I was looking forward exactly to this game called Echoes of End, because something in my subconscious tipped me off to the fact that this would be one of the few action adventure games, especially in the modern era to FINALLY put adventure over action and an emphasis on not just puzzles, but traversal, and the general ESSENCE of adventure in "figuring out where to go or how to get there".

So when I see picrel. And I see a criticism that appeals to an arbitrary "balance" that was broken because of too many puzzles. I have to ask myself...who the fuck lets these randos speak? This is such juvenile judgement that I could get it from a child on a playground when I was in 5th grade.

Nobody talked about the imbalance of extremely basic traversal so CONVENIENT in breath of the wild that determining how to get somewhere or find the right way was so trivial because you could literally just turn your brain off and press up on any surface, there was no mechanical difference between pressing forward in the air, on the ground, or on a mountain besides stamina which can be cheesed so conveniently (potions) or so tediously (stand on vaguely less steep slope)

Then theres God of War 2018 this game was compared to. I saw in a review call this game "repetitive" and "tedious" because the platforming expected some precision.

Are we really doing this? GOW is a game where every instance of traversal is a contexual button input that flies you across a gap. Or is literally so mindless that you can be holding the sprint button and jump without even having to press a button

Why are we shitting on games for doing more?

Why doesnt GOW get called Generic? When it blatantly apes off of RE4's contexual button traversal? Or doesnt get called dated for its QTE's? Why didnt BOTW get criticized for its repetitive enemy outposts? Its garbage equally repetitive combat? Its poor balance of puzzles, combat, and traversal, where Joseph Anderson showed how many shrines were repeated shallow filler?

AAA devs actually bribe reviewers for a guaranteed 8+ rating.

I know exactly why they dont make these criticisms for the big games. You know exactly why. And none of these DUMB FUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS should be respected or their reveiews paraded and shared around, with such shallow, hollow, void, and empty principles guiding any review.

Because all these reviews do is reinforce a bias where I see retards in Playstation comments on YouTube, or in reddit threads going "Boring asf having to do puzzles bro, when can I get to combat. Puzzles literally just breaking up the pace"

We live in this weird insane mentally ill world where puzzles are considered unequal gameplay, that SHOULDNT INTERRUPT action because weve given such an arbitrary reverence to combat, that everything is framed through how much combat there is, and therefore an "imbalance" is less combat, but nobody ever thinks that 90% of action ADVENTURE ADVENTURE GAMES being dominated by combat because its easier and more mindless to design is a problem.

FUCK this shit ass garbage game industry.

I dont care if you hate black women or anything, if you actually care about fucking videogames. If you actually care about a standard for traversal greater than contexual inputs, or pressing forward on every surface. Then you should HATE and despise these type of shallow reviews.

where did all these passioned kino effort posters suddenly come from? you got me convinced, I like your vitriol and passion. generic black women face game yes, but I've thought for a long time that reviewers are ruining vidya

>>717934774
Thanks I appreciate the appreciation. Just had to get this out because ive been tired of this for a while now

>>717933996 (OP)
BOTW is the GOAT, shut up.

Something I've thought about, is whether I'd care as much if there were no "Out of 10!" rankings. Because admittedly this dumb fucking retarded reviewer and some others admitted that "If you like puzzles in action adventure this might be for you" not understanding what kind of impression a 7/10 or fuck, even 5/10 can give inspite of ones natural inclination.

I just dont understand why these random retards with analysis as juvenile as a preteen are having this authority to comment on games like this??? Its so fucking stupid, where is the standard? Just because something comes from a big name "journalist" company ISNT a standard, thats what is called a "clearance" in my opinion

Nobody fucking cares about a forced black woman game being rated shit retard

>>717933996 (OP)
you tell em essayfag

I only follow electric underground but he's also a retard

>>717936476
Yeah hes one of those weird retards who clearly has principles. But will literally make everything conform to his narrative and if it doesnt its bad. Literally no room for something being different from what he wants

>>717934774
its just one guy who has found a style of writing that sticks out more than a tripcode

>>717933996 (OP)
>he thinks the traversal in botw is bad
sorry i have lost all respect for you as a critic
botw traversal was great for the time it came out because it did something you didn't see in any open world game up to that point
it added variation to its traversal
no longer do you get on a horse and hold W
now you alternate between
>walking
>climbing
>gliding
>shield surfing
sure. there's no location on the map that is really that difficult to get to. but the best open world games up until this point were focused almost entirely on having interesting points of interest and not paying any attention at all to traversal outside of fast travel and maybe giving you a horse
now BOTW having shallow points of interest that is valid criticism of the game

Sorry, when i want to go on an adventure in a game i boot up minecraft. The feeling of adventure in that is far more than anything 99% if devs could even hope to accomplish.

