I guess if you don’t like the genre, this is moot, but you should check out shooters from indie developers. Specifically boomer shooters. They are plentiful and they are good. Hopefully some of them take up the reins and make some old school, story-based shooters. But the singleplayer experiences are out there,…

They should sell the property to Respawn and let them do a campaign for it. Or team up? I dunno how that shit works.

I didn’t like something about the controls in the first one. (I can’t remember what it was. It’s been so long.) But a shift to 3rd-person shooter has my attention if it has cool mechanics. That’s been my favorite trailer I’ve watched so far.

It’s still ultimately merch for the original product. It just comes in different forms.

I mean, I don’t think anyone was arguing that they were open world. But it’s been a complaint since XIII came out, that it was basically just all corridors.

We’re at a point where I only play retro games and new indie games, I think. I mean, there are still a few AAA publishers/developers who aren’t total dogshit yet, but... it’s bleak.

I didn’t like the characters or setting, so I bailed, but yeah. Just didn’t seem all that different than most of the games, structure-wise. But it has been, like, 15 years or whatever since I’ve played it. Maybe it was more punishing in its linearity than is typical.

Yeah, that’s fair. It’s obviously not for everyone, but also we’re, like, three games deep in this kind of combat, so it’s weird to talk about it like it’s new. I guess that was kind of my point.

Yeah, it looks like you have companions, but I imagine you’ll have little to no control over them. That’s too bad, but I don’t think it’s the end of the world.

Everyone talks about XIII like it’s the only one that’s linear and corridor-y. X is revered and it’s exactly the same. And most of the FF games are pretty linear, they just give a vague illusion of freedom until they kind of open up toward the end. They mostly just have wider corridors.

Also, is the combat that…

80 percent of my playtime in the last couple years is in Mystery Heroes. It can still be a frustrating mode, but mostly it’s no pressure because it’s pretty RNG dependent. If you lose, who cares? You got Doomfist three times in a row and that’s not your fault. Plus it lets you play characters you can’t normally, and…

It just came out this week, from somewhere, that he basically left because of upper management forcing them to do stuff that he hated.

There are some Youtube videos about it, if not articles.

I think Push is really fun in Mystery Heroes. The other team could have the robot on your doorstep, just smashing you. Then you miraculously get a team comp that works and end up winning. It’s pretty fun. But yeah, in regular modes, not nearly as much.

I think this makes sense. These games have always been about exploration, haven’t they? I hope we move away from some of the mechanics I don’t like in the Switch games, but I’m okay with bigger, fuller worlds to check out.

I never played the original, but this looks potentially pretty cool. Wishlisted.

This might be too far and crazy, but one thing I kind of miss about pre/early internet era, is that I was theoretically watching the same stuff with a ton of other people at the same time. At the same pace. With the same breaks. We were all watching MonsterVision, or whatever, on Saturday night together.

I guess you…

I guess my point was that I do rate on a linear scale (or I try to) and that’s what the scale is. We’re just in a weird space where shit is warped and people lose their mind when a good game gets a 6 (which is a decent score).

I don’t know if I’ve ever waited in line for a game before, but I imagine the energy is pretty fun. The last time I went to get a physical copy of a game at a midnight release, I remember passing a Gamestop with a pretty big line for Wrath of the Lich King. Kept driving to a 24-hr Walmart and didn’t have to wait at…

Standard Rammstein stage prop.

Also, a 6/10 is still above average. I will buy any movie I rate 3 stars on Letterboxd. That is still a good score. People have it in their heads that anything under a 7 or 8 is garbage. It’s not a school grading system. 5 means it’s fine; it’s not an F.