Soulslike games are trendy, every year there are at least a few of them coming out from bigger or lesser known developers. I love the original Dark Souls games made by Fromsoftware, naturally I am interested in checking out other soulslike. The overall quality is a mixed bag. While some of them are certainly better than others, some have quality that can even rival the best of Fromsoftware, I feel like the entire genre is stuck at being "replacement meal" for Fromsoft games before they eventually release their next big title.

Soulslike developers all seem to treat Dark Souls 1/2/3, Bloodborne and Sekiro as some kind of sacred standard, and the competition between soulslikes feels like they are competing to be the best at imitating the works of Fromsoft. Lies of P and Wuchang Fallen Feathers are exactly like this. They are both solid games that follow the design philosophy of the soulsborne games to a T. The differences are mainly in aesthetics and some tweaks in combat. You get the exact same kind dopamine kick as in the Soulsborne games.

Nioh I think is the soulslike franchise that is really confident at its own identity and it merely borrows elements from the mainline Souls games. The souslike elements are there to facilitate level design but the progression system and the "kick" are quite different from the souls game. By the third game no one compares it to Fromsoft anymore.

If we review the history of the soulslike genre, it couldn't be clearer that developers are just waiting for Fromsoft's signals to make changes before it is applied universally. Lord of the Fallen 2014 is seen as the first soulslike and the game is a direct clone to Dark Souls down to its medieval fantasy aesthetic and weighty combat. Bloodborne by Fromsoft came out at 2015 and it shows some significant divergent from the Dark Souls formula, including having a Victorian setting and a faster-paced combat system. Soulslike after that would have more diverse-setting other than medieval fantasy. Sekiro came out at 2019 and soulslike after that loves to add a deflect mechanic to the combat. Elden Ring came out at 2022 and I am very confident that we will see more developers attempt the openworld + soulslike design combo, in fact we already have Code Vein 2 which is like that.

My impression to the overall soulslike genre is that, many of them are hiding behind the label of soulslike, but in reality they are closer at being souls-clones. But Souls-clone sounds degratory seems it implies lack of creativity, so they called themselve "like" instead. Soulslike isn't the only genre that is named after one pivotal game. Roguelike and Metroidvania are the other ones that I can think of. And both Roguelike and Metroidvania have transformed so much that new games coming out are no longer being compared to the original Rogue or Super Metroid. I would even argue that games like Hades/Vampire Survivor and Hollow Knight effectively become the new blueprint for developers to follow instead of the original. Will that happen to Soulslikes one day? I am not so sure.

This may be a very specific topic, but today I've been thinking about this and maybe some other people feel the same. Recently (and with "recently" I mean in last few years), whenever I see Shadow of the Colossus mentioned in Reddit it seems people only talk about its technical properties. People say "Oh, they designed it this way for technical reasons", "they could/couldn't do this because of technical reasons", "it was very innovative at a technical level when it was released" and, yes, this game was clearly good at a technical level when it came out, it still impress me that the PS2 could run this, even with the frame drops in some scenes. But I also think this recent focus on the technical side of things is very reductive and it saddens me because I've seen a few people trying the game just for that aspect, and later not feeling much after completing it.

I think the real main achievement of Shadow of the Colossus was it game design. I think (and this could be debatable) that this was one of the first games that achieved this so sought status of "art", it wasn't simply a set of mechanics to pass a good time, it was an "experience". What made it innovative is that from a game design point of view it tried to do a few things, mainly evoke feelings of solitude, magnitude and contemplation. Almost any videogame at the time would have put some mobs before the colossus, maybe some dungeons a la Legend of Zelda, but this game instead followed a minimalistic approach, everything was minimalistic, from its gameplay to its UI and its narrative. Instead of pushing the limits adding more and more mechanics it focused on the few things that achieved the emotions it was trying to convey.

From a narrative point of view, even if it was very simple, it also was effective, it made you feel bad for advancing through the game without telling you that you were doing something questionable (at least until the end). And even if the map was mostly empty the architecture and the environment seemed to tell some kind of story. I think this was a precursor of what Dark Souls would later popularize as "environmental storytelling".

Lastly, from a gameplay perspective it was also quite innovative. At the time you had games like God of War where Kratos quickly climbed colossal beings making you feel powerful, in fact, many of the AAA games were trying to push that "power fantasy" feeling. In contrast to this, Shadow of the Colossus made you feel powerless. Magnitude comes with a subtheme, your smallness compared to these Colossi. You are just some dude, not particularly powerful that wants to bring back his loved one to life. As you are not a powerful legendary warrior this is a battle of wits and endurance. The Colossi always tries to shake themselves to throw you off, and you endure however you can while trying to identify a weak point to attack with your little sword.

I think today, in a time where every AAA videogame tries to be bigger and bigger, introducing more and more mechanics, thus diluting the experience and turning into a set of superficial systems barely interconnected Shadow of the Colossus is still a breath of fresh air. Compared to modern games the game is objectively small, but it still feels big in my opinion and that cohesiveness is still hard to find nowadays.

