What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Chaz wrote: I've had much better luck with skill-heavy, frequent death games where there's almost no delay between dying and getting to retry the thing, because my brain doesn't get a chance to do that. Stuff like Super Meat Boy or Stuntman Ignition were great for that.

I hear you one that. I have a number of hours in Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon, and (more recently) Slay the Spire. They are brutally punishing, but I feel like I get to actually play the game.

Bloodborne DLC was amazing, so much better than dark souls 3 DLC. It actually answered a huge number of questions, which was great.

I’ve almost entirely given up on video games except for Nintendo and Monster Hunter. Played the crap out of MH GenU this weekend, and goddamn it’s good. A more refined MH Gen, the imbalance of the system over vanilla Mh is embraced as you enter G rank.

New players to the series are better served by MH World on the PS4, but I find GenU to be far more complete and challenging

Count Orlok wrote:

Chaz wrote: I've had much better luck with skill-heavy, frequent death games where there's almost no delay between dying and getting to retry the thing, because my brain doesn't get a chance to do that. Stuff like Super Meat Boy or Stuntman Ignition were great for that.

I hear you one that. I have a number of hours in Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon, and (more recently) Slay the Spire. They are brutally punishing, but I feel like I get to actually play the game.

For this kind of thing Hotline Miami is my favorite.

Gary Sax wrote: The lore, art, and backstory in Hollow Knight is pretty strong, Erik, so I think you could get something out of tourist mode. Dead cells, by contrast, I don't think there's as much you could get from such a mode.

You could get something, but it would not be Hollow Knight. It would be something lesser, like the stock-less variant of 1830: Railroads and Robber Barons. Actually, it wouldn't eevn be that, because the stock-less variant of 1830 is still a game. A tourist mode of Hollow Knight wouldn't because it would cease to be meaningfully interactive.

I've said this before, on Twitter and elsewhere but I think the biggest obstacle to a good gaming experience today is not game design, but players. The way we approach games, the way we react to them is not conductive to great play experiences. We want to put less and less effort in, to treat games as disponsable and we are quick to complain about "negative play experiences" instead of managing them and turn them into positives. We are increasingly less willing to pay the cost of fun, to our detriment.

Count Orlok wrote: I know the 8- and 16- bit era holds a special place for many of us, but let's not beat around the bush, they often sucked in terms of design. The games were "difficult", but in a way that covered up the limited storage
capacity of cartridges. Call it skill if you want, but there was a very practical limitation that designers had to work through.

The thing is, for me this game aren't special. I don't have a connection to them like many of you don't, because I wasn't even alive when these games came out. There's no nostalgia involved for me, I got into "retrogaming" as a teen and the closest thing I have to nostalgia in that regard is playing Pump it Up and Dance Dance Revolution.

And while I played these games when I was a teen, it was not until much later when I realized how they are meant to work. I used to credit feed or use save states and it was not until later when I realized that, no, the games are not designed wrong, it's me who is playing them wrong.

From my experience with Hollow Knight, it's picking up on nostalgia for that era in some of the worst ways. I want to explore, I want to see bosses, I want to fight enemies. I do not want to be forced to double back every time I die fighting a boss.

While it does happen in some games, there aren't actually many old games where this happens. It doesn't happen in any Capcom or Konami game I've played, for example. I'm not sure if it happens in any Treasure game, either. It doesn't have in Super Mario Bros, either. From the top of my head, the only game that does that is Ninja Gaiden and it was a bug that the designers decided to leave in because they are terrible people.

Games that spawn you back where you died tend to be harder than checkpoint-based games, too.

Speaking as someone who isn't into that, it really feels these days like everything is geared towards the gamer who wants something he can brag about dominating. It has to be hard, it has to be punishing, and it has to sieve out the weak so that the ultimate victory is not just over a boss, or the game, but also over the scrubs who didn't "get gud" enough to experience their own domination. It's very much a product of our modern times.

I don't go for that in the slightest which is why I haven't really been playing much anymore except No Man's Sky, which is the polar opposite of that mindset. (In fact, one of the reasons I feel it has been so poorly reviewed is that there is nothing in it that can be subjugated in that way.)

This applies to board games for me as well. I don't need to prove my towering intellect can unweave the 36 layers of tracks, rondels, and conversions and thus conquer the game and the mental midgets who oppose me. I just want to have a good, relaxing time.

Erik Twice wrote: While it does happen in some games, there aren't actually many old games where this happens. It doesn't happen in any Capcom or Konami game I've played, for example.

