• esc27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    11 days ago

    Avowed was very mid. I enjoyed it enough, but nothing about it was particularly brilliant or terrible.

    • MrNobody@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      Generation Zero was amazing, when it first came out and it was all new. The machines were actually scary to be up against. I remember playing the beta and freaking out that the dogs were following me around when I was in the bunker, how they would track you down. Just always put me on edge, but then you take down a few. Learn the ropes, get better gear. And that anxiety is gone. Its not longer difficult. It got too easy, not scary to be out at night alone.

      I will say though that the engine used was fantastic. I have never before, or since, had a game that loads so fast, looks so nice on mid-low level hardware. You hit load game, and you are in the game. It ran fantastic and looked really nice. The concept was amazing and for the most part it did work. Until it didn’t. Fun game but nothing outstanding.

      • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
        1·
        10 days ago

        Yeah once you explore the whole map, it becomes a typical looter shooter where you’re just grinding for 6 crown weapons. I will say though, having only played for a couple years, the dev team did a remarkable job adding new content over time, and not all of it locked behind DLC. Picking this game up on sale for $5 felt like I won the lottery. It might be “just ok” but I did have dozens of hours of fun in the game with my brother and friends.

  • Delphia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    10 days ago

    Mechwarrior online.

    Free, online “shooter”, good community, runs on linux, gameplay is dated and doesnt get tons of dev support anymore but its still how I kill an evening once or twice a week.

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    10 days ago

    Starfield. It’s the definition of a “mixed” rating on Steam. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. You play it for an hour and your reward is that an hour has passed.

    • brendansimms@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 days ago

      After running through the main story once, I modded it to where you cannot buy any natural resources - they must be harvested in person and/or setup a base and and ship all natural resources to a central storage planet. This essentially turned it into a spreadsheet-logistics game which gave me a a second, much more enjoyable playthrough. But I agree - absolutely medium-tier game.

  • yamper@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    11 days ago

    we are in a golden age of medium good action games. lies of p, stellar blade, khazan the first berserker, another crab’s treasure come to mind for me.

    non-fromsoft soulslikes are starting to find their voice. they’re not quite great yet, but they’re competent now.

  • Flamekebab@piefed.socialEnglish
    5·
    11 days ago

    Godus.

    I know lots of people hate it but taken in isolation it’s okay. I found its aesthetics charming and its pace generally pretty chill. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t terrible. Low medium perhaps but I have comfortable memories of listening to an audiobook whilst playing it.

        • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
          61·
          10 days ago

          But instead of playing the map as a menu screen, you actually play in the world and discover things.

          That was the crucial difference for me.

            • Iunnrais@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              9 days ago

              I don’t think Blackmist has a hot take here. The Ubisoft formula is: navigate to a tower. Tower gives you a checklist of things to do. You do the things, then look for a new tower.

              Breath of the Wild is different. Yes, you start by navigating to a tower, but then… no checklist is given. You look around, you explore, you find things to do. Maybe you find everything, maybe you miss things, maybe you miss everything. You can always come back and explore more later… and when you’ve done everything, you can’t really be CERTAIN that you got it all. The lack of a checklist dramatically shifts the gameplay from doing a list of events, with little difference from selecting them from a menu, to actually having to explore the world and look around.

              To call it the Ubisoft formula is to vastly misunderstand what the Ubisoft formula is. The formula is a list of things to do. BotW does not have that. Not even slightly. The towers are just something to aim for to get you started, and a place you can use your eyes to look around from, also to get you started.

              • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
                3·
                9 days ago

                And to add to that, it also gives you the tools for discovery. It’s not just “Ubisoft, but they hide the icons”.

                The shrine detector (which can become an anything detector), the ability to look through binoculars or whatever it is and stamp a limited number of visible waypoints onto the map. Tears of the Kingdom gives you a slightly obscure ability to highlight all the cave entrances nearby, which you can then try to mark up and see if you’ve been there.

                Other games have started trying to do some of this, but I think a lot of it is added late on in development and doesn’t really work well. Like Jedi Survivor gives you the ability to mark things with icons, but what for? You can’t see the markers when you’re walking around. There’s not really much to discover from a distance, and it’s pretty far from being a vast open world.

                Is it perfect? No. The last few shrines are often a complete ball-ache to find, although a lot of them are just a generic fight and they’re pretty optional, it feels like you should do them.

                Is it better than a world as a menu screen as offered by Ubisoft and those that copy them? Yes.

                I think in general a lot of developers should take a long look at what they’re actually trying to make before going with the open world approach. It’s getting tired, and they’re mostly doing it badly.