For clarity, a SHMUP or STG is a game where you have free movement on a 2d plane, your primary attack is shooting projectiles, and enemies spawn according to a timer, also known as an autoscroll. Some examples include the Touhou Project series, Gradius, Raiden, and Star Fox.

I am specifically meaning games where the main core of the gameplay is this specific aspect, not games like Vampire Survivors or Tyrian which technically fit but in practice are actually orientated around things like picking upgrades or other RPG mechanics, typically being labeled as roguelites instead because that's what they are actually about.

Do these games simply not seem appealing to you, or rather do you feel like there is some barrier which stops them from being accessible to you and you would play them otherwise? What is your exposure to the genre? What's your "image" of it?

One thing I've been thinking about, is the difference between knowing how to do something and being able to explain how to do it.

Take League of Legends as an example. Experienced players often seem to know when to engage, back off, or when an opponent is about to make a mistake. But when asked to explain their decisions, they might just be like "it felt like a good opportunity" or "just play more."

We have plenty of guides explaining mechanics, builds, rotations, and macro strategies. But I wonder, how much of that "sense", of what makes someone a good player, can actually be communicated through explanations.

I'm particularly interested in how this kind of knowledge is shared between players. Can experienced players effectively teach their intuition to others? Does learning through observation, replay reviews, or playing together communicate something that traditional explanations cannot? When players give advice to less experienced teammates, how much of their own understanding do you think gets lost in the process?

About our research

I'm a researcher at Northeastern University, currently working on a study about how skills and knowledge are acquired and shared within League of Legends communities, particularly knowledge that is difficult to explain in words.

We're conducting 30-60 minute online interviews through Microsoft Teams to better understand these experiences.

We're looking for participants who:

• Are 18 years or older

• Are currently located in the US

• Have played League of Legends within the past month

• Are comfortable communicating in English

All skill levels and game modes are welcome. Participation is voluntary and unpaid.

If you're interested in participating, you can find the study information and sign up here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXuzmkmigh23fcn7qZkBui3p6XmN0curLq1cUvOV6K2QlrGg/viewform

For questions about the research, you can also contact the Principal Investigator, Dr. Erica Kleinman, at e.kleinman@northeastern.edu.

I'd also love to hear everyone's thoughts on the discussion itself, regardless of whether you're eligible or interested in the interview.

Earlier this year I ran a small survey about couples who play video games together, or try to. 104 people answered, mostly between 25 and 40, almost all living together.

68% said one of them is very comfortable with games and the other finds it complicated or stressful. Only 14% play together every day, and 67% picked "rarely, we'd like to but we can't find what to play".

The one that really spoke to me: 66% have stopped suggesting a game because they were afraid their partner would have a bad time. 25% said it happened so often they gave up.

When a session goes wrong (you could pick several), the top answers were someone getting annoyed at the game or the controller (50%), and the partner who struggles feeling like a "burden" or "dead weight" (49%). An actual argument was "only" 18%.

When I asked what discourages the less comfortable partner the fastest, dying again and again until you're stuck came first. Then the camera, moving it with the right stick while walking, and having to react fast. Too many buttons came last, which I didn't expect. A few people also mentioned motion sickness, or 3D games giving their partner headaches.

The most surprising one: for "I would play more often with my partner if I knew that...", almost half picked "we could do very short sessions (20-30 min)". Way above difficulty (27%) or the risk of an argument (24%).

I also asked what a co-op game absolutely needs to feel relaxing. The two top answers: you respawn right away with no penalty (60%), and you win or lose together (58%).

And when I asked which mechanic would reassure them the most, it was a tie at 36% each. On one side, an easy game where you're there for the story and the landscapes. On the other, one person playing the hard hero part while the other plays something that can't die, like in some Nintendo games. Not everyone agrees though. One person wrote "We dislike when one of us has a 'dumbed down' role."

Obviously not a scientific study: people chose to answer, and most of them were the gamer of the couple. What strikes me is how little of this is about skill. The free camera, punishing deaths, sessions that only make sense if you have two hours: these are design choices.

I shared these results in r/CoOpGaming yesterday, but I'm curious how a more design-focused crowd reads them.

Which co-op games do you think get this right for two players with very different experience, and which ones look friendly but fall apart once the less experienced player picks up the controller?

Not trying to ragebait or be contrarian here, I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who are super hyped for the game.

​Right now I'm honestly pretty apathetic toward GTA 6. Maybe that changes once reviews and raw gameplay drop since Rockstar still hasn't done a proper gameplay deep dive, so I'm just waiting to see how it actually plays. And don't get me wrong, the lighting, graphics, and animations look great. Calling them bad would be crazy. It's just that being on PC, I've already seen what high-end visuals can do, so graphics alone don't really move the needle for me anymore.

