Just some off the top of my head: Destiny, Deep Rock Galactic, Overwatch, and most recently Baldur’s Gate.
I received BG3 as a gift. I installed and loaded up the game and the first thing I was prompted to do is to create a character. There are like 12 different classes with 14 different abilities and 10 ability classes. The game does not explain any of this. I went to watch a tutorial online to try and wrap my head around all of this. The first tutorial just assumed you knew a bunch of stuff already. The second one I found was great but it was 1.5 hours long. There is no in-game tutorial I could find.
I just get very bored very quickly of analyzing character traits and I absolutely loathe inventory management (looking at you Borderlands). Often times my inventory fills up and then I end up just selling stuff that I have no idea what it does and later realizing it’s an incredibly valuable item/resource and now I have to find more.
So my question is this: Do you guys really spend hours of your day just researching on the internet how to play these games? Or do you just jump in and wing it? Or does each game just build on top of working knowledge of previous similar games?
E: General consensus seems to be all of the above. Good to know!
I, too, miss the easy pick up and play games of the past.
Are those games of the past? Games of all stripes still exist, just like complex games were in the past too (looking at Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 from 20 years ago which are degrees more complex than BG3 today).
That’s not so long ago for me, or in gaming history my friend lol.
I’m talking more of the NES, SNES era. (All consoles anc PC included during that same time.) They were much simpler. The most complex ones were maybe simulator type games.
Many big title games today require a full on tutorial that can go from 15 mins to 30 mins to explain all the game mechanics and gameplay, inventory systems, power-ups, etc. Then you have all the DLC, loot boxes and all the other bull shit.
Back in the 80’s-90’s you just put in the cartridge, pressed power and played. (Or typed the DOS command, ENTER, and played.) You had the full game on the get go and you could learn the game mechanics in a couple of minutes or a few rounds of playing.
There are games today that still do this and keep it simple, and those tend to the the ones that I’ll play and re-play and play again.
I’d argue 20 years ago is a while ago in gaming, no matter how old either of us is. The appeal to authority due to age aside, I only mentioned 20 years ago to draw the comparison between the game being discussed in this thread and its predecessors.
Exactly. Hell, I’m willing to bet there’s more “plug’n’play” games being made today just because of how wide the gaming industry is now versus the NES/Atari age, and that’s even ignoring the entire catalogue of these games over decades still existing for the playing.
Alright. Whatever man. And thanks for making me feel old as shit.
Well, they are still here, just sometimes in a different form. For example, shmups are still a thing – RagingBlasters is a prime example.
As far as platformers go, Shantae games are my overall favourites. Ever since debuting on GameBoy Color, I don’t think they ever strayed too far from their roots. Another honorable mention from me would be Blaster Master Zero – a remake of the original Blaster Master on NES.
Yeah!! Blaster Master zero is on my wishlist. (I got so many games on my wishlist…)
Thank you. It feels crazy that SO MANY PEOPLE are playing these crazy complex games. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just prefer to spend my time playing intuitive games.
I used to play Destiny 1 and I was all about it for a couple of years and I get how much fun those kind of games can be but even after all that time I was spending more time trying to figure out how to play it than I was actually playing it and eventually just burned out.