I’ve found that as I got older, my taste in games has narrowed significantly. I used to be able to play pretty much anything, or especially any popular or critically acclaimed games. But these days I just don’t give a shit about most of what’s out there. I do have certain genres and developers that interest me though, so I know there are occasionally going to be some new games that I really like. And every now and then I might get surprised by something too.

Slightly better performance than a 4060 and $50 cheaper. But the 4060 is about to be replaced with a newer model at this point, so is it actually a good deal? Questionable.

The game was in a pretty rough state when they relaunched it, but they have been slowly improving it a bit at a time (it often feels like 2 steps forward, 1 step back). I feel like the game is in a pretty good spot though. I enjoy it and am looking forward to season 4.

I’m more surprised that this game is still running. I haven’t heard of anyone playing it in years.

Honest question here. I’m not familiar with the game, but you seem to be upset that it offers cosmetic items for sale. One of your proposed solutions is to bundle all of the cosmetic items together and sell it as a DLC. What is the actual difference in those two options? Why does one of them seem acceptable to you while the other does not? They sound like the exact same thing to me.

I don’t really like random battles for the most part, but they are not normally the thing that makes or breaks a game for me, either.

Some of the first jrpgs that I remember handling battles better then the typical final fantasy was Chrono Trigger and Pokemon. In Chrono Trigger, you can typically see the enemies before you have to fight them, though they would often surprise you with enemies that you couldn’t see jumping out. I think that worked much better than just the normal system where if you walk around long enough you get a battle. Then Pokemon has 2 different things that it did. First, for trainer battles, you can see the trainers on screen so you can make sure you are prepared before you go into a fight. Then for the normal battles around the world, it does use random encounters, but they take place ONLY within certain spots, like in tall grass or in a cave. So you still have a lot of freedom to roam around in areas without triggering battles, and when you do go through those spots, you know that a battle could pop up, so you can be ready for it. There are also items you can use to avoid encounters.

For dealing with the annoyance of low level enemies, I think Earthbound had a pretty good system. In Earthbound, it shows you enemies on screen rather than doing random encounters, and once you get to a significantly higher level than the enemies, they will run away from you instead of coming at you, so you are free to just ignore them.

Having not played either one of them yet, what do you think makes the first one so much better?

Jesus Christ, the ending of that 3rd Strike match was incredible!

You’re never going to get all Democrats to be satisfied with any candidate, ever. People are going to complain because they love complaining. That said, I think most people are probably fine with her.

I guess I just don’t see the appeal. If I wanted to interact with an AI, I can do it right now without launching a game to do it. And pointless NPCs are already one of the most annoying parts of games for me. I don’t want to waste my time reading meaningless dialogue from 100 characters trying to find the 1 person who will actually let me advance and continue playing the game. It will be even worse when they are all taking an unlimited stream of shit instead of 1 or 2 canned responses, because it will just be even harder to know who is wasting your time.

When a bunch of RPGs start doing that, they are all just going to start feeling the same.

I’m willing to keep an open mind until it releases, but that tells me that the gameplay will be nothing like the original.

I have no problem with developers continuing to create new content and give customers the option to buy it or not.

Loot boxes and gambling stuff and types of micro transactions where you are basically paying a fee to avoid artificial annoyance/grinding are a cancer on the industry.

Good to see some new content, the online modes have been kinda dead recently.

This is the dude from zero punctuation!

I think there is a middle ground though. It’s fine to have easy settings to help people get though a game if they want. The online functionality in Mario wonder, and the ability of Yoshis to not take damage are great examples of that. But on the other hand, I also don’t want to just steamroll the game, fully clearing most of the stages in a matter of minutes. How many man hours of work did they put into each of these stages, just for me to blaze through it in 3 minutes and then never look back?

Like I previously mentioned, something as simple as just a time trial mode could give me an actual incentive to go back and enjoy the content a little more.

Super Mario Wonder. It was an enjoyable game, but just too easy, and no reason to keep playing once you finish. There were only maybe 3 stages in the entire game that offer a real challenge. It would be so much more replayable if it just had a time trial mode or something.

I feel like the issue could be largely resolved if developers would just make a lot of the downloads optional. For as long as I remember, installers for PC applications have given the user options for which parts of the applications they want to install. Yet for games these days, they just take an all or nothing approach. Let me skip the ultra textures, and all the extra choices in languages I don’t need. It seems like it should be such an easy thing to implement!

I owned every Nintendo handheld since the original Gameboy. They were so convenient to just be able to play anywhere. I could be laying in bed or on the sofa. Put it in your pocket or toss it into a bag to carry with you.

However, I don’t really feel like the switch has really captured that same sense of portability. It’s large and bulky and heavy. It feels uncomfortable for me to play the same ways I used to play the older handhelds. It also feels more fragile, so I’m hesitant to just toss it in a bag. I ended up just using it as a normal console 99% of the time.

Maybe it’s just me being older, but I feel like the switch didn’t give us the best of both worlds, it just compromised and gave us a worse version of a handheld and a worse version of a console.

I don’t understand what you are asking. Do you mean you give it a picture of a cat and it speaks to you in a voice saying “this is a picture of a cat”?