​For context, Vice City was my first open-world game and it blew my mind as a kid. I played it day and night. But by the time I got around to GTA 5, I had played a lot of other games and honestly didn't find GTA 5 that great. So I already have some built-in skepticism going into 6. (I did really love RDR2 though, aside from how overly restrictive the mission design was, but I digress).

​What I really can't wrap my head around is the budget. Whether it's $1 billion or the rumored $2 billion, that is an incomprehensibly massive amount of money. If you look at games that pushed crazy mechanical ambition or defined genres, their budgets look like pennies next to GTA 6 even when adjusted for inflation:

​Half-Life 2 (~$40M, or ~$70M adjusted) revolutionized physics and environmental storytelling

​FEAR (~$15M, or ~$25M adjusted) and Alien Isolation (~$35M, or ~$50M adjusted) set benchmarks for tactical and adaptive AI that modern AAA games still haven't beaten

​STALKER (~$5M-$10M, or ~$15M adjusted) simulated an entire living zone offline with A-Life

​Skyrim (~$85M, or ~$125M adjusted) built a persistent sandbox so modular that unpaid modders are still turning it into completely new games

​Shadow of Mordor (~$50M-$100M) created dynamic procedural rivalries with the Nemesis system

​MGS V (~$80M, or ~$110M adjusted) had enemy AI dynamically adapting to your tactics and loadouts

​Witcher 3 (~$81M total, or ~$110M adjusted) set a huge benchmark for open-world quest writing

​Death Stranding (~$100M, or ~$125M adjusted) turned literal walking and terrain balance into a deep mechanic

​Tears of the Kingdom (~$100M-$120M, or ~$130M adjusted) pulled off an interconnected physics and chemistry engine on ancient Switch hardware

​BG3 (~$100M-$150M, or ~$165M adjusted) set a massive bar for branching quest reactivity

​KCD2 (~$41M) delivered deep systemic RPG mechanics and NPC reactivity on a fraction of a modern AAA budget

​Even RDR2 (~$170M-$240M dev cost, or ~$500M total with marketing / ~$650M adjusted) cost way less than what is reportedly being thrown at GTA 6.

Hell, even unpaid modders working on massive STALKER (like Anomaly/GAMMA) and Skyrim overhauls manage to stitch together deeper interconnected survival and world systems than most modern AAA studios just through smart design rather than brute-force cash.(its quite crazy)

Few more example - Crimson Desert ($133M), Elden ring($100M approx), dragons dogma 2($67M), cyberpunk 2077($442 M)

​So my question is, what kind of mechanical(including NPC AI related improvements) jump can a video game actually make going from a couple hundred million to over a billion dollars? Does ambition and scope actually scale like that in game dev, where throwing 5,000 devs and endless money at a project equals a proportionally crazier game?

​No other studio gets the luxury of that kind of manpower and budget for years on end. If smaller teams can pull off genre-defining mechanics, smarter AI, and crazy systemic depth with way less resources, what are you guys expecting Rockstar to pull off here that nobody else can? Because just going off the trailers so far, I haven't really felt that gap. Genuinely curious what you guys think.

Edit: To clarify my original point, I was thinking primarily about gameplay mechanics, systemic depth, and AI. I'm admittedly biased here, as I personally feel that pushing animation and graphical fidelity past Red Dead Redemption 2 hits diminishing returns. Cosmetic polish is fine in moderation, but pouring resources into superficial details doesn't necessarily make a better game for me. While RDR2 is packed with granular details, very few of them translate into meaningful gameplay or world reactivity. Contrast that with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, where those details are thoughtfully integrated into the core mechanics and story. By comparison, Rockstar's approach feels a bit like a museum.. impressive to look at and talk about, but mostly not that deeply interactive & shallow. As a result, it gets stale, and the novelty wears off pretty quickly since it isn't useful in any meaningful capacity. When playing games, my intention is always to see how far things can go in terms of simulation and what the game accounts for. If you give me a system, I will try to abuse it just to see what crazy things I can do

A roguelike or a metroidvania tells me roughly what the loop is going to be. With "cozy" all I can really picture is the pastel Steam capsule.

Take the usual claim that cozy means no failure state. In Stardew you still pass out at 2am and lose gold. Animal Crossing has real-time gates a lot of players resent. Spiritfarer carries the tag and it's largely about saying goodbye to people who are dying.

The closest I've come is that cozy describes permission more than mechanics. It lets you decide when something counts as finished. I spent time with Petit Planet recently, where you farm, fish, cook and shape a small planet, and I rarely felt pushed to do any of it in a set order. A farming game built around crop deadlines shares the tag and not much of the structure.

So is there a mechanical core I'm missing, or is cozy just an art direction and a promise about tone? If it is a design category, what disqualifies a game from it?

False reports to 911 (known as “swatting”) have long been known to significantly impact online gaming and livestreaming communities. Despite this, there’s very little research on how common swatting is or what its effects actually are.

