Brackstone

Ginger ice cream is a good one that's almost guaranteed to work.

I'd probably try to make some kind of dark chocolate and candied chili pepper combo.

I don't have an ice cream maker, but if I got one, those are what I'd try first.

I've so conflicted about all this. Delaying the game is the right move for the game, but it's absolutely going to be bad for employees at 343.

Similarly, I think it's pretty clear that time and time again Microsoft and 343 have mismanaged the Halo brand to the point that the entire franchise just needs a fresh team behind it. This feels like one of those terminal points where something has to change.

I checked out of the main series after Reach, but from what I understand, Halo 4 and 5 aren't thought of very highly, and the Master Chief Collection is an infamous mess that still, all these years later, has a massive laundry list of problems. But a big developer like 343 doing poorly isn't good, and clearly the Halo brand is keeping a lot of people gainfully employed even if the end products haven't been great.

Look at Guerilla games, stuck with Killzone for ages, a series with a somewhat mixed reputation, then they went at made their most popular game by far, Horizon, when they weren't stuck with an old franchise. 343 would probably benefit from the same opportunity.

As for the console launch, this'll hurt it, but not kill it. Playstation's definitely got a better lineup now, but the competition isn't that thrilling overall. Still, I can't imagine anyone rushing out to get an xbox this fall, whereas Spiderman will at least sell a few PS5s.

This is very annoying to me for a couple reasons.

First, the new controller doesn't have any new kinds of input except a built in microphone (which I can't see being necessary), so functionally for most games, a DS4 is the exact same as a DS5, especially for third party games that won't use any of the DS5's features on any of the other platforms they appear on. I'll be able to play CoD 2021 on PC with a DS4 and it'll work exactly the same as CoD on PS5 with a DS5.

In previous generations, the kinds of inputs generally changed. From DS3 to DS4 you gained the touch pad and the sensor light, that's a big enough difference to warrant such restrictions. Nothing like that exists this time, and it's an especially bad look given that their main competitor is doing the exact opposite. No, extra feedback in the rumble and triggers is not enough to warrant arbitrarily cutting out the DS4, especially when it's already going to work from the get go because of PS4 games.

Second, the DS5 arguably has worse inputs, because it doesn't have back buttons. My DS4 has back buttons now, there is no option for DS5 back buttons as of yet, and back buttons won't even have been out for a year when the DS5 is in people's hands.

It feels like a cash grab to be honest. These are probably going to be more expensive controllers due to those fancy new feedback things, especially if back buttons are just on a more expensive pro version of a controller rather than a reasonably priced attachment.

It's not nearly as bad, but part of Sony beating microsoft so handily this gen was because the Xbox seemed like a restrictive, complicated ecosystem, while the PS4 wasn't. Xbox has swung hard in the opposite direction in order to help the brand recover, and it's worked pretty well for them so far. This is something similar, to a much lesser degree, with the positions flipped. If the PS4 backwards compatibility thing ends up being an issue for Sony, since right now it's pretty vaguely defined, it's only going to make the comparison more apt. Not to mention the rumours about online being free for Xbox.

Also just because controller compatibility isn't expected, doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. Something that's common is still worth criticizing if it could be better.

EDIT: To make a clearer point, there's no reason why Sony should mandate this from the top down. DS4 functionality is built into the console, other controller types will work, there are no new inputs. Leave it in developer hands. If someone makes a game specifically for the DS5 and only wants people using that, let them restrict it, but the vast majority of games on the console will be the exact same with a DS4 as they would a DS5.

I'm pretty sure what's going on is that the only trick relevant to the player is York's appearance/name, really only in visual elements. Everyone in game sees Zach, and sees his badge as Zach, hence the confusion over him always telling people to call him York. There's enough of a time skip right at the end of DP1 for it to be possible for him to start telling people to call him Zach off camera, and really it's just a writing thing to reinforce that it's a different character. There's a lot of stuff that would clearly have happened between the final boss and the last few scenes, so we can just assume he started saying "actually, call me Zach now, not York". I don't think there's any memory manipulation or whatever, it's just certain visual elements being meant to trick the player.

