Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Jaz007 If you're basically saying "quality, not quantity" then I'd completely agree with you, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other folks around here would, as well.

If you're not, and you're just busy and don't have time for long games, then... well, I'd agree with that, too!

@RogerRoger It’s a mix of both. I think games are pointlessly long (padded out) and there’s not enough time to play too many long games. RDR2, Eder Scrolls and the like need to be long, but that should be the exception not the rule.I think hear a lot would agree, but I feel like I’m general people have become a bit obsessed with play time and use the word only when talking about game length a lot.

@Jaz007 I think Play Time and 'Value' do play a part in that - not necessarily for the 'better'. If you are expected to pay $70 for something that you finish in one session and can't buy anything for a while or have anything new to play, it can feel very bad 'value' considering you can spend the same money on some games that will last you until your next Pay Day and beyond.

I can't buy 'every' game I want to play the day it releases and so I have to choose which game may represent the 'best' value, a game that I could buy that will last at least until next payday or offers the best cost per hour. I don't mind a great Story lasting around 8hrs or so, but I am not paying $70 for something like that - not unless it comes with additional modes, content etc - like a full Muli-player or Co-op suite - as we came to expect through the 360 era.

I think with Prices going up, people become more concerned about the 'value' proposition - buy something for $70 that will last you a month or more, last you to your next paycheck, last until you can buy another game etc - not pay $70 for something they finish in a day and then feel they didn't get 'value' in a cost per hour from their game. It's not as if games like GTA, RDR, Witcher etc don't have 'Quality' that these 'linear' 8hr games do...

I find shorter games often feel longer than they are, I think because they are generally busier within the playtime. Take Dead Space Remake, I played that at a steady pace, did all of the side quests and enjoyed the environments and it took me about 18-20 hours over 4-5 weeks, but with the tight story beats and stressful gameplay just 45 minutes left you satisfied.

Comparatively, I have put over 30 hours into Octopath Traveller 2 in 2-3 weeks - time just melts away with games like this.

So I guess there is actual effort (time) required to get through a game and subjective effort.

@Jaz007 There’s definitely a middle ground. The problem for me is that when games have sooo much more to do in them, it can easily end up diluting the main story.

From instance, playing Cyberpunk I wanted to try and do everything possible (including slightly esoteric stuff for the platinum) which took ages and I kind of forgot what was going on in the main story (there were so many things I had forgotten which made the story more coherent when I did my immediate second play through).

It also kind of kills any notion of your main story being particularly time sensitive!

So I guess my issue is partly game length and partly open world problems. I just hate “busywork” stuff in games when they feel the need to pad the game length/content out.

Another place where playtime gets skewed is in retries after deaths or failures. Some of us will take much longer to complete a game because we have to replay sections over and over, or we have to grind and level up. For example, I think my Returnal completion time was in the neighborhood of 40-50 hrs, and some people claimed to have completed it in 10-15. Another for instance — I have taken a really long time on Souls games because I prefer over-leveling to repeatedly failing.

An additional place where total playtime is hidden is in games where you spend a lot of time in menus. Strategizing a loadout, poring over a map, tuning a skill tree, or reading volumes of of supplementary lore items — there’s places where games can either drag or enhance itself, depending on your personal preference, with all this hidden time they require.

I’m making my way through Hogwarts Legacy at present and this is a huge game. I could probably mainline it in 20-30 hours but I’ve spent around 50 already and only partially finished with the main story and still have tons of side content to explore. All that is perfectly fine. However, one annoying aspect is the time I’m having to spend switching out gear. My obsessive compulsive urges prompt me to switch to the best gear I have a available and to pick up every single chest and it’s adding so much time (and hassle) to the experience. Especially if one wants to have their character appearance to look a certain way, then each time you switch out your gear, then you have to do a whole separate transmog process afterward. I’ve grown tired of doing that so I just roll with whatever the gear looks like but it makes for some immersion breaking moments in the cutscenes with those ridiculous looking glasses and hats. 😅

But yes, to @BAMozzy ‘s point, there exists this unfortunate justification for pricing that results in developers bloating a game to fit the $70 price tag, whereas it should be the other way around — if the overall artistic vision of the game creates a 6-8 hour experience, then the launch price should probably reflect that, no matter how high quality that 6 hour experience is. It could have saved The Order: 1886 to launch at $30 or $40. The Callisto Protocol is another one that I’ve heard the complaints about more recently; I haven’t played it, but I hear it was a bit lean on content for the price and it’s a better “wait for a sale” type of game.