>>717937401
>was great for the time
most retarded reviewerism.

allows the retard to ignore everything about the actual criticism to frame the conversation in a completely disconnected way where they cannot be wrong because they created the arbitrary conditions for themselves to be right.

just like the reviwer with the entire completely arbitrary thing where they had to appeal to some empty conception of "balance of action vs puzzles" without having any ACTUAL reason or logic for saying what the problem with that is, because its arbitrary, he just doesnt like or appreciate the adventure aspect in action adventure beyond aesthetic and presentation. People like the idea of "wow im progressing from one place to another, and it gets grander and more open!" rather than any actual mechanic thay underpins that progression beyond completing some task or fighting some enemies.

Also. BOTW did not do anything fucking crazy intelligent or revolutionary. All it did was what Assasins Creed did with traversal but even MORE convenient, even MORE mindless somehow, you dont even need to find footholds anymore, dont even need to think about a route where you can actually latch onto anything. You can just hold up on a tall structure then glide from the top like a retard.

And I hate both ASScreed and BotW. Theyre both mindless garbage.

>>717937401
>"great for its time cuz no alternative"
you're retarded, shallow variety is still shallow trash
tendies dont play other games, you could glide surf fly around like a retard in morrowind, other open worlds like just cause, most super hero open worlds, its still just zapping around from a to b in an empty air space and empty open world
i have more respect for fast travel at this point
>climbing
same press up to go up along a flat vertical wall as other aaa trash but now with a shitty resource meter to give illusion of depth to retards, zero meaningful traversal in a complex 3D vertical space, zero tension from fall damage risk etc

>>717938289
>"balance of action vs puzzles" without having any ACTUAL reason or logic for saying what the problem with that is, because its arbitrary, he just doesnt like or appreciate the adventure aspect in action adventure beyond aesthetic and presentation.
I read that review and watched the two first reviews on yt and they're all utterly devoid of insight, I was at least curious to learn about the nature and design styles of these puzzles but nothing, are they traversal puzzles like what you're describing in op or just "push lever to activate block" generic stuff, I'll never know because they only just say "there are puzzles" that's all the insight I'm gonna get today, they didn't even mention the stuff with walking alongside walls

>>717939092
EGGFUCKINGSACTLY youre starting to catch on. I have an entire lamguage theory on why so many people are able to get away with such substanceless judgements. It would take me too long to get into to it, but the short form is the best example.

The average human being does not actually understand or engage with anything as it is.

Judgements are made based on a set of CHARACTERISTICS that are apriori decided as valid, or not, good or bad, useful or not, meaningful or not beforehand.

The easiest example I can give is THREE prime characteristics that are paraded around with videogames as if they are inherently valuable to games. I can deconstruct these characteristics even further SO deeply. There are SO many problems and implications to them. The entire reason why Characteristic theory is so bad isnt because of the obvious fact that people highlight certain characteristics, but how incoherent the valuing of certain characteristics become in certain contexts.

Also this theory btw can explain racism too, but thats besides the point.

Anyway the 3 characteristics Im talking about in videogames is:

-Freedom
-Immersion
-Mature

Theres actually way more. I can throw in "innovative" too. And I deliberately left out negative characteristics like "repetitive" which more blatantly reveal the contradictory nature of characteristics. Because if you read one of the reviews one of the things they highlight that makes the combat supposedly "repetitive" is that you do the same attacks mostly thoughout the game...

BUT I REMEMBER not too long ago, not even like 10 years, but 5 YEARS AGO. People would talk about how in Dark Souls the combat does not really change from beginning to end, but people spun an entire narrative about how "Thats actually a good thing because instead of progressing with skill trees, youre progressing as a player and getting more skilled!" thats such an abstract concept that it could apply to almost any game.

some weirdly high effort conversation in this thread

Realize...Real Eyes.

>>717938543
>>717938289
i wont deny there are other open world games that do not neglect traversal.
all i am saying is the vast majority of them just slap in a horse and fast travel and then go back to focusing on the points of interest

>>717940438
/2
and uh that botw traversal is towards the top when it comes to quality of traversal in an open world game. there are of course some better, but the majority are worse.
like look at fast travel for example
almost every game lets you unlock fast travel to any location you have visited before from the very start of the game. traversal is clearly completely secondary to points of interest
it's very rare that a game does something interesting, like providing multiple fast travel methods with their own pools of destinations, associated travel costs and unlock requirements

>>717937003
Electric Underground clearly says what he likes and that he reviews everything through that lens. It's your problem if you want him to tell you about puzzle or racing games or whatever he has no interest in.
You have to find reviewers that know certain genres, there isn't ever going to be an universal reciewer.
For example, Synthetic Man sucks dick and has 0 knowledge of any genre other than platformers. So if you want to watch him, only watch platformer reviews like the Bonanza video.
It helps when the reviewer is honest and tells you his or hers strenghts and weaknesses right of the bat.
The worst kind of reviewer is when he is a total poser faggot like The Gaming Brit Show. He postures as some action game guru and yet knows fuck all about game design and also simply isn't good enough at the games that he reviews so he just regurgitates some slop he heard before about the game(if you are lucky), summarises the plot and calls it a day.

