games

Rimworld encourages you to perform Eugenics on any undesirable colonists, especially with the biotech DLC. Also encourages cannibalism and harvesting your opponents organs to sell on the market for greed and profit.

Also too many quality of life mods should be in the base game.

Disco Elysium and BG3 are both incredibly well written, to the point where my first playthrough was so good, and so perfectly fit my head canon, that playing it again with different choices and playstyles just feels tedious, and an exercise in futility.

Helldivers 2 really needs some sort of end game content. The gameplay loop is fun, but i'm not even max character level, yet I have everything unlocked, all warbonds, and maxed out resources.

El Paso, Elsewhere is flawless and there is nothing to criticize, go buy it now you losers.

The atmosphere and ballistics are the only things in Shadow of Chernobyl that aged even remotely well.

The canonical explanation for what the zone is and how it works is sorta dissapointing because running (incorrect) theory that the NPCs talk about is tight as hell "Oh yeah its a totally unprecidented organism brought about by people fucking with psychic energy in some secret experiments and btw it hates us and the emissions are its immune response and also the zombies and monolith dudes are basically the zone hijacking the nervous systems of other organisms to act as extensions of itself"

while the actual explanation is basically "Nah yeah after the meltdown a bunch of government scientists were like 'yo lets do some fucked up experiments in the abandoned nuclear place' and shit kinda got crazy with the genetic modification and it all went nuts after we tapped into the psychic field that surrounds the earth... so anyways we're literally just five or so dudes hanging out in tubes of goo, we got a spot open if you wanna join the goo gang... please join the goo gang"

(though i may be misremembering/misinterpreting a lot of stuff here)

Had to recreate this one because I refreshed instead of posting

For Undertale, I disagree with the final Chara scene at the end of No Mercy. It muddies the waters on an otherwise very-deliberate thematic overtone of the whole route (you are engaging in a gameplay strategy that is designed to be extremely tedious and grindy in a continuous slog of deliberate cruelty so banal that it’s probably for no other reason than wanting to experience everything). I’d honestly prefer that the game continued to specifically lambaste me and reinforce my culpability rather than give room for anything else.

Like, okay, let’s spitball. Chara is the only entity in the game that has enough natural determination to step in and override you. Instead of being just ‘evil child’, let’s have them be an entity that is generally non-interfering but wants to enforce 'responsibility for deliberate acts' to counteract the godlike nature of SAVE/LOAD. Maybe Chara is the intermediary who allows us to interface with SAVE/LOAD and/or Frisk, or maybe they’re just an observer of beings with high determination, or something else entirely. Instead of the consequence in Tainted Pacifist being 'evil kill bad now spooky haunted' at the very end, have Chara make a show of them seizing control in the middle of the ending sequence (at the most unresolved moment possible) and leverage the metanarrative elements of the world to inflict a depth of dissatisfaction that can only come from a game—back to title screen, save wipe. Instead of 'you experience true pacifist but game haunted oh nooo' it would be 'you can never experience true pacifist in full again. live with your choices.'

Alternatively, let’s take another option. Don't involve Chara. Don't give a true 'conclusion' in that sense. Just end with a black screen after killing Flowey that persists until you manually go into the files and unfuck the save—i.e. 'What are you still doing here? The monsters are all gone. There’s nothing left. Isn’t that what you wanted?'

Instead, it really just kinda serves to make talking about the route annoying (no Patrick, you were not possessed to do evil, you chose what buttons to press) and feels a little hackish in retrospect. 'wow evil child monster haunts the game kill everyone and you too ooh wow' is a bit of an eye-roller when tailing one of the most otherwise ludonarratively-consonant gameplay routes in an RPG, IMO.

Moving on, encounter and non-encounter area differentiation is a bit unintuitive. Pokémon solves this by having special encounter tiles, and Deltarune solves this with roaming encounters. Properly adds to the tedium of No Mercy, annoying elsewhere.

Speaking of Deltarune, you can feel the lack of a run button on replay. Rather annoying now that I’ve been spoiled with having it.

Lastly, I don’t really like Muffet’s heart mechanic. Idea is cute, but it feels like it'd give me RSI if played for a good bit.

Prey (2017)

• Poorly balanced in some ways. The Typhon Neuromods give you some nasty diminishing returns, requiring more and more Psi to the point that it's not worth it to max them out. Same with some of the standard Neuromods. It's to the point that I always recommend the Core Balance mod you can find on Nexus.

