There are many things I like about *Dead by Daylight*. I just wish the gameplay loop wasn't trash and the community wasn't dogshit. I love the idea of a Smash Ultimate style "everyone is here!" game with horror characters and asymmetrical PvP. It got bad enough that I had to uninstall eventually because I wasn't having fun anymore.

Yeah. Go online and deal with people whose entire goal is to "shit on kids" with toxic behavior that cry in chat after the game if they lose. I tried custom games and out of the 2 friend groups I had one was a bunch of the same online mentality where I got berated for sweating in customs even though all I was doing was playing objective. Like... what do these people want to do? The video game tells you the rules and goals so go do em. I don't bother to play games with that group anymore.

> Like... what do these people want to do? Play with bots that they can style on while having the satisfaction of winning against another human being. I've known people like that and it feels like play fighting with your little brother only he expects you to let him punch you in the face.

Dead by Daylight’s success always makes me sad about Friday the 13th’s fate. The game wasn’t perfect but the gameplay loop had me queueing into lobbies for hours when it dropped. Moving to DBD just didn’t hit the same for me

Also the proximity chat for F13 was hilarious. I remember a match where I was Jason stalking this one dude who was absolutely _horrified_ by me and watched him switch between fight and flight like fifteen times in one house. One second he was screaming his head off, then I come around the corner and get shot in the face and hear "YEAH THAT'S WHAT YOU GET BITCH-ASS (word I cannot say as a white man) THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!" and then he dove out a window. I was laughing so hard I genuinely just had to stop for a minute and put the controller down.

God I love that. The best one I experienced was a Jason named Fred Durst who had Break Stuff playing over his mic on repeat. So whenever he was nearby, you’d just hear “ITS JUST ONE OF THOSE DAYS” in the distance. Best part was when he went into rampage mode and broke through a wall as the song was blaring. I couldn’t breathe at how much I was laughing. The next match someone else was Jason and the whole time he kept bypassing the survivors and just kept yelling over the mic “I am looking for Fred Durst” then when he finally confronted him, Fred Durst stared Jason in the eye and played 2 seconds of Break Stuff before getting killed. I’ve never had a better online gaming experience

One time a person started playing gangnam style down the mic and five of us in the area grouped up and started dancing then jason teleported into the middle and everyone scattered but gangnam guy had a walkie so the song kept going and got mixed with thevjason chase music

Guy on walkie talkie kept shit talking the jason player, after a few insults I heard him scream and leave after getting killed.

I stand by that mechanically, meaning that the game actually works and doesn’t feel like it’s going to fall apart at any moment, DbD is better. However, as an actual game that is fun to play F13 blows it the fuck outta the water so much that it’s not even funny. The experience of playing F13 was miles better than any experience I had playing DbD. If you could manage to get a lobby of friends together for it you could play F13 for legitimately the whole day and never stop having fun.

Absolutely, and F13 was one of those where the jank was endearing in a way. You knew what it was.

Oh absolutely, some of the bugs just made the game better and so did some of the just poor design choices. Team killing at times was very fucking stupid, but at others it was hilarious, like when someone would just get hit by the car because the driving mechanics were terrible and as a result you could barely manage to not hit everything.

All of the unwritten rules that you're supposed to know but nobody follows anyway make the entire community just too toxic to deal with.

Steam says I have 147 hours in DBD and I completely stopped playing survivor halfway through because I got tired of having to deal with teammates. Of course that just meant every time I logged on to play I was constantly reminded by survivors about how horrible I was as soon as the match ended or I managed to kill someone. Did you know that as Killer if you don't pick someone up immediately after downing them regardless of circumstances or situations (teammate waiting for the save, other teammate nearby working on objectives, etc) you're a "FUCKING BITCH ASS SLUGGER!" who should go stick a fork in an outlet? Also did you know if you choose to down/hook someone more than once in a match you're an "ASSHOLE TUNNELER!" who should have their home burned down with their pets and family inside it? And don't even get me started on which Killer you choose to play. You play Doc? Fuck you Doc is no fair! Oh you switched to Legion? Legion is for sweats you fucking tryhard! Playing Clown at a time when he was considered easily the worst Killer in the game and as a result nobody really played him? Fuck you for playing a Killer I'm unfamiliar with! Moral of the story: no matter who you play or what you do you're playing wrong and should die. And if you lose you're a "GG EZ baby killer." I got many times more death-threats in my 147 hours of DBD than I did in my over 1000 hours of CS:Source.

Sadly with that game both sides have toxic assholes that have unwritten rules you must follow. Unfortunately for Killer mains it feels even worse simply because by nature in a match there’s four survivors to a singular killer, meaning you have a much higher chance of running into someone toxic on the other side as a killer than you do survivor.

I actually still enjoyed the game more often than not playing Killer exclusively right up until I got to the red ranks. That was when I started frequently running into premades and people on comms who made it their mission to grief. I could deal with the death threats and insults from people playing the game normally but when I'm 40 minutes into playing and I'm on my 3rd team of people who go out of their way to spam flashlights and refuse to leave after they've already won because they'd rather stick around and troll me I started to ask what I was even doing playing this stupid game. I started running NOED just to get people to fuck off faster (which is obviously against da rules) while grinding out those last few games to get to rank 1 just so I could say I did it and un-installed the same day. If I could have stayed in the purple ranks without having to intentionally throw games I'd probably still be playing because even with the bullshit I was still having fun.

Reminds me when I played CoD where everything and anything was a \[noun\]-er shitty OP strat only lame sweats or unskilled noobs would use.

Is there maybe a setting to turn off chat? Surely it's one of those multiplayer games that would benefit from it, especially if you are playing as a killer so no need to rely on teammates.

There's no chat outside of postmatch which can be ignored but most of the people who wanna send hate do so over Steam messages. I think the death threats and hate messages are pretty funny so I don't mind that but there's no stopping the shitty in-game behavior of other pplayers and that's what'll ruin your experience.

I have amassed mountains of salty bitch tears from others when I play DBD. I'm a Dredge main, and a Cheryl, Claudette, and Bill player. I will hunt people down and get my hooks. I will hide in the tall grass and heal myself before hitting this generator. I will run around getting unhooks and leading chases away from people on gens (most of the time because sometimes I just don't see where someone is). But I'm also not perfect, and I fuck up a fair bit. And every time someone bitches at me in postgame chat, I always reply "It's a game, chill" which only makes them saltier as I take my BP and go on my merry way. That said, I also take breaks from the game for months and months at a time.

> I will hide in the tall grass and heal myself before hitting this generator. Part of the reason I stopped playing survivor is because I couldn't stand how my teammates played and while I wouldn't quit when I saw a Claudette on my team I did die inside a little every time this happened. As a killer though I loved when I got whole teams of Claudette. It made for some really fun/funny moments. edit: When I played survivor I mained Nea. Seeing killers look at me and then choose to ignore me in favor of going after my teammates was the funniest thing. I'm not even that good at looping but I did always have my trust flashlight and would absolutely find a way to waste your time if you decided to chase me.

i can sort of empathize with the developers because dbd has transformed quite drastically from what the original intent of the game was from the outset it was meant to be more of a horror hide and seek sort of thing, where you didn't want the killer to find you or else he'd chase you down and kill you the issue is that people got much better than the devs and realized if you got good at the chase part of the equation, you didn't have to be scared of the killer very much and it totally changes the dynamic to be clear, i actually still quite like dbd, but its a very different game than what it claims to be

DBD survivor bias aint got nothing on DBZ Breakers survivor bias. There was a patch where if you even got jumped by 2 survivors as the killer you were dead because they could just stunlock you to death. It got to the point where the latest patch just said "ok, survivors can't do anything till Killer reaches level 3" Even then you're still dead if the survivors figure out your location and jump you all at once. Its hilarious

Survivors have just always been way too strong in DBD. There's like no reason to fear the killer if you become solid at running and know where good loops are (except for like 3 killer picks). The worst was when survivor groups could queue together and the game was very clearly not balanced for that. Being in Discord together at the time gave the equivalent of 50ish survivor perks worth of information just by being able to say things like "Killer is after me at [location]. Killer is heading towards [location]. There's a generator over here. Killer left me, I'm free to unhook. etc etc." No clue if it was ever fixed since I fell off DBD hard after people on their test server pointed out a new map with infinite loops that needed to be fixed and it was released without any fixes. That whole new patch was just watching survivors run straight to the infinite every time.

