ll_Exile_ll

I am struggling to find the point you're trying to make regarding the Switch controller. The Switch has all the same buttons as Xbox and PS. Four face buttons, start and select, four shoulder buttons, a d-pad, and two analogue sticks with clickable buttons. Yes, PS has the touchpad, but that mostly amounts to a single button in most games, and since the share button isn't actually a valid button for games to use, the touchpad ends up just being the select button. The touchpad could theoretically provide several inputs, but hardly any games use it like that.

If anything, it's Xbox that is lacking since not only does it not have any equivalent to the PS touchpad, it also doesn't have gyro functionality like both Sony and Nintendo do. Like, how would TotK's controls be any better on the other consoles? It would have the number of available inputs but aiming would be worse without gyro on Xbox and on PS it would probably just use touchpad as the select button like most games rather than getting multiple inputs out of it.

Are you saying all standard controllers should have more buttons? Because I don't necessarily disagree with that, but this whole diatribe about the Switch's controller being inadequate make no sense when it is perfectly in line with the other major controllers. The only real shortcoming is the triggers being digital, but that doesn't impact the number of available inputs outside of racing games.

I think a large part of the disconnect with the mechanic comes from the fact that this is a game meant for a broader playerbase than a Souls games and therefore the default difficulty is pretty damn easy. It essentially removes the tension inherent to the bonfire system in only having a certain number of healing items until you reach the next one. The risk reward of choosing whether to replenish your items but respawn all the enemies is also lessened due to lack of difficulty.

That being said, I have been playing on Grandmaster difficulty and there it does indeed bring back some of that tension. Outside of legendary monsters and some boss fights it's still not that hard, but it's hard enough that the possibility of running out of stims between bonfires does at least exist, at least before I got to the point of having like 10 stims in total.

Chrono Cross has way too many characters and most of them are underdeveloped. Luckily, having like 40 potential party members means it can still have a decent number of characters that are well developed and interesting, even if the percentage works out pretty low.

For many multiplatform games that are not designed specifically for the PS5, it's not really going to be a major difference. Just typical very fast loading you'd expect from having an SSD on PC.

However, there are some games that really take advantage of the PS5 SSD, mostly first party Sony games, and these games have basically eliminated loading altogether. If you have the right hardware on PC it is possible to be technically capable of replicating this, but it would require PC games to be designed specifically to take advantage of very niche hardware, which hasn't really been the case.

@theonewhoplays:

I also enjoyed Vampyr quite a bit. While I didn't like it quite as much as fellow overambitious French AA RPG Greedfall, it was still quite enjoyable. I always keep an eye on what Don't Nod is up to. Between their narrative driven adventure games like Life is Strange and Tell Me Why and their RPG stuff, they always seem to have something interesting going on. You mentioned wanting to see them take another stab at an action game, I think that's what this is:

It's not exactly some arcane practice that requires deep analysis. It's 2 games for $100. If there are two full priced games you want for Switch, it's worth it. Not sure what you're hoping to hear from people here.

User reviews do have a purpose. Many critics play a ton of games for review purposes, usually far more than most of the general public, so they can often have a different perspective. It's not uncommon for reviewers to favor originality and uniqueness to an outsized degree and be overly critical of common game design tropes. A player that plays 10 games a year, and thus hasn't seen those common design concepts in dozens of games a year, may have a totally different perspective on those things. Another potential benefit of user reviews are for niche genres or game series. Some genres or series just never review well among professional critics but nevertheless have strong fanbases, so user reviews are a necessary resource.

Now, metacritic and other sources of user reviews that do barely any moderation (if any at all) and just let anyone post a review are essentially worthless. However, I do find steam user reviews to be a decent resource, even if I'm mostly just looking at the percentage of people that recommend a game rather than reading a ton of individual reviews. It's a good way to get a general idea about how a game is being received among players. The reason steam reviews work where metacritic is a total failure is the result of a few key factors. Only those that own the game can review it, all reviews are simply binary "recommend" or "do not recommend" instead of a 1-10 scale, and crucially is that steam has a system in place to detect off topic reviews (i.e. review bombing) and will hide those reviews from the average.

Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes user reviews may be a worthless cesspit, but the concept of user reviews can be a good resource alongside professional reviews if implemented well.

If you're responding to me, I never advocated for supporting the game. JKR's actions alone are enough that I am against supporting the game.

However, the people making this game had no control over JKR's behavior. They were put in a bad situation where they are developing a game attached to such a toxic person. This individual also didn't go full mask off until well after the project was underway. You have a situation where people would have put years of work into a what, at the time, probably seemed like a dream project. Then JKR reveals her true colors and all of a sudden they're working on something inherently tied to a very toxic person.

I am in favor of boycotting this game based on JKR's actions. I won't be buying it. But I have a lot of sympathy for the individual developers working on this and the nature of how this project, which probably seemed like an amazing project to be a part of at first, quickly turned into a real shitty situation. Given that, I think it is unfair to call any attempts the developers have made to be as diverse and inclusive as possible as "token" or "lazy." They never asked for JKR to go full terf right in the middle of their development cycle, and any attempts they make to distance the game from that rhetoric shouldn't just be held against them.

It's not their fault that, in the grand scheme, there is nothing they can do to make that a project worth supporting for those of us that care about these issues, but at least they did try to be better than JKR.

This type of rhetoric does no good to anyone. The developers of this game did not create this world, they have not endorsed Rowling's views, and almost everyone on the development would not have been involved with the process of getting the license and greenlighting the project. There are legitimate reasons to choose not to support this game, but don't throw the developers under the bus for trying to bring some inclusivity to the game that certainly wouldn't exist if Rowling were leading the project.

Also this type of criticism does is dissuade other developers from trying to add representation. If all attempts are going to labeled as token or lazy, why would they even bother? Obviously, critique how they could have done better, but it's not the developers fault Rowling is a piece of garbage and you shouldn't hold it against them when they seem to be at least trying to bring more diversity to the universe than she ever did.

You can't honestly believe this. Maybe in some cases this is true, such as with exploitative business practices in games like Battlefront II, but the majority of review bombing these days is people giving a TV show or game a 1/10 because it "went woke" by daring to have non-white or non-straight characters in it.