Also, there's the matter of the scar. People clearly see Zach because they comment on his huge scar all the time, but York reacts as though they're talking about the tiny scratch on his cheek and plays it off as nothing major. It's a little weird cause York is missing hair where the scar would be, but doesn't actually have the scar, so when people mention it, they're very much seeing Zach.

Basically, it's all in York's head, he sees himself as York in all relevant visual ways, but nobody else does. They see Zach, but interact with York.

This all misses the point. There are lots of harder things in video games than Dark Souls. Hell some CoD games on Veteran are harder, I have terrible memories about World at War on Veteran. It's not about the degree to which Dark Souls is hard, it's about the way in which it is hard. It's a difficulty that rewards patience and attentive learning, and that makes it a rewarding difficulty. Dark Souls is known as being a hard game not because it's the hardest game around, but because there's only one difficulty level that's meticulously designed and balanced to be rewarding.

Any asshole can crank up the numbers to make some bullshit difficulty on their game. Sure it'll be harder but it's the bad kind of hard. Most games that have difficulty options just become tedious bullshit on the highest level. You could make it so Dark Souls had a 99% chance to kill you whenever you swung your weapon, and it'd probably be one of the hardest games at that point, but does that really say anything?

I'd make a comparison to hot sauce. Anyone can dump a bunch of pepper extract, vinegar and salt into a bottle, slap a picture on the label of a donkey shitting out a nuke , and call it the spiciest hot sauce around. Or you can actually make something that has a lot of heat, but also good flavour profile. One is a low effort gimmick, the other is something with purpose and thought behind it.

For me, it's about whether or not the game feels like it's length matches what it's trying to do. Doom 2016 is a game where I felt like the combat encounter never got quite crazy enough. In terms of hour count, it's a good length, but I felt the encounter design could have been stretched a little further. Opposite that, Alien Isolation is a game that feels way, way longer than it's gameplay can support.

Trying to pin an exact hour count on games is a mistake. I can feel satisfied from a fairly short game that delivers on it's central premise and keeps itself interesting throughout, like Titanfall 2, and I can be satisfied by a long game that does the same.

In my opinion, though, generally games that are too short and don't live up to their potential are much more uncommon than games that outstay their welcome, because designing fulfilling gameplay loops is a hell of a lot harder than raw content creation and a lot of people are easily swayed by the raw amount of stuff a game has.

Story wise, sidequests throw a wrench in things, so I give RPGs and such a bit of a pass, and obviously less story focused games can get away with stretching their plot out. However, in terms of raw, linear main story, I think anything longer than maybe 10 hours is really pushing it. That goes for all media, books, tv, games, movies. Even when it's a series of books or something, where it's told over several entries and sequels, I've never really seen a story worth telling take that long.

Some people start to define themselves by their hobby to an unhealthy degree. It can happen with a lot more than video games, but with the way in which video games grew up alongside the internet, and the way in which a single video game can basically be a hobby, and the way in which video games were maligned by those outside the hobby for so long, you get a perfect storm for every criticism of a product being felt by someone as a personal attack.

Think of the way some people's hobby is sports, but not necessarily sports in general, just one team. Liverpool fans or whatever, who's hobby is basically following one team. Same thing, but in video games it can exist on several levels, whether it's attachment to a console, a franchise, even a specific game. Somebody's hobby can be, say, Warframe, not video games in general, just Warframe, that's all they do in their spare time. When someone says something bad about Warframe, they take it as an attack on a huge part of their life, and thus an attack on them.

What happened to you is your investment in gaming as an art form made you form perhaps too great an attachment to the Last of Us 2, since you saw the success of video games in general depending on it's positive reception. To tear it down is to tear down your hopes for the future, and that's not a healthy way to look at things.

I do think there's a problem with the journalist/fan/developer/publisher dynamic, where each is in some way dependent on the others, but also frequently shows open disdain for the others. That disdain then also gets read as an attack on the individual, and so the cycle continues.

This article gets into it somewhat: https://www.polygon.com/2020/6/30/21307200/the-last-of-us-2-controversy-critics-press-naughty-dog-vice-review-leak-sony-ps4-playstation

Another problem is I think people tend to see the other as a monolith and that can silence a lot of people's voices. If you say "video game fans are assholes" as often journalists do, obviously they don't mean all of them, but it's implied that it's at least the majority, even if it's not true. This has been so common, and so ingrained in people that it's kind of being abused in the case of The Last of Us 2, where in several parts of the internet, the haters are being accused of all being racists and misogynists and all sorts of prejudiced, and that's silencing some important voices, particularly actual LGBT folks who are criticizing elements in the game relevant to their identities.

