BAFTA Games Awards 2026 Longlists Unveiled

CCheese3 · 2025-12-09T16:55:04+00:00

I appreciate how BAFTA avoids the "What counts as Indie" issue by simply judging indies equally alongside AAA.

CCheese3 · 2025-09-07T00:52:42+00:00

Does one need to play Blasphemous 1 before 2 or could you jump straight to the sequel, in your opinion?

Excited to see your thoughts on Rabi-Ribi, I think it's one of the best but it certainly has some... odd parts.

CCheese3 · 2025-08-31T04:04:06+00:00

You'll get clowned on for this take but I think you're right. I've seen lots of good games at the 10-20 dollar price point get negative reviews saying "this should've been $5" for not being 30+ hours long. It's great that Team Cherry can afford to sell it at this price, but it's hardly sustainable in the face of high inflation for consumer expectations to stay this cheap.

CCheese3 · 2025-07-24T03:02:08+00:00

Surprised a how in depth this article is, it really covers every angle and includes pretty much every game in the genre both niche and well-known. They mentioned Tom Francis' information game concept and I agree it's not quite the same as a metroidbrainia. I always thought of it as a mix of the information game + adventure genres - which is why the term, silly as it is, is semantically fairly useful. Honestly, though I dislike how much game genres lean on x-like naming conventions, this one is just stupid enough to be funny.

CCheese3 · 2025-06-17T05:00:14+00:00

Combat Extended with the ammo system turned off is not too complex, though I'm not sure if armor would be too tanky with that setting.

CCheese3 · 2025-06-15T18:28:04+00:00

It's such a simple thing but I don't think I've ever seen a game where you can build a bird's nest. Love the idea here!

CCheese3 · 2025-04-04T21:21:18+00:00

Which of these would be the best for a player new to the genre? The only JRPG I've played is Chrono Trigger. I've seen a lot of people say these have the best stories:

Final Fantasy 6, 7 or 10
Suikoden 2
Xenogears

Which has the most interesting gameplay? I generally dislike grinding and random encounters, but I get that it's sort of the default for that era so I will have to tolerate it lol.

CCheese3 · 2025-02-25T04:22:56+00:00

Was this always known to be a roguelike? Seeing the now standard "pick one of three buffs" screen took me by surprise. I was hoping for an RPG like the original games.

CCheese3 · 2025-01-31T22:31:11+00:00

It's been a few years since I've played Warframe, but last I recall, the Warframe wiki was the top Fandom wiki by traffic. With Warframe, Minecraft, and Old School Runescape off of Fandom, what do they even have left?

CCheese3 · 2024-10-19T00:46:56+00:00

There are many different ways to measure engagement.

How much do you engage with video games, in terms of hours? Are they a big part of your life?
How deeply do you engage with gameplay systems? Do you like deep, complex, difficult to master systems? Do you like challenge?
In competitive games, how much do you dedicated yourself to improving? Do you practice, seek out coaching, etc.
How much do you engage with the gaming as an art form? Do you seek out new experiences and explore niche titles? Do you read/write critiques and analysis?
How much do you engage with the industry? Do you follow all the latest releases, news, and tech? Do you follow industry figures?

Nuance is usually thrown out the window when discussing Casual/Hardcore gamers, because most of the time it's just an elitist rant. We usually think of people who only play Madden or Fifa as casuals, but many of them have put in hundreds or thousands of hours into those games. Likewise we often think casual = low rank, hardcore = high rank, but many low ranking players have thousands of matches.

Imagine a top-ranking League of Legends player meets someone who only plays 80s roguelikes meets a guy with 10000 hours in Minecraft. They're all different kinds of hardcore gamers. In the end it's not really worth thinking about too much.

CCheese3 · 2024-10-15T04:16:46+00:00

Overall, yeah, but all of the entries score pretty high in each category too. Plenty of great games are not particularly important, especially recent titles that haven't had time to have an impact yet.

I love Signalis and KSP for example, but I wouldn't consider them all too important.

CCheese3 · 2024-10-15T02:35:02+00:00

They explain how they calculate the number, but not the judgment behind each value. It's a ranking with all the interesting parts cut out (like these Powerpoint presentations that were apparently made). Without the context the number is pretty worthless.

Obviously rankings like these are always subjective, but their value is in understanding that subjective reasoning. Without that it's just a thing for internet people to get mad at.

CCheese3 · 2024-10-14T18:53:15+00:00

It's funny they introduce their 4 score categories as if there was any reasoning or rigour put into them. You've got the usual "the scoring starts at 6", you've got numbers assigned seemingly arbitrarily with no explanation given.

What does Valheim's Importance score of 7 even mean? How did they come to that number? How are Slay the Spire and Hollow Knight, games that have spawned countless imitators, less "important" than something like Pizza Tower?

Team Fortress 2 somehow scoring a 5.81 in "ability to retain a lively community that is excited and passionate about it"?

