@goosemunch: "it's core to the design of this game that it makes all the information available to the player but it's up to the player to make the effort to pick it up and learn it."
This is a very good way to describe it as a whole and on top of that the player still has to like this kind game which is definitely niche.
@goosemunch: That's unfortunate that that happened. I feel like the game did enough to tutorialize it since they treated all the equipment in this way, but obviously you can only do so much in the way of teaching.
@goosemunch: This is user error imo. The controls are literally on the screen. There's a lot of critique about the Outer Wilds which are fair and warranted (for example I hated the flight controls), but faulting the game because you didn't see a very obvious button prompt is not one of them.
Out of curiosity I booted up the game and checked what other instructions were in the top right and found the following:
How to move, how to roast marshmallows, how to jump, how to control the model ship, how to use the satellite camera, how to use the signal scope.
At this point I stopped. Almost everything has controls in the top right. From your first run to your last.
I love this game. I've almost beaten it (on last boss). If you are someone that's admired Dark Souls, but find them too difficult/obfuscated to play then this might be for you. The log/map makes doing quests easy, but the game scatters items throughout the zones to make exploring still feel worthwhile. The game has a 3D platforming thing going on too, that actually works despite how odd it sounds.
The two main problems that have bugged me have been my AI partner acting a fool and the random difficulty spikes. I can definitely see someone who is used to DS's level of difficulty being turned off by this game. If you have Game Pass I'd recommend trying it for sure. It was a fun ride.
Dan’s frustration mirrors mine and I’ve only just started chapter 4. I don’t even like the story so idk if I’m going to even finish this. The mission structure is terrible.
The amount of times I’ve set a waypoint and switched to cinematic mode is silly. Just make a proper fast travel system.
The slowness of the controls and animations are killing this game for me. Maybe I just need to switch my brain away from looting everything, but some missions are telling the player to do exactly that. Languidly moving about a cabin searching for the right drawer to open isn't fun. Not being able to run because I'm in the camp is just befuddling game design. I'm really hoping this game opens up with some quality of life upgrades. Alex is right; there are so many things about this game that are absolutely stunning, but parts of it are being held back for the sake of realism.
The attitude of whatever young people are reading is trash and isn't a possible gateway to other literature is a silly and snobbish stance.
Ehhh, I think the Beastcast is allowed to specifically harp on Harry Potter as being overrated, especially the part where (based on my own experience) lots of now-20-and-30-year olds still have a weirdly high level of adoration for everything Harry Potter.
Don't get me wrong, as someone who read tons of fiction throughout my child and teen years, I read Harry Potter at the height of its popularity like everyone else my age was doing. Harry Potter is pretty good, but so was like a ton of other stuff I was reading at that time. I have fond memories of reading the HP books at their time of release, but I can't imagine sharing the level of continued zeal for the series that seemingly an enormous portion of my generation still has. They were good, but they weren't that good. But also I'm in the minority of people who thought the last book was pretty trash since it completely throws away the Hogwarts setting and characters for 90% of the book to go on a faux Fellowship of the Ring countryside trek.
It's one thing to say it's overrated, it's another to say people who read Harry Potter never read any other book. Just a dumb statement from them.
Also awesome I'm getting to play this on release date since I'm a game pass member.
Game pass kinda feels unreal. I paid $2 for 2 months at the end of August and I'll get to play this at launch for basically $1. I'm so pumped for this.
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