave!” murmurs, and some of the enemies being metal versions of real-life creatures is really interesting for… a few hours, and then it just kinda isn’t, and some of them are too tanky for no particular reason.

        Horizon Forbidden West kinda just felt like the same game as the first but in a different setting and with different metal creatures. It similarly takes a little while to get to the actual story hook - finding HADES - and once again I really liked the story, but once again it’s a Ubisoft towers skinner box with Gamer Vision. It’s actually really embarrassing for the game that the main gameplay hook (at least, as I saw it), being able to ride flying monsters and fly around the map, was introduced virtually at the end of the game and has very few uses in the game. I mean, I guess you have a… glider… that is really just a parachute. And underwater sections, sometimes.

        The end of Forbidden West actually pissed me off. Like, I was planning on finishing up the rest of the game’s map and doing the rest of the quests and collectibles and stuff, just to get my money’s worth I suppose, but I finished the main quest and decided that I couldn’t really be assed. I really hate when game endings aren’t self-contained. It was just “Oh, we’re DEFINITELY getting a sequel to this, so we’re leaving you on a cliffhanger and not actually giving you any closure at all.” This kinda happened in the first game but like, the series could have ended there and you would have felt 95% satisfied. For this game, it was like 10% satisfied.

        I’ll… probably play the third game simply because I’m invested in the game’s story at this point, but the gameplay loop simply isn’t going to get better and I’m not looking forward to once again climbing up those towers and once again entering Gamer Vision and once again firing dozens of arrows into machines while in Slow Motion Aiming Gamer Mode.

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Any game that uses the Ubisoft exploration method of going somewhere to reveal icons on a map like Horizon or Breath of the Wild has already aged badly.

      It was super cringe that even Spider-Man had to go around NYC activating towers. Although Spider-Man, Horizon and BotW are already over five years old, so technically outside of this thread.

  • Magician [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    It’s hard to say - a lot of them are aging poorly so fast these days, especially with how they come out all glitchy. It’s like Starfield was born and then drank from the wrong holy grail.

  • Dessa [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Genuinely good things in its favor but the exploration/traversal is utter trash. The absolute second Open Wolrd stops being a buzzword, this will be a casualty

    • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      Damn, you beat me to naming Scarlet and violet, but my reason is because it has too much zoomer slang.

      “Flex on” “L” “cringy”, and there’s pokemon with “smol” and “chonk” in their names. If gen ten has a fucking Skibidi toilet pokemon, I’m going to snap.

    • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      Agreed, but in a different way. I feel like Pokémon will create better open worlds in the next few years, making S/V feel last gen and dated.