Outriders was really weird to me, in that so much of it felt like a ‘Games As Service’ game, but it... actually wasn’t? Yeah, it had those endgame ‘levels’, essentially, but they didn’t really add all that much to the game, ultimately, and as far as I know, the developers haven’t done any of that ‘dripfeed’ content…

Oh, I’m not arguing that Bungie vault things for the same reasons Digital Extremes does - just that they looked at Warframe, saw that DE was ‘getting away’ with that structure, and said ‘hey, I bet we could do that as well!’ (Or at least, ‘use that as an excuse for when we rebuild the engine into essentially Destiny…

I think there’s probably an apt metaphor in there for the relative lack of detail in the environments and the relative lack of complexity in the game itself - it does just feel kind of empty, doesn’t it? Which I definitely think is more or less on purpose, but whether or not that ‘works’ I think is likely to be pretty…

Yeah, I could see how that would leave Avengers in a strange place, for sure. What I do find weirdly ironic about the game’s ‘failure’ (for lack of a better term) is that, of all the IPs one could fit into the ‘Games As Service’ mould, where a constant drip-feed of content is required and the narrative is, for all…

As someone currently playing it on GamePass (meaning I didn’t pay for it directly), I won’t really argue against your impression from the demo - at times, the actual gameplay feels so ephemeral it’s nearly nonexistent. It’s definitely the sort of thing I ‘admire’ more than I ‘enjoy’ so far, and that lack of truly…

You’re not wrong, but (as someone who’s halfway through Sable, and is a little more ambivalent than the reviewer) there’s also an argument that ‘player verbs’ are one of the main characteristics that differentiate video games from other forms of art. The ability to ‘do’, rather than ‘watch’, essentially: games are…

I’m a couple hours in, and I’m very much of two minds: as the review states, the visuals are gorgeous - not just in the art style, but in the way they’re animated. Sable comes closest to that ‘you’re actually playing a hand-drawn animated film’ look as any game I’ve seen in motion, except maybe Cuphead. (I’m less…

I mean, you’re not wrong, and there are certainly games like that out there, but I feel like those sorts of ‘habitual’ reward behaviors - the sort of things that are meant to ‘punish’ players for not logging in every day or not engaging a set amount - are more often found in mobile ‘freemium’ games than PC/console…

The thing about the ‘endgame’ debate, I think, is that ‘endgame’ actually isn’t great terminology when it comes to ‘Games As Service’ - ‘endgame’ content, or ‘everything after the campaign’, is more or less the point of a Games As Service game. They’re not necessarily designed to be played to completion, then set…

It was definitely for me, at least kinda sorta - I played the beta way back when, wasn’t wild about it, but said to myself ‘I might check it out when/if it hits GamePass’. Which, now it has. Given the general reception after release, I’m not hugely enthused about the notion of giving it another go, but if some of the…

I definitely agree on the button mapping stuff - it’s just... baffling, some of it, like not using the universal ‘cancel’ button to exit menus, or the ‘game menu’ button and the ‘inventory’ button being swapped from their positioning in every other game ever made.

I was exactly the same way. I really, really wanted to like this - I have a pretty narrow band of ‘how frustrating’ vs ‘how well paced’ survival games have to be for me to enjoy them, and this seemed to be landing inside of that band, just from a gameplay perspective. (My ‘band’ and Walker’s requirements for a ‘calm…

And honestly, one of my favorite things about Hades is that it’s only ‘a fifty hour campaign’ if you kind of... want it to be. I ‘finished’ my playthrough (admittedly, with the ‘easy mode’ assists cranked all the way up) about a dozen runs after *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* bringing Persephone home *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* and…

Honestly, (and sorry, this is only tangentially related to the main thread) I think they’re gonna run into a lot of issues with this ‘extra long season’. I’m not begrudging them the time it takes to finish Witch Queen... but they delayed it all the way back in, what, January, something like that? I do not understand…

Interesting! I don’t think I really understand how the other passages work, honestly: I’ve been using the one that grants you a ‘bonus’ win at your third win, just in case I can actually get to seven wins and start getting those bonus rewards you get when you win past seven. (I got there I think mid-Sunday last…

Hell, even as a decidedly less-than-average player who’s not even attempting to go Flawless, there’s still plenty of reason for me to give it a run.  (I am curious to see what happens a few weeks or a few months from now, when most of the players like me have their rewards and have moved on, but Bungie’ll just have to…

Sorry, I’m... not really seeing the relevance, here? My original comment was aimed at the players who only want to play when they’re more or less guaranteed a win, because they only want to come up against players significantly beneath their skill level. The instant it’s suggested that they should at least partially…

I think one of the things that’s notable about the Trials revamp is how well it feels like they’ve balanced ‘rewards you get for playing’ vs. ‘rewards you get for excelling’. As someone who absolutely will never earn an adept weapon - either in Trials or in high-level PvE play - I really, really like the concept that…

True, and I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I still don’t know if the math quite works out for me: since I’m highly unlikely to get a win in those harder matches (assuming I could go flawless through the first three or four), I’m better off just losing and claiming the reputation rewards that come with twenty…

Withdrawing from the thread with grace and tact, I see. Enjoy your Trials!