• Really blows its wad with the mindfuckery early on and doesn't take more chances to layer it further, ending notwithstanding. When I first broke out of the apartment my jaw genuinely dropped. It surprised me in a way few games or even other pieces of media have. Then it just kinda peters out. It had the potential for more.

• Poor pacing on the plot. It kind of herds you through every sector of the station and implies an urgency that can undercut the exploration if you take it at face value. It also locks you out of half the station for half the game. Not a great thing to have in an ImSim.

• Visual variety on the Typhon is lacking. The Weavers look super cool and the way the Phantoms move is pretty unsettling, but the Telepaths and Technopaths are just big black blobs that kinda float around mind-controlling other enemies and hurling annoying projectiles at you. Likewise with the variant Phantoms just being tougher versions of the base one with different damage type auras.

Still my favorite goddamn game it is so fucking amazing

The gameplay loop was developed in the 80s for the sole purpose of munching quarters and dick all has changed despite how much gaming has evolved

Stormworks: I think overall I'm pretty happy with it. There are some things where they don't change stuff because too many people's creations would break if they changed (e.g. parallel jet turbine bug). Also, the actual overworld game is pretty undeveloped. I think people would really appreciate a semi-live economy, though simulating the physics of that would be wild.

My main frustrations with the game are usually because I want to make things by myself, instead of downloading other people's engine controllers and ballistic computers >.>

Also having a creation tip over outside of the de-spawn range and having to restart a game because there isn't enough money to re-make it.

Then there's just a pile of parts that are either too big (pivots, sliding connectors) (usually from the early era of the game), only in one size despite it being quite a broad range of products (pneumatic piston), or just missing.

It would be nice if you could simulate/control things with hydraulics without an intervening electrical component (e.g. carburetor, piston control units), but I also get that that might be rather complicated.

It would also be nice if there was a way to have parts on non-cardinal directions at the start without shenanigans.

Also, I always play by myself and wish my friends would come join me and say "Oh wow, you're not a complete idiot" or something. :(

I love Portal but I would vehemently disagree with anyone who says it's a better game than Portal 2. Even just ignoring all the stuff like plot structure and graphics, Portal 2 is way ahead in terms of puzzle design. Also Portal 2 does better job at fully exploring the concept of portals, while Portal 1 feels like a tech demo in some parts

• Ratchet and Clank 1 (PS2) has tank controls that make zero sense.
• Streets of Rogue 1's NPC AI is super easy to exploit that using items isn't necessary for most runs.
• Fallout New Vegas isn't actually that deep narrative wise, the NCR have the most quests while everyone else is underdeveloped. On closer examination a lot of it is libshit sophistry apart from chasing down the guy who shot you in the head and some companion quests.
• Hitman WOA's NPC AI is extremely exploitable while also being frustrating to babysit, some levels are a snoozefest.
• Mother 3's rhythm mechanic was annoying because I could never actually do it (probably because I was playing on a emulator with a patched fan-translated ROM)

Xcom 2 shouldn't be so demanding of my video card and it gets worse as the campaign goes on. Not a big fan of the chosen either, especially with the long war mod - they're either unfairly overpowered and unfun or just a bullet sponge and unfun and neither the mod nor vanilla can hit the right balance to make them fun. Also not particularly fond of the story, but that's kind of secondary to what actually makes the game fun.

The first Dead Space was magical (the remake is also really good) and then everything afterwards falls off hard. Dead Space 2 is still worth playing I guess, but it's not the same - the way the markers effects manifest as hallucinations and psychological conditions makes more sense and works better in the first game, but in the second one, idk, the final boss fight just feels like an overdramticization of mental illness (literally going into your own head and having a gun fight with your hallucinations? Idk just feels gaudy compared to DS1's reveal). The only thing that makes DS2 strong is how it expands on the theme of religions mimicking cults and causing damage to society and people's psyche, something that was mostly junt hinted at in the original DS1.

All that to say everything that comes after DS1 makes it feel worse in retrospect and I really wish they'd finish the story in a more satisfying way. The only other criticism I'd offer is that DS doesn't need so many weapons and, in fact, it both makes the game harder and removes tension if you carry more than one. Multiple types of weapons work best in games where each weapon fills a role or purpose that the others can't (this is accomplished with stasis and telekenesis, the other weapons have nothing else to do besides do damage) and it might actually create MORE tension in the game if you're only offered the plasma cutter to fight with and nothing else.

CrossCode's pacing is a little strange, especially towards the start of the game which feels long and slow, and has a billion side quests available for doing much less interesting tasks compared to the later game side quests.

