RolyRamen

@RolyRamen@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Final Fantasy XVI is out now on Steam and Epic Games Store⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s Sony got to do with this? It’s entirely developed and published by Square.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Hidden Costs of Long Playtimes in Modern Gaming⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I very much do move on when Im done with a game, rather than when it’s done. I mentioned that I moved on from AC Valhalla only 25 hours in, and a more recent example is when I stepped away from Armoured Core 6 after only about 5-6 hours realising it wasn’t really for me.

  The problem with length is when length is the reason I stop playing. I can love a game at first and think it’s great 4 hours in. That love can turn to like if the formula is getting a little stale or the plots not going anywhere. If this continues then my like might turn to just “consuming “ to get it done, and if I’m still plugging away for long enough in this state it’s easy enough for things to slip into a negative view of the game because it’s asking more of me than it’s giving back.

  Take Final Fantasy XVI this year. It took me 44 hours to finish, but imo it peaked around the close of act 2 (a certain boss fight that went hard about 30 hours in). By then the gameplay formula was established and it’s largely the plot carrying it but (imo) neither ever really got any better in act 3 but I still had another 14 hours to go. I was invested enough to keep going but I went from loving it to just liking it as a whole because it never escalated and 14 hours of treading water is a bloody big investment. This was main-lining the game too, I gave up on side quests early on, so we’re not talking about completing a game just getting through them.

  It comes back to games justifying their lengths. This is going to mean different things to different people, as well as the games themselves doing different things so there’s no one size fits all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Hidden Costs of Long Playtimes in Modern Gaming⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, it’s not so much a question of length but whether a game should last as long as it does. There’s got to be something that makes it worthy of its run time.

  Case in point, I played about 24 hours of Assassins Creed Valhalla when it came out, only to sack it off when my friend informed me that he clocked about 100 hours in it to play through. Fuck that! That game would have been a decent 20 hour Viking romp but it’s got nothing to say, show me or keep me engaged at 5x that length. Hell even at 40 hours I’d have said it was inflated, but 100! It’s madness.

  On the flip side, I played Elden Ring through to completion over 80 hours and would have played for 80 more had it asked. It was engaging, exciting, full of interesting locations, characters and things to fight. There’s tension in and intrigue in just exploring this unique setting and it all adds up to an experience that’s worthy of its runtime.

  Similarly, one of the only JRPG’s I’ve finished in recent years is Persona 5 Royal, which took me a huge 109 hours to finish and yet I loved it. It’s full of style, flair and a sense of fun often missing from this genre that it just got me hooked. It’s not even that the story is all that great but the characters are well realised and there’s a wonderful dynamic in the core cast that really got me to go along for the full journey. I also think P5R also did the one thing many games fail at and it’s pacing, the thing just goes and despite facts like the tutorial is about 8 hours long I never felt like I was just killing time.

  My point is, my feelings these days are that most games aren’t worthy of being over 10-20 hours, and even less so of being 20+. It’s not a one size fits all answer and individual mileage might vary person to person but there has to be a hook (gameplay, game feel, story, characters, setting, playing with engaged friends , etc.) to warrant time invested beyond a point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft’s CEO say it’s ‘doubling down’ on being a game producer and publisher | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Can’t agree more. I don’t think there’s a studio under MS that’s done better under their leadership/portfolio than they’d done prior to their acquisition. The studios created to shepherd Xbox franchises that original studios move on from generally have never matched the highs previously seen either.

  I also don’t appreciate them hoovering up franchises, via acquisitions whilst failing to develop much new that’s if any note. All it does is condemn a growing back catalogue to mediocrity or have them disappear into the vault.

  Sony aren’t perfect but their studios tend to produce top tier games that look and feel like they’re a tier above most, making the most of their “exclusivity”. Most (all?) their major releases are their own franchises developed in house too, and it feels like there’s a steadier turn out of new, quality IP to boot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This is Microsoft’s new disc-less Xbox Series X design with a new controller⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, battery life sure. Form factor is debatable. I prefer the dualsense personally (own both).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is also coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Given how rough this game is (was? not sure how much its been patched) on current gen and OC I’m not hopeful about an old gen version.

  Really liked the game but playing on PS5, the performance was definitely a distraction to the point I put the game down and still haven’t gone back to it.