>>717940438
>all i am saying is the vast majority of them just slap in a horse
And I criticized that. Also you're kind of presenting things a bit disingenuously. In that, BOTW doesnt exist in a strictly "better" category just because of the inconvenience of a horse in its game. You highlight all the superficially "interesting" traversal (which is just appealing to the virtue that theyre not present in other games because theres no mechanical difference between gliding horizontally, and running or jumping with a horse. Vertically too, I already described the button inputs). But you also forget the fact that there is an insanely how amount of time in BOTW spent just running across flat plains with a shitty stamina meter having ti stop and wait every once in a while. Please describe to me the MECHANICAL difference between this and gliding or climbing?

In climbing the game either just gives you spots to rest like you would on the ground, or you spam stamina potions. Theres nothing youre actually doing differently besides maybe pointing in a different direction. And for gliding. The only difference is that a lack of stamina results in a stopping of the gliding...which returns you back to the ground...still pushing forward.

This is the aspect of BOTW nobody talked about the ACTUAL game part. Not the abstraction of "freedom" or percieved "innovation". Its not even just about the "emptiness" Its the sheer fact, that the contexts and situations in which you have to press buttons to do things...are braindead, blasé and the exact same across almost all interactions.

Totk actually fixed this somewhat with fusing and some other stuff. But THAT is whem you shift to criticism of the actual content vs what you actually do.

>>717941031
>It's your problem if you want him to tell you about puzzle or racing games or whatever he has no interest in.
I never said anything like thay retard. His criticisms of action games are retarded strictly speaking.

>>717940691
>it's very rare that a game does something interesting, like providing multiple fast travel methods with their own pools of destinations, associated travel costs and unlock requirements
What the fuck are you implying? That Breath of The Wild somehow does something interesting with its ffasttravel?

This game will get no GOTY accolades kek

It's OK anon. I thought the PS4 GoW was boring and derivative. I had to kick myself to keep going until I beat it. Really anti-climatic ending as well.

>>717942248
Okay what does that have to do with this...I know i mentioned GOW, but what specifically are you responding to...

>>717942328
OP asked why GOW doesn't get called generic. I thought it was generic. I also thought it was boring and derivative. Made by committee trash more interested in pulling your leash than letting you loose.

>I was looking forward exactly to this game called Echoes of End

NIGGER, the very first 2 minutes of the trailer should tell you everything you need about this """"""""""""""game""""""""""

>>717933996 (OP)
I don't really have much to add except that I concur, while journo hate is nothing new it's really important to understand that you really cannot hate them enough. Sadly the issue is they are the normie brainlet retard of which there are billions around who companies think will throw money at them if they can trick journos into giving a positive score.
Most actual people are not much better either because of how their own instincts and ability to appreciate different experiences has been eroded by this mindset and games following this mindset. This is why you play old games and games from genres you don't normally play, and try to learn their mechanics at every stage. I suppose I did have a few things to say after all, I just didn't think I felt like doing it again.

>>717942532
Okay I agree then. But I wasnt criticizing people like you. I was criticizing normies and reviewers who just post hoc want to put certain games they never would have given a chance anyway because they didnt have a big bombastic tryhard IP/Brand before it.

It is SO unbelievably shallow when we can only appreciate games for being tryhard AAA with 500 employees, EVEN when they're mechanically bankrupt. Whereas some AA game doing more shit with its actual mechanics than GOW. Even going as far to ADDRESS the fundamental combat flaw I felt GOW had, in trying to ape RE4's camera restrictions to encourage awareness of space in combat and enhance combat that seems basic at face value like RE4, but thats only because the experience of the actual gameplay cannot be reduced to how many mechanics there are, because RE4, like GOW should have been, is about controlling space, and managing resources to not get overwhelmed.

This Echoes of End game has much more impactful crowd control and seems to encourage it better. Dont know about enemy variety, but I wouldn't expect that from AA anyway, and it can supplement that variety elsewhere anyway in puzzles.

>>717933996 (OP)
>journo review of a puzzle game
First time?
https://youtu.be/GV5lNMkn8Ok?feature=shared

>>717933996 (OP)
>47% mixed on steam
It could be that the game... is just bad.

>>717939692
That's why I like EU and find him relatable even if we like different games for different reasons. For him it's arcade, but he describes the same phenomenon. Reviewers give arcade games shit reviews for only being 30 minutes long or for not having checkpoints. Then souls gets praised for being punishing with checkpoints and that's good design. You see it all the time. Open worlds are empty and shallow or AAs have dated graphics but Zelda gets a free pass. But vice versa, EU has his own double standards when he reviews games not focused on arcade-style action and pacing. He says a lot of arbitrary contradictory shit but at least he tries to understand his own preferences and not just repeat consensus. I can find value in his takes, because I understand what his base taste and principles are. I know I won't go to his channel for insight on puzzle games. Issue is general outlets and random reviewers never contextualize where they're coming from so you get those empty buzzwords that never get questioned.

