/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7007974
It's a problem that's become pervasive as the major players in the games industry consolidate and consolidate and consolidate, becoming more bloated in the process. There are practically two types of video games that come out now, at least outside of the Nintendosphere, and that's gigantic multiplayer games that are butt-fucked with microtransactions and grinding progressions, and games that are tanked and diseased from the start because they're designing a ten-year progression before the game ever hits an alpha. and the other side of that coin is the God of Wars or TLOUs or Gears games that are these very linear, staid, and dry affairs that have any kind of interesting gameplay hiding under the veneer of a huge budget for narrative. the GoW reboot was actually a pretty neat concept, trying to fit a character action game into that over-the-shoulder third person action formula. I think in a lot of ways it was successful. But it tries to balance the gameplay with narrative segments at a ratio that feels like 1:1, which seems sub-optimal for a fucking video game.

A decade ago I thought indie developers would save the day but unfortunately it's just as hard for them to survive as it is for the big boys to stay afloat, which is why we're still seeing an entire universe of games in the language or formulas of...Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, Luftrausers, Nuclear Throne, Binding of Isaac--games that all came out a half-decade ago or more. Do you really want to play another fucking Metroidvania? How about another game described as "2D souls"? Can you stomach another fucking rogue like, or rogue lite? how about a procedurally generated bullet hell retro throwback? like fuck off. it's so disappointing to see that well get poisoned so early.

of course this is to say nothing about the rise of games that are visual novels, but I don't think those matter. I file that under "media expressly created for people who write about media for pay".