Most of my examples are from the NES, but this shit happened all the time. Metroid was one of the worst offenders: no map, what appeared to be miles of identical-looking corridors, and if you died you respawned at the beginning of an entire area where you entered with an elevator. In fact, there's a "no death" category of Metroid speedruns because, after killing Kraid/Ridley, you can abuse this mechanic and save a ton of time by killing yourself and respawning at the elevator without having to trek all the way back.

Anyway, Castlevania/Castlevania III levels had a checkpoint at the beginning and (an invisible) one about halfway through the level where you would start if you died to a boss (except for Dracula where the designers had a rare moment of compassion and set the respawn at the stairs to his lair), and if you died then say goodbye to your subweapon and you had to upgrade your whip again.

Megaman 1-6 was in the same mold: a checkpoint at the beginning and one about halfway (I think you respawn right at the boss in 2-6 but I'd have to go back and check), and if you screw up a boss fight and deplete the subweapon the boss is vulnerable to before you die you might as well start the level over.

Sunsoft games (Blaster Master, Batman, Fester's Quest, Journey to Silius, Gremlins) were also notoriously unfair where the games would heap limited continues and no maps (as well as the occasional wildcard like the weapon downgrade items your whip could pick up in Fester's Quest) on top of an already punishing difficulty.

If you die in the original Legend of Zelda you always respawn in the same map tile with only three hearts (you'd better know where the fairy pools or potion merchants are) whether you died to a Tektite or to a monster in the room before Ganon.

And that's before you even dip your toes into all the second and third-tier titles that would have limited/no continues or insane difficulty to compensate for the game being short and/or badly designed.

I probably won't touch Hollow Knight due to the wonky map system and having to backtrack to the bosses. It just seems like an (here's the keyword) unnecessary increase in difficulty for what is, IMO, no good reason other than to appeal to the git gud crowd. Hell, this shit's been figured out since Super Metroid (and continued in Symphony of the Night) with its unlimited map and save rooms right before bosses.

It seems like these newer games' designers missed the "fair" part of "tough-but-fair" where they're basing their difficulty on what they think retro games were rather than what they became.

Legomancer wrote: Speaking as someone who isn't into that, it really feels these days like everything is geared towards the gamer who wants something he can brag about dominating. It has to be hard, it has to be punishing, and it has to sieve out the weak so that the ultimate victory is not just over a boss, or the game, but also over the scrubs who didn't "get gud" enough to experience their own domination. It's very much a product of our modern times.

That's quite simply not true. The vast, vast majority of games are not "hard", nor "punishing" nor anything of the sort. Here's a list of the 100 best-selling games of 2017. How many of them are "hard and punishing"?