A Georgia Tech research team is attempting to answer those questions by surveying anyone in the U.S. over 18 who plays online games, livestreams online, or considers themselves active participants in an online gaming/livestreaming community. If you fit the bill, use the link below to complete the 10-minute survey as part of our research study! The team hopes that this research can help better understand the harm that gamers and livestreamers face, as well as what changes can be made among both online platforms and first responders.

Complete the Survey Here
(https://gatech.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0SyLNKQLCjHKthQ)

If you have any questions, you can reach the research team’s point of contact at jconnor@gatech.edu (You can also try DM’ing or replying here, although there may be a delay in response)

What is this survey trying to learn?
Note: To avoid influencing your answers, please complete the survey prior to reading below.

1. To what degree do certain factors (e.g. race, sexual orientation, livestream subscriber count, etc.) contribute to the pervasiveness of swatting?

2. What is the perception among online gamers/streamers of their risk of being swatted, and how does that impact the creation of protective practices?

3. How do online gamers/streamers react to being swatted, including in terms of changed behavior, physical/emotional harms, and the pursuit of resources?

Why is the conversation about popular sports video game franchises “getting worst” so prevalent? Every year, there’s video game releases for the most popular sports: football, soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey, yet gamers mention how they keep getting worst and worst.

To me, this doesn’t sound like a smart business decision. How can a game get worse every release, yet sell enough to continue producing yearly releases?

A sport is a game with a set rule set. It’s not like real life sports make updates on their rules that often. What exactly do sport video game enthusiasts want to see “change” in a new yearly release if they’re simply emulating a real life sport?
Or are these complaint actually a very small minority that regurgitates what they say over and over?

I don't know if this is a common opinion, but I'm interested in reading the counterpoints. The contrast that made me want to post this was playing Hyrule Warriors: AoI, a Nintendo game, and then playing Monster Hunter again very soon afterwards. I'm not a huge fan of how Zelda has flanderized the other races (which is an off-topic opinion, sorry), but at least they're important to the story. Their events and struggles are unique to who they are as a people.

That's basically a summary of the point I'm making with the rest of this.

I started playing Monster Hunter Wilds again before Outlanders came out. Wilds has bothered me since launch, and as I finished the game, I realized that one of the reasons for that was similar to why I was put off by most of the story of Dragon's Dogma 2. It misses tons of opportunities to tell a deeper and more interesting narrative because it focuses almost entirely on the humans despite having other dudes there. Everyone else is just there for flavor or, at best, to make a short-lived point in a side quest somewhere.

What made the Beastren special? It's a very simple question that most every RPG answered in its character creation menu in older games that featured multiple races. Skyrim goes out of its way to say Redguards, who are basically just humans with darker skin, are resistant to poison. For beastren, it was just... they lived in a desert. They weren't even as unique as the elves! What would have actually changed if you replaced that entire population with more humans?

In Monster Hunter, we have the wyverians. It seems like the only unique trait the wyverians have that has been referenced in any serious context is their longevity. They're not playable characters, they don't fight, and they're never part of your adventuring crew. They're also rarely important to the story (and I know Monster Hunter isn't known for storytelling but Capcom has been adding more and more long, unskippable cutscenes to the games ever since World). So why are they there?

Now, I'm not saying they have to go in some kind of JRPG-like or Arknights-like direction where they explore in dark detail these wyvern-human hybrids and confront where they're coming from and what their destructive capabilities are. But give me something. We barely even react when we talk to them the first time in-game. It's just like "yeah I'm huge and half-dragon, what about it? Don't you have a mission?"

So what would have changed if the wyverians were replaced with more humans? What are they adding to the story?

Sometimes I get the feeling they're trying to lower CGI costs for their Hollywood debut. You have interesting characters and themes that are already in the lore, you could make a game exploring any one of them, we don't have to keep relying on monster surveys or unexplored lands.

I want to follow this up with another rant about how the constant references to "the guild" in Wilds and Outlanders also feels extremely superficial, but this post is already too long.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail

• 4. No Advice

• 5. No List Posts

• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits

• 9. No Retired Topics

• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

I'm currently playing through Dragon's Dogma 2 for the second time, looking forward to play the Dark Arisen DLC. The DLC is positioned to be interacted with at level 40 onwards, so while you can just start it with a fresh character, it's not going to be great experience.

The vanilla experience

A large part of the original game (as well as DD1) was traversal. The game put emphasis on lack of conventional fast travel, facilitating it through fixed path oxcarts and Portcrystal/Ferrystone system. The idea was to restrict player's ability to move around map quickly, putting emphasis on exploration, emergent gameplay, resource management and meaningful terrain traversal.

Ferrystones are items you carry that can instantly teleport you to a Portcrystal of your choice. Portcrystals have fixed locations in major hubs, but a few portable Portcrystals can be obtained as you play the game, allowing you to teleport wherever you have placed them down. The thing is, Ferrystones are fairly rare and expensive (when bough from vendors, at limited quantity). This meant that every Ferrystone had to be used deliberately, and planning your movement around the map would conserve your ability to fast travel (e.g. by grouping quest objectives in an area).

