I looked at the piece you linked, but I can only see the first page, not sure if the notation you’re referring to is beyond that page. Can you clarify a bit what you mean when you say “dotted capital I’s?” Are you talking about the symbols that look like this 🎶 but with a dot next to them?
I was watching someone’s playthrough and I genuinely had to turn the stream off after like a dozen hours because I knew I had to play it. I mostly gave up on the survival/crafting genre because all the heavy hitters just didn’t do much for me. I always play solo and they all quickly feel like they devolve into housekeeping and inventory management sims.
The only one I ever really enjoyed was Subnautica, specifically because of some of the non-thematic reasons you mentioned for this game being so good. The survival aspects are actually really well done without making the game feel like a chore (it’s so weird how effective adding a tiny little mini game to things just makes it feel less obnoxious), the setting and story is interesting and well crafted, and most of the tedious aspects of gameplay are given intended solutions in the crafting trees.
The setting and storytelling is just so masterfully done that it always keeps you engaged. The combat is a little bit lame, but it’s mostly because of AI being kind of dumb. I’m playing on a lower difficulty though so maybe that’s the reason.
I am currently finishing up the manufacturing sector. I’m playing solo and I’m not excited for when I get to this part. It’s not going to be a fun time with how low visibility underwater is in this game.
As a side note, I very rarely buy games new or even like survival crafting style games, but holy crap this game is so good.
I think a lot of the community pushback is for that exact reason. People expect a different game when a 2 is attached, not a shinier version of the same game. I really don’t know if any IP that’s done this well from a marketing standpoint. Maybe OW2, but that’s also been a trainwreck.
I don’t know that I agree necessarily with your second point though. A big selling point for a lot of the live service games going through this process is a changeover to a newer game engine. You’d be surprised how limiting in terms of features, graphics, and performance it is to be on an engine that’s over a decade old.
This is the perfect time for character reworks imo and they’re trying at least. As long as they keep the original design intent in mind this is the most efficient time from a dev standpoint to tweak unbalanced and broken characters.
I agree that releasing a live service sequel is tough though. I don’t think I’ve seen one try that didn’t receive an astronomical amount of hate for it.
It’s early access development. I’m not even sure it’s a beta at this point.
Ahhh, thanks for the clarification.
Smite 2 has been bombing? I wasn’t aware it was even available to anyone yet? I’ve been looking forwards to it.
It goes 24/7 open alpha at the end of the month and they’ve had a handful of closed alpha weekends and marketing tournaments over the past few months. The game suffers from some weird design/map choices and they’ve only ported over like a dozen or so gods so far which is a big sticking point for a bunch of people. I’m sure it will be fine eventually, but it’s rough around the edges right now.
I can’t really find any good information right now. Is this a beta still or this a sneaky release? If it is still in beta a lot these points will probably be adjusted soon, especially 2-4.
I know the Smite community has been excited for the release since Smite 2 has been bombing so much at least and it also is receiving similar criticism.
I had the same thought when I saw Conan on the list too. I always thought it started in film and TV.
The biggest ones that come to mind for me are The Witcher and anything Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I know the SMT series was originally based off the Digital Devil novels, but kind of developed its own identity pretty quickly.
There were some interesting names in this list from Wikipedia I found.
I finally got a chance to give it a listen and I really enjoyed it overall. The jazzy song structure of the first few tracks (chorus-instrumental improv-chorus) was a little off-putting to me, but after about halfway through I was really everything they were doing. I don’t know why but every time I hear an upright bass organically mixed into a rock track it gives me a nice fuzzy feeling. I haven’t heard anything of theirs since Contra released and they’ve definitely come a looong way in terms of mixing and composition.
Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have to check out how they’ve matured over the years. I enjoyed them back when they were relevant, but as you say they were way too upbeat and simplistic to stand up over time. Definitely some fun guitar riffs to play though.
Yeah, I sincerely don’t understand why people keep buying these games. Bioware massacred all the gameplay elements that actually made the game special.
Because the playerbase moves to the latest game on release and the multiplayer of the older games stops being fun because it’s exclusively tryhards.
Kind of. When I like a new game I have a tendency to obsessively play it until I burn myself out, take a break, and forget it exists and never finish. Makes the prospect of playing long rpg’s both exhausting and tough.
I feel this way as well. I always like the idea of playing it more than I like the actual experience. I really appreciate that it’s a complex well written and executed story, but I would rather watch a stream of someone playing it than actually play through it myself.
This happens with a lot of really good crpg’s too for me and it really bums me out. I’m probably just weird though.
Yeah, I’m in the same boat. For every game that I actually own that’s on the list I’ve at least played it enough to find out it’s not quite for me or I got halfway through and put it down with the intention of coming back, which is just a bad habit for RPGs in general for me because I tend to burn myself out on them. I had to stop playing Witcher 3 halfway through because my brain hates me and I need to find and clear every map objective.
The only actual exception is Dwarf Fortress and that’s only because I have over 1500 hours in Rimworld and I know how much of a learning curve there’s going to be when I start it. I’ve just never had the mental fortitude to devote the time to it yet.