Do you mean Scarlet and Violet? I largely agree, but the Blueberry Academy DLC was pretty good. It is set in Unova with a lot of Gen V pokemon added and references to those games.
In general, I’d say that the SV main game is one of the worse ones, but the post-game is among the best.
Gen 5 is still the best though.
I feel the same and I think I’ve narrowed it down to a handful of things, in no particular order.
The environment design. Fallout is mostly wastelands, with just a few settlements scattered around. Everyone is fighting each other, plus the monsters that are encroaching on civilization. Everything is a shabby remnant of the past shoddily cobbled together. Even the entire settlement system in Fallout 4 is based on gathering scrap and taping it together. In Skyrim, you can mine and process the minerals to make the nails to put your house together. Skyrim has ruins and remnants of past civilizations, but a lot of the buildings and infrastructure are still in good condition, and there’s fresh growth. The wilds of Skyrim are much more diverse than the wastes of Fallout. Fallout 3 in particular has the annoying green filter on everything unless you mod it out. It doesn’t feel like there’s really a world left to save- it seems like everything is doomed to chaos and anarchy.
“Survival”. I would not put Fallout in a list of survival games, but it does borrow a lot of elements from the genre. I understand what they’re going for, but I don’t like the resulting gameplay. Constantly scrounging for weapons, ammo, and resources getd really boring really fast for me. Managing health and Rads too. Every combat effectively takes twice as long when you factor in the time you spend to recover the resources you used.
Guns. I know there’s a schism in the Skyrim community between those who mod in guns and those who don’t. I see a few problems with guns in Skyrim, and most apply to the vanilla Fallout games too. BGS just isn’t great at gun play. The feel of the weapons, the environmental design, ammo distribution, enemy AI, physics engine, the sound design… BGS isn’t particularly great at any of it. When the ranged combat is a supplemental element of the gameplay that’s fine- Bioshock has 2 great games despite mediocre combat mechanics, and the Elder Scrolls games are similar with their bows and ranged magic. Fallout puts the ranged combat front and center, and it falls apart.
Progression. I think this is why I love Skyrim, and the source of it’s commercial success. I was no stranger to RPG’s before Skyrim (both videogames and tabletop), but the ones I enjoyed were imusually in spite of the leveling systems. Usually a lot of grinding and overly complicated systems with points, skills, abilities, etc.
Fallout uses one of my least favorite systems- general experience gained (mostly through combat) that leads to an overall character level increase, which then grants points that can be used to improve specific skills. You want to get better at lockpicking? Go kill something. Barter, speech, science, repair, medicine… The answer is to kill something. Improve the Energy Weapons skill? You can kill something with Small Guns or Melle and it’s just as effective. It completely disconnects the actions you take as a player from the development of the character.
Skyrim is the opposite. To get better at lockpicking, you pick locks. To get better with a shield you use a shield. It’s both intuitive and satisfying. Other RPG’s boast more complexity, flexibility, or realism, but I think Skyrim really hits the sweet spot between accessibility, realism, and customization.
This also ties back to the survival aspects I mentioned earlier, because I also felt like equipment was much more important in Fallout. Your damage there is often more about what gun you’re able and willing to use than anything to do with your character. In Skyrim, a character with a high one-handed skill and perks can have pretty good damage with just about any one-handed weapon. There’s variance of course- you can tell the difference between an iron sword and dragonbone. But the smithing and enchantments mitigate a lot of those differences. If you haven’t focused on enchanting yet you might choose a lower-pedigree weapon with a better enchantment.
For what it’s worth, I got into the series a bit late myself and didn’t play AC1 until probably 2012 or 2013. I asked people at the time whether it was worth it to play AC1 or if I should just skip ahead, and everyone told me to skip ahead for a lot of the same reasons you said.
I’m not sure why I bothered asking because I decided to just play AC1 first anyways and still managed to enjoy it.
If you’re new to the series, it’s still fun just to run around and climb things and kill people. The story was actually interesting and the Animus was a really cool concept. The occasional shift to present day gameplay helped keep the historical stuff fresh. It doesn’t have the overwhelming volume of useless collectibles strewn about everywhere like later games have.