I'm playing an old tactical shooter and the coolest thing about it for me is you get limited to 2 saves per mission, more tension than most shooters designed around quick saves and for me it's good design because a tactical shouldn't be a mindless power fantasy to rush through, but put you in the mindset of being meticulous and dealing with consequences, etc. then I read old reviews and bingo, the reviewer is complaining about the save system being punishing but does not even consider why it's a design choice. Baffling.

I'm playing Wuchang and my favorite thing about it is the tension from levels and traps/hazards instead of the bosses and combat. Then I see the reactions and so many "souls vets" are complaining about "inconvenience" aspects. When I've always viewed them as a favorite aspect of Souls. And I wonder if those people ever liked Souls in the first place or what's going on because it gets criticized for stuff Souls got its initial praise for.

>>717933996 (OP)
I just check the consensus. Or better yet find someone with similar taste to yourself. Individual reviews each have their own bias.

>>717943853
>I'm playing Wuchang and my favorite thing about it is the tension from levels and traps/hazards instead of the bosses and combat. Then I see the reactions and so many "souls vets" are complaining about "inconvenience" aspects. When I've always viewed them as a favorite aspect of Souls. And I wonder if those people ever liked Souls in the first place or what's going on because it gets criticized for stuff Souls got its initial praise for.
I've long agreed with this, and have been one of the premier people pushing the idea that souls fans and normies alike dont actually like Dark Souls, because every aspect of Souls that is unique or essential to DS1, is what they complain about or rationalize as being "dated" whenever those DS1 aspects manifests in other games.

BUT on the other end. I do not create narratives about normies and journos. Theyre just shallow retards. Electric Underground is probably the type to complain that this game has a black woman, even if hes more principled than the people im criticizing.

I wont validate a game just for having friction, just for being hard. Just for being "arcadey". Because that is just MORE characterizing, just from the other side.

I will praise and defend classic Tomb Raider, and call Super Mario 64 shit for its garbage slippery controls and its braindead floating platform level design.

I will defend RE1 directors cut. And lambast REmake for being a trial and error, random garbage mess where the game arbitrarily decided whether you take 3-8 shots to down an enemy, and barely cares whether you headshot them.

>Game "review"
>It's actually a plot synopsis with commentary
>large plots of the plot synopsis are inaccurate because the creator just pretends certain parts of the game aren't in the game

decent thread, i agree with op /vpol/ has somewhat contributed to this low value review culture by focusing on race and gender over gameplay

I hate these spineless faggots, they never stand up to big games (maybe few years later) and never fight for smaller lesser known games
I am more than happy to argue 6/10s like wildlands, unity, rage 2 and dead island 2 are worth a shot but they won't do it .

The scale is fucking retarded it's 7-9 with very rare 6s for broken games
0 is no game at all.
but what does 1,2 and 3/10 game looks like? I have no idea

>>717944946
>I hate these spineless faggots, they never stand up to big games (maybe few years later) and never fight for smaller lesser known games
This is why I've wondered if reveiews should just never have number rating at this point. Because its such an absurd and ridiculous standard when GOW2018 was being heralded as this insanely grand defining game, when its the most blatant ripping of RE4 and other vaguely similar adventure game, and fuck, even borderlands tier rpg loot mechanics too.

But this FIRST time AA game gets shit for essentially not having the IP of God of War to give the surface level, apperance based impression that its actually totally not generic?

At that point reviews can never even ATTEMPT to be remotely fair or reasonable.

Theres just no standard but an arbitrary appeal to what already gets the most attention and praise. OR what despite getting attention and praise makes the reviewer so uncomfortable because its not as convenient and straightforward to get into as their nintendo games they played as a child which they hold up as a barometer for base game design. When not all games are trying to be braindead retarded "interact for interacts sake! who cares if theres actual level design or anything overcome!" Nintendo design.

>>717945191
This game got a 5/10 from IGN Spain, you can go on open critic and see it for yourself. Absolutely retarded. It got some 6/10s too. And its not broken, so its not as if reviewers dont use those scores.

>>717933996 (OP)
>Why doesnt GOW get called Generic? When it blatantly apes off of RE4's contexual button traversal? Or doesnt get called dated for its QTE's? Why didnt BOTW get criticized for its repetitive enemy outposts? Its garbage equally repetitive combat? Its poor balance of puzzles, combat, and traversal, where Joseph Anderson showed how many shrines were repeated shallow filler?
Big publisher bonus. And BOTW was the first open world game that normies have played in their lives.