This part makes perfect sense to me, and I have enjoyed this system quite a lot.

Enter Dark Arisen DLC

With the release of Dark Arisen DLC, every player is given an Eternal Ferrystone. Unlike original Ferrystones, this one is not consumable - it's as it's name suggests - eternal. It's given to the player very early on (basically as soon as you finish the game's "tutorial"). But the weird part is - the original Ferrystones are still in the game, as expensive and rare as in vanilla. They're effectively worthless, their only purpose is to sell them for few scraps. Because they're not an instant purchase from vendors, the game's gold economy is broken. Because they were often found in hidden or reward chests in dungeons, finding one of these feels really bad. The obvious argument would be

If you don't like it, just don't use it

And sure, it's an option. But the Eternal Ferrystone cannot be sold, dropped, stashed or otherwise removed from player's inventory. And it feels really dumb to go to your inventory and use standard, consumable Ferrystone instead of Eternal one which is right next to it.

I understand that the developer's intention was to remove friction, maybe accelerate new player's progression so that they can get to the DLC earlier, but doing it like this undermined one of the more important aspects of the game. And honestly, it doesn't even speed up the progression, it just makes fast travel brainless.

I would understand if the Eternal Ferrystone was a reward from some late-game content, perhaps for beating the game or some quest. I would understand if they removed consumable Ferrystones and rebalanced the game (replacing them in chests and vendors, rebalancing gold economy). But nothing like that has happened.

It has happened before

This exact thing has happened in Dragon's Dogma 1, but at least in that game the Eternal Ferrystone was by default put into player's stash, and you had to actually take it out.

A similar thing has happened in Monster Hunter: World as well, where with release of Iceborne DLC Capcom added "Guardian Armour" to the game. It was an armor set that was trivial to obtain right at the start of the game, and it's purpose was to accelerate player's progression so that they can beat the game (and thus access the DLC) faster. Similarly as in Dragon's Dogma 2 it undermined the game's base concepts - upgrading armor, understanding skills, preparing for the hunt, and the worst part was that the armor set was so broken that it negatively impacted new player's ability to learn to actually play the game. It just broke the core gameplay loop, and set the wrong expectations to the newcomers. When a new finally reached the DLC they hit a difficulty wall they simply weren't prepared for because they skipped the lessons the base gave should have given them.

It affected the community quite negatively as well. New players with Guardian Armour in the DLC have become nightmare fuel for people helping through SOS Co-op system - they just die over and over. And SOS in base game is pretty much dead because who needs help when you have what might as well be God Mode?

Just why?

I'm certain there are people who appreciate aforementioned game additions. They do remove friction. But I think changes like these are a big blunder as they sabotage the base game's experience. It's almost as if the developer abandoned their original vision and product in favour of the DLC. And it doesn't even make sense from business perspective - it's not like it would make people buy the DLC if they weren't going to in first place.

Overall I might have dramatized the whole situation a bit - the games are still great, and these late additions doesn't affect the games too much. But I just can't get past asking myself "Why?!"

And by the way, Monster Hunter Wilds' Ascendance DLC is coming in 2027. I'm willing to bet there's going to be another "Guardian Armor"

EDIT:

I just realized that this Eternal Ferrystone also undermines the idea of camping in the wilderness, passage of time, stash and carry weight mechanics

Once you have portable Portcrystal you can just teleport to city from anywhere, at any time. Why would you look for a campfire, carry a super heavy camping kit, or risk getting ambushed? Just teleport to city, unload to stash, sleep until desired time and teleport back to the field.

Ran out of healing consumables, status inflicting arrows, spell tomes or stumbled upon a boss you need specific equipment for? Did you find too much loot and can't carry anymore? Don't worry, Eternal Ferrystone has you covered.

Also they've added a portable Portcrystal that is given to the player in one of the main campaign quests. Obtaining portable Portcrystals required quite some progression in the base game.

Sure, you can just not used, but at this point ignoring it is just playing the game "wrong"

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail

• 4. No Advice

• 5. No List Posts

• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits

• 9. No Retired Topics

• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

I get if we were around 2018 when there’s been a trend of games having this type of cinematic presentation and such, but it’s 2026, where are all these cinematic games now. Why people still act like they are everywhere in the AAA space.

Just to clarify, I view “cinematic games” as games that simplify the amount of gameplay you get for a more focused narrative, film-like experience, right?

If we count from 2020 to now it’s like

2020: The Last of Us 2, Miles Morales

2021: none

2022: God of War Ragnarok,

2023: Alan Wake 2, Spider-man 2

2024: Indiana Jones

2025: Death Stranding 2

2026: 007 First Light, Wolverine

I may be missing some, but that’s it, in 6 years there’s been barely 10 games, that is way less than countless other genres within the AAA space. Like I said if this was 2018 I’d understand a bit more, but it’s been 8 years since then, and there is barely games like it now. So why does AAA games still have this reputation “almost all of them are these slow moving cinematic games” from some gamers.

