The physical market is great for sales. Usually wait 2-3 months and get a game for almost half off. It's how I buy most my games unless I'm super looking forward to something. It's why when people push for an all digital future I often push back against it because the pros of "not having to deal with physical discs" is such a first-world problem that robs many people of a means to get games for cheap and at least not have to download massive games on limited and capped internet.
I backed Session on Kickstarter and while the "Dual stick" controls were part of the campaign, I thought I'd back it anyway because it sounded interesting and it was primarily to fund a project from people passionate about skating. Unfortunately, having tried the game in early access I couldn't deal with the twin stick controls they were using - it felt super unintuitive and I was focusing more on the controls and less on doing some skating. Luckily the "legacy" controls (were exactly like skate's) were still in there and I had a blast playing it.
Unfortunately, they removed those legacy controls in 1.0 so I found the game just to be unplayable. It's just not for me. I'm sure if you can get over that hump that the game will provide you with a ton of fun but I just couldn't do it.
The Halo comparisons to the weapon durability was actually really good. As someone who hated the durability stuff in Breath of the Wild I appreciated that comparison. It's a neat way to look at it for sure but it really didn't change my opinion on it. Halo's weapons all felt unique and fun to use. Each felt different and the game usually had restocks of your favorites all around so if you wanted to stick with that particular weapon you could.
With BotW, all the weapons felt the same. The one-handed weapons all had the same moveset, so did the two-handed heavies and then the spear. That was it. Then you had mess of an inventory with tons of "spares" ready to go. I rather they have a set amount of weapons and each one matters in some way. "Forcing people to use other weapons" is better done through gameplay than some arbitrary durability system.
At a certain point I just didn't want to bother with combat anymore and that was just cutting out a large part of the game. It's interesting to think about and discuss the implications of that. How it's a commentary on the nature of violence and conflict. I'm sure you can write a bunch about that but in terms of a game system that's fun to engage with in an open world setting, I did not like it.
The DLC, however, used that system in a great way with those floor-based combat trials where you had to manage your resources. I had a blast with those and they made you think about how to approach those tailor-made encounters so you wouldn't use up too many resources. Your reward for doing them was getting a near-unbreakable Master Sword, which made the whole rest of the game a ton more fun.
I liked BotW but I was down on it more than most people on this site and elsewhere. I agree with Jess that I missed dungeons. As sacrilege as it sounds, I missed having stuff to do on that map. I rarely found climbing up mountains rewarding. A few spots did give good views and sometimes you did find something fun up there but the fidelty of the world didn't really impress all that much and the grasslands were extremely boring. So having proper dungeons around the map and interesting landmarks/treasures to make that exploration worth it would go a long way of moving my opinion from "merely liked" to "absolutely loved".
Rise of the Ronin sounds a lot like Way of the Samurai from the little details they shared on the Playstation blog and I'm here for it. WotS is one of my all-time favorite series and it's like they made a game just for me.
A friend and I really like the new Saints Row but yes, the bugs are what is really holding it back. A lot of them are really rotten. One even broke a mission that we had to retry a few times for it to work properly.
Remove all the bugs and it's a game that, I think, is better than 3 but not as good as 2. It makes a really bad first impression since I think the opening is really weak but once you decide to form the Saints the game really takes off.
A console going digital-only would blow ass. Shitty infrastructure, particularly in the US, notwithstanding eliminating that option would be a blow to the consumer. I wish I had the privilege of being incredulous at people still buying discs but I have data caps. The less I have to download, the better. Massive day-one patches suck shit as it is but adding the whole game to it would make it worse. Digital-only anything would be great under any system other than capitalism, but I rather not rely on the kindness and good will of a machine create to generate pure profits.
I appreciate push-back against this sort of thing, but I think the erosion of what the consumer actually gets when they purchase something can be partially blamed at the people who cover games (not pointing fingers here). Little by little we lose more and more and the best I can hope for from the enthusiast press is them throwing up their hands and gong "Welp, that's just the reality of the industry." I don't even think it's hyperbolic to say that pretty soon we'll just be buy limited time licenses for 60 or 70 dollars and they only last a few months before you have to drop money on it again.
More folks who cover this stuff need to be more like Jim Stephanie Sterling. They have the right amount of righteous anger that you really need to keep it real.
The value proposition of a game based off of labor is a misguided talking point. It would be one thing if the people who actually worked on the game saw the full value of their labor but they do not. The publisher see that money. They paid the developers for their labor and what surplus profits they saw from the sale they kept. They didn't redistribute that surplus to the people who did the lion's share of the work.
This is why I'm against F2P game these days because of how monetized it is. Not only for how these things pray upon folks with poor impulse control or addictive personalities - children too - but because developers don't see any of these profits. Yeah, it continuing to make money means the publisher will continue to support it by paying the meager wages of the developers but all that money, all the profit, the developers don't see a single cent of.
Just a more lighter note: Skater XL and Session are games that exist if you want to get your skate fix in. The later seems to be more popular with the skate crowd than the former, but that's just from what I've seen.
I get bagels from BJ's Wholesale Club (it's like a Costco) and I quite like them. Throw them in a toaster oven on the broil setting and it comes out perfect.
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