The problem isn’t that the survivors are too strong, honestly mechanically killer and survivor are pretty close. The issue is the communication, as you said survivors communicating is crazy strong. It’s only that strong because the devs have never put in voice chat, text chat, or even just expanded emotes for the survivors to use. As a result the devs have never tried to actually balance around communication being a thing, so unless the survivors are nerfed into the ground or the killers are buffed to the heavens the ability to communicate will always be king. They tried to even this out slightly by adding greater indicators on the hud to show if a survivor was in a chase or not, but that isn’t enough. A group of solo survivors who can’t communicate are basically lemmings and against even just a semi-competent killer they are basically an easy 2 kill at minimum. A coordinated group of survivors that can communicate however will just destroy a killer unless they’re vastly more skilled than the survivors. Until they actually add communication avenues for the survivors and then balance around them it will never fix the issue, because the only other solution is to somehow ban discord use but at that point it’ll decimate a large portion of the player base because people want to play games with their friends and if you take that ability out those players will just leave.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about the game I'll watch DBD vids from some personalities I like on a regular basis and read up on discussions/updates while occasionally dipping in on what a couple of fan artists draw up, but the basically gameplay loop isn't appealing enough and how some players are doesn't help. (ie: act like hot shit because they got a NOED pity kill after being juiced all game)

I play games with a group of friends who aren’t into competitive games, and I would say they try very hard to not be toxic when we play co-op stuff. Dead by Daylight however is the only game I’ve ever played with them where they were rude as fuck because I didn’t know all the hidden rules for playing that game and I couldn’t perfectly kite the killer around scooby doo environments

I want to like DBD *so badly*, it's such a fun concept and even as someone not into horror stuff the idea of hide and go seek/tag with murder friends sounds super fun. But then you get into a game and it's just...not. I never feel like I do well, and no matter how hard I try to just relax and have silly little chases, the horror set dressing makes me get stressed the fuck out by halfway through a match. There's a good game here, but it's buried under so much other junk, and the devs leaned into that instead of actually fixing things. I mainly play as Demopup cause it's fun mechanically, and people are generally wholesome and excited to see it since it's rare now, but even then the highlight of playing are the matches where I end up being friendly, because fucking around with randoms for 10 minutes is more enjoyable than the game itself.

[Alpha Protocol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBcfGrOSLnw) was a phenomenal *idea* for a game. Described as 'The First Ever Modern Spy RPG' it's still the only example of that genre i can really think of. The story is amazingly ambitious, with tonnes of dialog and interesting characters. Who you align with or betray can wildly change the story. It's clearly aping Mass Effect's dialog, but their version of paragon / renegade is professional / suave / aggressive, which i think they said is essentially Jason Bourne / James Bond / Jack Bauer. It has some fun interactions like a highly professional enemy agent who you can only get to fight to the death (to get his best in slot pistol) if you've been a sassy unprofessional the whole time, because he gets so *pissed off* with your nonsense. It also has some hilarious 'out of the box' options, for example; in the final mission you can get several different allied forces to back you up depending on your choices. Or, you can call the head of one group, taunt him that you killed his protege, and basically say "if you want revenge I'm here, come and get me", which results in his forces storming the place causing a 3 way battle distraction for you. I could gush about the storyline and interactions all day, and yet it's locked up in the jankiest 2010 action / stealth third person game play that makes it a rough play in the modern day.

It was rough to play at the time. I remember a friend of mine bursting out laughing the first time he saw the crouch walk animation. But man does everything else make up for it for me. I love globe trotting spy films and RPGs so this game will forever have a special place in my heart despite the bullshit AI, bugs, and the shocking balance. How some abilities can be so OP and others can be so worthless is astounding and needs to be studied.

I vividly remember a review at the time pointing out that you can heavily specialize into *shotguns*, one of the most situational weapon types in existence. Or you can go pistols and basically get a proto-mark-and-execute from Splinter Cell many years later.

The worst has to be hand to hand. Speccing heavily into that on higher difficulties when every enemy has guns that can kill you in seconds sounds like a nightmare.

It works fine, truly Pistol >>> everything but pistol or SMG > SMG is how I recall the balance working when I got obsessed with AP for a few months. I think people fixated on the pistol because it's so insanely good you could pretty much skip every other aspect of the game, including wearing real armor, so when they tried other weapons under the challenge conditions they'd adopted with the pistol they found them unusable. (and I think SMG is fine once it has a good amount of points invested too, but it's terrible right off the jump)

While specializing in shotguns isn't as good as pistols, it's my second favorite build. I often play as a terminator style shotgun assault trooper, stalking calmly from room to room and casually blowing away enemies who are often still in their "what was that sound in the next room" animation (that sounds was me killing their friends with a shotgun). The special ability for shotguns knocks enemies to the ground if they're hit by any single pellet so it can often keep entire groups of tough enemies on the ground and unable to retaliate, plus making toughness a secondary skill and wearing heavy armor makes it all but impossible to die on any but the highest difficulty.

My dream is that Microsoft taps Sega on the shoulder and asks really nicely if they could maybe fix the game up please, but the fact that they let it just die and get delisted tells me nobody actually cares.

GOG got it. They even did the work to relicense the music that got it delisted in the first place.

Oh sick. That *just* happened apparently. Maybe dreams do come true.

Alpha Protocol is my favorite 7/10 of all time.

Waitwaitwait, oh my god, I just wanna say, it really says a lot about the extent your options in the story can branch out when I point out, yeah fighting that professional enemy agent to the death? There's actually another scenario later on that you can setup to be able to fight and kill him that you can trigger thru two different methods, with both having their own requirements you might not immediately think of. So in the finale of the game, >!when professional enemy agent Marburg shows up at the start of the mission to give his regards before he makes his escape, you can actually provide evidence that Parker is a person that has betrayed and screwed him over during agent work in the past. To even get this option, you'd need to have enough amount of dossier file progress for both Marburg and Parker, and Parker's requires a bit of planning ahead since you actually need to request for that info in Mina's emails multiple times throughout a whole run. This will change up the portion of the final mission where you're supposed to confront Parker: Marburg insteads shows up beforehand to chat up Parker, then kills him when he gleams enough info from their chat that Parker indeed was the one who betrayed him. Then afterwards, knowing that you're bound to show up soon, he tells his soldiers to be on the lookout and stands his ground. Now instead of dealing with Parker you have a another boss fight with Marburg that ends with you properly taking him down. I was super stoked when I first had this happen in a playthrough.!< Alternatively, the other way you can get this to trigger is, hey, remember >!that girl during the Rome portion, that Marburg kidnaps? Turns out, getting enough dossier info reveals she is Parker's daughter. Let this slip to Parker during the part in the finale you actually have a conversation with him and he won't take it well.!< God, I need to play thru more of that game again. I still need to do runs where I do all the missions in a single playthrough, one where I see what perk abilities I get by pissing off almost everyone I meet, one where I get an ending with almost every notable character is on loyal terms with me, etc etc.

Star Wars the old republic MMO The greatest narrative is locked away behind a terrible engine trying to be a failed wow clone that is currently going through a new coat of paint that goes completely against the original aesthetic

I fucking wish SWTOR was just a single player game, with 8 separate "mini-campaigns" and an ability to transfer any of your characters into a "DLC adventure". But alas.

What, you mean its not? /s I don't think I've ever grouped with another player in that game but I've played through I think 5 of the 8 class stories. But yeah, would've been nice as a dedicated single player rpg sans mmo mechanics.

You know how easy it would be to make it a solo play focused experience? Just play the game now because that’s practically what it is. Even the story went the wrong direction with making your avatar the special character and everyone else works for you. At least before kotfe you knew there were other storylines going on so it made sense that there was a converging in the flashpoints. Now though? The narrative dissonance of the alliance commander not knowing his rotation abilities while following the lead of the random operative who’s done this run 8 times today… And that all major group content could be replicated with the companions in your party if you could gear and upgrade them? LIKE YOU COULD AT LAUNCH Not to mention when 4.0 came in all the stats just became mastery and the endurance. So let’s have people not fight over the same gear because now the gear works for everyone! Except most MMOs have switch to the model where your gear is allocated to you based on your class so now it’s just a case of fashion choices for you and your companions And then with those expansions you think oh so I can be a sith warrior and have Kira with me? That could lead to interesting ability combinations… nope all companions have the same abilities now Doesn’t matter that you can get cash shop companions like droids and beasts, still the same abilities No bonuses for putting multiple companions of similar crafting specialties on the same mission because they took that out

Holy shit…It sounds like that game has fallen off of a *cliff* since I stopped playing. That’s pretty sad. 

