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.