They’re also illustrative of how fucking dumb “metrics” currently are. I’ve watched for nearly twenty years as metrics went from being meaningful measures of key goals to being things to juke to get more points. Unsurprisingly, many a shop chasing points has succeeded magnificently only long enough for the execs to…

really change up how it’s told stories in its previous games like the first Alan Wake or 2019's Control 

It’s pretty disappointing how creatively bankrupt gameplay devs seem to be nowadays. I get there’s a money (read: greed) component vis-a-vis live services, but what a gut punch to see such a great art style be thrown into yet another PVP-fest.  At least give the assets and dev tools to a moonshot branch of the studio…

Agreed. They’re long, feel like slogs, and have a bunch of the same grind/bloat loops that are great for bored players with tons of time on their hands but which become pretty nauseating for time-restricted players like me.

I’m waiting for FFVII, where the “game” will just be a a series of cutscenes alongside a 1500-page companion book trilogy.

I gave up on FF a while ago so my opinion doesn’t matter BUT XII’s combat was everything I needed in an FF game, but they dropped it like a hot potato immediately. It allowed strategy and intelligence to factor in for how you created rulesets, which also helped to turn the grind of FF into an exercise in optimization,…

The most surprising thing here might be that someone did a Godfall cosplay. Also LOL at that Eye of Sauron outfit

Which ones? I’m not good at spotting this stuff, but the shots from the sides really make it look like a few people (especially Ford) is just sitting in a car pretending to drive.

I honestly never liked Ken much as a contestant, but he’s been a great host and the way he’s testing out changes like this is really thoughtful, both in the roll-out and in how he’s allowing viewers to be in the dark if they still want to. Hats off to you, Ken.

I’m an old who has used Discord a bit and can definitely see that 15-year-old-me would’ve been all over that shit. BUT the idea that anyone thinks it--or any other chat-based interface--is a replacement for static information is absolutely insane. That’s like saying improv jazz sessions are a replacement for albums or…

This better not awaken anything in me...

If fighting games were just kitchen appliances fighting each other, I’d be way more into them

Oh it is 4/20, isn’t it? Okay, this post makes A LOT more sense now--I thought it was just a random post about video game merchants selling weed. As someone with a new kid less than a year old, 4/20 is not really something I spent a lot of time thinking about.

I can’t tell if this is a strange post or not. I’m trying to imagine a “Which Video Game Merchants Would Sell Good Booze?” post and having a hard time. Honestly I don’t have anything against people enjoying alcohol or weed (I definitely enjoy both), but the recent glamorization of weed feels both cringe and like…

I’d put the entire BOTW Ganon fight here. The BOTW bosses were pretty terrible to begin with, but just rolling them into one for the final battle felt both lazy and tedious. I would’ve loved a Shadow of the Colossus -style battle where you have to navigate a giant Ganon to reach various weakpoints that require…

Your mistake here was bothering with twitter/reddit/any social media based discussion. Long gone are the days of nuanced discussions on these platforms (well, in twitter’s case those days never came), and every amplified opinion is polarized, intentionally or otherwise, while everything else gets washed away.

*Kendall Roy has left the chat*

Oh high up for sure, I’m not arguing that it’s at the bottom or anything. But #1 is, well... #1. And the ranking here seems to have a recency / crafting bias. Though at the end of the day some ranking on Kotaku really doesn’t matter--I just want some good dungeons in TOTK :(

I’m just here for Darth Clooney.

Wow, BOTW as #1? I feel like the lackluster dungeons and bosses immediately drop BOTW several places down, unless you really enjoy crafting in your games and want to spend an outsized amount of time playing around with sandbox mechanics, which to me... isn’t very Zelda-y. I definitely think there’s a place for it in…