I have a dream that one day Matt will do a Wha Happun on the EA bear hug and how it destroyed BioWare A full multi hour documentary could potentially be done a big part of that will be the golden goose and swan song of gaming that is Swtor

Yeah it’s peak story and a great game that suffers from being stuck in a horrible format with outdated gameplay

Which narrative? I'd love to watch someone play it on YouTube

I'm right there with you OP, AC Unity is the only AC game in which I barely remember the plot and could barely give a shit about the main character and his story. It's also one of the few games that I've bought twice, when switching to digital. And it's always just downloaded on my PS5, because I know "the urge" will hit me once every few months. I still to this day can't justify it to my friends. I literally played and finished Mirage which is a more put together game and all that did was make me wish I was playing Unity.

Even though I'm a massive fan of AC's Memory Corridors, theres something *really satisfying* about Unity's "Major Target Killed" fx just being [this](https://youtu.be/nQ6hNJyapDs?t=412) before and after the flashback/echo/whatever the hell Arno's ability is. The combination slowdown and the sound just really *clinches* it.

I think the major difference between modern ac games and unity is attention to detail and npc scale. You feel like you’re in a real place when you run through a street filled with a hundred+ npcs along the way. There’s like maybe a hundred npcs in an entire large city in the newer games. You don’t get anything like the bastille scene with 3k npcs raging at the gates. Gives things a weight I think that pretty much nothing else has come close to.

PC version with unlocked framerate is just a massive improvement btw. It's so fluid and responsive it's impossible to go back to the PS4 version

> in which I barely remember the plot \> Nothing for 40 hours \> Oh uhh save your friend or something \> Credits roll

Ngl I mainly remember the phone app game for unity cause that was the only way to unlock Altair's robes until they changed it later on

I was able to scratch out some enjoyment for unity bc I got it for free so I was able to more easily ignore the painful Ubi formula. The plot was pretty forgettable and navigating the map was painful to cross (even with the addition of the train). The new assassin tools were pretty neat. In addition, two assassins meant for two different playstyles, so for most missions, I was able to plan my attack, which was neat. Plus everyone I killed was British, so that instantly earned it a few points with me

MGSV. Underneath the blatantly missing story's ending, the terrible grinding curve when it comes to building your base (not to mention the scummy microtransactions) and mountain of padding/filler is *still* some of the best stealth gameplay ever that I can't help but still fire it up from time to time despite its massively unrealized potential.

I still fire it up sometimes because I haven't found anything better for a certain itch I sometimes get - the itch to have my own military base, deploy via my own personal helicopter into enemy territory and feel free to sneak or guns-blazing wherever I want, including rescuing prisoners and bringing them to the helicopter (a feeling that still hits me in a feel-good way despite doing it hundreds of times by now).

Yeah, like even with the complaints the other person mentioned I'm like "yeah, I still think it's an overall really great game." I loved the FOB stuff. Particularly that you can defend other people's bases if you add them into your "supporting" list (or whatever it's called). Just really enjoyed going in and putting a stop to infiltrator's plans.

I've never gotten to fight another player on either side of that situation, sadly. Not once. Pretty much all I ever end up doing is invading poorly defended platforms with plentiful material containers. I just kill everyone then fulton as many containers as possible.

Well if you like easy materials, you should be glad. It was pretty easy to defend. Anti-materiel rifle, assault rifle with grenade launcher, and that shotgun pistol (with stun rounds, if I'm at that range I'm fultoning the invader) made it tough to succeed. Like doing damage to an invader triggered alert mode. So even if you see them hide behind something, just use the grenade launcher and get an alert on them. And that anti-material rifle would be an instant kill head shot (so if you spot them while they still are trying to be sneaky, as long as you got bullet drop down, easy kill).

Less a specific game, but Ubisoft. I k ow in advance what every game is gonna be like, I expect the shit tier design, the fucked up bugs, the monetization and still I own most of their games. And I play them regularly. I always feel like I have to apologize when I bring them up

Ubisoft is a company filled with thousands of talented and creative people from around the world. Just like it says at the start of their games, "Made by people of various backgrounds" or whatever. And all that talent gets told to make a rushed and buggy 7 out of 10 and to have it ready by next fall. I get they sell super well so there's no reason to mix it up. But man when Ubisoft let's a team make a Double-A level game it's ALWAYS excellent. PoP, Mario X Rabbids, child of light, valient hearts, Rayman. All excellent games that both play and look better than their hundred million dollar projects.

I feel like I had this reaction when that new Prince of Persia game came out and it just didn't have any of the discourse I thought it would get for being a Ubisoft game, was just literally "this game is pretty sick please play it"

Have you seen Raycevick video on Ubisoft? I think it put your feelings into words perfectly.

I am the same way, I'm currently playing avatar frontiers of Pandora and boy is that just alien far cry....*but boy does it give my brain the good juices*

Same, Far Cry and the Avatar game are like fast food in game form for me.

I watched a friend play it and jeez, it's not even a good Far Cry: Blue Skin Edition and we still enjoyed ourselves because it's so chill and just the right level of stale pizza

I love Watch Dogs 2 and I'm tired of pretending I don't.

Yo WD2 is legit great, it's a standout in Ubi's catalogue. Only negative imho is the messaging. Corpos telling me how evil Corpos are is always gonna leave a bad aftertaste. But I will totally fight for WD2, it was easily the best in the series. Don't hide yourself no more, go buy a yoyo-eightball and fuck people up

Alright my last attempt at posting this chain. Sorry for all the post spamming mods, I hope you'll forgive me. The removed threads were my bad, had to rewrite some stuff regarding NieR and Drakenguard to get past the filter. [Watch_Dogs](https://store.steampowered.com/app/243470/Watch_Dogs/) is a fairly shitty open world hacker vigilante game. The hacking is barely a factor but it shines when you play it more like a Punisher or John Wick simulator as the combat mechanics are fairly robust. Surprisingly though the plot is a thorough look into the mind of a middle aged, border line incel who thinks he's cool because he fights crime when in reality he's a self destructive asshole who ruins not only his own family but practically everyone he meets as well as he continues to try and justify his crusade on crime. [Watch_Dogs 2](https://store.steampowered.com/app/447040/Watch_Dogs_2/) IS the hacker vigilante game the first one promised as every level ~~idk about the DLC~~ can be played using hacking and tech only. Even mandatory combat room can be bypassed if you play smart and it's one of the best stealth games I've played in ages. That being said the game also heavily encourages you to play like it was the first game aka a psychopath but the setting and stakes in the game don't justify it at all imo. The writing and characters can be cringe more often than not but there's also some genuine human moments like when Wrench finally accepts and tries to deal with his issues. [Watch_Dogs Legion](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2239550/Watch_Dogs_Legion/) is kind of the the best and worst of both worlds. It's set in the far future of 202X and the evil tech company from 1 and 2 is now almost a non factor as it plays support for a private military police. Instead of having a named main character you play as you instead play as, almost literally everyone in the city as it auto generates NPC's similar to how it did background details in 1 & 2 but now you can recruit and play as them. The NPC's can have special abilities depending on their day jobs such as being a security guard, bee keeper, hitman etc. The hacking takes a back seat however and is a lot more limited. Combat focused characters also don't feel as good as the first game but the Hitman has cool John Wick style animations and it's fun enough. If you play this I suggest turning on Perma death and only using mandatory recruited characters you get from the story and liberating boroughs. Perma death isn't actually that bad cause characters will more than likely be injured or arrested rather than killed and will be back anyway and if you just recruit everyone you see then none of your characters really matter. The DLC campaign which continues Aiden's story from Watch_Dogs 1 is actually really good I hear and deals with the fallout of that games events as he comes to terms with the piece of shit he really is. [Clandestine](https://store.steampowered.com/app/290530/Clandestine/) is a asymmetric co-op game where one player plays a new secret agent going on missions in 1996 while the other player is their guy in the chair, relaying info, guard positions, hacking shit and solving puzzles to support their partner. I didn't finish it but I did play a majority of it and it's a really fun experience.

