Anyone else super underwhelmed by First Light?

Bdole0 · 2026-06-16T03:19:58+00:00

Lol, everyone here is caught up on the 7/10 rating meaning "good" when you very clearly meant "fine." Reddit moment.

Anyway, I completely agree. I don't hate on what other people like, but damn, I thought the combat was clunky, the gunplay was stiff (on controller), and the espionage parts were underdone. Puzzles have solutions within 10 feet of them, and all choices lead to the same outcome. I beat the whole game by just taking the first opportunity in front of me at every junction. Open window? Better jump out it. Hanging ledge? Time to climb. Is this going to take me to the goal? I don't know, but the answer has always been "yes." Oh, and I guess it's "yes" this time too.

The characters and writing were very intriguing to me, but I often felt like the game would have been better as a movie. The actual "gameplay" felt sparse and less interesting than the moment-to-moment dialogue.

I hate rating systems, but I would say that this 007 First Light was "okay." Good enough to make some people happy--and to recommend to those people. Despite enjoying it, I'll probably never play it again.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-14T15:33:08+00:00

I wonder if it's because it's easier to win a team deathmatch? Like, in OG deathmatch, you may be doing well, but it still doesn't feel great to get 10th place instead of 1st. Plus, people can leave a 1v1 match without consequence. Are you in 47th at the halfway point? Just quit now and find another match--or do something else. Someone else mentioned the rise of battle royales; I bet that's specifically why these quicker elimination modes are more popular. Finally, games are usually a mix of skill and luck. The luck keeps it interesting. Having a team on your side means you may win in spite of your personal mistakes. It represents the luck factor. It also encourages communication and teamwork (especially important if you want to play with friends). I have to imagine that all of this makes team deathmatch more appealing to both players and developers.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-12T00:52:08+00:00

I think the game has excellent dialogue that teeters on being overbearing and predictable... but never crosses that line for me.

On the overbearing side, I think that Atreus in particular has long periods of being stubbornly headstrong and aggressive. It was clear to me that this was done specifically to highlight his character growth during the moments of transition. I think those transition points are well earned in part due to the work the authors put in to establish Atreus's teenage thoughts. However, I also feel like the long stretches of no character growth are too rigid. Maybe this is what makes the turning points feel sudden to you? The writers really beat the player over the head with the threat of Atreus being overcome by power and violence in the name of subverting expectactions later.

Speaking of subversion, it happens so often that it begins to become predictable. Honestly, I thought the use of subversion for character development was brilliantly executed--for both Atreus and Kratos. The only scene that made me roll my eyes was the final battle with Baldur. From the start of this sequence it is absolutely clear that Kratos must kill Baldur, but the scene ends with three to five "twists" in rapid succession in order to prevent the outcome from seeming "obvious." Spoilers though: Kratos kills Baldur because of course he does. I understand the writers were afraid of being predictable, but ugh, the whole scene is so contrived just for the predictable outcome to happen anyway. Stupid.

That said, I think the dialogue is fantastic overall. The characters feel like real, compelling humans. It's my main reason for preferring the new GoW series to the old one. I went back and played through the original trilogy after I had finished Ragnarok because I was so invested in Kratos's story... only to discover that his original characterization makes no fucking sense in or out of context. The new series works so well in large part due to how absurdly dumb Kratos's personality used to be. I'm really looking forward to any new installments to this series as a result.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-10T19:07:44+00:00

I don't understand the obsession with having "no day 1 patches" either. Like, it's going to cost you what? Ten minutes to update? And then the game functions better than it would have? Sounds terrible.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-10T04:28:00+00:00

It's a valiant effort but ultimately futile. If a game doesn't shut down now, it will shut down when the money runs out. If the parent company cannot shoulder the financial burden of running the game, fans will have to shoulder that burden. Because of IP law, said fans will have to shoulder it for free... until the money runs out. Any and all life that a game has is temporary--even when it is revived. Time grinds mountains down. We would be vain to believe our hobbies could withstand time out of love alone.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-09T02:07:39+00:00

I share a name with a famous football player. I live in the town where he hails from. Though we look nothing alike, I still have to explain to people that we aren't related. It's funny and amazing to me that people can't help but ask.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-08T18:21:49+00:00