When my second child was born in November, I was in the mind set of getting stuck into something long form, like say the Witcher 3 and that would be perfect to work around a newborn. What I actually found was the moment to moment gameplay, events or story etc were taking place over a much longer timespan and that I was getting next to no enjoyment because of that. During a window of 40 minutes or an hour if I was lucky, I felt I wasn’t achieving much. Since then I’ve primarily focused on smaller indie titles with runtimes under 20 hours or so, Headlander for example, and I’m having a lot more fun. This isn’t to say I don’t love sinking 100s of hours into one title, just that it really is subjective to the context of your current situation.

@AgentCooper Ha, on the flip side I motored through both of my runs on Cyberpunk during my paternity leave when I had my newborn sleeping on my lap and the wife got a few hours sleep between feeds.

@AgentCooper Although I can’t speak for the newborn parenting aspects, but I am a busy guy, what with work and outside friends, family, hobbies, etc. All the extraneous real life diversions result in those random 45-60 minute openings to spend gaming. I have stretches of 3-4 hour sessions sometimes, but the majority of the week has bite-sized amounts of game time. I’ve found one of the difference makers for determining if I will spend time with a game is whether it lets me save anywhere. If I have just an hour then I’ll spend it in Hogwart’s running around doing a couple exploration and item collecting and do a few puzzles and then save when I shut down. The game even lets one save in the middle of a story quest usually. The Souls games are great for this too, since you can save anywhere and there’s not huge hour-long story cutscenes that you’ll accidentally get in the middle of when you really need to shut the game down for some reason. There is the unfortunate lack of a pause function (if playing online) in the Souls game though, which annoys.

The worst offenders for a busy lifestyle are games where you can randomly wander into an area, trigger a cutscene and story mission without warning, and the game allows for no pausing or saving in the middle. I’ve been held captive by a game when I need to shut down and the game has a really long sequence that I can’t escape from for like an hour sometimes. 😅

I realize that games need their long story sections — I actually love those — but I appreciate it when they telegraph when they’re coming so I have the time to relax and soak it all in.

@Thrillho Mate, that’s impressive, I just couldn’t get myself into that headspace. For the first two months I was awake exclusively during the night whilst my wife was recovering from surgery. I did manage to rewatch the LOTR EEs and a lot of lost so it wasn’t all bad. How are things for you now? How are you finding being back at work and juggling baby commitments?

@Th3solution The situations are not too dissimilar I expect, just with a lot less poo and vomit (I’m just assuming there 😉) and as for gaming the save state is definitely a killer for me, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve actually become a lot more comfortable using rest mode and quick resume on PS4 and XSX respectively, they go some way to alleviating that particular headache, especially when I’m trying in vain to get somewhere with Bloodborne.

Personally, I was waiting for the release of Remnat 2 because the first one was my favorite game, even if it wasn't a popular game.

I got it suddenly how it was released on 25 July. I was attracted by the post-apocalyptic Earth story and the new archetypes they introduced. I picked the Challenger Archetype because Challengers can quickly turn the tide of battle in their favor with their superior strength and resilience. You can read about all Remnat 2 archetypes on Enigma Gamers.

Someone could consider it a strange main story, but I loved it and completed it in 25 hours, and I was engaged in the story. Now I am going for a completionist title and have 50 hours played and around 30% to complete.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the most legitimately "next gen" feeling game I've played in years. Even if it's running on hardware that is achingly old and weak now. The enormous amount of environmental interactivity and complexity, the sheer scale and cohesiveness of the multi-layered world, etc. are enormously impressive. You can literally jump from the peak of one of the game's sky islands and descend into the cavernous depths below Hyrule with no loading screens. And this is running with relatively few bugs on a Switch lol.

Probably a more controversial take: I'm excited to see how generative AI will impact video game development. The idea of having actual conversations with AIs in the context of a video game is really cool, and some indies are already playing with the idea. Also interested in seeing how the technology speeds up development time on big projects.

@Ralizah I haven’t played TotK but I hear it’s great. There is a vocal camp that would complete dismiss it though as unworthy of play because it’s 30 fps. 🙄

@Th3solution I think TotK is not worth playing if you don't like building stuff. That aspect can completely ruin the game for certain people I think since it's such a huge part of the game. In fact, it made me drop it last year as I just couldn't bother playing it anymore. I vividly remember spending over half an hour at a part where I had to build a bridge and I just couldn't get it right due to the physics. I couldn't move on without the bridge, so it just ruined the pacing of the game for me. It's just ridiculous how heavily integrated that aspect is into the game as it's not for everyone. That's why I vastly prefer BotW over TotK due to its simplicity.