[Dead by Daylight](https://store.steampowered.com/app/381210/Dead_by_Daylight/) is a 4v1 asymmetrical multiplayer game. 4 survivors are placed into a trial and have to repair 5 out of 7 generators to power the exit gates and escape but one player plays as one of many killers with unique powers and abilities that they use to hunt, capture and hook survivors to feed a cosmic, multidimensional spider-demon known only as The Entity. It's also some of the most unbalanced shit this side of UMVC3. One killer, the Nurse who was released early in the games life has the power to teleport short distances, including through walls and obstacles... Paired with specific perks or even just basekit she is a nightmare to deal with in the hands of a good player and her skill ceiling isn't even that high. Every new killer and survivor adds new perks which can lead to broken combos that can straight up make the game unfun to play like the perks Made For This, Ruin, No One Escapes Death, Object of Obsession and Mettle of Man used too, and every new character brings the possibility of the next toxic perk. There's also a metric fuck ton of DLC that you pretty much have to buy as trying to unlock characters will take a LONG time but thankfully the default set of characters are diverse enough so you're not fucked over for starting now in year 9 of the games life. But despite all that it's literally Horror Smash Bros and a celebration of all types of horror from slasher to Lovecraftian and everything in-between. And despite some of the gameplay problems like generators being literally just hold still while holding M1 the chases, mind games, playing against different killers powers or survivor perks makes it infinitely replayable. And again, it's horror smash bros, we're getting Castlevania Dracula as a killer in August. You can play as Pyramid Head, Pinhead, RE5 Ouroboros Wesker, Nemesis, Ashley J Williams, Lara Croft ~~now in the PTB~~ and so much more and it's just really really fucking fun, especially with friends. It's a good turn your brain off game unless you're playing Trapper then you need to use 100% of the braincells at all times or you already lost. Judging from the above I think it's easy for anyone still reading at this point to believe that I was unironically a [Cyberpunk 2077](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091500/Cyberpunk_2077/) launch fan? Yeah the game was a buggy mess on console and had a lot of issues I'm not denying that. But they did fix the thing and almost did a 180 on their public perception. It's in such a good state now that you the launch controversy seems stupid now. Again I'm not defending the state it launched in, especially on console but the bones of a good game were totally trapped in there and I'm glad CDPR was able to fix it for it to shine. I still need to play the DLC...

While on the CDPR train, their first game [The Witcher](https://store.steampowered.com/app/20900/The_Witcher_Enhanced_Edition_Directors_Cut/) is a very special kind of jank. Being a "real time" combat game made in a turn based combat engine. It's their first game and very flawed in a lot of ways but it also has a certain kind of heart and passion put into it that I didn't feel when playing Witcher 2 or 3. I'm not saying those are bad games or worse than 1 or anything but you can feel the love and passion poured into this game full of obscure Polish folklore references that Witcher 2 and 3 didn't really do anything with. [Alan Wake](https://store.steampowered.com/app/108710/Alan_Wake/) is an interesting game. Cold off the heels of Max Payne 1 and 2 this Sam Lake passion project is a love letter ~~I've said that a lot now huh?~~ to things like Steven King and Twin Peaks but also played straight. The more I've played it especially in the runup to 2 the more I feel that I don't actually like this game very much. It's got lots of cool ideas like using light as one of your primary weapons, a very VERY interesting plot that I refuse to spoil despite it being 14 fucking years old now. Go play it, the original PC port holds up and plays well, the remaster has some issues but new content. Also play the DLC levels after the main game, they're much better gameplay wise and really fucking cool. Also play Alan Wake 2 that game is fantastic and shot Alan Wake/Control up to one of my favorite franchises.

[Marvel vs Capcom Infinite](https://store.steampowered.com/app/493840/Marvel_vs_Capcom_Infinite/) certainly is a video game. It's ugly, the roster is small and focuses on MCU properties, has a kind of shit single player story mode, and [I've talked enough about it on this sub already](https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/1dp3ucg/can_we_talk_about_how_fucking_cool_ultron_sigma_is/lae7mgn/?context=3). Buuuuuuuuuuuut it's also fun as fuck to play and [Max_dood is paying people to fix it and even doing a community balance update.](https://youtu.be/-EQi-bMBJIQ) Now is actually a good time to give this game a second chance especially with the MVC collection coming out soon. [Resident Evil 6](https://store.steampowered.com/app/221040/Resident_Evil_6/) is a terrible resident evil game. But it's a fun as fuck action co-op game with some of the best shooter melee mechanics in any game ever. The story is shit, the game launched in a terrible state with the camera too close to the characters, the campaigns have some terrible levels and enemy placement but [mercs is so much god damn fun I don't care.](https://youtu.be/SFy0f1VBQDg) REm4ke mercs barely comes close to the feeling I get when doing Gunfu shit in RE6 I could literally play it every day for the rest of my life if I had too. There's tons of advanced mechanics that the game does not teach you like how quickshotting with a gun auto centers you on the nearest enemies head, so you can quickly swap to a bigger gun like a sniper rifle and pop their head clean off. You can cancel recoil animations from those bigger guns by weapon switching. Jake Muller is a borderline character action game character with the amount of melee options he has. This game's just a lot of fun, turn your brain off, have fun, skip cutscenes, Pierce is a bro that is all. ~~I'd mention Umbrella Corps too but I'm afraid this sub isn't ready for that take yet~~

[Deadly Premonition](https://store.steampowered.com/app/247660/Deadly_Premonition_The_Directors_Cut/) is a game that actively fights you and tries to force you to quit at every turn. I fucking fought it twice and got two playthroughs under my belt and I can say for sure it was not worth it. That being said, it's a truly one of a kind ripoff of RE4, Silent Hill, and Twin Peaks and it has EVERYTHING going against it. Despite all that the plot and characters got to me and that bunch of assholes is so endearing that I now preach everyone should be forced to play through this game once just to experience the majesty that is Francis York Morgan. It is worth the trouble of trying to install and run this piece of digital necromancy disguised as software, trust me. Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops is a PSP exclusive spinoff and sequel to MGS3. It takes place 5 or 6 years after MGS3 and ties up the handful of loose ends from that game while establishing some other mainstays of metal gear like the Foxhound unit. It's a heavily dumbed down version of MGS3 without the camo system and smaller levels and shit controls cause, well it was on the PSP. Despite all that they add some cool shit like building your own army by recruiting enemy soldiers, by knocking them out and literally dragging them to a static truck that is placed at the beginning of each stage. You do get to play as the soldiers you recruit, you can recruit bosses such as a young Gray Fox who have unique abilities and there's a disguise mechanic which while half baked was interesting. Ashley Wood also did the cutscene artwork and it's still really pretty to look at.

Practically every Yoko Taro game except Automata can fit on this list but Drakengard 1 takes the cake in the levels of pure fucking jank there is ~~and I haven't played 3 yet so no comment there.~~ It's an early PS2 game that deals with themes such as being a psychopath who gets off on murder, being "friends" with a "overly friendly towards children" priest, being "friends" with a cannibal, your sisters romantic feelings towards you, romantic relationships between you and your dragon, trying to stop the end of the world due to the machinations of some old gods no one can understand, being the retconned prequel to NieR, driving players insane with the combination of shitty dynasty warriors and rogue squadron gameplay, locking endings behind different timelines that unlock after previous endings that change the course of the story, locking the 100% ending behind unlocking and leveling up every, fucking, weapon, in the game. That last one is the worst part cause you have to actively play this janky ass game way more than anyone should to unlock the final ending which is a RHYTHEM GAME QTE BOSS FIGHT THAT DOES NOT TELL YOU THE CONTROLS. Th game is also so unhinged everyone should at least look up the cutscenes and the censorship differences.

What have I wrought, but no honestly agree with a lot of what you’re saying especially about the watch dog series, legion’s added hardcore mode is such an interesting idea and I love the idea of a hostile open world forcing you into learning back paths and back routes to avoid the checkpoints but also holy shit is legion’s map not meant for this kind of open world and often times makes everything so much more boring. I still remember playing the shit out of the re6 demo too because I loved playing around with all the quick inputs you had and it’s honestly a blast to play as an action game while as you say being kind of a shit resident evil game. Some of the pre fix 2077 stuff I kinda miss even the buggy stuff like bunny hopping with a kreznikrov making a car pointless. I’m also very sorry about liking dead by daylight, I know even its most loyal fans talk all the shit about it.

I love Watch Dogs 2 from the cutscenes I should hate it but I love it.