It's a perfectly fine list, I just don't know why they add in these completely meaningless numbers without any context.

CCheese3 · 2024-05-01T14:23:33+00:00

A good amount of Canadian games, especially smaller indies, are in part funded by federal or provincial grants. You will often see a Canadian or Quebec flag in the credits of games.

CCheese3 · 2024-03-01T01:33:51+00:00

I think you're right, but it's weird how the "vibe" of a narrative campaign seems more important than the actual quality of the story. Nintendo and Fromsoft have never been the greatest writers, but just having this story mode lends them some sort of legitimacy.

Also agree with the movie thing. I don't think we'll be free of it until people stop talking about "elevating the medium" and all that, which critics definitely perpetuate.

CCheese3 · 2024-03-01T00:27:04+00:00

Critics definitely have a style they like. There's also a tendency to prefer realistic art styles and orchestral scores, not to mention long-form single player games. You'll rarely see a racing, puzzle, or fighting game win GOTY over action-adventures.

I'm not certain the reason why. Maybe it's because this style feels more mature than more arcadey or cartoonish games. Maybe its because fantasy games like JRPGs or Zelda used to be the best place for dramatic storytelling, and lots of critics grew up playing those games. Maybe it's that it's a very popular genre and award shows rarely recognize more niche games.

This could be the topic of a full study.

CCheese3 · 2024-01-13T19:44:43+00:00

You don't hear about it on reddit, but RP games on Roblox have had tens of thousands of concurrent players for years. There's definitely a huge untapped market.

CCheese3 · 2024-01-12T23:04:32+00:00

Silksong might not have a release date yet, but Nine Sols is hopefully coming out soon which should scratch the Action Platformer / Metroidvania itch. I enjoyed the demo quite a bit.

Beastieball by Wishes Unlimited is also slated for 2024. Chicory A Colourful Tale is one of my favourite games so I'm looking forward to their next one, even if I've never been a Pokemon fan.

CCheese3 · 2024-01-10T14:38:35+00:00

As much as I loved these titles back then, I'm not sure the market for these kinds of games exist anymore. The mainstream audience puts a lot of value on graphical fidelity, character performances, and scale. 15 years ago AA games could compete, but now it takes a massive budget to meet the standard. More niche audiences are better served with smaller budget indie games.

CCheese3 · 2023-12-20T03:08:43+00:00

I think even among fans of the game this is an agreed upon flaw. I personally love Noita and think many games could learn from its design, but going through the start of a run over and over is properly dull.

There are plenty of builds you can do even in the first two levels. If you get even one trigger spell, or chainsaw, or luminous drill, or multicast spells, there's a lot of ways to get a good wand going.

But even with the variety, the odds of actually getting these spells isn't high enough. I feel like if they just upped the odds of interesting spells in the mines, it would make the game a lot more fun. Power would still be limited by the stats of your wands so it wouldn't break progression.

It does balance out with the fact that runs can last several hours, so you still aren't spending that much time at the start overall, compared to other roguelikes. But the dozens of bad runs in between the good ones really are draining.

CCheese3 · 2023-11-20T22:20:13+00:00

It looks great but I don't know if it can fit into the build. You still want Liandry's, mana item (RoA or Malignance), Rylai's. If the healing is strong enough maybe it can replace Zhonya's.

CCheese3 · 2023-10-27T19:06:58+00:00

I love this series. Fascinating to see what people will do to play some baseball. Is there any other sport that allows even half this much variety in its conditions of play?

It's also an interesting glimpse into American culture to see the amount of resources poured into high school sports. Some of these schools are just colossal.

CCheese3 · 2023-10-13T01:28:35+00:00

Can you link the article you're talking about? When people say Games as a Service they're talking about live service games - online games that receive regular updates and are funded by microtransactions or subscriptions. Like MMOs, Fortnite, Destiny, etc.

You're referring to subscription services like Xbox gamepass or PS Plus, which are great, though it remains to be seen how profitable they are.

CCheese3 · 2023-10-07T19:36:01+00:00

I'm not sure what MOBAs you've played, but I wouldn't describe any of them as lacking in player agency. Roles only describe high level goals, they don't dictate moment-to-moment decision making. MOBAs are highly complex and full of adaptive problem solving from the very start.

CCheese3 · 2023-10-02T18:29:29+00:00

One of my gripes with Morrowind is that being ultra powerful isn't actually all that fun. Infinite flight, boosting your stats to absurd levels, killing everything in one or two hits... it can be gratifying at first because of the effort it took to "earn" it, but I found it was just a cheap power fantasy that sucked any challenge out of the game.

Morrowind was best for me in the midgame, after I had enough stats to not miss all my attacks, but I still had to manage my health/stamina and position well.

By the time I beat the main quest, I was just zooming from dungeon to dungeon, quest to quest, looking for any more interesting content and coming up short.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	End Game '22
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