  • JoeKrogan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    11 days ago

    The outer worlds . it was just meh in my opinion. Not to be confused with the outer wilds game that I’ve yet to play

    • Nindelofocho@lemmy.worldEnglish
      83·
      11 days ago

      Outer Wilds is absolutely superb if/when you get it try to get the DLC too its a good value. Steam summer sale coming up soon if you’re in the states

    • KuroiKaze@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 days ago

      Well, I can sort of be impressed with what outer wilds did. I didn’t actually find it all that much fun to play, whereas I completed the outer worlds.

    • Green Wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
      241·
      11 days ago

      I was going to say outer worlds as well (outer WILDS is a fantastic game IMO) the game was entirely competent, just unimpressive in every way. Except Pavarti, she is a precocious sugar dumpling and must be protected at all costs.

      • ItsMrChristmas@lemmy.zipEnglish
        112·
        10 days ago

        Actual conversation had with my wife, who was watching me play near the end:

        “That chick is cute. I bet her romance is adorable!”

        “She’s aromantic and asexual, you can’t romance her.”

        “I bet her quest line is fun”

        “Nope. It’s a really boring fetch quest where you set her up on a date with some bland woman old enough to be her mother. She is also very obviously sexually and romantically attracted to this woman.”

        “…huh.”

        I love Parvati but Drinking Sapphire Wine is a terrible quest.

        • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          6·
          9 days ago

          I thought The Outer Worlds was violently mediocre, and yeah, its really long uninteresting fetch quest, but:

          • Parvati says she’s not interested in physical affection, but I don’t recall her ever saying she was aromantic. The closest thing I remember is that she feels like she’s better at dealing with machines than people, which definitely doesn’t mean the same thing.

          • I also don’t recall her ever saying anything sexual about Junlei?

          • how old does this woman look to you that you think she could have a 28 year old daughter?

          • Green Wizard@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            9 days ago

            The quest was nothing new sure, but the reason I’m doing the quest? I want her to have the best dam date ever. I just wanted to see her happy and help her get ready for her date. Not sure what they were talking about with her being aromatic, don’t remember that. And about the age thing? not sure what they meant by that either, she looks the same age as Pavarti to me.

    • XM34@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      Was gonna say it. This perfectly describes the last few Assassins Creed titles. Not bad enough to put them away, but also not good enough to leave any kind of lasting impact.

      • Tigeroovy@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        10 days ago

        Yeah, Assassins Creed was cool at first but they just bled that shit to death with too many releases. It’s hard to keep things fresh when you put out like 10 sequels.

      • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
        31·
        10 days ago

        It’s like chewing gum. You just keep going as it gets blander with no end in sight.

  • chameleon@fedia.io
    8·
    11 days ago

    Dual nominations for Paper Mario: Sticker Star & Paper Mario: Color Splash. The only thing I really remember about them is that I played them and they left me without any feelings about them whatsoever.

  • tuckerm@feddit.onlineEnglish
    81·
    11 days ago

    Unreal 2, at launch, was the most absolutely 7/10 game I’ve ever played. Just a very generic singleplayer FPS, and not the sequel to Unreal that everyone was hoping for.

    I say “at launch,” though, because almost a year after the game’s release, they added multiplayer, and that is still my favorite multiplayer game.

      • tuckerm@feddit.onlineEnglish
        4·
        11 days ago

        It’s a very different game, although it does have vehicles, so it has something in common with UT2004 in that way.

        Unreal 2’s multiplayer only has one game mode. It’s kind of like capture the flag with some resource management. There are power generators that you need to take for your team in order to use vehicles. You can also capture respawn points which give your team more choices of where to respawn from.

        You choose one of three classes when you spawn, with each class having specific weapons. You don’t pick up weapons as you go.

        There is a release of the multiplayer that’s available for free here: https://xmpcommunity.com/. After Epic tool all Unreal titles off of digital stores a while ago, they specifically mentioned xmpcommunity.com in a blog post as a way of still playing the game. So it has their blessing.

          • tuckerm@feddit.onlineEnglish
            2·
            10 days ago

            It definitely had a lot in common with Onslaught mode. There was some overlap with the types of vehicles, too.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      Oh my GAWD 7/10 is NOT mid. I just ranted on another comment about this. 7/10 is a GREAT score. Everyone: please make 5/10 your mid-game point I am so tired of this aaaaaaa

      • tuckerm@feddit.onlineEnglish
        3·
        10 days ago

        I was using the GAMESPOT weighted numbering scale:

        Generous Averages Make Easy Satisfied Publishers, Our TrafficReliesOnThem

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          Hahaha that’s totally fair. I’m just peeved that people don’t rate games as a 5/5 = okay game rating. When I see a 7/10 as mediocre, I get a solid flare up of my autism