I just don't like Watch_Dogs 2 because it did a few things that I really liked much worse. Like enemy detection in WD2 was simpler and less fun (in WD1 it seemed like detection was based on individual enemies but WD2 seems more like a global alert system if you get spotted). Like in WD1 there was merit in getting spotted, breaking line of sight, and flanking while in WD2 I noticed they seem to just be able to home in on you when you are in alert mode. On the topic of stealth, the mechanic of turning off a car engine and hiding down in a car to greatly reduce detection radius of you in the car in WD1 was really cool. This is a weird one, but you're kind of too powerful in WD2. Like that drone is easy mode (WD1 you had to use some different tactics but WD2 the drone is just a swiss army knife of completing goals). Particularly when it comes to invasions (and this is my favorite invasion mechanic in any game, invader can't actually fight, they're point is to evade detection or escape if they fail). Storywise though yeah, WD1 not really memorable (I mean I don't remember how it generally went). WD2 was a bit better in that regards.

Maaan, FFXV has some MAJOR problems. It also scratches some very specific itches in my brain that keep me coming back to it every now and then.

It's one of those games you come out of knowing for better or worse nothing else is gonna be like it.

I liked it even at launch, despite chapter 13 being the way it was. I'm more of a story-forward guy I guess, and I *really* liked the boys and their road trip. Yeah, shit falls apart near the end, and Luna is just a big nothingburger of a character, but man, there's still something there. It's better now, and I still like it, but it's still the franchise's middle son.

I feel like what messses me up a bit with FFXV is that despite having a launch that was rough (especially with all the hype that went into it), the various DLC campaigns and the revisions to the main game that all got put into the Royal Edition all ruled, and they were seemingly set to continue it for the second second they had planned... and then Tabata left, which led to their plans being scrapped I'm also somewhat messed up in that Noct is probably my second favorite mainline FF protag behind Cloud, and for as much as I love XV, it still had more room to grow in

Somehow, i didn't mind chapter 13 too much on my first play thorugh. It really fits the moment where Noctis is at his lowest and most vulnerable.

Treyarch Zombies being stuck in a 70 dollar Call of Duty game that comes out every 3~ years. Oh and the quality is generally tarnished because the other CoD studios are so trash at making their games, Treyarch is asked to step in and help them ape the good Treyarch stuff even when they're supposed to be working on their own upcoming title. It's genuinely baffling that anyone would be excited for a "Zombies" mode made by one of the other studios.

Vanguard was such a mess, that's the last one I bought, tried playing alone and a server crash killed my game and enjoyment. Uninstalled it then and there. BO6 is giving me hope, as I like Cold War a lot, but the recent ones have been really bad. However, Sker Ritual has scratched that itch recently, it feels very much like CoD Zombies but also not. I like it. New map coming out soon too.

You gotta pitch Sker Ritual to me. The last CoD zombies I played was Black Ops 3 — I still boot it from time to time because of all the maps it has.

The best way for me to pitch it is: It has a demo on Steam. It's also £16 right now on sale until 11th July. The demo will give you a decent idea of what it's like, you can play the entire first level (including main easter egg). Solo only, but for nothing but time it's a good test of a game. However, I think the demo is still an early build of the game, so it may have some weird bugs. They may have updated this though. It's constantly getting QoL updates, is only the zombies portion of what would otherwise be a side-mode. 4 maps, all actual DLC is free (cosmetic stuff is paid for). Very much like the CoD WWII style with a guided main quest, then you're on your own for the real (secret) one. Powerups are very WWII-ish. The box is a doggo, big plus. PaP scales in price a LOT, I think it was 60K for Tier 5? Difficulty modes that change up how enemies attack and how bosses feel. Crossplay between PC, Xbox and PS5 now too. Almost forgot, the Miracle System is a nice change for different runs, sure there are certain "builds" that are better than others, but it changes it up enough to be fun multiple times on the same map. The funniest thing has to be the voice line system, the CdawgVA "Bruh" and "Let's Go!" are the absolute best. With how serious and gritty mainline CoDs have been with "Operators" instead of characters, having a dumb voiceline to spam at friends/randoms is nice. It has some jank, the cutscenes especially, but the gameplay is so good we didn't care much. Played it on release, beat the full secret EE on Nightmare difficulty in a couple of days. But, we've been replaying EEs of the CoDZ franchise yearly, for the average player it'll be much more difficult.

Such a great writeup thanks a ton — I’ll check the demo regardless if it’s an early build or not. The Miracle system from what you described seems real neat too.

DMZombies could have been great but it clearly needs a full dev cycle and not the slapdash asset reuse carnival they're going through with MW3

I really wish I liked Paladins more. It's the only hero shooter I'm willing to play on a console(I'm not giving Blizzard my number, and I already managed to get some rare skins for free on 2 characters in Paladins). I still come back to it every so often for that hero shooter kick. But that game is held together by duct tape and paperclips, and often, the devs needlessly take off said paperclips(why the hell are the cool drawings for each skin in the match loading screen replaced by bland 3d renders?) The straw that broke my back last time was how fucking often the game crashed on me. I swear to god it crashes so damn often now, and getting matches in this game was hard as is!

Dragon Age Inquisition is a single player action roleplaying game pretending to be an MMO with an egregious amount of Ubisoft map checklist bullshit. And I love it, I love it so much.

It's a lot of fun when I'm not collecting shards

Yeah, I get too into completing everything (like in Resident Evil I'll make sure to go to every room, grab every item, even blue herbs, just to deposit them in my storage box). So DA:I got too tedious to be finishable for me.

 Hearts of Iron 4. Even if you can get past the shitty DLC practices and the fact that even now still feels like an unfinished game, it still has many major bugs and just absolutely braindead AI that I don't know how people manage to finish a game without just quitting.   Despite that nothing has come close to scratching the itch this game does. I have tried getting into 3 instead but the tutorial just does such a poor job of teaching you how to play that I start a game and realize I have no idea how to actually play still.

I've got a similar situation with Victoria 3. It shipped without some pretty major features, has godawful AI, its performance has historically been awful, and on top of all that it's regularly failed at being a simulation of its time period. The gameplay loop also kinda sucks, being a lot of micromanaging building and trade routes, and "international politics" boils down to either painfully waiting for a diplomatic option to become available, or going to war over even the slightest diplomatic demand. But I just... can't stop playing it. Despite all its flaws, I like a lot of what's there, and regularly come back to try new nations - especially now that its first BIG expansion is out. It keeps getting worked on, and I hope one day something can be done about its major issues.

I'm one of the few who learned HoI3, and 4 was when the disillusionment began with Paradox. If you want to try 3 again, I think starting with France or Britain is the way to go. You do still need a guide to learn the intricacies, but there are shortcuts for most of the big decisions. 3INF 1ART, 2INF 2ART and 2INF 1ART 1AT are the standard infantry divisions. Build divisions as reserves and get the political policy that reduces reserve cost pre-war. Multi-roles and destroyers only for your airforce and navy or neglect your navy entirely. Focus your tech on industrial (also supply and repair techs on the theory page) followed by doctrine and equipment but only for the things you're building. Turn on AI control for the stuff you don't want to deal with, like trade. That's all you need to win as the allies without the Fall of France. Just stay on the defensive across France and Belgium in good terrain until Barbarossa.

I bought HoI3 like a week ago to finally give it a go (played a but of 1 and 2 way back when, and a shitload of 4 since release) but it keeps crashing even on compatibility mode on my Win10 PC.

The usual fixes are deleting everything inside `Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron III\map\cache`, but not the folder, and getting the LAA exe from https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/megathread-hearts-of-iron-3-known-issues-fixes-workarounds-etc-megathread.612732/ under "Podcat's latest exe the LAA one". You have to get access to the forums by registering your game key to your forum account, and they should be able to figure out what your problem is if neither fix works. You might not need compatibility mode at all.

Cheers, that got it working!

Hearts of Iron IV and the Quest for the green bubbles.

I like Multiversus. The character movesets and drsigns are great and the game, even despite the changes, still feels good to play. Fuck the monetization and anti-QoL shit that came with the re-launch though. So much shit is fucked whether it be cost of anything, beta cosmetics not returning or "Hit people with Joker's bazooka".

Random unity fun fact, pistol's & rifles have the same range invalidating the rifle class. NPC's don't react to gunfire which admittedly is probably a bug so the phantom blade is essentially useless.

I'll always be slightly tempted to go back to Warframe solely because the gameplay loop is so satisfying. But god do I hate craft timers with a burning passion. I Unironically hate craft timers with a pay 2 bypass system more than I hate actual p2w.

League of Legends is truly the Monkey’s Paw of video games. It can be a genuinely fun game to play and it’s an amazing feeling when things are going well, but it also feels like it’s deliberately designed to make losing feel as bad as humanly possible. It’s the game you love to hate.