Really there's a mess of people, no monolith exists anywhere, but when you see criticism levied against something you've formed such an attachment to that it's become an important part of your identity, you tend to start thinking in "us vs them terms" and you start to try to fit all the criticism into an easily dismissed box. There are too many different people with different perspectives out there for that to work, whether talking about fans, companies or journalists.

Personally, I think everyone, fans, journalists, video game developers and publishers, have all had a role in poisoning the discourse, but the shift towards this kind of thinking seems to have occurred pretty much everywhere outside of gaming too, so I don't think there's an easy solution. Video games aren't a bubble of this.

Hunt: Showdown. I know it'd been in early access for ages, and came out on Xbox and PC last august, but since it only hit PS4 this year and that's where I'm playing it, it gets my vote. It's maybe my favourite multiplayer shooter of all time, as frustrating as it can be sometimes.

After that, I guess Doom Eternal as the runner up. It's mechanically one of the best shooters ever made, even if the writing and story stuff were a step backwards.

Made this suggestion in another, similar thread, check out Hunt: Showdown. Kinda similar to Tarkov but much more streamlined and set in the spooky haunted old west. You go in with a kit of your choosing and try to take out a boss monster and take his trophy/bounty home for the money, and of course other players try to do the same and will try to kill you in the process. PVE against AI exists entirely to force players to make some noise, ai enemies are really just sound traps, it's very much a pvp game at its core.

Much, much less inventory management than Tarkov, but you can still do the thing where you go in with crappy gear and come out with high level stuff. It's all old timey guns, so lethality is high (2 shots to kill with most guns, headshots always kill) but time to kill can also be fairly high since you can't really spray and pray with old timey guns that usually hold between 1 and 6 bullets before a reload. Even melee can be viable because of that. Also, it has perfect, and I mean perfect, audio design. The footstep audio here is the gold standard, nothing does it better.

Matches are either teams of 2 or 3, but you can choose to go in undermanned if you want, going into a duos match as a solo, or into a trios match as a duo or solo. With how the game works, it's a disadvantage for sure but not a huge one, definitely doable. A lot of fights between equal sized teams quickly turn into 2v3s, 1v2s and 1v3s anyway, just because of how lethal the guns are. It's still a game that benefits from having a regular crew, but that regular crew can just be one dude to get duos going, so it's not as bad. There is a solo mode that's fun in its own right but it's not the focus of the game, and it plays quite differently.

It's on sale on steam right now. I play on PS4 and I think it's also on sale there, but I'm not sure. They just pushed a big update on pc that adds dual wielding pistols for all your dumb yee haw cowboy needs.

It's a bigger problem with openworld games, but yeah, a lot of games are too long. You nailed it, either there's not enough mechanically to make it work, or the narrative gets stretched out too much.

It's what bummed me out about the Witcher 3 so much, it just felt bloated compared to the Witcher 2, and the narrative loses any sort of weight and urgency when it needs to be stretched out that long.

Generally speaking, I find long games can only exist because they keep themselves mechanically interesting. Stuff like the Souls games work by introducing new areas and enemies all the time, but even then, those games aren't actually that long, they just seem long because you die a lot. Nioh, however, for all it's fun character upgrades and abilities, had terrible enemy and environment variety for how stupidly long that game is.

There isn't a story in video games that was improved by lasting longer than 20 hours. I feel similarly about tv shows, the moment a show has more than 2 seasons I start to think they probably didn't actually know where they wanted the story to go. A tight miniseries is always better than some big sprawling narrative. Think about TV in 2019, you had the massive, sprawling GoT that collapsed under it's own weight and people finally turned on it, and the surprise smash hit of Chernobyl with its lean 6 episodes.

I wish stuff like Hellblade, maybe even stuff like Call of Juarez The Gunslinger, were to be the way forward more often. Not every AAA game needs to be this massive behemoth just to justify the price tag.