>>717945271
Honestly it's a popularity thing
Look at death stranding 2 getting all those 9s and 10s
Despite being worse than one
Also GOW had dogshit enemy veriety but they only talked about muh story and moments

>>717945358
it's a very flawed
There are many way to judge a product/piece of art
>What it is
>What it should've been
>What was promised
>What it could've been

Reviews switch it depending on the game.

>>717945872
>>What it should've been
I dont like this one, because its judging a game based on characteristics it did not have, youre essentially not judging the same game at that point. Especially if it was a deliberate choice to not have the things one arbitrary thinks it should have.

Only exception I guess is pure game functionality, so how it runs, whether it runs at all etc. But that works because almost every single game intends to be functional, and only fail at it unintentionally.

Otherwise Yes I agree with you. Something else I think reviwers should include, because people will always say "theyre reviewers first and foremost, they dont need deep analysis just to tell normie retards like me whether the game is worth a buy" Is whether the game will appeal to a type of person or not yadda yadda. So for me personally it is very important for me to know that an action adventure game has either equal amount of puzzles as combat, or more. Because otherwise I almost wont even bother to waste my time at all if its another one of the hundreds of generic straight action games that cant design anything outside of combat (or a big fuck all open world...thats again 90% combat)

>>717933996 (OP)
Because we don't bully reviewers enough.

>>717941358
there ARE mechanical differences between those things. you are trying to minimize time spent travelling while using height and stamina as resources. you can spend time doing SLOW traversal like walking or climbing to gain height, and then later cash that height in for FAST traversal like gliding and shield surfing. all of this depends on the terrain, which is obviously different depending on where you are in the map. in skyrim it does not matter if you are in a flat area or a mountainous area. you just climb up steep cliffs on horseback and try not to die of fall damage

i am not trying to tear down every argument you are making about botw being bad. I am only defending the traversal mechanics in botw as being deep enough to keep me engaged when compared to contemporary entries in the same genre

>>717941508
no. the fast travel mechanics in botw are pretty boring, except i guess that since shrines are you main fast travel hubs, there's extra value in going to a shrine vs other types of points of interest. of course most points of interests come with a free shrine
i am only pointing out that ubiquitous fast travel sheds light on developer intentions to ignore and even carve out traversal as a mechanic from the game to be replaced by loading screens

chat reminder that echoes of the end has a female NIGGER protagonist. happy to help

>>717947489
I like how you said there are mechanical differences then pointed to an arbitrary conception of "fast" or "slow" traversal as if that somehow changes the button input, or as if there is level design that makes going slow vs fast meaningful.

In classic tomb raider, walking is an extra button input, but not only that, it gives distinct precision from running, in especially a game where you are jumping from blocks to blocks that are like one or 2 steps wide in a row.

Even ignoring the fact like I said that walking involves holding a fundamentally different button in tomb raider, there is no GAMEPLAY (this is the context that mechanical presses exist in, so this still wouldnt have anything to do with mechanics per se) element to BotW that makes moving fast or slow remotely meaningful, because there is no level design and NOTHING to accomplish when you can do anything you want, at any given time in any given way.

Also your overrating how efficient shield surfing is, the game is 90% flat on the ground. Shield Surfing will take you like 100 meters across, slightly faster than running most of the time.

And while ill admit shield surfing requires a different PRE input. Youre still holding forward, with little to no nuance.

Im not even going to respond to your stamina point because I already addressed everything about stamina before this and why it changes nothing.

>>717947643
>i am only pointing out that ubiquitous fast travel sheds light on developer intentions to ignore and even carve out traversal as a mechanic from the game to be replaced by loading screens
Nobody disagrees with that. I used BOTW as a mainstay criticism to prove my poijt about how brand names can allow giving more credit for traversal that is ultimately still incredibly basic and not even that innovative ("evolution" of asscreed) whereas an AA game that actually seemingly demands precision from its traversal, and incorparates it into puzzle solving too, not just disconnects it. Is being called "tedious".

>>717933996 (OP)
Essay Anon, it's been too long
How've you been?

>>717948104
>How've you been?
Thought I got over my zelda replacement obsession but it came back out of nowhere so Ive been keeping an eye on a bunch of new action adventure games and this is one of them ill probably pirate, and then buy if good. Theres another one upcoming that im not revealing to anyone, but in the meantime im checking out some old games I found scouring reddit in disdain.

I mostly quit making threads on /v/ with how I saw people talking about Expedition 33, because it cemented to me that nobody really cares about analysis, just exalting narratives to confirm biases. So now I just counter narratives when it makes me angry enough, If i play a really good game soon, I might be inspired again, but criticizing games in an era where real critque cant be appreciated, is tiring.