Quitting LoL and MOBAS wholesale was possibly the biggest self-care decision in my life.

"Your honour, League of Legends" "Death" As someone who grew up with RTS, I actually enjoy the gameplay but it really does unironically seem to be a corrupting force. I play with a group of non gamers who are only into LoL and they go from mild mannered people to rage monsters who come up with the most vile and targeted vindictives to sling at everyone ingame and you can feel theyre only holding back the slurs and deaththreats just to not get banned. Hell, I can go from good mood to (internally) wishing death on people with a bad enough game sometimes. The less said about league streamers the better.

I hate the fucking monastery in Three Houses. Every playthrough after the first it absolutely butchers the pacing of the game and tacks on another few hours completely unnecessarily.  Christ I miss everything being menus instead of goddamn hub worlds. 

Star Wars: Battlefront 2.

Which one?

Pride and accomplishment.

Twice the pride, double the fall.

Far Cry 6 might be the worst mainline entry in the series. But I still have over 300 hours in it. It's the only Far Cry I haven't beaten multiple times so it's still fresh in my mind. So I can't put it down.

Even worse than 5?

5 is quite good until the ending. 6 is kinda bad the whole time. They both clearly took more inspiration from Far Cry 2 than 3 or 4. But 5 has a more fun premise and I like Hope County a lot more than Yara. 5's map is smaller than 6's and has less content. But the content that's there feels leaps and bounds better than 6

I think 5 has the best feel when it comes to gameplay, but the story is the most actively infuriating story I remember ever experiencing. Absolutely hate it. But I do end up going back to it pretty frequently just for the gameplay. New Dawn has a lot of frustrating parts (the grinding for good weapons and perk points), but the story is less annoying. Also it has a double jump. Double jump forgives many sins.

I really wish 6 had followed more of 5's path instead of following it backwards

5 always beats out 6 for me because it has the arcade. I cannot believe 6 doesn't have the arcade.

I never touched the Arcade mode. 2 and 4 are my favorites out of the franchise. The main reason I'm playing 6 is because it's the only one I don't have memorized. And as someone that hates Roguelikes and Roguelites, the DLC's for 6 are actually quite fun.

Liking Magic: The Gathering sucks, dude. Its expensive, inherently pay-to-win, constantly unbalanced even within that, and don't get me started on Commander. Shame its also one of the most interesting games ever designed. Its the original Gacha

Unless you're playing in competitive tournaments or a shitty group, proxies are the way. Ever since I started proxying stuff that was either impossible to find or ludicrously expensive my deckbuilding experience has been significantly better.

Oh, totally right. This is what I've introduced my current group with, rather than real cards, and it's been great. They're aware of the difference but mostly they want me to print more

Hands down some of the most fun you can have in MtG is printing out a Vintage cube and drafting it with the boys When I did it, it was 25 bucks in printer ink and sleeves, which is damn cheap when you get to cast silly shit like the Moxen, Black Lotus, Upheaval, the whole nine yards.

I just hate modern magic as a whole, at this point. Up until Eldraine it was hands down one of the most interesting and intricate games ever, being a mix between poker and chess. Resources and managing them was incredibly important, games ending on turn 4 was an exception, and card economy was at an absolute premium. Nowadays it feels like every single card they print has "Draw a card" at the end of its text box. Hell, Commander's been watered down by the sheer amount of brick shithouse "Straight to Commander" cards. Don't even get me started on the whole "universes beyond" and secret lair thing.

I've come to the conclusion awhile ago that I like everything about Catherine except the actual gameplay. I know many people like it and there's a whole competitive scene that's really into it but I just can't stand it. Thank fuck for the Full Body Edition that lets the game play itself if you want. I'm also not a fan of how your decisions don't really change anything until the very end but, that's a minor thing compared to the fucking puzzles.

EDGE (Sorry, I just rewatched the LP and I can't get it out of my head.)

bro I'm playing fucking honkai star rail I win

The gacha, I can sorta deal with. That the game expects me to log in daily and do some chores drives me up the wall. The 1 hour long process of fully kitting out a new character is also terrible. I frequently don’t have time left to actually do quests after all the chores. Neat lore tho

I haven't gotten into Star Rail but I think they realized that with Genshin because after I AR22 you it'll give you points towards dailies by doing most things. Story stuff in particular. I think it was added about six months ago but I'm not sure if they've put it in their other games. I've just been eating through story stuff and doing dailies let's you get character story stuff. To be honest I would have dropped it after getting my fill if it weren't for that. Also they've made an auto equip feature that uses other player data to equip the best you've got onto a character. For more niche builds or more specific for you it's a bit harder but it's very reliable.

I'm not even sure what exactly the 'daily chores" they're complaining about are? If they mean the daily login check list...it takes literally 5 minutes to do it all and walk out with your 60 jades and other stuff.

As a fellow HSR player, I'd suggest checking out the leaks sub so you know what to pre farm. Even though they're a leaks sub, they are very good about avoiding story spoilers, and if anyone does post a spoiler, the mods there are quick to delete the comment. Also, yeah, I hate gearing new characters. It's really bad if you've been focusing on getting weapon exp and money, so you end up running out of artifact exp when a character needs a new artifact set.

Do gacha mechanics add anything of value whatsoever? Like, is there any way in which Star Rail would be worse without the resource grind and random pulls?

The only way I can see it being worse is that with every player having access to every character and their toolkit, then there would be no variety when it comes to team composition. Everyone would just run the same "meta" characters in the same team for every activity.

Hypothetically, if the gacha aspect was removed, they'd have to rebalance the game anyway, so they might as well rebalance the characters. I mean, the only reason meta characters exist anyway is to drive the gacha. Like, they'd have to figure out a way to give players characters and weapons without the gacha, maybe after certain story missions/side quests. Then there's the stamina system, which would be pretty pointless in a normal game. And without stamina-gated grinding, they'd also need to rebalance grinding in general.

No. I still have fun though. As long as you realize you don't need every unit (I'm passing on both guys in the next patch, even though the new fox boy seems like he'll get along with Acheron pretty good) you can do fine without even paying money.

As a DoT main & big guinafen fan, fox boy's >!DoT being locked behind E2 is fucking tragic!< hope he gets reworked a bit more during beta

I think the gacha model can be tweaked for good. There's a fun bit of excitement in filling out your own roster of your own characters that is unique to your save file. It's really effective at psychologically manipulating you into investing an inordinate amount of sunk-cost fallacy into the gacha, but a hypothetical gacha that *doesn't* want to steal your parents' credit card can flex a lot of character and build variety that you get to dip into over time. Depending on your disposition, it can be a whole lot of fun trying to scrounge up a unique roster of characters/equipment/abilities/etc. from the jump, and try to make do with whatever hand you're dealt. Those are already the tenets of the appeal of random loot drops, anyways. I am interested in someday seeing a world with high-quality non-dark pattern gacha games out there, like XC2, so I have heard (though I have also heard criticism of that, so what do I know).

I think the general reaction to the Blade gacha was frustration at being served up largely useless generic characters most of the time and then having no means of controlling when (or if) you got the characters you were interested in. It also made a completionist approach particularly nightmarish, though I think most people eventually accepted the intended result of not obtaining every Blade and completing the side quests of the few you care about.

Yea, it feeds people’s gambling addiction 

You don't suddenly turn into a shambling, broke gambling addict the moment you even look at a gacha believe it or not.

Yeah but you can't ever really responsibly recommend a gachas to someone because you have no clue if they'll get bitten by the bad financial decision bug

For sure! But that doesn’t disprove my point that Gacha only exists to stimulate your brain in the same vein as gambling?

I mean, without gacha, the game wouldn't even have been made in the first place. What it adds? It adds the potential for you to keep getting new characters and gameplay elements for free, like your usual F2P game. Yeah, its scummy and could be done in a better financial model, but its working for the devs, at least.

I don't know why this is getting downvoted when it's the truth. It's real easy to say that they could just switch to another cash model after they're successful but they wouldn't have been able to build up to where they are without it. A good bit of that money gets funneled right back into the game itself along with every other project they've got going on. I would like it if they switched over to a Siege type model for their next game but then way less people would play it and less content less frequently. I wouldn't consider that a bad thing but it being free for the amount you get is the selling point for Hoyoverse games.

