I think that games with options like that are fine, and that games that don’t offer options are also fine. One is giving players the least amount of friction as possible, the other is providing an experience that emphatically does not bend to the player’s will and must be taken on its own terms.

Both are valuable in…

The only Switch game where the HD Rumble felt like it legitimately added to the experience in a significant way was Okami HD. Your puppy pitter-patter feels AMAZING through the Joycons, and they clearly tried to make the whole feature worthwhile.

Otherwise? Nothing that stands out in memory.

I think you’re mostly right, but I have a feeling it’ll be just a connection and not some continuation/expansion of the same storyline.

i.e. I don’t think we’re going to be seeing Frisk pop up or people meeting alternate versions of themselves.

I barely managed to skate by on my first attempt after using ALL of my items. Between the mechanics and the musics and everything else, definitely a great fight.

Just convince yourself that humans delude themselves on a constant basis and that their judgements are inherently flawed, and suddenly hype doesn’t mean anything anymore. Then you can just enjoy stuff based on your experience in the moment rather than broken expectations painting the whole thing.

Okay, I came in a little hot with my original comment. But I still stand by my main point: things people aren’t used to take time to adjust to, doesn’t make that thing inherently bad.

For a lot of these reviews/opinions, they initially describe these design choices as negative/frustrating, but then they go on to…

I think you’re just hearing things you don’t personally like about the game, framing them with a negative connotation as if they’re objective game design flaws, and then becoming confused that not everyone dislikes a game that to you seems to have a bunch of objectively bad ideas in it.

But here’s the thing, maybe the…

I agree on that, all I’m getting at it that R* pushing RDR2's realism, detail, AI, and emergent systems to the limits as the driving force behind the game’s design philosophy is making people pay extra attention to things like the game’s realism, detail, AI and emergent systems.

Basically, the game is so good at what…

To be fair, Ferrari sold their car to you by emphasizing how the entire car was a revolution on how you store and drink beverages while driving. It would be an industry-shattering beverage-drinking experience that took 100's of hours of work from the engineers to redefine the very act of drinking a beverage in your…

I put 100+ hours into FFXV
I regret wasting all of that time for a good game that never materialized. Not only do I not recommend it, I heavily recommend staying as far away as possible.

I put 100+ hours into FFXV
I regret wasting all of that time for a good game that never materialized. Not only do I…

Holy crap, this is amazing.

Not that I wasn’t expecting quality, but there a sincerity and heart here that makes it feel like I’m really sitting at a campfire listening to a great yarn-weaver with a mix of contemporary sarcasm and old-timey mannerisms.

The shear effectiveness of your brand of off-kilter humor filtered…

Oh, for sure, but I do love to be there and just take in someone’s first experience with the game proper.

Oh, for sure, but I do love to be there and just take in someone’s first experience with the game proper.

And the “it’s so great to share!” aspect is the #1 reason while I’ll never get this achievement.

There’s always the one friend at the get-together who hasn’t played the Stanley Parable :D

Listened to the podcast this morning, expected to feel righteously indignant by the end but ultimately you all had good points and though I may lean more towards Kirk’s “it kind of seems like microtransactions are generally a bad idea”, I appreciated your explanation and perspective from someone who thinks about this…

Fair point, but I think people are starting to grow out of that attitude. Most players are looking for a strong artstyle and not photorealism, even if they don’t exactly know it yet.

That’s a very reductive and bad-faith representation of people’s critique of optional microtransactions in $60+ single-player games

FOO Strategy, I’m going to have to remember that; it gives a name to something I’ve been trying to articulate when I talk about how I play and think about video games; thanks for that breakdown.

That’s a very good point you made about that particular weakness of BotW’s design too, I didn’t think of it from that angle…

I think it boils down to people seeing BotW as “the Zelda game where you climb everything” as opposed to “the Zelda game with a big open world and multiple traversal methods”. Once their main method of traversal is hindered, they feel like they’re being unfairly hobbled by the game.

I always used a horse, used the…

From my experience, being comfortable with VR locomotion is an exception and not the norm. It makes sense to have the default settings make sense for the widest demographic, unless you’re making a niche game.