See, that’s one that never actually bothered me all that much, just because I kind of did always view Destiny as an MMO, regardless of what they said. So to me, paying for annual expansions was really no different than paying a subscription fee, and it just didn’t bother me that they were taking content I never used…

That makes sense. In general, ‘forcing players to pay for cosmetics if they want access to content’ just... isn’t a good approach, in my book. And it’s also not something Bungie’s ever really done before - a mark in their favor, as far as I’m concerned - so it feels especially weird here.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not complaining about the content. I’m complaining about the lack of an option to pay for just the content, rather than ‘the content and the cosmetics’.

Absolutely; I would have zero problem with them just coming out and saying ‘guys, making video games is expensive, and we need to raise the price of the season passes to $15 each’.

Right there with you on the mic. I talk to strangers for work, that’s not something I want to do with my leisure time. It doesn’t matter how ‘accessible’ a video game makes its LFG mechanics, if it’s the sort of thing where I more or less have to mic up - or at least listen to other people who are mic’ed up - I’m just…

That’s good to hear (and I appreciate the offer) - I’ll admit I haven’t even tried yet, since it was getting kinda late last night* when I realized that ‘the Gjallerhorn Quest’ and ‘completing the Dungeon’ were one and the same.

See, my issue is less that it’s behind a paywall at all, and more that it’s behind a paywall that’s arbitrarily high, because cosmetics are included: Bungie has taught me that ten bucks buys me a season pass worth of content. This... is not that, just in terms of how much content is included. But it costs twice as…

Because of course... of course the one time Kotaku (and Gach, specifically) are almost entirely positive on a Destiny thing - I’m extremely critical of it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m significantly more likely to give Bungie leeway because of how much I enjoy their game than Kotaku is, but the one time I’m…

That would probably be the simplest way to do it, for sure - and worth a playthrough or two, at least - but if the two of you can’t affect each others’ games beyond passing static, unrandomized information, I feel like ‘playing together’ might have limited utility.

Glad to know I’m not the only one! But yeah, I’m just having a rough time grasping exactly how the two players ‘play’ together, I guess. If the games aren’t synced up at all, you could still pass information back and forth, I suppose - ‘you need the red key to open the lion door’, or what have you - but if that stuff…

So does that mean it would be entirely possible to play the game ‘online’ - as in, ‘talking to a friend over some form of independent voice chat whilst they also play the game’ - even if the game is meant to be played in the same room?

About the only thing I remember (beyond, generally, ‘I had a lot of fun’) was a huge difficulty spike once you went ‘off the circuit’, so to speak, of the staged gladiatorial games and into the plot missions. But I was also, you know, in my early twenties at the time, and so quite often... let’s say ‘chemically…

This sounds really, really cool - like some of my favorite bits of the (unfairly maligned, in my opinion) Dead Space 3, which was my first experience with this sort of thing: there, either you or your co-op partner would start hallucinating, ‘seeing’ different things from each other... but you had no way to tell what…

I’m not a hardcore Forza player, so I’ll get bored and wander off way before I’m anywhere near ‘done’ with the game. (Honestly, chances are I’ll get to the point where I’ve got everything opened up - all the adventures and festivals and whatnot, I mean, the point at which the game really ‘begins’ - and then I’ll be…

Given that I sunk way too much time into both Slay the Spire and Monster Train, I’m a pretty easy mark for that type of game, too. (Also: solid username, for a hologram.)

Had almost the same exact experience a month ago, with Gladius. Is Gladius still a good game? Probably not! Was it ever? Magical Eight Ball says ‘signs point to no’. But I enjoyed the hell out of it back in the day, and it’ll be a legitimate pleasure to re-visit, even if all I learn is ‘nope, it was never good, you…

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely think the FH5 map is more interesting; it just seems like a lot of the ‘I never liked FH4 because the map was sooooo boring!’ talk... didn’t really start until FH5 had arrived.

I find it kind of fascinating how many articles on Forza Horizon 5 I’ve read treat ‘Forza Horizon 4 was boring because it was set in England’ as gospel, despite the fact that I don’t remember hearing that a whole lot when FH4 actually came out.

I get what you’re saying here, but again, I’d challenge the point that Microsoft’s line-up is ‘almost entirely games like FH5'. I’d say what’s more accurate would be ‘Microsoft’s line-up lacks games like Horizon Zero Dawn’ - which is absolutely a concern, especially if that’s your favorite ‘type’ of game, but it…

I took that to mean ‘you can recommend the game without caveats’, rather than ‘its sales success comes without caveats’. But, you know, I don’t think there’s a single sales success of any kind you can point to that doesn’t have caveats or qualifiers of some kind - things don’t get super successful based purely on…