Hades took a genre famous for unapproachable difficulty and made it accessible while preserving optional challenges - how many of the “git gud” crowd can pull off a first-run Hades kill? And somehow the sky didn’t fall when people who don’t base their worth on game skill were able to play and enjoy a roguelike.…

What makes your definition of “git gud” real and the other ones fake? “Git gud” has become the new “it’s about ethics in game journalism,” in that it’s a vague phrase that can be twisted to reflect whatever values you want. The only people I see saying "git gud" are the toxic gatekeepers, but the toxicity is enabled…

Exactly right.

That’s especially wild to me—this game sold, what, 12 million copies in a week? More than any other in their catalog has *yet* to sell, something like that?

It’s the predicted GOTY and it’s open world and every (gushing, 100/10 masterpiece greatest of all time) review talks about this one being more accessible than…

I’ve been saying for a minute that this is already something Sekiro began to answer, and then Hades beat them to it. I didn’t like Sekiro as much as Bloodborne (just not quite my vibe compared to BB, which is my favorite not only of their library but of all time) but both games made some smart, elegant refinements…

I stopped playing a couple weeks ago—just wasn’t enjoying myself anymore, too much of the game felt like a step backward to make up for the things I did like—but I’m heartened to see somebody with clout and a voice speak out against that toxic “git gud” mentality. Maybe it’ll get through to some people.

The ‘Immutable Artistic Vision Upon Which No One Must Infringe ’ of these Souls games sure does seem to infringe upon itself a lot...

I mean, don’t put your tutorial in a pit next time?

Or, if you want to embrace the Souls humor, put an item on the edge of the pit and when people pick it up have the ground crumble away and knock them down into the tutorial pit. That way on ng+ you’ll know about it and can just ignore the item and walk outside if…

Sorta, yeah - it’s first person and there’s shooting, but it’s actually kind of a metroidvania :)

I guess I could finally go back to Cyberpunk 2077 and finish off that story?

Oh no! Why would you do that to yourself!

Damn, and I was just about to suggest Dark Souls 2 :P

Ah, totally get it. In that case: Outer Wilds!

Elden Ring!

You know what? I’m gonna come out and say it: I enjoy the comments section on WAYPTW, because I swears it’s the only place one the internet where people actually talk about games’ gameplay.

Vampire Survivors is technically a rogue-like/rogue-lite, right? Is there no value to playing it after clearing everything? I honestly do not know, since I have yet to play it and I have only an inkling of the gameplay. I will likely never 100% The Binding of Isaac or its many iterations/addons--some of the challenges…

I think my problem is, as I get older, I have less and less time for gaming and so I’m starting to prioritize the activities that really hit my dopamine hot spots, ya know? I also hardly ever 100% open world games because I just get bored with the game eventually.

But I’ll see if I can give the races (and Machine…

I still continue to make slow but sure progress through Horizon: Forbidden West. I’m very much enjoying the game but I’ve decided I just have too much Open World fatigue this past...well, decade, and so some of what I found charming in the first game, I find inelegant in this one. It’s stuffed to the brim with things…

Yeah, so many of the good parts of AVClub are disappearing at a rapid rate. It’s nice to see What Are You Playing This Weekend? as a comforting Friday balm.

It’s almost as if people just wanted options when playing their video game who knew?