Personally 2024 was ok for me even though I was laid off and unemployed for 6 months. Ok maybe it's a little shitty.

If we're in the darkest timeline, what was the last point where it felt there was so much hope and joy in the world?

Some options commonly put out.

• The day Pokémon Go released July 2016. So prepandemic and we went outside and and a girl told me where to find Weedles. Yep I'm in a videogame

• The day before 9/11 or when Harambe got killed

• When Endgame released, culmination of 10 years of marvel moments into a single movie, people cheering in the cinema. Still pre pandemic, maybe there's a trend here

Got the gamepass deal for $1 again, somehow, different email? So I took the opportunity and holiday season to try out Black Ops 6 and Diablo 4. Obviously the main reason was to play Indiana Jones, but that's another story..

Here are some points I noticed

• The developers expect you to know the game, no more handholding and tutorial for the 22nd game in the series, you already know the buttons to shoot and crawl and sprint crouch. Zombies mode was a revelation, insanely complex since I played the first one and the tutorial only scratched the surface

• This ties in to new mechanics, new game, new things to do right? BO6 has a grappling hook, while not new(?) introduces some sort of proof of concept and different gameplay in a couple of levels which shakes things up, in Diablo, I didn't notice anything new, it feels like a mobile game now though.

• They have no time to chill, devs think Gen Z or whoever their audience is has no time to admire the view. In old Cod, MoH games, you could blow up some tanks and then admire the French countryside after saving the town, here its curated so tight that I don't even think 5 seconds is allowed for you to explore or relax, its crafted like a movie, every 10 steps there must be a guard standing still for you to stealth kill. In Diablo, you go into a field and there are 20 wolves there for no reason and a bear. I thought you started with a 'normal' amount of wolves and then move on to ridiculous numbers in the endgame or post game. You also level up so fast and get access to the entire skill tree

• Diablo's story is now entirely detached from its gameplay, the protag can see the villains cutscenes due to a plot device, no more clever writing to explain events after, you get rewards not from an NPC but from the menu from completing world events, and somehow there are localised areas of 100s of enemies just waiting for you to start a fight in a random spot on an open field, theres a GPS showing you the way to the next objective

Overall I played both for the story and B06 was short and serviceable and let the player control the amount of lore they wanted (they did rip a level right from Control though) The presentation was top notch and had enough themes to make things different, it was also polished to the point where there were no rough edges and dare I say no personality.

I was completely uninterested in anything Diablo talked about, the intro was interesting then it turned into a bunch of fetch quests

My short review on Indiana Jones would be the opposite of Veilguard "It's a good game but not a good dragonage game"

"Its not a great game but a good Indiana Jones game"

We know that certain games are big, like BG3 or Persona 5. But recently games like FF7 rebirth and Indiana Jones just kept going on and on past "Act 3". Also Rise of the Golden Idol seemed a little short to me

Are developers getting more efficient with generating content?

Have you ever met a stranger that gave you advice that changed your life?

Have you lost a partner at a young age? Got a rare disease?

Decided to buy bitcoin on a whim in 2009?

Changed careers several times?

The 9800X3D just came out, so I'm looking to upgrade my 2017 PC to join the modern era, which means I'm waiting to play Baldurs Gate 3 (runs, but not ideal), Dead Space Remake (poorly optimised), Space Marine 2, Cyberpunk, Metaphor etc when I build my new rig in a couple of months.

In the meantime, I've finished some indies like Rise of the Golden Idol, first run of Satisfactory, did the Elden Ring DLC.

Then, there's the gap from now till the next RGG game and Monster Hunter, which would really scratch that action, open world itch.

Any recommendations for action games that feels like you're doing some exploration? Trying to get into a flow state. I may actually take a break and go read a book instead.

We're all just roleplaying as our ancestors hunting down mammoths and giant sloths to get fur and meat. No wonder it's so addictive.The book is Sapiens btw

I want to play an easy shooter where you feel like you're in a flow state aiming at targets, the only time I've ever felt like that was in the PS2 Medal of Honour, kneecap, helmet shot, head shot or up till MW4 original.

I've tried the latest CoD and the cinematics and cutscenes are just overblown.

Borderlands would be a kind of turn off your brain type but they haven't made a new game in awhile.

Helldiver had great shooting but the grind, limited levels and multiplayer means I wasn't too invested in it after a hard days work

3 big ones recently, this year was God of War Ragnarok, FF7 Rebirth and Jedi Survivor

Back when 3d games were new, tomb raider, prince of persia etc the traversal was the challenge, the gameplay.

Eventually they got watered down and simplified, now they are cleverly disguised choke points while the open world or boss ahead loads.

You'll notice the squeezing between narrow walls to separate 2 areas or a simple climb against a flat wall just before a boss. I think Uncharted was the first to do this as they moved away from climbing and focused more on combat and puzzles.