Binding of Isaac can be unfair, and while yeah that's kinda the point and mastery can overcome most of that, some rooms are laid out in a way that it's impossible to avoid damage. For example, a closet filled with spikes and a large troll bomb spawning and immediately homing in. This never feels good even if damage is avoided through pure luck (such as flight or explosion immunity).

Also most bosses are fine but they do love to add at least one bullshit boss per version. Rebirth brought us the dreaded Bloat, then in AB they added Hush, a bullet hellish, tanky completion mark boss that can only be attempted if reached within 30 mins or less. That wasn't bullshit enough, so in AB+ they added Delirium, another mark boss that is hidden somewhere on the largest map in the game among 6 other bosses (which included other end bosses). Before Rep there was only 1 way to guarantee access and that was by killing Hush (2 bs bosses in a row!) Oh and the fight itself is a disorienting chaotic nightmare and honestly never fun.

I don't think anything added in Rep compares to Delirium, though I'm never happy to see Scourge or Colostomia. Mother is difficult, but honestly getting to that fight is more annoying than the fight itself. Then Rep+ added the most devastating boss of all: barely functional online co-op that can delete your save.

Shadow Empire's user interface is quite possibly the least intuitive I've ever used, and I play Paradox games.

Final Fantasy X, a game with heavy enphasis on death and mourning, didn't feature the death of a party member. Sin is terrible and named characters die to it, but it's not the same. In fact there were few on-screen deaths.

Also, I wish the world didn't feel like it had a population of 200. I get the population was dwindling after the thousand years, but it just felt so small. I think this could have been solved by having a larger unexplored world or by explicitly stating there are villages dotted all over Spira that the protagonists cannot explore on their journey.

Also also, over the course of 1000 years only five people performed the pilgrimage to the point of defeating Sin. The practice of the pilgrimage would have fallen out of favor with such a low success rate. I'd sooner expect Spirans to move underground in tunnels as mole people.

Also also also, there was no water Aeon. Leviathan deserves justice. More Aeons in general could have explored more heroes who defeated Sin in the past.

Morrowind should have a start that gives just a little more direction and reason to keep playing.

Kenshi: after hundreds of hours put into the game and going thru multiple cycles of starting a new game, struggling to make money, fighting, losing, fighting again, building and automating a base, etc, and all the emergent storytelling that comes out of that -- I feel like it was only the combat-related systems that were fully fleshed out and ultimately, the only way to interact with the world in a meaningful way is through combat. Though the visuals and worldbuilding do great of offering the promise of a lot, the dialogue system is not developed enough to allow for any dialogue mods that integrate well with and impact the world or player characters. Animations systems are similarly limited, with the system allowing for minute customization and replacement of combat animations, and very little room for any animations not combat-related.

Why the fuck do so many enemies have elemental weakness before you ever get access to anything that uses an element. Wasted ideas that hopefully wilo be fixed in the re-release

(OFF)

Earthbound can be a real piece of shit, everybody knows the clunky and limited inventory is a pain in the ass, and it is completely true. Furthermore, the story, while good, lacks a lot of personality building for the main cast of characters, which is funny cause every npc has amazing dialouge. While the lack of character building doesn't harm the ending overall, it certainly does not hit as hard as Mother 1 or 3's endings, due to them actually taking a few moments to flesh out the main cast of heroes at several points.

Total War: Empire, a buggy mess that likes to crash in the late game. Unfinished, AI is illogical in both diplomacy and a lot of battle tactics (Which makes the few times they pull a clever maneuver incredibly surprising) and nearly requires modding to be playable, either through script edits or from installing overhauls.

EU4: Now this is one I haven't thought of much, but there certainly are many flaws to find in this one. First off, 93% of the gameplay is just finding buttons to press with the right timing, that's it. The DLC's have mostly been focused around adding more buttons to press. Powercreep has been a real issue, like how Spain will have colonized most of Oregon and Alaska before a Russia player can even hope to have gotten to East Siberia. Many intended paths require RNGesus to smile upon you, and whose alternative requirements can be very difficult to achieve in comparison. (So many MP games of my friends grumbling over many such cases.) And, despite being an 11 year old game, some regions are still not very fleshed out. India and parts of the Americas lack flavour and content. And of course, the UI can be a bit inscrutable at times, with a few features hidden away or poorly explained, like the macrobuilder diplo screen. And yeah yeah, the DLC policy is terrible as it locks out critical features behind a paywall, which has only been partially fixed with updates and working older DLC into the base game.

FFXIV has too little content being released once you actually get through everything they made in the last decade.