SethMode

@thepanzini: Looking at credits is all well and good for needed recognition for time spent on a product but I find it very uncompelling on its own as some measure of what game is complex and what isn't. This just totally throws out individual skill, workplace environment, management structures, project goals and organization, not to mention no accounting for what may or may not be done by secure employees vs contract employees, outsourcing, etc...

I'm not saying you're wrong, necessarily, because I honestly don't know what games are more complex and what aren't when comparing something like Assassin's Creed Valhalla to Tears of the Kingdom, especially "under the hood", but I do feel just going by raw numbers from game credits isn't a very effective method for determining anything other than who deserves credit for work done on the project.

I wish that the console version of this game looked and felt a little better. I liked what I played of it conceptually, but it just kind of feels like a cheap port on my Xbox S. It did inspire me to give the game a go on my PC. It's a really neat hook/loop.

@bigsocrates: Thanks for the thoughtful reply, as always. I've been less attentive to video games as a business between the bleakness of the industry and my own personal business stress (buying your first house tends to distract), yet I keep seeing Atari in this nebulous space of seemingly shattered reputation but also still doing a lot of things that presumably cost money to do...

I mean no offense by this, but often your posts hinge on this idea of a huge backlash in spaces that I (and most everyone else in the thread) have never seen. It starts to read like you are posting shower thoughts, complete with imagined detractors and everything.

"Most quick looks end up with people frustrated by the long telling and not showing of plots. People tend to hate RPGs for having a lot of it. So I'm pushing back."

For example, now I'm pushing back: I both don't know what you mean by this AND I don't know from where you are unearthing this incredibly bizarre criticism from. RPG fans are mad about too much dialogue and not enough plot? This is not a complaint I've seen since like the early 2000s, and it was never from RPG fans. Action game fans? Can you give us a link or something as an example of what you mean?

@cozmicaztaway: When do we get to a good year for game developers? Haha

Genuine question: what does modern Atari make money off of?

How long are we going to tolerate this kind of bannable behavior????

Kidding aside, I tried to replay the first one and found myself kind of hating it in a lot of ways (this is a game that I used to adore), so I'm glad to hear this one seems great. Both looking forward to trying it out and not needing another thing on my plate right now. I don't know if this is my greatest year ever, thanks to how nostalgia impacts that, but separated from it it is certainly a year of high quality releases that will stick with me. Particularly Nintendo's two big releases.

@bigsocrates: I'm broadly in agreement with you, but I had to comment on your last paragraph, because I'm experiencing the same thing! Other than the first day, where I dropped maybe 3 hours into it, everything since has been satisfying bite-sizes. This is, to put it mildly, very unlike my general game playing style, but for whatever mysterious reason it works for this game.

People have outrageous expectations often when it comes to all purchases, video games aren't any more so, people are just typically way more ignorant about what goes into them. Regardless though, most of the time they just want to be mad; even your example of Spider-Man is literally history repeating itself. And almost NO ONE talks about the "backlash" and "disappointment" some people had for the "downgraded" graphics of Spider-Man 1.

If the bloat is true, it's worthy of the criticism.