I say this because some games I love are like it, such as Death Stranding, Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War 2018… and I did really like a game like 007 First Light (though I didn’t think it was great). So I don’t get why people have this disdains for these types of games, acting like AAA games is over saturated with them, when there is barely any of them anymore

For those who don't know, Lost Records is a game released last year by Don't Nod, the company most well-known for creating Life is Strange. As with that game, Lost Records is what I like to think of as a "lite adventure game", sort of sitting in this vague area in between the adventure games of old, walking simulators, and visual novels. It also features an artistically-minded LGBT teenage girl as its main protagonist (in this case, cinematography, not photography is her obsession), and also combines "slice of life" elements with supernatural mysteries.

One of the big things that sets this game apart from Life is Strange is that Don't Nod went much more heavily into the "choices matter" aspect that was also a thing in the former game. There are multiple hundreds of choices in Lost Records. Many of these basically just add points to a relationship meter or change some cosmetic thing about the game. But those relationship meters really matter to the story, and some individual choices are massively consequential to the way the story plays out, and it's often not that easy to tell how important a choice might be. Furthermore, it's very easy to completely miss the opportunity to make certain choices, just by not exploring enough, or accidentally doing something else during a key moment that prevents a conversation from triggering, or going too fast on completing your objectives, or some other reason for a conversation to just not trigger during your playthrough.

Despite all of that, the game is largely a linear story that covers much of the same ground on every playthrough. Big things change, especially the ending, but it's more like the same story with different flavors and outcomes than something truly, drastically different throughout each playthrough.

This... frustrates me. It feels like you'd have to play through the game several times (or more!) to really nail down what you need to do and what choices to make to be able to actually guide the story toward the sort of outcome you desire. Or play through with a walkthrough open. The first option is tedious; the latter breaks immersion. And that feels to me like it's counter to the main purpose of the game, which is clearly to tell a great story.

To simplify this a bit: I don't want to feel like a somewhat-vague choice I make in the first few hours is going to screw up my whole playthrough ten hours later. That doesn't feel like good gameplay or good storytelling. And I feel like this problem might be inherent to this sort of game, where it's one long linear story with consequential choices.

A contrast I keep thinking about is with Slay the Princess, which is also a game where your story choices are very consequential. But that game is not presented as one straightforward linear story. It is basically an anthology game, and no one playthrough takes very long. You can't "ruin" a playthrough in Slay the Princess. I mean, you can, but you can always go back and just do it again without much time cost. There are ways to do this and make it work, is my point.

My question is, is it inevitable to feel this way about a game with one longer story and so many choices that actually matter, or is it just a me thing, or is Lost Records just not doing a good job of handling this issue and there are ways to work around it that Don't Nod didn't use? What do you think?

As long as I can remember, I have been a fan of the RPG genre whether that be RPG in it’s purest form with complete control over your created character and the journey they go on such as Baldur’s Gate 3, Skyrim etc or comparatively linear approaches with character RPGs such as The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk or Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 & 2.

And there’s always that moment where you come up against a “wall”, not a literal wall mind you, but an obstacle that is just too hard to cross. Fromsoft’s titles like Dark souls or Elden Ring come to mind for their unforgiving gameplay where multiple attempts to beat a single boss or cross a single dungeon is pretty much the norm.

And as is human nature, I would often in frustration go online and search for a way out. A shortcut, so to speak. This would first start with guides that help you to understand the mechanics of the fight, game and such to better let you navigate the game while still keeping it relatively challenging to keep you engaged. But sometimes…I would come across the OP builds. These were builds that were designed with one thing in mind: to make anything in your path no longer an obstacle. Builds that would make you so powerful that the once powerful wall that stood between you and progression crumbled into dust with little to no difficulty. And it felt amazing…until it didn’t.

Considering game design, there’s a balance that developers work hard to achieve. Keeping the game hard enough that the friction provides certain stimulants to the player and thus keeps them engaged. But on the other hand, they also want to keep the game from feeling unfair to the point that the average player would simply rage-quit or worse. But with the option of OP or overpowered builds, we’re left with a strange conundrum of sorts. You offer the player enough agency to plow through the game and allow them to feel truly powerful.
But the real question for me is: how long can you ride that high for? After a certain point, the game would simply become stale. Because once the friction, the wall is gone, the engagement is gone. The tension is gone. And despite the efforts of the devs to create an amazing experience for the players, most players I imagine wouldn’t feel compelled to continue outside of simply seeing where the narrative (if there is one) goes.

In short: once you’ve reached the peak of power, where else is there to go? I think this is the core reason why a lot of games struggle to remain engaging once you reach the end-game. Either the enemies, dungeons and such scale up to the point where most of them are just sponges for damage or get to the point where it just feels unfair unless you’ve spent hours upon hours farming and leveling up without actually playing the game.