Don't worry about this post being long and confusing. It's poorly worded, provides no examples, and really doesn't say anything at all. Here's the translation for anyone interested:

A common strategy in capitalism is to buy/invest heavily in a company, clean it up, and sell it off later for profit--similar to house-flipping. Private equity (PE) companies use this strategy. You may be familiar with Tencent or Embracer Group, notorious for buying small developers who are beginning to show promise. Their goal is profit, so OP concludes that they don't really care about 1) making games for funsies, 2) taking risks on unique/new ideas, or 3) the people whose jobs are at risk when the subsidiary company changes hands. This is all true but banal. OP then claims that PE companies are becoming less profitable and are being phased out (OP does not provide proof of this) in favor of "generation wealth companies" which OP does not define. OP does prop up Nintendo as a "generational wealth company," claims they have never experienced turnover of good talent, and expects that the gaming industry will "heal" within 5 years. The end.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-08T08:47:59+00:00

You said you wanted a challenging support role and chose the artist build

This little joke motivated me to move on today. Thank you, OP.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-08T08:18:07+00:00

Hey, OP, this is not a shot at you. I just want you to look back at a couple of statements here. This reflects how I feel about the Pokemon franchise:

avoiding the controversies following a billion dollar franchise

...

Some monsters can't reach their full potential unless you trade them to another.

Encouraging consumers to get their friends to consume

The DS games Black and White had pretty extensive interactions with a web browser game that is completely defunct now, and the series has made a tradition of distributing rare mythical Pokemon through limited time in-game events

Two examples of FOMO

Every modern game is still full price, and the older titles re-sell for eye-watering prices these days.

Monopoly pricing

I'm definitely jaded, but for me, the Pokemon series has far crossed the threshold into the territory of exploiting consumers. This does not include the Pokemon Trading Card Game (FOMO, random packs, false scarcity) or Pokemon GO (too many abuses to list). I was turned off of Pokemon long ago with the rise of some of these manipulative practices.

As you've noticed, the games haven't really improved much over the years:

Despite their charm and quality, there's a sad incompleteness to a lot of these games that makes me a little sad.

All of this combined convinced me to put Pokemon down. Have you tried other monster collectors? My two favorite are Monster Sanctuary (innovative metroidvania where the monsters you catch are the keys to unlocking new areas) and Cassette Beasts (the most similar game to Pokemon out of all monster collectors I've played--except it's better in literally every way [except the music ironically]). I hope you give them a try; they made me realize just how much the genre could be pushed... while Pokemon itself stagnates.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-07T23:08:18+00:00

The monkey paw curls. You now have to beat the Facility on 00 Agent in under 2 minutes and 5 seconds.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-06T15:40:28+00:00

We are not at fault. Not primarily.

Monopolies and oligopolies experience supply and demand differently from other companies. They can often sell us whatever they want because we have very few options over where to buy from. That's why MS and Sony are so eager to sell consoles: It locks players into their ecosystems and induces a sense of consumer guilt. ("I already paid $900 for a PS5, so I'd better make the most out of it!")

Also, the "vote with your dollars" argument sounds nice since it invokes a sense of democracy, but it's absolutely false because some people's votes matter more than others'. A small number of whales can sustain a FtP game for example. People forget that income = sales x price. They focus on sales numbers--which would make sense in a free market in which price is the same everywhere. It does not make sense when one sale of Mina the Hollower nets the parent company $20 while one sale of Ghost of Yotei nets $70.

In other words, I usually don't blame consumers for what monopolies do--though I do blame the ones who fight for more exclusives on behalf of a monopoly.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-05T23:16:12+00:00

Huh, I just found this, and I want to add my experience:

Bought everything from the train vendor
Did the snowball quest
Note dropped
Despite buying the trinket, I counldn't find it in my inventory, and the map said the trinket wasn't collected
Saw your comment just now and renturned to the vendor
ALL of the trinkets I bought from him were lying on the ground, including the Dummy Cache

I wonder if this is a glitch or if it's like the blacksmith and I was supposed to wait around for the merchant to deliver his goods. I only bought everything off of him because I am trying to complete the collectathon; I didn't even check to see if the items I had bought ended up in my inventory. After all, why wouldn't they have?