I haven’t played it since so maybe it’s aged worse than I remember. It doesn’t have dozens to hundreds of hours of gameplay and side quests in a huge open world. But for a dozen hours in a game focused on a linear main story it was pretty good. Like if you took down the walls of the hallways in Uncharted.
Lemmy simply hasn’t been enough content. I still use Lemmy (obviously, I’m here) but I also supplement with other places.
For example, I used to enjoy the sub for one of my favorite sports teams. A lot of posts tended to be articles from the same handful of news outlets. Now instead of reading through Reddit I just have that website up and routinely check for new articles.
I use the Google News app occasionally. It usually sucks.
I also use Instagram a lot more. I only reluctantly downloaded it and created an account because my wife and a few friends wanted to send me things. Then I used it more when my band released an EP as a way to promote that. For pure entertainment rather than informational purposes, I usually go to Lemmy first and exhaust what is good quickly, then go to Instagram after.
I know it sucks. I don’t like having an app from Meta on my phone. I know it can become an unhealthy habit. But I also drink and eat junk food, so there you go.
Pokemon Sword and Shield.
Rose is trying to move the country off of fossil fuels and onto sustainable green energy. Somehow Gamefreak manages to portray this as being a terrorist and extremist. How dare he try to move Galar away from coal?
I’ve been meaning to re-watch Korra, but I remember even the first time I watched it being a bit disappointed in the “enlightened centrism” where they are trying to paint every conflict as pacifists vs extremists.
I think it’s similar to looking at BioShock 1 and BioShock Infinite. There’s a lot of writers out there who just use politics and ideology as a setting for the conflict rather than actually being central to their message. It’s simply a solid formula to make a villain: take any sort of stance and push it to violent extremes. Comstock is a religious zealot, Andrew Ryan I don’t think ever even mentions spirituality if I remember. Ken Levine’s message in the two games is not about religion, but extremes.
There are benefits. It makes the villains more nuanced and relatable. It gives the protagonist room for doubt and allows for some of the “good” guys to take on antagonistic roles. But Korra also ends up supporting an oppressive regime, and Booker DeWitt gets shoehorned into fights against the people rebelling against his enemy because… Reasons?
Any word on a Citra replacement? I remember a while back I tried to look for an alternative just for compatibility for certain games and I couldn’t find much. It seemed like Citra was the only good option for actually playing games. When you add in that the 3DS is no longer sold or supported, plus the hardware gimmicks that led to most games being exclusive to that platform, and also the sheer discomfort my adult hands experience trying to hold such a small device, I’d really much rather play those games on the Deck or with a controller.
The Switch is still young. It’s Nintendo’s active console so they’re dedicating more security and legal resources to protecting it, but I’m sure that will be reduced after the Switch 2 launches. RyuJinx is still a solid option, and when you add these various forks I’m sure emulation will be in a good spot in time.
One i don’t see mentioned here is the PS3 digital download of the PS1 version. You can emulate it on RPSC3.
There’s no benefit to doing so that I’m aware of, and in fact it’s less convenient and probably less efficient than just using a PS1 emulator. But you can do it!
To be fair I think Ukraine benefits from this too
I haven’t seen anyone mention Tempel yet. And yes, it’s spelled Tempel not Temple.
Last year they released the 50th anniversary edition flashback, which included 130 games, 2 joysticks, and 2 paddle controllers. It’s currently selling for $70.
https://www.atgames.us/products/atari-flashback-gold-50th-anniversary-edition
I’m really struggling here… What is this 2600+ offering? Only 1 joystick controller and a measly 10 games. I guess the ability to play 2600 and 7800 cartridges? Are they going to re-print some? How much would those be?
For $30 you can get the Atari 50 collection for whatever console you have it Steam. 103 games, including 5200, 7200, Lynx, and Jaguar, plus tons of bonus content.
What could they possibly add to make this thing worth $130? This feels like something that should be $40-$50.
All PS3’s could play PS1 games too