Good video, I like the discussion. I feel like we share a lot of the same pet peeves when it comes to games. Namely "moving too fast" and music. I'll drop a game in two seconds if the character movements suck. One game that got it PERFECT is Breath of the Wild. The way Link interacts with the environment is masterfully done. His movement speed and animation changes to accommodate slopes, and with varying degrees of severity. Grass and foliage will part as Link moves through it. Really makes him feel like a part of the world that he is in. Music is also pretty important for me. I have a RU-vid playlist of video game tunes that I've enjoyed dating back to the SNES, and will put it on occasionally when I'm working on something. The New Super Mario games haven't bothered me as much as they bothered you. I don't mind the music, I wouldn't call it "good", certainly nothing I'd want to listen to outside of the game, but they can be catchy. I definitely hope Nintendo switches gears with the next sidescrolling Mario game and does something different. The "new" style feels like it's played out. One game I recently passed up cuz I played the demo and the music was BEYOND AWFUL was Yoshi's Crafted World. Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how bad it is, I can't fathom anyone thinking this atrocity was acceptable as "music". It was so bad it was actually annoying me as I was trying to play the game. Like, I felt like I needed to hurry up and finish the level just because I didn't want the music to loop again. It literally cost Nintendo a sale. It pains me because Yoshi's Island on the SNES has great music. In fact, I don't think a Yoshi game has come close to unseating it, which is sad. I'm also losing more and more patience when it comes to collectables in games. I used to scour games and find everything, now I can't be bothered. I was just thinking cuz I've been playing Dragon Quest XI again, that it's more fun when you're searching for and finding regular items and money than it is "collectables", cuz most of the time they don't mean anything and are just for completion sake. I agree about Save Points needing to go. The game shouldn't hold you hostage, ever. When you need to put the game down, you should be able to. Finally, I know what you mean about Proficiency based stuff. You hit the nail right on the head with the "making coffee just to dump it out" analogy. I would find myself going around and doing crap I'd never do in a game just to get the proficiency. In my experience, it was something I completely got addicted to in my first few exposures to it, but then couldn't be bothered to do in future games cuz of burnout. I feel like Final Fantasy Tactics did it just about perfectly with jobs and JP. All you really had to do was switch to the job you wanted more abilities for, then just play the game the way you're supposed to. Never felt like a grind, or like I was wasting time.
You give fantastic examples. My favorite is BOTW, because Hyrule is huge and if you're going to walk everywhere, it is going to take a while. I don't know why other open world games feature big worlds when they just speed up how fast you run so you can travel 100 miles on foot in 3 minutes. Why bother with a big world?! Why not just make it smaller?
I’ve only continued to purchase games like New Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi’s Crafted World because my wife and I enjoy the co-op experience. We definitely recognize the issues the games have, like the music and sometimes too easy/simple gameplay, but tend to have fun with the games despite these issues. Many games are better with co-op. We don’t have as much fun as we did with games like Resident Evil 5 and Guacamelee, which feel more fleshed out and skill based but co-op games like those are few and far between. We even went so far as to 100% New Super Mario Bros. U, Luigi U, and Yoshi’s Crafted World just because of the ability to play in co-op. I don’t have an issue with collect-a-thons if they’re in the vein of games like Banjo Kazooie because the collectibles actually unlocked things and felt like they had meaning. What I can’t stand is games that have collectibles just for the sake of having them or collecting them all unlocking an achievement/trophy. One of the worst cases of this was Mafia II. It had wanted posters scattered around the world that you could collect. They had pictures of the developers on them, were incredibly hard to locate, and served no purpose other than unlocking an achievement. Unfortunately, I actually tracked them all down (with a guide of course) because I was still hunting for achievements/trophies back then. Thankfully, I’ve finally broken free of that addiction so I can enjoy games I my own pace again. It was around that time I realized how meaningless the achievements were and how little thought developers put into them. I think Breath of the Wild did something interesting with the Korok seeds. They recognized how it would be nearly impossible (and not fun) to find all of the Korok seeds in the game without a guide so they made it so that A) you don’t actually need to unlock all of the inventory slots in the game, and B) you only have to find less than half of the available Korok seeds to unlock everything. That was perfect for me and I had fun hunting for them.
