BrunoTheThird

@ntm: I had absolutely no idea Jeff liked it. I love the RJD2 soundtrack and yeah, the voice acting is very decent indeed. For some reason I thought he was negative about it on a demo derby or something...? I love it though and always do a yearly google search about a sequel.

Some great mentions, Heaven's Vault and Walking Dead perhaps having my two modern favourite non-white protagonists ever. It is pretty fucking embarassing how few examples there are... Shit tonnes of side-characters, which is more embarassing. We could probably name over 100 in a flash...

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Few more:

Broken Age

HL: Alyx

Marc Ecko's Getting Up (genuinely enjoy this game but it's regarded pretty divisively)

@justin258: Good post, and that video explores just how clever the game is beneath its primal terror. Def in my top 20 of all time. Obsidian's Grounded looks like it could possibly be taking some important cues from it, which is promising, because I'm gagging for more terrifying survival games with a big story goal to aim for.

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Alien Isolation's xenomorph could have been an easy top 5 for me if they had just managed to tame its randomness out of the unrealistic and into the alien-but-still-believable.

Sports games have more varied and adjustable mechanics that can be more easily cranked to give players an artifical sense of difficulty, yes. Guitar Hero and DDR are also harder with cheats and super speed on. Dark Souls is very carefully balanced most of the time (internal logic), to be more consistent with its game world (external logic), jank aside.

It is a bit like saying a cheetah is faster than a dog. It's just an unbalanced comparison with a fairly obvious (no offence at all) victor, even if the two things in discussion are still [relevant adjective] in the context of their own ecosystem.

You can simplify and interpret my response that way, I have no issue with that. I think words like "easier" or "harder" are a bit too limiting, is all. I find sports games more complex, definitely, and the way they balance systems and A.I. skew very hard one way in their "pro" modes.

I think the challenging aspects of the Souls games are demonstrably learnable, generally follow a certain internal and external logic that is understandable and quite predictive, and rewards the player when they apply each lesson learned into that one successful run.

Sports games have always scaled their difficulty in a way that often feels insanely robotic after a certain point, especially at the highest ones (IMO). In fact, I kind of disagree with your thread's versus logic at a fundamental level because, outside of NG+, Souls games have a finely tuned and fixed difficulty and sports games don't/can't due to the real-life variables they attempt to emulate (the sudden on-a-roll adrenaline rushes of a star player, wind speed in a golf game, formation changes, whatever.) It's like comparing a yo-yo to swing ball; one is far more predictable.

I will choose a different language than yours and say that the A.I. of some sports games at high difficulties is often far less predictive and arguably designed to be unfair rather than challenging. There's nothing "brave" about me saying that, though, because it's a by-product of its genre, not an arbitrary assignation of being "more difficult" than a famously challenging game like, say, DS1.

The frenzied boss/enemy states in DS3 and BB specifically, however, have some of that unpredictable behaviour, though still incomparable. Just my opinion, I'd love to be corrected if I've totally missed something or edged close to an ignorant viewpoint.

@stantongrouse: Great example, that's def my number two on the anxiety meter. Not just the finger-juggling you have to do to climb, jump, grip, rest, shimmy, prime your sword and stab withouth falling, but all the while eyeballing your stamina and the collosi's attack patterns. Not to mention dealing with the emotional strain of the intense soundtrack as you are straight-up murdering the last living examples of an ancient land's native inhabitants...

@undeadpool@ghost_cat Sorry about that; I gave myself flashbacks, too, ha. I can still hear my ship's A.I. saying, "Entering ecological deadzone..." in my head from time to time, followed by the metallic shriek of a leviathan. Seeing the giant red blip appear out of nowhere on your sonar triggers the fastest LEAVE. NOW. response ever.

I'll stop now.

Yep, Subnautica for me too. In fact, it's still the one and only time I've truly been emotionally wrecked by a digital creature's mere presence. I could only explore the deepest depths for an hour maximum at a time before I started to experience borderline hyperventilation. The sensation of seeing huge abyssal horrors gliding through the vast darkness when you're so aware of the vulnerabilities of your vessel, the distance to your nearest base, the increasing environmental volatillity as you delve, and the importance of finding what you need in these areas to finally escape the planet, is monumental.

Oh, the energy from the crew was about as muted as the games Ubi showed, I think we can all agree more about that. Perceiving that as neutral is valid, and I see why some perceived not very positive as negative. Whether it's because of a change in their personalities or because nothing genuinely grabbed anyone is harder to say, but I think it's much more likely the latter based on the very positive PS5 stream reactions recently.

I will say about the thread: I disagree with those saying the crews are too negative, but those folks haven't once asked for them to turn into mindless, nodding zombies or overenthusiastic influencers at all; it's a bit rude to reply to them in that kind of way. They're just saying it's too negative for them now -- whatever that definition means for them -- I think, which is fine, and fine to disagree with, too.

I hate talking about people like this when they're not directly conversing with me, but I will say I think Jeff has been much more neutral about critiquing games he really doesn't like in recent years. Just to counter a couple comments that said they think a more negative side is more prevelant now. I think indifference can seem very negative, though. It's a fine line on the emotion wheel when you think about it.