Sure. Without the glitchy joints and with an end goal. KSP doesn’t have any special reward for visiting and landing on all of the planets. You just get generic “science” basically and while outer planets reward more, there’s no specific advantage garnered from visiting the equivalent of Pluto.
Basically, this is a variant on that where “Pluto” (I mean the hardest to reach place) is going to have as a reward the tech blueprint for the biggest gun in the game. And there’s an end goal - a “boss vehicle” you need to face.
This is pretty much where I’m at. I’ll get a new AAA game and enthusiastically fire it up and play through the single-player campaign for a few hours, maybe a few days, maybe even over a whole week, but sooner or later I’m going to stop doing the missions and either just wander around looking for random trouble, if such things are allowed, or I just stop playing altogether and never finish.
For example, on a whim last Friday evening, I re-installed GTA V. Previously I had gotten to what I think is the last big heist, or the next-to-last, but in any case I was very close to the end of the story when I stopped playing, and my intention was to finish it this weekend. I played the game all weekend, for maybe 15 hours of gameplay, and I never started a single mission. I spent the entire time stealing and customizing cars, then driving around the city, shooting randomly into traffic, then chasing down and murdering people for “driving like an asshole.” Never felt compelled to start a mission, and the game doesn’t ever pressure you to. (People tell me that’s essentially GTA Online in a nutshell, but I’m just not that into random virtual interaction.)
I basically haven’t played a “big hit” game for years (I’m not even talking about like, ‘AAA’ games, which is a useless label.) - I get all my entertainment out of smaller niche titles that give me the game I want, rather than the game some focus group at EA thought was a good idea.
The only problem I’ve run into lately is that even a lot of the indie stuff is pretty derivative - I don’t need anywhere near the number of platformers that keep coming out - and it’s hard to sift the wheat from the chaff. But boy. There are some good ones. Invisible Inc. is phenomenal, and I got quite a bang out of Helldivers.
It doesn’t even really take much - I though I was totally done with 1st/3rd person shootery nonsense, but Earth Defense Force 4.1 has been a great time.
I think the problems are twofold: Firstly, that I need to stop paying a damn bit of attention to what anyone else thinks is good, because even this thread is full of stuff that I can guarantee would bore me off the map in a hurry, and and second, I need to judge each game on its own merits and not “Well, I really like 4X games.” (Actually, I don’t. I really like SOME 4x games)
There are still tons of good games out there. They’re just not easy to find, and they’re usually not the big shiny “Look at how modern technology has benefited games!” ones.
I am definitely turning into a grouchy old man when it comes time to picking out video games. Now that I’m older (55) I want to play them for enjoyment; and to me there is no enjoyment in games with boss levels so hard that you can hardly beat them on easy. I’m willing to acknowledge that my reflexes are a lot slower; but some of these games are ridiculous (I’m looking at you DOOM). I have fun with big open world games. I still get a great kick out of the following games: GTA5, Assassin’s Creed series, Far Cry series. Just Cause 3. I even enjoyed the last couple of Lara Croft games. However pretty much anything that is sci fi or zombi related I just don’t enjoy anymore.
I like the IDEA or multi-player games but the reality is most of the other players I’ve come across suck.
The only mmo I have actually enjoyed playing with other people were the original Ghost Recon and DC Universe Online.
I’m playing Ark now in stand-alone mode and I’m enjoying it. I doubt I’ll join any public servers, I have NO interest in logging on and finding my hard work trashed, and I don’t have the time to stay online 24x7.
I, also, am having a much more difficult time finding games that I want to play in the first place.
Very true. Even the worst games are much more entertaining when you have someone on the mic to laugh/bitch about it with. Likewise for competitive games; I don’t seem to mind my squad being terrible so much when I know the guys versus four randoms acting like idiots. That’s above and beyond the obvious benefits of coordination, etc.
