BaneFireLord

There is a pretty clear throughline from watching the Giant Bomb Unplugged Pathfinder stream feat. V-Bomb to me meeting my future wife, so that was a pretty cool good time.

Jeff is the best, a constant virtual presence in my life since I was a barely coherent middle schooler. Now that I'm pushing 30 and a lawyer (what the fuck happened?), while I haven't listened to the Bombcast in months, Jeff's influence is still indelible on my whole deal. I probably quote him or think of some nonsense or other that he spearheaded at least once a day.

I've always found this to be a pretty cringey and empty question, but any time anyone has asked me who my hero or role model is, my mind has always gone to Jeff and the integrity with which he handled the GameSpot nonsense and the frank, blunt manner in which he has historically approached problems. I hope he re-emerges in some capacity where I can directly give him money without jumping through corporate hoops because the man more than deserves it. What a dang legend.

<>, duder. The once, future, and forever threat.

Welp, that's that. It's been a hell of a run, Jeffy G.

Turns out I had to stop playing Elden Ring. I'm going to go back, since I'm very close to the end. But man...everything took a sharp, sharp nosedive around the Fire Giant. There's now zero sense of momentum left, and the only pleasure I'm getting comes from being relieved that I don't need to fight a particular enemy again, nothing from the actual act of playing the game.

My dissatisfaction with the open world also continues to grow. I get why people are blown away by it -- the art direction is superb and the lack of quest markers and breadcrumb trails is a balm for everyone who's sick of icon vomit. I also think it largely works as a rendering of the Souls formula on a bigger canvas, though I think its size moderately dilutes From's strength as level designers. However, as a game that was pitched to me as having one of the greatest open worlds ever, it's not delivering on that promise at all for my preferences. My biggest problem is that none of it feels like it exists outside of the player's perception--everything is placed solely for the player to encounter and not because of any larger logic of the world. Of course, all open world games are designed with the player in mind, but Elden Ring does nothing to obfuscate that fact, which for me makes most discoveries feel preordained to the practically the same degree as a stereotypical checklist Ubisoft game. Also the lack of any emergent systems or sense that any mob has a life beyond its placement as an obstacle gives everything the artificial quality of a fucked up theme park. For all the grotesqueness on display, it feels sterile, and I want to get dirty.

All that said, I really enjoyed the first 50 hours or so, which is far more entertainment than most games can dream of, so on the strength of that time alone it's a solid 8.4/10. Between beating Dark Souls and most of Elden Ring, I wouldn't say I'm a From convert, but I have a lot more respect and appreciation for what they're going for than I used to.

Anyway, now I'm playing Yakuza Like A Dragon and I'm loving it so very much. Ichiban Kasuga 2024. What a tremendous himbo.

@mellotronrules said:

Yeah, with minimal effort I got one the same way in January 2021. In addition, looking to my broader friend group (all based in the USA, for what it's worth), everyone who wanted one now has one and got them all at MSRP. I think if you set your mind on getting one and spend a little time setting up online alerts, it's far from an insurmountable task. But if you're just casually looking around and hoping to stumble upon one in the wild for a reasonable price, it's still going to be quite a while.

If I stop playing Elden Ring I will probably never pick up Elden Ring again so that's what I'm playing and will be playing for the foreseeable future. Allegedly I'm over halfway done but we'll see. It's good but not a personal all-timer and playing it shortly after beating Dark Souls for the first time has definitely blunted its impact. In the pantheon of Generational Open World Fantasy Games, I'd rank it above Breath of the Wild, about at the same level as Witcher 3, and below Skyrim. Love the combat, love my little horse, love the art direction, but don't particularly care for the overall design of the open world, the arbitrariness of the questlines, or the soup of Proper Nouns and Names Starting With G, R, Or M that passes for lore/a story.

Ideally I want them to be sufficiently good to give me the same feeling that playing Oblivion for the first time did, but that's probably impossible. I'll settle for them giving me enjoyable places to dump another thousand hours of my life.

To the jank/graphics issue, I would much rather have them deliver on the claims Todd's been recently making about their future games being deeper RPGs and keep making fun sandboxes than overly focusing on chasing tech and polish dragons they'll probably never catch. The physical tactility and emergent clockwork world aspects of Bethesda's games are far more important to me than technical polish or best-in-class visuals. I have a strong suspicion a lot of Bethesda's janky reputation directly stems from those systems but I would hate to see any of them get sacrificed at the altar of fidelity and stability.

I'm not saying they shouldn't do better--they absolutely need to do much better than Fallout 76, that shit was ridiculously embarrassing. But I'd much rather have a janky Starfield that's fully-featured and goes back to Bethesda's RPG roots than a bug-free Starfield with pared back systems that doesn't let me fill my space house with astronaut cheese wheels. I've seen a Bethesda game with all the physics and emergent open world weirdness sanded off, and it's called The Outer Worlds. Sure, in a lot of ways it was much more stable and polished than Fallout 4 or Skyrim (and infinitely moreso than 76), but the world felt like a static, soulless theme park and I hated being in it.

@shindig:The Elder Scrolls lore gets sufficiently weird that this is more likely than you'd think. I vaguely recall some obscure corner of the lore wiki talking about canonical dwemer astronauts.

I tend to point to playing Oblivion at a friend's house in high school as my baptism into loving video games, since that was when I *really* got obsessed with them, but in truth my gateway drug into games was real time and turn-based strategy as a wee babe. One of the first non-edutainment games I ever played was the PC version of Lego Rock Raiders, which I spent an ungodly number of hours being bad at as an elementary schooler, before graduating to Civilization, Battle for Middle Earth, and Age of Empires as I aged. Nowadays, two decades and change later, I rarely touch the stuff. I play some Age of Empires multiplayer from time to time with old friends and spend a few weekends obsessed with Civilization every two years or so, but that old pull just isn't there. I blame Crusader Kings 2. After tasting the drug of Paradox grand strategy games in early college and beholding the batshit insane majesty of their capacity as emergent alt-history storytelling engines, the itty-bitty skirmishes and proc-gen nation building of RTSs and Civ-likes feel hollow and clinical in comparison. They just don't hit like they used to.

What are some genres y'all used to love but just don't click with anymore, and what drove you away?

WRPGs (action or tactical/turnbased), open world action games, immersive sims, and grand strategy games. Currently juggling Elden Ring, Weird West, and an ongoing Crusader Kings 3 multiplayer game, which I think is a good representative sample of those tastes.

Age of Empires, Assassin's Creed, and Elder Scrolls have yet to do me dirty, though I expect AC is going to drop off a cliff with whatever live service NFT nightmare Infinity or whatever it's called winds up being.