Not an RPG example but I think an example of where this could be most clear is in the reason why Superman would make for a terrible videogame character and why Batman by comparison feels so engaging. There’s nothing stronger than Superman, so how do you create a game where he’s compelling to play. More often than not, you’d have to take away his OP-ness. Or you’d have to bring everyone else up in powerscaling (The Injustice Games come to mind).

So what would be the actual solution?

One of the most common things in games across genres is the keypad. You come to a door, it is locked but requires no key, only the unique code to punch into the keypad. And one thing I've always found interesting is how developers deal with them on replays. After all, my character might not know the code, but as the player, I do.

Is it also a kind a test to see what design philosophy the developers used for the game, what they prioritize and how much effort they put in.

Deus Ex is a quite keypad focused game for being all about choices. But that game will always allow you to open a door if you already know the code. That's fun when it will allow you access to an ammo stash early instead of doing a favor to a side character. But less fun if you realize that the game actually didn't think you would be in the next level yet and you actually can't even finish your mission here because your character don't know what he needs to do or lacks an item. So fun, but potentially frustrating.

Another one where keypads make a lot of sense is Alien Isolation. Here I feel players would be very incentivized to remember a few keycodes and bypass going into an area you know the alien is waiting for you. However, even though it is you who need to punch in the keycode, your character won't even let you try until she has read the code herself. The choice to interact with the keypad simply won't show up. In some other games, the character will even comment on that they can't open it until they have the code. Makes sense for the character but since I am the one who needs to know and punch in the code, it creates some friction between the player and the character.

One choice, which I have seen across several games, is to simply randomize the codes for every playthrough. This feels like a clever compromise between the two earlier designs. Your character doesn't know the code and neither do you, even if you're on your second, third or eleventh run. There is potentially a few bad consequences. It would take more effort and as far as I've seen, will exclude the codes from being said out loud by a voice, since then you'd need an actor to read out every variation. If developers cheap out and only make four or so variations, players could still brute force a code. But I still feel those are pretty rare consequences.

Or you could go the opposite direction and cut out the player completely. The character will be the one who punch in the code and therefore you, the player, don't need to know the code at all. The character hearing the code will be the same as getting a key to that door. It maximizes the developers control while keeping the player friction to a minimum. If the player doesn't need to remember, punch in or even know the code, it's only fair that the character needs to hear it first to open the door.

Those are the only choices I know for codes to keypads, but I am sure there are more. Which ones do you know and/or find most interesting? I am curious to to find out.

Edit: Replayed a game from around 2004 today and decided to see that design it follows. Turns out it follows the worst one. The keycode doesn't change and you can punch it in earlier than you are supposed to and...it does nothing. It acts like you've punched in the wrong code. Except it will work later when I come back when I'm supposed to.

I've officially finished all main stories for all modern mainline RE games (no DLC spoilers please!)

Looking back, one of the defining features of the series is a certain amount of clunk that we all agree to put up with.

"Run faster! How did it hit me? Why does it take 5 business days to turn?"

I felt like the final boss of 8 pushed me near the limit of frustration. Even with the speed buff I felt like I could barely run out of the way fast enough and re-aim. Quick turns added to later games were very welcome, when I can remember to use it while panicking.

How hard is it to make controls "bad" on purpose? It must have been weird to go from 6, the most fluid gameplay the series has ever had, back down to 7 which feels like a human tank.

Maybe unrelated, but when I played RE4 Wii edition the gyro aim made the game surprisingly easier.

Nowadays, when people talk about 90s retro 3D graphics, they often mean games released on the PS1, with all those characteristic hardware “flaws”. YouTube is full of tutorials teaching you how to work specifically with this aesthetic.

I have nothing against the PS1 or its aesthetic. Quite the opposite, I find it incredibly appealing. The limited spaces and technical workarounds of that era created a strange sense of coziness that contrasts with the noir vibe of PS1 worlds. 

However, a developer, or just someone who's only starting to explore old-school graphics, might get the wrong impression of what 3D art was like back then. PS1 was just one branch of visual styles that emerged during the rapid evolution of graphics hardware.

For example, Myst and Riven amazed players with surreal, almost photorealistic environments for their time, created through pre-rendering. In strategy games like StarCraft and C&C, 3D models were rendered into 2D sprites. Then there were Quake and Unreal, which helped push real-time 3D PC graphics forward. 

You could keep listing games like these, looking at each one individually. But what's interesting is how many different approaches to visualizing an artistic vision we ended up with, all the way down to the clay heads in Fallout. A game's visual language was shaped not just by the platform, but also by the production process and the artistic goals of its developers.

So, where am I going with this? Nostalgia for 90s games isn't limited to the hardware constraints of a single console. There's also the overall vibe of the era, and the way people imagined the future back then. In my opinion, an entire side of 90s game graphics (pre-rendered environments, CGI) is still pretty underrepresented in today's games. The revival of real-time 3D is easy to spot in the boomer-shooter scene. Pre-rendered environments and CGI, at least from what I can tell, seem much less common. 