@LtSarge That is one of the reasons I skipped it. I loved Breath of the Wild, but the building stuff in Tears was a total turn off for me. That and the 30fps of course.

@JohnnyShoulder It's completely understandable. I mean, it seriously slows down the pacing of the game. Hopefully Nintendo drops this mechanic in future Zelda games if they keep making them open world.

@Th3solution It's a deeply creative and ambitious game that I have mixed feelings about.

But yeah, if people can't look at the hardware and appreciate what a marvel of programming the game represents, I dunno what to tell them at that point. The game running like it does at all on Switch is miraculous. 60fps was never an option with the available tech.

The developers made EVERYTHING physics-based, give you full access to use the materials of the world to make whatever you want (while still abiding by the physics systems in place), allow you to reverse momentum for moving objects, etc. When you're visiting the game's sky islands, for example, you can grab onto one of the crumbling blocks that fall from them and then reverse the momentum to climb into the sky. Or you can build a hot air balloon or hovercraft if you have the resources. Even then, the highest ones usually require you to ascend them from the bottom up once you reach them, using everything at your disposal to conquer the challenge of even reaching their surfaces. Or sometimes you'll need to fly over to them from neighboring sky islands that are more easily accessible.

This is on top of the existing survival game elements, where you need to hunt for food, dress appropriately for the weather, etc.

The dungeons and story delivery need some major work, IMO, but it's easily the most innovative open world I've ever seen. It's leagues ahead of what any other major developer is doing with that type of game design.

@LtSarge @JohnnyShoulder I wish the game started you off with the autobuild rune, since it makes the game way more accessible to people who hate Ultrahanding stuff. You can find recipes for building vehicles and whatnot by exploring. It obviously doesn't fully remove the creative element from the game, but it does make it feel much less dominated by that aspect.

I also prefer Breath of the Wild, which is a top five game for me overall. Mostly because that game felt like a perfect harmony of its various components, whereas TotK doesn't.

@Ralizah Sounds really interesting. It’s tough to pull off a game that has openness and flexible systems to approach exploration and objectives, and yet not have it become messy or buggy.

My experience with open games systems is mixed. Something like Dreams was just too much. The ability to make anything you can dream of sounds great on paper, but in practice it’s just too time consuming and arduous. But something like Death Stranding is great, where I loved being able to create and problem-solve navigating the open world with a select set of building tools to manipulate the environment to my advantage, and yet not have too many systems to become oppressive.

And I had tongue firmly in-cheek about the 30 fps. 😄 The fps snobbery among gamers is getting to be ridiculous now. I’m starting to see a lot of people ‘cutting off their nose to spite their face’ with their refusal to even consider a game if it’s not a solid 60 fps. It’s become cult-like in some enthusiast circles to harass and lambast any game that dares to drop to 59 frames for a couple seconds. 😅

@Th3solution One of the reasons the game took so long to come out is apparently because Nintendo spent the last year or so of development time just optimizing and bug-squashing, which is not a level of commitment to quality you see from many other AAA development teams out there. There was actually a GDC presentation recently from some of the game's designers talking about the chaos Link's Ultrahand ability (which you can use to effectively combine objects together in the environment to build structures, vehicles, etc.) caused during development lol.

Yeah, I admire what Dreams had to offer as a platform for creativity, but in practice it's not something I'd ever mess with personally. Discovered the same was true for Super Mario Maker, and stuck to playing the levels others created. Creativity isn't really my 'thing,' and it's undoubtedly one reason why I didn't fall in love with TotK to the same extent as its predecessor.

Yeah, while I like to know about performance from an informational point of view, the number of people who act like 30fps experiences are unplayable has become rather obnoxious. This fixation definitely became worse once Digital Foundry analyses grew in popularity.

I've played amazing games that didn't run well and boring games that run extremely well. It matters to some extent, of course, but the people who act like performance should be the main consideration when talking about a game drive me up a wall.

Granted, the people who care about this are mostly console gamers, who have only recently become accustomed to AAA games running at higher framerates. Yet somehow games like The Witcher 3 that struggled to hit 30fps consistently on PS4 were still enjoyable for them at the time.

@Ralizah @Th3solution I'd rather play the game first and find out for myself. Everyone will be different, but I find sudden changes in fram rates the most jarring. I've played plenty of games recently at 30 fps, with no issues. Others though, I have found really rough to play in performance mode.