Reviewers shat on qay better games for even more stupid reasons but you decide to take a stand in the name of generic ue5 wokeslop action game

>>717948070
so you are allowed to post on the internet arguing with nobody but i am not allowed to reply to you arguing with nobody

Game critics were always retarded

>>717948460
>but you decide to take a stand in the name of generic ue5 wokeslop action game
Are you a retarded bot with no reading comprehension? You fucking retard? Do you lack the self awareness to not realize that you are doing the exact same thing as the retarded reviewers im criticizing of imposing arbitrary preconceived perceptions of a game based on a void lack of principles of what a game should be to appeal to "you"
"If it has more puzzles than combat thats bad!" Youre just as mentally retarded. Maybe possibly even worse because you somehow think your judgement is any better when you dont have the self awareness to realize that just because youre a retarded generic /vpol/ retard with no emergent thoughts of their own, doesnt make you functionally different from the reviewers, just on a different side to them.

>>717933996 (OP)
>puzzle balance
>repetitiveness
valid criticisms imho. by the end of RDR2 it was just
>shoot a bunch of dudes
>and sometimes you shoot them while riding on a horse
>and the final mission was: shoot a bunch of dudes while climbing a mountain

>>717948793
What are you talking about retard? Im making a criticism against a broad trend/phenomenon. You are talking directly to a person, and your entire initial contention was me criticizing BOTW. Which I was still ultimately right about. And besides I engaged with all your annoying contentions anyway. You made up a point about fast travel and open worlds that I was never focusing on.

Besides Open world games can never fundamentally escape that fast travel problem without being more interconnected and/or smaller scale, and at the point where it could be interconnected, it would no longer be open world.

Dumb annoying frog.

>>717949081
RDR 2 is a bad game in general. A great product but a bad game.

>>717949081
>valid criticisms imho. by the end of RDR2 it was just
Dude are some of you actually retarded? How are you not seeing the problem? Honestly im now surprised anybody understood what I was talking about in the first place since /v/ tends to act like im speaking a different language when making an argument.

So now im thinking the people who agreed, agreed because they hate reviewers, and not because theyre principally opposed to the way reviewers make reviews, since theyre appealing to all the same logical folly's here.

"Balance" and "Repetitiveness" are not real conditions. They're subjectively imposed perceptions.

ITS NOT valid or real criticism, youre not engaging with the game, youre engaging with your perception of what you before the fact has decided is invalid. The statement

"Puzzle over Combat is bad balance" does not inherently mean anything because I guarantee I can find a game (thousands actually) with a significant skew towards combat over puzzles that youd never criticize for imbalance. So youre using the word arbitrarily post hoc because you dont even understand the actual particularity WHY you dont like the balance, let alone whether your preference is even reasonable to impose on a game that was never trying to be braindead straightforward action retardation.

Do you understand now? How flawed these characterizing words are? I already gave an example with Dark Souls why "repetitive" is a stupid shallow criticism

>>717949280
that's a pretty succinct way to put it. i'm onboard

>this entire thread
Just make a blog already OP, or better yet make videos about it
You're just screaming at the void, nobody is going to read all the text you posted

>>717949098
and yet you have never meaningfully engaged my actual argument
you have done the intellectual equivalent of n-nuh uh and you even attacked me with an ad hominem

>>717949827
I'm assuming youre either a troll at this point or a different person. Point to a coherent specific sentence that I didnt address. And when I say that. I mean something i either didnt greentext, or dont implicitly mention a concept you suggest, so for example lets say I never greentexted anything saying fast travel from you. It wouldnt matter because I bring up the word in a reply context to you and address what youre saying anyway.

Point out one moment I didnt do that (ironic as youre actually the one that hasnt engaged with anything just repeated what you thought) and youll have a point

>>717949823
I am contributing to videogame discussion and saying something meaningful, you are trying to shut down real videogame discussion by calling it a blog, when the reality is you have no real standard because I have been in "I DONT WANT TO GO TO WORK!!!" type threads that are actual life blog posts and I guarantee your subhuman retarded ass never posted "make a blog!!!" in those threads because I have BEEN in all of those threads and CTR F searched for "blog" because of an awareness of subhuman retards like you, and got no results. If I was angrier Id tell you to kill yourself

>>717949443
>"Balance" and "Repetitiveness" are not real conditions. They're subjectively imposed perceptions.
>ITS NOT valid or real criticism, youre not engaging with the game, youre engaging with your perception of what you before the fact has decided is invalid.
incorrect. "balance" is a very normal part in any critical rubric. feeling that an experience had too much or too little of something has nothing to do with "preconceived notions" or whatever the fuck you go on about. it is about "i spent 3 hours playing this game. i enjoyed the combat but there was too little of it compared to the puzzles of which i thought there were too much of." some games (or other pieces of media) benefit from having repetitiveness, sometimes you need variation to break up monotony.
it is also okay for people to have different feelings towards pieces of media than you. no amount of you screaming into the void is going to make people think leaving reviews/thoughts on a game is not okay. you haven't even played the game he's talking about and you are screeching about how his review is bad. in essence, you are reviewing his review. but you have no real conception of what he might be talking about because you haven't played it. and he doesn't even say "puzzles = bad", he said it might appeal to you if you prefer puzzles over combat, but the game is not thrilling because it doesn't have as much action as he'd like. if you found the most retarded review of something ever and criticized it, people might agree with you. but you found one of the most normal and decent reviews you could that gives insight to the reader as to who might benefit from playing the game and who might want to steer clear from it. what is the problem there?