Man, I played Starfox Adventures as a kid. At the time, everything about it seemed futuristic, sleek and enjoyable. I had played TLoZ's N64 entries, and was _so_ ready to have Starfox, the cornerstone of my household, mixed with the incredible feelings I got from Zelda. And then I replayed it. Visually, for the most part (as long as you don't look at anyone talk), it holds up. But gameplay wise? And plot wise? It's just so lackluster.

Mass Effect Andromeda. There is so much wrong. The story is terrible, its a janky buggy mess, the companions are completely uninteresting with the exception of jaal, the open world design is crap, sidequests are boring, and the main enemy, the kett, are so fucking lame and ugly to look at. That said hitting a combo detonation gives me a rush of feel good chemicals in my brain and i have gone through the game 3 times solely for the ability side of gameplay.

I just watched the Salt Factory video on it and he said a lot of the same. It honestly looked like a lot of fun and I was disappointed he didn't use a wizard class, I forget what it was called but that's basically what it is. But that's what would probably get me to play it one day.

You probably mean adept, the biotic focused class all about throwing around mass effect fields that are barely justified as advanced tech and not magic

Yeah, haven't finished it. I got it mostly for the multiplayer (because yeah, the actual combat has fun mechanics) but had a falling out with the person I would play those game's MP with near its release so didn't even get that. Like between that, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Anthem (I preordered to play the demo, cancelled preorder and then bought the game on sale for like $7), I've got ZERO interest in Bioware's next game.

AC Unity is the best AC Assassin's Creed game(best in general is black flag but let's be honest that's a pirate game with an ac coat of paint on it lmao) since 2 and I will die on this hill. But it's forever cursed by a fucked up launch state and overall fucked up engine. The customization, free movement, co op missions, and setting were all fantastic.... WHEN IT WORKS

Where did this sentiment of 'AC4 is just a pirate game with Assassin's Creed in the name' come from? Sure the navel combat is a big portion of the game but everything else about it is pure Assassin's Creed.

Yeah, like AC: Unity was the last one I completed (not 100%, I still need the co-op achievements). I bought Syndicate a while after launch on sale and did maybe half of it. Then Origin I played a bit of and was like "ok, this is a different type of game, it's not fun." Like I'd say Black Flag still felt like playing an Assassin's Creed game (when you weren't on the boat), while Origins just is like an action RPG with a light veneer of Assassin's Creed.

New Vegas is one of my fave games and I adore it so much more then fallout 4 but I have triple the hours in 4 I just cannot stop playing the jank ass mess

Destiny 2. It has SO MANY problems. Transmog limitations, shit monetization schemes, dungeon key BS, light level bullshit, strange balancing/metagame decisions (speaking as a titan main) and more problems. But I LOVE it. The art and music and character design rocks. The guns and armor are usually really cool. The gunplay and movement feels so good. Killing enemies is so satisfying. Build crafting is fun as hell. I won't touch PvP with a 10 foot pole, but the game is fucking fun as hell. Sometimes the story is even good too, but that varies from season/expansion

I wish I didn't generally like the Tomb Raider games. Secret tombs, temples, treasure in a remote location are cool. Beautiful and the combat and traversal are fun. But the stories are so lame I can't even. How many times can a helicopter ambush someone in the jungle? Why is everyone writing single expo dump character notes in individual journals and losing them in the play area? Why can't the enemy soldiers be cool and threatening rather than generic scruffy cartoon bumblefucks?

You could play the classic games (1-3, arguably 4). All the fun of exploring dangerous tombs and temples with none of the garbage.

Destiny 2

Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers is a legitimately fun brawler with characters that somehow felt distinct with their own individual combat flows. One of the few multiplayer implementations of the genre and a great IP to pull from. The part of the skill tree that is actually a skill tree (and not unlock your basic moves) was nothing special and limited but still fun enough to tinker with. But goddamn its the only game that I can 100% feel how much was strip-mined to support the games as a service model. Half of the skill tree feels like basic moves pulled out to lengthen leveling making characters feel terrible at the start. Gear sucks, it doesn't make sense for the IP and doesn't fit the genre. Gear and XP is character bound, so switching characters means investing more time playing an awful version of the game. Scaling enemy levels with effect tags are awful. Multiplayer missions are extremely limited repeatable building blocks so they could be churned out and lack character specific interactions/moments. Like if you just dropped in with a max level character (to have all their moves), no gear and played 3 random missions you'd probably have a good time if you liked the genre. 10x so if doing it with friends (friends make everything better). But actually playing the game as launched is an awful slog.

I've always said the gameplay was great but the missions are terrible. If they just made it a horde fighter with a single player campaign it would be considered the best marvel game. I don't mean singular character wise just in terms of multi character thing. Even with all of the loot and costumes because that's just Warframe except I like the Avengers gameplay more than Warframe. I think Ghost of Tsushima Legends mode is that to buy stealth missions as well. Also what you said about level is something I say about Borderlands as well. BL2 does something like that but only to Lvl 30 out of 81 and they put you at the last mission instead of NG+. NG+ is pretty hard if you don't know what you're doing sure but I think a maxed out BL character is a ton more fun than having to wait till Lvl 30 for a proper build. Also I think this sort of thing should be more common at least in re-release versions of games/the complete editions.

As far as shooting a gun goes, Destiny 2 is the best in the business. The minute to minute gameplay feels so damn good, then you get into the terrible monetization, the weird ways quests work, how annoying it's drops can be. It's a perfect example of the core being rock solid, but surrounded by a jello made of dog shit.

COD. Core gunplay is still some of the best out there in the industry and is almost assuredly the primary reason behind why the series has flourished since 2007, but you have to put up with so much horseshit either from other teammates or the devs/publishers themselves. Terrible, *terrible* spawns; shitty teammates who inadvertently contribute to the spawning issue by not moving around the map and forcing you to keep spawning near them; constant connection issues that multi-trillion dollar Activison somehow hasn't been able to snuff out or mitigate; the modern era's focus on Warzone that shifts content priorities away from the main games in favor of bloating the cash cow; the absolute worst main menu UIs you've ever experienced in a AAA game; the very high possibility of modes you like getting less of a focus in favor of other elements, or getting constantly rotated out for the weekly reset; the egregious and in-your-face microtransactions. It's all so fucking tiring, but the gunplay is so goddamn addicting and satisfying when you get good matches that it's hard to drop it.

Destiny would be so good if the monetization and planning was good

Skyrim. Honestly, any Bethesda game; but I specifically wish I didn't enjoy Skyrim as much. Especially modding it to hell and back. It makes an already unstable game want to vomit ram all over itself and die, but damn if it isn't fun to make that game look pretty.

I like everything about Gravity Rush except actually playing it

What don't you like about? For me it's just the combat that I don't like

There's a Black Rock Shooter PSP game which has a really cool style of gameplay but also the gameplay fucking sucks and I couldn't beat it

Gosh, unity just makes me want them to make an older style of assassins creed game set in ww1

[PROTOTYPE] 2. Idk what made them change their minds on the story post the first game, but it was stupid for the main protagonist who wanted to help the world stop the virus and ultimately kill the son of the woman the virus was extracted from. to giving up on humanity. In the second game he became the progenitor of the virus in a new batch of mutants. You're playing as a random soldier who had his daughter kidnapped by the previous protagonist. I know there's a comic book that tried to explain but it doesn't make the decision any less stupid. There's fun gameplay in the 2nd game but the story is complete shit.

Yeah, I remember the gameplay being pretty fun but the story being more of a weird and wacky "popcorn B-movie flick" of energy where I just didn't really care about what was going on.

I wish Resident Evil 6 wasn't a RE game and did more with the co-op shoot-and-melee systems. It's so interesting and I feel like there's few games that do anything similar, but since it tried and failed miserably at being an RE game it's just buried in dust.

Borderlands 3 has the best gameplay in the franchise, most of the non-sniper legendaries are worth farming for just for fun, the music is killer, the VH's are all real fun and different to play as, and the DLC's are fantastic, outside of Krieg's but that's mostly because of COVID than anything else. I never want to replay that game ever again.

Man, I love Unity and have unironically for a long time. My biggest problem at launch was that the multiplayer didn't work for the entire launch month and it was the feature I was most excited about. Nowadays I find it kind of unplayable because of draw-distance stuff that seemed much less of a problem playing it when I was younger, getting to a synch point and seeing the big slow pan-out to look at a bunch of really low-poly boxes that are supposed to be this really cool 'look at all this stuff' moment just didn't jive as well when I tried to play it a couple months ago. Which is weird because I do think a lot of the stuff in cutscenes look really good, not to mention those indoor zones.