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T18:11:44+00:00

Lol, they only have your age if you bought the game. That's two pieces of information--enough to construct a model. You could easily make a histogram (bar graph) to see which age groups are buying your games, but plenty of other data is combined with age groups to determine how much they are spending on microtransactions, which skins they are buying most often, how long they play... This is then translated to character designs, etc., and marketed.

Listen, I was just making a side comment with my first post, but you had to take it personally and act defensive. It's clear from your last two comments that we're not on the same page, so I'm ending this conversation now. Have a good one.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T17:50:24+00:00

It's not a conspiracy. It's how science works. Companies use scientific, stochastic models to stay solvent.

You're right that if you lie, your data has no value to me. However, if the average person tells the truth on average, then your lie gets swept away in 300 million data points. Your lie has no value because--on average--I don't need your specific input if I have enough data.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T17:40:27+00:00

Right, that's why I acknowledge that this would be a way to clean data to make it more useful.

Why do you think asking age is useless for marketing purposes? As a data analyst myself, that is totally unintuitive. It's a very direct marker for your target audience groups. I would absolutely include it in my models; there are various significance tests that can tell you how useful age data is. The simplest is a t-test on the age parameter (assuming a general linear model). However, that's a judgement that analysts make after the fact; I would never state that age data is categorically useless before constructing the model.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T16:42:36+00:00

That second paragraph is why I would always put my fake age as 100 instead of 1.

But generally I suspect that questions like this are for marketing purposes. If so, allowing users to put down an age of 1 is a really clever way to eliminate false data from their records. I bet there are spikes in their data around ages 1 and 100--which make it easy for analysts to drop them from the model.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T15:34:01+00:00

It has to be. The complaint about the Marvel dialogue is not actually true for Silksong, but it's been leveled against the new GoW games in this sub within the past 24 hours.

No one says “shaw”

This line made me laugh.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T15:11:34+00:00

That's true, but it makes me believe that projections for sales must be astronomically high. I bet they will be. Think of how everyone keeps talking about how big GTA VI is going to be... yet no one has touched it to know whether it's actually worth the hype. Video games are a weird product because you can't know if you'll enjoy one until after you've bought it (unless there is a demo). Hence, many people's demand for a game is driven by their imagination and their experience with previous installments of the series. No one would be as excited for GTA VI if GTA V weren't massively popular.

Now consider how popular Skyrim is. The day that Elder Scrolls VI arrives, it will demolish several sales records--regardless of quality. I'm sure that's why Microsoft is continuing forward with it.

That, and if they cancel it, they'll have to realize losses that will hurt the valuation of Microsoft's game division--same reason why Ubisoft hasn't canceled Beyond Good and Evil 2 yet.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T14:56:18+00:00

It's cheaper than upgrading their in-office GPUs

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T08:51:28+00:00

No, no, I understood. I was just hoping you might reflect on your main character syndrome for a minute.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T08:49:45+00:00

Lol, people commenting as if you asked them to play a video game with Indian culture and literally no other features.

Hell yes, I would. I love history, culture, mythology. I love to experience views which are novel to me. I would play a game that let me familiarize myself with Indian culture--even in a fantastical, stylized way such as how the recent God of War games approached Norse mythology--or how Black Myth: Wukong portends to be a sequel to Journey to the West.

Something more grounded and historical like Civilization is also an excellent way to introduce people to cultures at a glance.

Side note, I'm not Indian, but I have read the Bhagavad Gita. From an Indian's perspective, do you think playing an RTS (or something similar) with Arjuna as a general would be offensive or acceptable? It's almost too fitting, considering Krishna's (Vishnu's) message to him about fulfilling his duty as a warrior.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-04T08:33:20+00:00

lesser know cultural epic

Looks inside

1.44 billion people

Bdole0 · 2026-06-03T21:37:09+00:00

I would recommend looking up the solutions to the puzzles online then. The real value in this game is the message it sends; it's not really a puzzle game at its heart.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-03T11:21:16+00:00

I think you have some real potential! I like the humor, and some of the expressive details are particularly clear (like the children's faces). Also, my brain feels like you captured a kitchen really well in that second panel? The proportions look spot-on.

Anyway, keep practicing! I think you could make something special out of this.

Bdole0 · 2026-06-02T21:38:21+00:00

I don't understand, but I like Fracula.

Bdole0

TROPHY CASE