There is no reason to actually have the characters climb anything if it's not fun or there are better ways of traversal, GoW being the biggest offender here

Jedi Survivor embraces traversal more but still locks you out with invisible walls and floors that kill you

I think I might prefer the elevator loading screens from Elden Ring, at least you get to stretch out your fingers when waiting

They both good looking people, but I guess their chins got typecast

I missed the days of Uncharted and Tomb Raider, those games don't exist anymore, instead open world "everything games" have taken its place, AssCreed, Horizon, Fallen Order etc.

So Jedi Survivor scratches that traversal itch well, it has limited platforming sections and exploration, but enough to get the sense of wonder I had previously in the worlds of the old games.

It does a lot of things and takes inspiration from Souls likes, adventure platformers, hack and slashes, open world etc, but does none of it particularly well. This iteration focuses more on platforming and metroidvania as compared to the first game, here are some things that I wished were better.

1. It takes too long to get good. The setup at first seems very similar to Uncharted, solid platforming and combat wrapped around chunky set pieces placed in each act, however for some reason, Cal starts with losing all his abilities from the previous game and has to start again, you also slowly gain platforming abilities like air dash similar to a metroidvania. So you start the game feeling very anemic, a weak Jedi who can't do much but just gets pushed along the story.

The first point where I felt the game had potential was an amazing boss fight set piece on a desert planet, at that point, the initial hours of the game were a slog, probably only sustaining interest from Star Wars fans

2. It hates Lore I don't mean the canon and Lucasarts vs Disney and all that, I myself am not familiar with the "correct" story, by Lore I mean how things work in universe are not consistent or sensical at all.

In one part of the game, you put on an imperial disguise and depending on the customisable hair and beard style you have, you obviously look extremely out of place, the disguise is also of a high ranking officer, but the NPCs of lower rank look down on you.

There are several simple visual or dialogue changes that could have been done, for example removing the rank from the uniform or acknowledging that the designers thought about imperial ranks. There are also problems of weird architecture, random items scattered around the galaxy which I'll cover in my next 2 points.

3. Exploration with no rewards Speaking of items, the loot in the game is terrible, consisting mostly of cosmetics, so while you take on a tough platforming challenge, you may end up with not much at the end, this also really brings up the Lore part, like finding paint colours for your lightsaber in a meat packing factory, or force essences in random caves. Exploration is fun for its own sake and there are "audio tapes" of side stories when walking around, but again very uninteresting stories that do nothing.

4. Combat Lightsabers don't cut people in this game, behaving more like glowy baseball bats in combat and act like movie lightsabers in cutscenes. As many people have pointed out, the combat was probably started out as a Sekiro style parry into deathblow mechanic that was downplayed so that casual players could get into it by mashing. Only 1 stance out of 5 has animation cancel and the most enemy attacks are not well telegraphed, bosses are designed better, but they still take 20-30 light saber cuts to bare skin without so much as a scratch. The stamina and health mechanic doesn't gel and I wished they had designed a system that had the lightsaber cut off armor and limbs if they didn't one a one hit kill.

Force powers are not integrated well, being quite useless against strong enemies, obviously dark side powers are more flashy and easier to implement, but maybe we'll see it in the 3rd game

I did enjoy the puzzle sections of the game but it felt like it ought to belong and it completely different series altogether, the mish mash and inconsistent vision for this series really stops it from becoming one of the greats

Back in the day, Asscreed 1-4 and Far Cry 2-3, there were constant improvements and innovations in level design, mechanics, graphics, cool shit to do basically.

Recently the 2 "highly praised" Star Wars "open world" games essentially haven't moved the needle but are just Generic Game with a star wars skin

1. The new Open Worlds, firstly we have the Horizon Dawn killers, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Exploration focused game design, unique mechanics include unrestricted interaction and massive dungeons hidden behind tiny doors. Honourable mention to Death Stranding where deep mechanics are overshadowed by top notch facial animation by famous actors

2. Hero shooters, not a fan, but probably huge improvements and gameplay mechanics in Apex, Overwatch, Fortnight, maybe someone could chime in

3. RPG, Baldurs Gate 3, an impressive step up from Witcher 3 where every choice is considered, voice acted, millions of lines of dialogue, every player thought predicted by the designers.

4 The indies - usually the place for innovation but recent indies are super polished for small teams, bug free, fully thought out, addictive game loop, Balatro, Tactical Breach Wizards, Animal Well,Thank you for Coming.

In summary i think the industry is just spread out across more budgets, team sizes and countries now, no longer are the days when western Devs come up with fun or innovative AAA games, the focus more is on casual appeal and form over function

It seems the general direction the internet is going and I'm all for it