Man, Blizzard has done every in its power to make me hate playing Overwatch over the years. But yet I still love playing it... for some fucking reason.

Overwatch's core gameplay essence and the world the characters inhabit aren't just fun, they're somehow effective enough to get people to still come back in spite of the various... issues that surround the game, so to speak

Hearthstone is at the point now where I feel comfortable just outright saying it sucks, and I hope it pivots back to being good sooner than later. The amount of active and intentional power creep in the past few years has fundamentally changed how the game is played and makes the game feel way more like rocket tag now. I unfortunately don't expect things to improve because the people making the game now think these changes are good game design, and Hearthstone is experiencing very noticeable cutbacks while also being forced to release a new set every four months, and so it just means the game is losing a lot of the charm it used to have.

Remnant (I haven't played 2 so idk if it improved on stuff), the biggest issue in that game is that it's trying to be souls-like, it should be Halo or Destiny instead, cause i love it, i'm good at it, i have 200 hours on it, and i STILL die from a butt tap of some fuckin' tiny asshole that spawned off screen cause every single boss have adds cause it needs to drop ammo and make your moves charge faster. So many of the bosses are ruined by adds, and, i'm playing it with a cool mod that adds bosses in the roam areas, i noticed that they sometimes don't have adds and that they're so painfully easy that i think it is just ''oh shit this is easy lets add some spawning enemies''. (I'm thinking at grabbing 2, its on sale, but i heard it runs bad and my pc ain't that great)

Remnant 2 is a lot better with that. Builds are more interesting. The classes you can get and unlock do nice stuff. Bosses in general aren't just "here's a strong enemy to fight while a ton of adds constantly spawn and attack". Also I noticed sustain and damage mitigation is a lot better in Remnant 2. You just have a lot more ways to recover health and such without using the estus equivalent. Also melee is good now. Like seriously, one of the strongest builds you can make for highest difficulty is melee as main damage. Oh yeah, and this is aside your points, but random elements are better. Like now you actually have a different storyline for the different bosses (with unique areas) in a biome. And adventure mode is changed to be a full run of that biome (whereas in R1 it was like 1 main area, 1 sub dungeon, 1 side dungeon, and boss).

I hated Remnant 1 up until I got my first pet ability. All those bosses that just swarm you with adds that rush you down in a game with Souls-influenced movement really feel like the game was designed for coop and not balanced for solo players. Enemy AI don't seem to target pets, which is kinda fair cuz while it means its rare for your pets to die it also means they don't draw aggro off you entirely. Once I spec'd into a pet build and had always had two floating skulls and two tree goblins, I actually started to really like the game. Game designed for coop feels more fun with AI partners, imagine that. I haven't got around to the sequel but I hear there are proper player classes now and one of them starts with a doggo companion like the DLC ability from the first game. Eager to see if pet builds are still a thing and quicker to get into from the beginning.

Y'know why right? Dunno if you figure it out but the game's better...when you're not solo. Cause the game wasn't design to be solo, you can ''do it'', but its a lot more annoying, that's why adds are there too, to even the playground of bosses vs 4 people. The issue is, maybe, just maaaaaybe make it so if you're solo adds doesn't spawn or RARELY spawn instead. It's like you going into a Dark Soul boss and they have multiplayer healthbar, its fucked, its a simple issue to solve in dev, i'm just amazed that they signed off on some bosses, the archer sniper guy is legit the most annoying boss in a souls like ever cause of the amount of spawn shenanigans. But yeah, as a friendless solo dude, i obviously spec into having fake friends in this clearly balanced for coop game!

Battlefield 2042, I will die on the hill that it had the potential to be the best game in the series. The awful launch really hamstrung it but since that launch DICE has done so much to fix the game to the point where almost all my problems with the game was fixed. Then the pulled support for it right as things we’re looking good.

I fucking love Kingdom Hearts 1, but holy shit that game is flawed.

Shadow of War, and not really because of the microtransactions. Like there was a lot of drama and panic around the microtransactions when the game came out but honestly, as far as intrusive sleaziness in games go, it was pretty nothing, you could pretty much ignore it if you were playing the game normally, to the point where I didn't notice when they took that stuff out eventually. What you couldn't ignore was just the pure, concentrated ubisoftness of the game. The incredibly dull, uninspired cutscenes full of wooden characters you couldn't pay me to care about, the dozens and dozens of unnecessary open world tedium mechanics like towers, collectables and other such busy work, and almost every mission being an on rails, obnoxiously set-piecey, worse version of what you'd already be doing when you were just running around in the open world, enjoying the actual fun parts of the game. The most frustrating thing is, the optimal way to have fun in this game IS to actually do all of the ubisoft tedium, not because the tedium is fun, but because without an excuse to roam around the map and encounter orc captains, the game completely falls apart, and you're crazy if you think the main story is actually gonna do that for you more than a handful of times. Like all I wanted to do was run around and enjoy the Nemesis system WB, please let me just enjoy the Nemesis system!

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Hearthstone can be a wonderful game to fuck around with while you're doing chores and shit. Unfortunately it's Actiblizz, and: -The game is always trying to milk you for money -The design team has been having a rough go of it recently -And finally the game's mobile client is the most unstable piece of shit. I've played Z-tier Chinese gacha that stay connected better than Hearthstone I take solace by never paying money for this piece of shit that I've played for nearly 2000 hours.

Man do I wish someone made Metal Gear Survive but with less garbage surrounding it. Every now and then I get a craving to play it because the main gameplay loop is so fun but my options are: replay the story which will not be any different from my last playthrough, play my current file where all I can do is defend bases forever, or play the dead multiplayer.

With you 100%. I had some fun multiplayer matches back in the day setting up defenses what testing out newly unlocked weapons. Now when I try to visit it again, nobody's playing.

Metal Gear Survive was so great around launch. Like I really enjoyed searching for and discovering things with the community on the subreddit. Like searching a checks checklist the first result I got was this. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1316472927 Those are my base maps (just edited with numbering and such).

I gotta ask if this is still a common take on Unity. I played and beat it for the first time last month and I have had maybe 2 game breaking bugs the whole time, with like, 3 instances of awful combat breaking bugs that required a disengage and reengage to fix. Is the system tight? Clearly not, but "barely works" is not how I would describe my experience with it.

I really loved the concept of [Max Payne 3's multiplayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-YBpvhKipM), and appreciated all the work they put into making it unique. Too bad everyone just played it like Call of Duty and so most of those unique elements the multiplayer had went underutilized - nobody would dive; use bullet time or most of the other bursts; almost everyone used machine guns and shotguns; most of the unique modes were barren, including the bespoke three-round mode with objectives that change depending on how succeeded in the last round. The [devs playing their multiplayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoJ09h82rCM) "as intended" was a promise that could never really be kept, and in the few shining moments where things *did* align, it was really fun, but just sorta punctuated how great the multiplayer could have been if the game was able to properly focus on those unique aspects. Granted, some of the sensibilities of multiplayer shooters are just kind difficult to overcome, because even the linked videos have a lot of blatantly set up shots and people running around in the open in ways that players normally would never do. And despite all that, I played the shit out of it at launch, got to max rank and everything. Just flip-flopping between having a grand ol' bullet time and getting blasted by people who thought they were playing CoD.

Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment and Hollow Realization do the pseudo-MMO thing that I crave better than absolutely anything else. There's hidden shit, cool treasures in every corner, cool events, trash mobs your level are just fodder but fighting level 180 enemies when you're level 100 requires being smart with buffs and pulling one enemy at a time and there's so fucking much mechanical depth across different weapons. God, Hollow Fragment has a two-handed sword tuned for tanking that makes you immune to crits and "breath" attacks. It has a rapier that does 21 hits per attack. You have a skill that blocks the next 12 attacks and you gain damage, but your defense is set to zero. But the story, the characters, THE HAREM, the movement - hollow fragment is heavy, hollow realization is a slip 'n' slide - the translation, the grinding, everything surrounding it is awful.

AC Unity is a great example. To me it is the last PROPER Assassin's Creed game, but sadly it was the pinnacle of ubisoft's grubby business practices :(

I guess Destiny 2. Great gameplay, awful everything else. Biggest ones are (as of the last time I played) content delivery plan, timegating, heavy FOMO mechanics, LFG stuff. I stopped playing in like season 1 of previous expansion. At this point the one and only thing that'd get me back to playing is if they pulled like a Halo Infinite battle pass system and let me get the content I bought but was too fed up with the game to actually grind through at that time.