Things That Bother You About Gaming

[Mustang]

I know we all hear the noise surrounding the Game Awards, and I know we're all ignoring it, too. I'm only speaking about it cause I'm only here for the trailers 

[Mustang]

So I already ignore reviews for the most part. Don't get me wrong, I still look at them, but I stopped letting reviews be that stamp of what causes me to buy or not buy a game. That being said, "word of mouth" is something I'm thinking very heavy about ignoring going forward. I like to keep my ears open for games I'm interested in, but it's been hard to do that. I bring this up because of Dragon Age: The Veilguard had a lot of controversy behind it and, while I'm not a big fan of the series I am a fan of Mass Effect. To my understanding, Dragon Age was "woke" before "woke" became a thing and now all of a sudden there's an agenda/movement with this game. I don't buy it. If there is, dammit, whatever.

I gave Capcom a chance when Ono left. EA/Bioware have new faces and maybe they can, maybe they can't fix what the stain that Mass Effect Andromeda has left on the company. I have to give them a chance to at least try. All these people bailing on Veilguard day 1 because of writing and supposedly "bad" combat that looked fine to me (all fair but subjective as well). I think the game was screwed regardless. And then so many people comparing it to Baldur's Gate 3. Really? This notion of it needing to be the best right out the gate is wild to me. Baldur's Gate 3 is too high of a bar for new faces filling in for old shoes. Can these new folks at Bioware make a game that can match the level of success in their own franchises? Let's start there for 1, at least that's where I plan to start. Especially because there next game is Mass Effect and they're supposedly returning to the Normandy. This is a no-no for me. This is a squad you don't mess with. The way I am with this crew is how a lot of people are with FF7's crew. If you're not doing a reboot you leave this squad alone. So me knowing all that, I'll give Bioware the benefit of the doubt and try out Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Outlets GotY's are starting to come out which spurred this thought on and then there's a guy at my job that says he won't buy anything "woke".

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I already stopped trusting most game "journalists" and their reviews myself back in the 7th console generation where I realized that they valued glitzy visuals and the appearance of depth over gameplay mechanics and unique styles in the medium. It's only gotten worse since then, really.

My tastes in general have really strayed from what's popular in the current age. I couldn't care less about most big budget AAA titles that I see people ranting and raving about or bashing to high hell for one controversy or another. I'm constantly turning to older stuff that I missed out on over playing the next big thing. Like, looking at my games library on the XBOX Series X and PS5, I am not lying when I say that 80%+ of my content are games from previous generations. I'm effectively using these consoles as 4K emulators (I suppose I might as well have invested in a gaming PC after all). Don't get me wrong, I'm having an absolute blast playing through classic titles that I never got the chance to experience before, as well as re-living my fondest memories from some of my favorite childhood games. That said, I genuinely doubt I'll even bother with the next generation of consoles other than maybe the successor to the Switch depending on what they have on offer. For all of my grievances with Nintendo as a company, I give them credit that my Switch library has quite a few of their first-party titles and a much better ratio of that to ports of older games than the other two.

And I'm not trying to be a buzzkill by any means. If people like what they have now, I'm genuinely fine with that. I just feel completely indifferent to most of the modern gaming scene. Every now and then there will be something that I really get into like Shadow Generations or the RE4 remake (and even in those cases they are nostalgia-driven games based on classic stuff as well), but most often I find myself gravitating to smaller, more exprimental titles these days.

[Mustang]

Yeah, for the most part I play whatever I want to play regardless of new or old. I only use Dragon Age cause it was the trigger. Gaming is pretty much my only hobby. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten into anything else for the time being. And then there's my nephew. He's at that curious stage and wants to try everything. I'm not gonna say no (I'm a cool uncle lol). I'm his gaming buddy. Be it modern or retro, if he wants to play it, we'll play it. Other than that, I'm all for play what you play. I do want to work for myself, so eventually I'll end up becoming a streamer at some point (I got plans in motion)

That being said I do agree with you when it comes to the next generation of games. Unless the price of games and consoles comes down, which I don't see happening, I'm not touching them. If anything I'll just hook my laptop up to my TV and call it a day.

You're right though. I need to really just tune everyone and noise out and keep it at that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, DOA6LR is out and what could have been KoeiTecmo's chance to entice people back into this series was completely squandered on day one. No new characters at launch. Only ONE visually enhanced stage on launch. No DLC costumes included. Having to repurchase Mai and Kula even if you already own them in the original version (and for more money at that). No real rebalancing outside of a few very minute things for certain characters. No Tag Battle mode. And most egregious of all, no Cross Play or Rollback Netcode whatsoever.

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is literally just DOA6 with the DLC characters included (MINUS Mai and Kula, of course) and Photo Mode, for all that's worth, with a $40 price tag slapped onto it. I hate to say it, but this game is a literal scam, and it makes me both extremely disappointed and angry that any chance of this series making a proper comeback is being completely undercut by corporate greed.

[Mustang]

To brighten up your day (hopefully a little bit lol), the thing I'll tell you is that DoA6LR won't have an impact on the newest game unless they cancel it outright. Reason I say that is because it's already been announced that they're working on it. I think if anything, this release is basically just to get the game on current gen. Preservation, I suppose. If you don't hear rollback netcode for the new game then you might want to start panicking. But this is a lost opportunity for them to branch out and ask for help on fixing their online infrastructure. I hope they know what they're doing when it comes to online. It took years for other fighting game devs to get to where we're at today with the help of, I can't remember the guy's name, but last I heard he helped Arc System Works get rollback implemented with Granblue Fantasy Versus. I know for sure Capcom has reached out to him during the late cycle of Street Fighter 5. I'm fairly certain Sega got a hold of him for VF5's 1st re-release on PC. Anyway, you have a new audience looking forward to the new DoA (I've seen a lot of new faces react to it and are interested)

[Mustang]

Sony. Heh, do I really need to say anything at this point? What haven't they done to piss people off at this point? All I can do is shake my head, especially with the Kojima situation.  People are saying that Sony is dead. I don't think I'll go that far. Definitely in trouble. I think people are sheep and soft. All this anger, all Sony have to do is announce Bloodborne 2 and watch how many people break and see how many people act like nothing has happened. It's why I hang back and do my own thing. I buy games for me. If I don't like what I see I don't buy. If I like what I see I buy. That simple. If you want to pitch in and pay my rent, by all means I'll let you tell me what to buy, but until then, whatever.

[Daikun]

R.I.P. BioWare

[Mustang]

Yeah, I saw the news of Bioware getting shutdown. To be honest, it doesn't shock me either considering they haven't put out a decent game in over 10 years. Dragon Age Inquisition came out in 2014, I believe, and that was their last "hit" so, yeah, it's not surprising. I guess my question would be should they've been given 1 more chance with this Mass Effect game? I haven't watched any of the leaked trailers, but from what I've been hearing about it, it's better that they shutdown. Personally, I don't know. I'm not a "this will damage your legacy" kind of guy. I remember the hits and misses, but it's whatever. I'll never be for shutting down studios unless they are just that bad (kicking my dog kind of bad). I do believe in starting over though.