FIFA 18 EA/EA Canada
2 Call of Duty: WWII Activision/Sledgehammer Games
3 Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar/Rockstar North
4 Assassin's Creed Origins Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
5 Star Wars Battlefront II EA/EA DICE
6 Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy Activision/Vicarious Visions
7 Destiny 2 Activision/Bungie
8 Gran Turismo Sport Sony/Polyphony
9 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands Ubisoft/Ubisoft France
10 Horizon Zero Dawn Sony/Guerrilla Games
11 Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Nintendo
12 Super Mario Odyssey Nintendo
13 Forza Horizon 3 Microsoft/Playground Games
14 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Nintendo
15 Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Activision/Infinity Ward
16 LEGO Worlds Warner Bros/TT Games
17 FIFA 17 EA/EA Canada
18 Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Capcom
19 Fallout 4 Bethesda
20 Forza Motorsport 7 Microsoft/Turn 10
21 Uncharted: The Lost Legacy Sony/Naughty Dog
22 WWE 2K18 2K/Yukes
23 Rocket League 505 Games/Psyonix
24 Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Warner Bros
25 Mass Effect Andromeda EA/BioWare
26 Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Siege Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
27 Minecraft: Xbox Edition EA/4J studios
28 Doom Bethesda/id Software
29 Overwatch Blizzard
30 For Honor Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
31 Need for Speed Payback EA/Ghost Games
32 Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus Bethesda/Machine Games
33 Battlefield 1 EA/EA Dice
34 The Sims 4 EA/The Sims Studio
35 South Park: The Fractured But Whole Ubisoft/Ubisoft San Francisco
36 Injustice 2 Warner Bros/Netherrealm Studios
37 Dishonored 2 Bethesda/Arkane Studios
38 Minecraft: PlayStation Edition Sony/4J Studios
39 1-2 Switch Nintendo
40 Splatoon 2 Nintendo
41 Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle Ubisoft/Ubisoft France
42 LEGO City Undercover Warner Bros/TT Games
43 Prey Bethesda/Arkane Studios
44 PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Microsoft/Bluehole Studio
45 PlayStation VR Worlds Sony/London Studio
46 LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 Warner Bros/TT Games
47 Pokemon Ultra Sun Nintendo/Game Freak
48 NBA 2K18 2K/Visual Concepts
49 F1 2017 Codemasters/Codemasters Birmingham
50 Overwatch: Game Of The Year Edition Blizzard
51 Pokemon Ultra Moon Nintendo/Game Freak
52 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition Bethesda
53 Sonic Forces Sega/Sonic Team
54 Watch Dogs 2 Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
55 WWE 2K17 2K/Yukes
56 LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens Warner Bros/TT Games
57 Just Dance 2018 Ubisoft/Ubisoft France
58 Mario Kart 7 Nintendo
59 Sniper Elite 4 Sold Out/Rebellion
60 Mafia III 2K Games/Hangar 13
61 Hitman: The Complete First Season Square Enix/IO Interactive
62 The LEGO Ninjago Movie Videogame Warner Bros/TT Games
63 Dirt 4 Codemasters
64 New Super Mario Bros 2 Nintendo
65 Pokemon Sun Nintendo/Game Freak
66 Tekken 7 Bandai Namco
67 The Evil Within 2 Bethesda/Tango Gameworks
68 LA Noire Rockstar/Virtuos
69 LEGO Movie Avengers Warner Bros/TT Games
70 Tom Clancy's The Division Ubisoft/Massive
71 Uncharted 4: A Thief's End Sony/Naughty Dog
72 Steep Ubisoft/Ubisoft France
73 Hidden Agenda Sony/Supermassive Games
74 Gears of War 4 Microsoft/The Coalition
75 Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 Konami
76 Knowledge Is Power Sony/Wish Studios
77 Just Dance 2017 Ubisoft/Ubisoft France
78 Ark: Survival Evolved Studio Wildcard
79 Miitopia Nintendo
80 Final Fantasy XV Square Enix
81 Wipeout: Omega Collection Sony/Clever Beans and EPOS
82 Football Manager 2018 Sega/Sports Interactive
83 LEGO Jurassic World Warner Bros/TT Games
84 Pokemon Moon Nintendo/Game Freak
85 Minecraft: Story Mode - Complete Adventure Telltale Games
86 Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montreal
87 Rayman Legends Ubisoft/Ubisoft France
88 Micro Machines: World Series Codemasters/Just Add Water
89 Mineraft: Story Mode - Season 2 Telltale games
90 Tomodachi Life Nintendo
91 Titanfall 2 EA/Respawn
92 Star Wars Battlefront EA/DICE
93 Halo Wars 2 Microsoft/Creative Assembly
94 Super Mario Maker Nintendo
95 Yooka-Laylee Team17/Playtonic Games
96 Farpoint Sony/Impulse Gear
97 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt GOTY Edition Bandai Namco/CD Projekt Red
98 NBA 2K17 2k/Visual Concepts
99 Halo 5: Guardians Microsoft/343 Industries
100 Persona 5

How many of these games are "hard"? How many of them pander to the "git gut crowd"? Because when I see this list "hard" and "punishing" are not really words that come to my mind.

SebastianBludd wrote: Most of my examples are from the NES, but this shit happened all the time.

I was mostly thinking of the 16 Bit games so yeah, it could be. I do think that Castlevania does have more checkpoints than that but even then, when the average stage is less than 2 minutes long, starting halfway through really isn't really a big issue.

It just seems like an (here's the keyword) unnecessary increase in difficulty for what is, IMO, no good reason other than to appeal to the git gud crowd.

But who is this "git gut crowd"?

Something that bothers me about this conversation is the invocation of this difuse "crowd" of gamers that are somehow both an extreme minority yet extremely influential in how games are made. And everyone seems to have a different definition of what the "git guy crowd" is. Is it hardcore gamers? Is it people who like retrogames? Is it fans of Dark Souls? Beats me.

And I don't know if you guys realize this, but you are all someone's else "git gut" crowd. There's one guy in Reddit right now telling me that the "game design trend" is for games to be shorter and that 2 hour boardgames are too long. Another guy tells me that I only like Dune because it's unavailable and I'm "nostalgic". Nostalgic about a game released on the other side of the world when I was minus 21 years old, yeah. And you can find a lot of gamers complaining about how Twilight Struggle is too difficult and too long and should be made easier and more "accessible".

For me, at least, I know it's a function of age, lifestyle, and schedule - I was a Nintendo kid, and I've busted my share of grueling platform titles (Ghouls and Goblins, Kid Icarus, Contra, Castelvania, etc) - At some point my tastes in games shifted in my 30's - I no longer have the time, nor inclination to bust my balls on anything, and if I'm being candid, my 45 year old self does not have the twitch skills that I used to have - Even in WoW and Overwatch I gravitated towards support roles whose exemplary gameplay required a higher emphasis on gamesense, positioning, and cool down management, vs raw twitch skills. My thumbs are getting old!

