I realized this idea long, long ago, when Rare made Banjo-Tooie.

Banjo-Kazooie was a fun game. You unlock worlds, go to the world, collect 100% of all there is to collect, then continue.

Banjo-Tooie, its sequel, wanted to be bigger and better in every way. Sprawling open world hub, much larger worlds with more sub-zones, interconnectivity between worlds, more things to unlock, more things to do, etc. etc.

And I think, despite having so much more, it was a worse game for it. You go to a new world but find there’s a lot you can’t do yet because you didn’t unlock an ability that comes later on. You push a button in one world and then something happens in another, but now you have to backtrack through the sprawling overworld and large world maps to get there.

And this was just a pair of games made for the Nintendo 64, before the concept of “open world” had really even taken off.

But it demonstrated to me that bigger was not always better, and having more to do did not make it a better game if it wasn’t as enjoyable.

Early open world games were fairly small, and the natural desire for people who have seen everything becomes “I wish there was more,” but in practice it ends up typically being that they take the same amount of stuff and divide it up over a larger area, or they fill the world with tedium just for the sake of having something to do.

When looking at the collectibles and activities on a world map like Genshin Impact, it’s basically sensory overload with how much there is to do.

But almost all of that is garbage. And this is just a fraction of one region among several. Go here, do this time trial, shoot these balloons, follow this spirit, solve this logic puzzle, and then loot your pittance of gatcha currency so you can try to win your next waifu or husbando before time runs out.

And don’t forget to do your dailies!

If a game has a large world, it needs to act in service to its design. It needs to be fun to exist in and travel through, not tedious. It needs to have enough stuff to do that keep it from feeling empty, but not so much stuff that it makes it hard to find anything worthwhile. And it needs to give enough ability for the player to make their own fun, to act as the balance on that tightrope walk between not-enough and too-much.

Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the most recent games that seemed to properly scratch an open world itch for me. While they weren’t perfect, the way they managed to really incorporate the open world as its own sort of puzzle to solve, in ways that Genshin Impact failed to properly emulate, made them more enjoyable as an open world than most other games in that genre I’ve played in recent memory.

But then those sorts of countries usually have law enforcement that likes taking large amounts of “financial incentives” to do whatever a company like Nintendo wants them to do.

In a world that is controlled almost entirely by heteronormativity, policing straight representation in a queer-friendly game made by a queer developer does not seem like an equivalent situation at all.

Filed before, updated and approved after.

I’ve seen a few valid criticisms, which I get. It’s hard to make a choice-driven narrative in the post-BG3 market and not get held to a higher standard. “Written by committee” is one such descriptor I’ve heard.

For me, as a fan of Dragon Age: Origins, I also can’t say I prefer the dip into the actiony, grindy sort of combat mechanics the game appears to have now.

There’s probably a reason why people apparently like her. Or two, actually.

I bought a PS4 pro back in the day but am giving this one a pass.

I’m all for incremental mid-gen upgrades, but not at that price point. If it can’t be priced competitively with the prices people have been paying, then it should not be made until the hardware they want meets that price point.

Should have made it $499 and drop the base price of the PS5 to $399.

Gotta get that daily login bonus in [insert live service game here].

Surprised it’s not higher. I would have thought more than 2% of people on Steam were using Steam Deck.

Agreed. I remember there being some controversy around including figures in the game like Poundmaker, whose major mark in history was advocating against the colonial practices his people were submitted to.

Forcing anti-colonial figures to compete in the colonial model of success just doesn’t seem right.

I thought the same thing when I saw another article talking about the Pixel Watch 5.

Modern tech news is so boring we have to speculate about what will be coming in 2-3 years based on what chips are under development today.

Surely this will be the movie to break Lionsgate’s streak of complete flops.

But the Sony implementation wasn’t really meant to take you back to where you were previously, it was meant to take you to specific predefined starting points, is all. Both meant to be “time savers” of a sort but different strategies were used. One clearly didn’t work as well as the other.

While I don’t believe the PS5 has any feature that is up to snuff with quick resume, just wanted to mention that I think this feature was a bit different in function. It was more like a shortcut to specific things within a game, such as if you wanted to just go straight into a multiplayer match or to a specific level of a game, you’d use one of these activity cards, the game boots up, and there’d be minimal to no menus to navigate through. Just launch direct to gameplay or as close to it as possible.

I don’t believe many games used it, though. Not even all of Sony’s own offerings.

The BioShock logo (and the art of the game itself) uses an art deco style that was relatively commonplace around the early 1900’s.

Whether this game’s usage of that style is a deliberate move or if it’s just borrowing from a shared aesthetic, who can say.

Super Mario Wonder was also a big one. Critically acclaimed, too.

You joke but I would kill for a new Kirby Air Ride game.

You wouldn’t believe my disappointment when they had a Nintendo Direct years ago and threw a “one more thing” at the end which opened with Kirby Air Ride music and Kirby riding in on the warp star, only for it to be a Smash Bros character reveal. The video they put on YouTube after the fact opened with the Smash logo, but it didn’t during the Nintendo Direct.

Shit, Ben Starr? I’m in.

WoW players not spew hateful bullshit they know nothing about? Who would even be left at that point?

Well, €/$100 is about how much people are paying for some new games these days, to put it in context. If someone is a Nintendo fan or a collector it’s not necessarily a hard sell at that price given that they probably have disposable income.