Problem with that, which I agree with, is none of my friends are PC gamers. The ones who play games have PS4s, and they aren’t interested in playing any of the vanishingly few true cross-platform games. I talked them into a few games of Rocket League once, but that’s been it. They’re not going to buy PCs and I’m not going to buy a PS4, so that’s that.
Bad players, people trying to ‘Leroy Jenkins’, people trolling all chats with either Spam or ‘Trump Is Great’ BS. Party DMs who try to dupe or steal your stuff. Not to mention the religious zealots who try to make everything about their brand of [/fart] religion. Oh, and let’s not bring up the obvious pedos looking for cheap thrills*.
*obviously I’m lying as no one like that ever games in MMOs.
I used to have the same issue as well. I really didn’t get into games anymore. I was too busy. Even the new Civ6, which was fantastic was a game I played for a little bit and then have never picked up again (have I even finished a game… man, I remember when I played Civ2 for like at least 2 hours a day for 6 months).
Though interestingly I find myself completely hooked (like hours a day hooked) on the new Zelda game. And I think partially it is due to the use of cartridges and default Sleep Mode on the Switch. It takes literally 10 seconds to get back into the game. You wake up the console (Nintendo indicates the Switch should be in Sleep by default, not powered down) and then you can click right back into where you were. The quick dungeon’s (shrines) also help (I know folks tend to talk about wanting longer dungeons, but the shorter ones allow for someone to deal with one in a short order). It makes it feel as if you can easily do a few minutes of gameplay.
So maybe the goal for epic games is to make it so folks can easily get into the game itself and then can do something worthwhile in 30 minutes.
So in the new game PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, at the start of each round, they shove you in a single area where you can hear the mics of all 100 other people in the match with you.
Nothing drives you into a homicidal rage more than hearing what random people say and do on the mics. Everything from a girl’s voice instantly being answered with “send nudes” to people hotmicing an annoying song, etc. It makes you want to gun down every other player and be the last one standing (which is the goal of the game) via any means necessary.
It was an amazing game at the time and the only reason people scoff at it now is because New Vegas came out. It was basically Oblivion with guns and a retro-futuristic theme and it was incredible at the time.
I played it extensively at release. Primary issue was that the actual gameplay was fairly dull, quest chains where you do more than shoot stuff weren’t terribly common. Other problem was that enemies were bullet sponges, your character was a bullet sponge, and thus the gunplay wasn’t good. And then there’s unforgivable bits like not being able to send a radiation immune companion into a certain room full of lethal radiation. (and the messed up thing was, the game’s scriptwriters thought of this possibility and gave that companion a line to refuse!)
New Vegas was better because it was just more inspired on the quests and contained a greater variety of gameplay. More quests that could be solved without a gun. And the cycle hath repeated with Fallout 4 - less interesting dialogue choices than FO3, every quest results in a gunfight, yawn. Oh, and the usual forced morality. Though New Vegas had this problem as well. In all 3 games, there’s an “immoral” choice that honestly makes a great deal of sense.
Eliminating the mutated life in FO3 is the only way to create a place safe for regular humans to live, the super-mutants are clearly homicidal and also superior in most ways. Mr. House is the only reason Vegas still exists, and being biologically immortal, is a far more proven entity than the NCR. And the Institute is the only entity I have ever seen in the Fallout games that even has the potential to un-fuck the United States. With exponentially grown sentient synths, they actually have a real shot at making the world a livable place. (even if it’s just for the synths - the synths are ideal for a radiation filled world and maybe won’t make the same mistakes humans did)
Narrator condemns you in all 3 games if you take that route with his tone of voice in the ending.
Or people like me who played the “Complete Edition” with all the DLCs. I absolutely loved Fallout 3 and it was probably one of my favourite games of all time until New Vegas came out.
It has very positive ratings on Metacritic and Steam. It has 11k votes on the GoG wishlist. It won a ton of awards.
By what metric, other than “low energy game, lots of people have said so, believe me, sad,” can we agree that **most people **think it’s not a good game?