Nice video. You touch on a lot of interesting topics that I sometimes experience and wonder how many of them make it into video games in the first place. I can’t think of a single game that does proficiency well. Like you said, it may seem realistic, but it just doesn’t translate well into video games. At least not as it’s been done. I feel like that’s an excuse developers use a lot “Well, it’s realistic.” Realism be damned if it’s not fun. I play video games for enjoyment. Now if something is unrealistic to the point that it’s awkward or kind of stupid and draws you out of the immersion of the game, that’s a different story. Funny you talk about high resolution games and how difficult it can be on the eyes. We have a 65” HDR LED TV in the living room and it’s actually my least favorite place to play video games because it dries my eyes out and strains them. It seems to me that there’s too much detail in many 1080p+ games and my eyes have a hard time trying to take it all in. I actually prefer the lower resolution and comfort of the Switch. I also have a 27” LED TV in my office that I like to play on, though that’s also generally only the Switch. I feel like we might have had different experiences with Dark Souls, though I did play only the remastered version. What I love about the Dark Souls games is that the ooze atmosphere. The world feels real and believable to me. It also feels like it’s filled with history that we only get glimpses of as the player. Their world building is top notch. I also feel that if you’re aware of your surroundings that deaths don’t generally feel cheap. I will say that the experience of playing through such a game can be so tense that I’m often not tempted to play through again after completing it. Which has been the case for me with Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Despite listing them as favorite games of mine I haven’t been terribly tempted to play through them again. One thing that really irritates me is when a game basically lies about what it is in the marketing. I remember picking up Brutal Legend, thinking that it was an action adventure game, only to find out that it was a tower defense game in disguise. More recently, Spider-Man on PS4. I bought the game to play as Spider-Man exclusively. Instead I find that every other mission I’m forced to play as a lame side-kick character in insta-fail stealth sections. Not what I signed up for. My top pet peeves with video games are: - Convoluted mechanics and a shit-ton of tutorials: If I need to take a class to figure out how the game works and excel at it, no thanks. Xenoblade Chronicles II had this issue big-time. It continued introducing new mechanics and tutorials right up to the end of the game. They really needed to trim the fat on this one and simplify a lot of the mechanics. - Too much dialogue: Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. Sure, it’s realistic that every character and NPC can have a five minute conversation with you, but is it fun or even interesting? Not to me, generally. Some games have found a better way by highlighting characters that actually have something important to say. - Massive difficulty spikes: This one will cause me to quit a game outright. Octopath Traveler was a beautiful but mediocre RPG in my opinion. I finished the game though and found that there was a secret boss at the end. Only problem is that you need to have all eight characters at a very high level to defeat it and you only use four throughout the game. I had no will to grind the other four and buy better gear for them as well so I quit there. It’s worse when a game does this for content that isn’t post game. Making steady progression throughout a game only to hit a solid wall is infuriating. - Games that have no respect for my time: Save points and/or having to repeat hours of content because you couldn’t save, unskippable intros/cutscenes, boring and slow escort/tailing missions, instant fail missions, cheap deaths, tons of fetch quests, and quests that have you running all over the map just to talk to different NPCs for five seconds (I’m looking at you Final Fantasy XIV). This is really the most cardinal sin to me aside from being outright boring.
Your convoluted mechanics mention is exactly why I dropped Xenoblade on the Wii U, I just always had this feeling that I wasn't playing the game right, but had no idea what I was doing wrong, and is exactly why I didn't even bother with the one for Switch. Too. Much. Dialogue. Man, this is on my list too! Especially when the NPCs have fuck-all to say. I gave up on Fantasy Life partially because of this. I usually never skip story dialog in games my first time through, but in this one I remember having that "fuck this shit..." moment and just started skipping ahead. I feel bad for the Treehouse for having to translate all that hot garbage. Another thing I'd relate to this is when (and this isn't just specifically for games) you play a game/watch a show (namely fantasy) where every person and city and continent has some bizarre name and they throw 20 names at you in the form of exposition right at the beginning. "Fllareghan of Nynbarith was in power until his brother in-law Gargariane returned from Lupartie and, with the help of the Nyntarakelani magic was able to overthrow him..." etc.
@@shad0wsibling Yup, that's a frustrating one, with the fantasy heavy names. It ends up reading like a child's first attempt at writing fiction. I really enjoyed Xenoblade Chronicles II while I couldn't get into Xenoblade Chronicles X at all. I feel like X didn't have much personality on top of being convoluted and I really can't stand silent protagonists that aren't named Link. At least Link emotes. Whenever they give you a blank slate character to play as they act like a robot trying to fit in with humans. Xenoblade Chronicles II had a very interesting world and characters. I enjoyed the story as well. Unfortunately I had to enjoy it despite many of the game mechanics being unnecessarily convoluted. It was worth it in the end though. I'm really looking forward to the remake of the original Xenoblade Chronicles announced in the last Nintendo Direct. It looks gorgeous and includes additional dialogue (fully voice acted) and areas that were cut from the original game. Definitely the right way to do a remake.