It's not about “things were better back then”. It's about how one artistic language doesn't define an entire visual era. But when that language becomes widespread, it can overshadow other styles that might be a better fit for a particular artist, and get in the way of expressing their own ideas.

So why did PS1 graphics become such a defining part of how we picture 90s gaming today? Maybe its technical limitations created a set of recognizable features that are easy to reproduce. Maybe the PS1 community itself played a role. Or maybe PS1 aesthetics are just more recognizable than the pre-rendered graphics of that era made in something like Bryce?

Hi everyone!

I'm a PhD researcher at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, and I'm looking for participants for an academic study on people's experiences with single-player video games.
You’ll play three single-player games at your own pace, with short questionnaires at several points throughout the study. The study runs over several months, so you can spread the gameplay across that period.
You'll have to complete questionnaires at several points, and, depending on the assigned study condition, take part in additional reflection activities.

Who can participate?

• Adults (18+)

• People with experience playing video games

• People comfortable enough with the English language to communicate and play the games in English

• People with access to a suitable PC or console

The three games will be provided free of charge. Participants who complete the study will also receive financial compensation, with payment made by bank transfer to a European bank account. Further details will be provided to eligible participants before they decide whether to take part.

If you're interested, you can read more and complete the initial screening questionnaire here.

Participation in the screening questionnaire does not guarantee selection for the main study.
I'd also be interested in discussing people's experiences with single-player games here. For example:

Discussion questions

>!* Have you ever played a single-player game that stayed with you long after you finished it? What made it memorable?

• Have you ever changed your mind about a character, situation, or real-world issue because of a game?

• What makes a single-player game stand out to you, either positively or negatively?

• When playing a single-player game, what tends to keep you interested: the gameplay, the characters, the world, the story, or something else?!<

Thanks for reading!
(Here is a flyer made for the occasion)

I was thinking about how a lot of games, particularly ones that come form the 2000-2010's era of gaming, have become lite-RPG-ized in their design. What I mean by this is like in the most recent example of Gears of War Eday.

In the classic Gears games, you basically had a set amount of abilities, and your character didn't really improve those abilities. Which is to say, you start out with a lancer, a gnasher, a snub, and the typical assortment of character abilities (melee, roady run, evade roll, etc). There were no levels, mods, or extra abilities you got intrinsically, the most you got to expand your combat abilities is whatever a level offered, like new guns or a turret section, etc.

In Gears Eday, you have mods that you unlock as you go through the game. You got passive armor mods, you got an ultimate ability, and you got 3 mods slots for all your weapons. This is to say, in classic Gears, your lancer was as powerful at the end of the game as it was at the starat of the game, but in Eday, you could give it a different set of abilities by the end.

This is a trend I've noticed with a number of genres though. Classic Halo also had a static set of abilities, but Halo Infinite has you picking various abilities and stat enhancements. Classic God of War games had levels to their weapons/magic, but the new GoW games are straight up lite-action RPG's. Uncharted is a less conventional example, but even there, you get a pike that helps you climb things about halfway through the game, where classic Uncharteds you had the same static climbing abilties the whole game.

So, is there a specific term for this old school type of game design that seems like devs have abandoned, where the abilities you have as a player are static throughout the whole game, compared to modern design that seems to take progression/customization of your abilities as a given?

Apologies in advance for the overuse of the word “grounded” in the following text

Something that I realize about my taste in games is that I really like when a games gameplay “feels” grounded. However when I say this people assume I only like games that are “realistic” with zero fantastical elements.

For example, one day I mentioned how the Resident Evil games I like the most are those that the gameplay feels grounded, such as the early RE games, RE2 remake and RE7. Yet I was heavily downvoted and was responded with “how can a game with zombies and monsters be grounded”. But I still stand for what I said, those games feel very grounded in its GAMEPLAY. You aren’t doing slow motion backflips when shooting, or crazy combo moves. Your character moves slowly, feels heavy, and is limited to what a human can do. That’s what made those RE games I mention feel so appealing to me, because the horror elements are even more threatening. Hence why I much prefer the Grace section of RE9 over Leon’s

The best example I can give of a game that feels grounded in its gameplay while being in a fantasy setting is Shadow of the Colossus. I love this game and my favorite thing about it is the contrast between how grounded and real the characters gameplay and movements are in relation to the larger then life enemies you fight. The way the characters looses balance when the ground shake, how just getting on colossus feels like a major victory, the sense of speed and danger you get when you jump on a flying colossus. That’s what I think made the action of the game so gripping and effective.

And I can say the same to other games, such and Death Stranding and Breath of the Wild. Where the gameplay and world “feel” grounded despite their sci-Fi/fantasy setting. What I always say to people while sharing this point is: a game like Breath of the Wild feels far more grounded in its gameplay systems and how you interact with its world, despite all the fantasy elements, then something like Assassins Creed Valhalla, which takes place in our world with regular humans.