>>717948381
My most awaited AA game this year is Hell Is Us. Main designer was the art director on the nu-Deus Ex game, this is a smaller budget title. It's another Unreal Souslike which superficially looks like a red flag but in dev diaries he talks a lot about trying to focus on the adventure and mystery sides instead of just copying Souls for the combat, he keeps saying he doesn't want it to be seen as a Souslike but a classic action-adventure and also mentions Zelda or Resident Evil as influences, adding different puzzle layers, etc. that's something I don't see other Soulslikes doing. And even more than that, there's a bit of Outer Wilds thing going because it's trying to be a detective mystery, with supposedly minimal handholding and railroading and a big focus on elegant environmental directions. I don't think you'd be that into it because the focus isn't mechanical interactions but I'm very curious about it, on paper all the things he says resonate with me.

Played the demo and I have some doubts and worries about the direction not delivering on promises and compromises inherent to AA design (it still has to appeal to retards so puzzles look shallow and the publisher is leaning harder into the combat for marketing), I know I'll be disappointed on some levels but it's such a cool set of promises, it's the first time in a while I'm excited for a new game.

I expect it be very flawed but the promise of Souls x Outer Wilds excite me. Just because, WHY is no one else trying something so obvious? That's the kind of game I'd want to make. I'm already frustrated with how it's being talked about because the Outer Wilds side layer I know will alienate most of the Soulslike fanbase OR some journos will over sell it without being critical of the things I take issues with, like the puzzles being too basic. The game seems designed as an answer to all complaints against yellow paint trends, but it will go under-appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu3K7_yCqkA

>>717950117
how about my first fucking post where i said "the traversal in BOTW is more varied than in other open world games" and you and one other poster both just locked in on the words "great for the time" and "you didnt see in any open world game up to that point" and explained why that traversal is good
you just said XD le great for its le time and erm you can climb walls in ass creed and left it at that

>>717950117
how about my first fucking post where i said "the traversal in BOTW is more varied than in other open world games" and you and one other poster both just locked in on the words "great for the time" and "you didnt see in any open world game up to that point"
you just said XD le great for its le time and erm you can climb walls in ass creed and left it at that

>>717950271
>I am contributing to videogame discussion and saying something meaningful
Which will be forgotten by everyone after like 10 minutes, and the thread will be gone after few days
You're contributing jack shit
>you are trying to shut down real videogame discussion by calling it a blog
I'm just pointing out the obvious, if you want your voice to be heard, typing walls upon walls of text here isn't going to do any favor. Just make videos at this point, otherwise, you're just screaming at the void
>rest of the post
Calm down, faggot
You're gonna pop a vein if you keep seething this hard

>essayfag trying to say he stopped making threads because of E33
shut the fuck up. not only did you not stop making threads (maybe decreased the frequency of them), it also had nothing to do with E33. it had to do with you being a gigantic dumbass on multiple levels.

>>717950348
>incorrect. "balance" is a very normal part in any critical rubric.
Lol retard. Already ignoring everything else youre saying because if youre explaining something backwards post hoc from a presumption than youre too fundamentally retarded and exactly part of the problem to ever understand what Im talming about. Begone retard.

>>717933996 (OP)
Miyamoto completely fucked over BotW by making the dev team go all in on climbing everywhere. One of the dumbest things he's probably done, but it's now the thing that it gets praised for the most, despite the best parts of the game being everything that forces you to be more creative by making climbing and item spam impossible.

>>717950695
I agree with you hear atleast. This is another AAA game Im looking forward to. Recently watched one of its recent trailers and it communicates the same mentality ive had about action adventure games not caring about puzzles or figuring out where to go and how to get there. Combat gives me some meeeh vibes but thats only because I dont trust combat games where the combat occurs in an arena like area. But I value adventure more than action anyway, and am objectively based in doing so just for the sheer amount of number of action games that are out there and just how similar action is, so adventure in a raw sense just has more potential to offer.

>and the publisher is leaning harder into the combat for marketing)
I was worried about this exact same thing with echoes of end because in their reveal trailers theyd just skip everytime it came to a puzzle. But the reason I still held hope is that there were so many "skips" especially compared to typical AAA action adventure that it had to mean a decent amount of puzzles and traversal was my guess.

>I take issues with, like the puzzles being too basic.
Only thing I want to tell you is to not think of puzzles as "basic" or not. Because actually a lot of Outer Wilds puzzles are "basic" or simple. Because its less about pushing a number of blocks in a specific mathematical lile sequence. And more about understanding the rules of an "alien" world.