Moreso, My gaming comes in 30 minute to hour long blocks of time - I want to jump in, have fun, and have some measure of improvement or success or some visually appealing story put before me and move some beats forward. Sometimes, I want to play the dopamine slots and watch loot explode from some pixels. On the subject of loot, Destiny gave me a lot of bliss spreadsheeting and catalogueing my gear. Diablo 3 does that for me too.

On the subject of story based games, most often shooters, or action platformers - I have no problem setting them on "dad" mode and running through them - If the "game" system is fun enough that I want to master the combat/shooting/whatever then I will eventually scale up the difficulty. When I play a game in this genre, I want to be a superhero and do awesome stuff, not play Edge of Tomorrow.

guys, there are games for both types of gamers, that's all. Most games that appeal to people aren't the type with huge difficulty, but they make those still because there's a niche group of gamers, that Lego describes, that love that stuff.

I'm like Lego, i play games to relax and I'd happily lose hundreds of hours in some chill game for just the experience. I used to be very achievement-focused and I'm much less so in the last few years.

Can we take a moment to marvel at Barney the Peacemaker rather than the more traditional Barney the Meme-y Shitstarter? Truly we are #hashtag #blessed.

I have been sinking some time into CIVILIZATION VI on iPad. It's goooood. I am more into this and any CIV since play CIV II over Ethernet in 1997. Totally digging this, depsite getting my assssssss handed to me by Saladin, holy* shit.

Just picked up MARIO KART 8 DELUXE and the Labo Kit to make a fucking car in my living room. Will update.

*intended! he almost won on turn 280/500 with a big Religion push

You know what I just realized? 45 year old me would probably be pissed at the Psycho Mantis gimmick if it was sprung on me without any foreknowledge.

That is sad.

Erik Twice wrote: I was mostly thinking of the 16 Bit games so yeah, it could be. I do think that Castlevania does have more checkpoints than that but even then, when the average stage is less than 2 minutes long, starting halfway through really isn't really a big issue.

You could very well be right about the checkpoints since I play it through at least a couple times a year so I don't make use of them that much. As for the stage length, there's enough RNG horseshit (birds, skeleton movement, random weapon drops ["Were you counting on using that holy water on the Grim Reaper? Tough shit, here's a dagger."]) such that the level length often doesn't have much bearing on your success.

Erik Twice wrote: But who is this "git gut crowd"?

I should have clarified, to me the "git gud crowd" consists of anyone who dismisses any criticism of a hard game's design by saying it's the whining of gamers who've become soft from playing dumbed-down, streamlined games that are mostly a collection of action setpieces stitched together by a series of cutscenes and quicktime events.

I'm thrilled that there's been a backlash against "easy" games that's resulted in the release of difficult, skill-based games like the Soul series et al. (For instance, I recently heard the best justification of the lack of a map in Dark Souls when they said that the designers wanted the players to be constantly taking in and observing the environment instead of constantly breaking the mood by accessing the menu/map.)

But I also think it should be possible to level fair critiques against design decisions in these games without telling players to suck it up (I'm paraphrasing).

Where is the line between hard-but-fair and hard-for-it's-own-sake? I don't know, but I like hashing it out here and I wasn't trying to be unduly combative (while also realizing that what I type can come off differently than how it sounded in my head...).

As for what I've been playing lately... pretty much just Hearthstone. The meta is stale right now but my boys like playing off-meta meme decks with my collection so that's helped to keep the game fresh for me. My dual-class Arena deck is also apparently really good (Control Warlock with Rogue hero power, what was I thinking?) and I'm sitting at 6-1, which has been a nice surprise.

I’m in NYC this week for business. I hate this town, so I started a new game of Skyrim on Switch. It’s a competent version, but I’m still wrangling with the controls a bit and there doesn’t appear to be any gamma settings which kind of sucks. It’s relatively amazing that something the size of Skyrim can be in a handheld device.

I just played through the Portal games while my kids watch, and I just finished the single-player campaign for Portal 2. It was my first time playing to the end, and I really enjoyed it. I had heard that the increased length made the game feel just a touch flabby, but I didn't think that was the case at all. The story-telling is not as strong as the first one, but it does a good job at making the different parts of the campaign feel varied and interesting. I loved it, and I will definitely revisit it down the road.

Now I just need to find some time and a willing partner to play the co-op campaign.