Another point I want to make is that classic Resident Evil is the same. 90% of its puzzles can trult be reduced to "Bring Item A to Door/Room A" but what makes it engaging and interesting nonetheless is the level design and how it snakes and intersects with everything, how you have to manage multiple different puzzle pieces and the routes to taking them to their respective location, mentally map.

So if the level design and everything else is sufficient enough it could be fine. Just want to induce the same hope I want to have.

>>717951350
>i want to discuss videogames and videogame critique!
>NOOO NOT LIKE THAT! I WILL NOT EVEN READ IT!
you don't want to discuss anything, you do not add to discussion. you are desperate for an audience and wish with every ounce of your being to have sycophants parrot your retarded opinions. such is the life of a retarded no-life zoomer who spent most of his formative years watching retarded streamers scream over each other.

>>717951930
No, the problem is that I criticized the fundamental understanding and use of "Balance" and "Repetitiveness" and you reiterated wnd regurgitated the exact definition I was criticizing, as if I did not understand what people intend to mean when they use the word. Youre like on a fundamental layer below what Im trying to talk about and dont even realize it. I dont even know how to explain this fundamental concept to you. Its like me criticizing somebody for calling a conservative a nazi, and then somebody explaining that a nazi is an authoritarian, discriminatory based, system that is extremly hostile to foreign or outgroup persons.

All of those could apply to some degree of conservatives and it would still be wrong, because it isnt completely or properly considering the contexts or manners in which discrimination, authoritarian, and ingroup bias can manifest that seperates a nazi from a simple bigot.

I didnt engage because you never gave me anything to engage with that I didnt already fundamentally address.

>>717952331
essayfag, please. you aren't the smartest person in the room. rid yourself of this poor facade of someone who knows more than everyone else. you aren't engaging because you are too unintelligent to engage.
>I dont even know how to explain this fundamental concept to you.
because you are unintelligent. an intelligent person would be able to communicate their ideas. you, on the other hand, write walls and walls of meaningless text and then shit yourself when someone disagrees with something you say. your words are not truth. you hardly understand what truth is. you hardly understand linguistics for that matter.

>>717953143
>mfw when this guy is still here obsessed with calling me dumb
i dont know why you love to defend retards, but this thread is dying anyway so whatever

The journos are as retarded as they are because the normies they have to appeal to are just as retarded. Dont let those cuphead journo memes fool you. Gamers are just as retarded if not more

>>717951930
this is correct.
>>717953143
this is also correct.

>>717953365
im not defending anyone. i am saying that you are stupid. you sit here and pretend you are any better than the review you posted. you aren't. i have seen your critique of games before. i would give your writing a failing grade.

>>717951920
You read my mind again. I ran out of space in that post but I wanted to add this exact thing about RE puzzles (and besides mental mapping, carrying items being defined by limited inventory also induces choices, risk-reward, affects route-planning or attack/defense items you will pick or not, leaving empty spots for new items on the way, etc. it's all holistic and about decision making and feeling under that tension, bringing item to door was the puzzle). Doesn't seem to be the case here so it's hollow just like that puzzle archetype was hollow in RE4, just there for aesthetic reasons. I found it predictably annoying that reviewers compared the puzzles to RE, because they're only superficially like RE (aesthetically, there are obvious callbacks, these nostalgic nudges, like "wolf medallion" so journos feel clever for recognizing the reference but once again I didn't see reviewers actually address WHY they're NOT like RE and why they feel hollow here).

As for OW I disagree that they're simple, even if one some level most of them can be reduced to "just wait for the right time". Just the way they are integrated so uniquely and cohesively into the environmental or timeloop logic, etc. the execution may seem simple but they are complex in concept and deep in cleverness, and so often you have to understand "the whole" instead of just being one isolated gameplay segment, so that also include mapping and routing in space and time or using your gadgets in some surprising ways. Puzzles click differently in different people heads anyway, I never found OW difficult, it's so elegantly accessible but I was constantly impressed, surprised, never "simplistic", lazy, predictable.

Should have used generic or formulaic or lazy, there are certain templates of puzzles that devs default rely on when they're not serious about puzzle design. Don't have to put thought into designing those. Because in most games, puzzles are just filler/pace breaker between gameplay segments.

>can't talk about indie games because AAAnormalfags want to slap you on the wrist and control what you are and are not allowed to play
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

these threads remind me of 2000s 4chan where posts actually had substance and length

>>717957435
The webm to destroy all journos...

OP made this thread thinking he was smart and would highjack the journo hate here to get people to agree with him or tell him about the game that was being reviewed. But it backfired because he is an insufferable twat.

>>717945191
>ahhhh ugggagtagagaga
You fucking retard. Go on itch.io and look at some random 0 follower game.