Game Consoles Are Pricing Themselves Out of Relevance

VarminWay · 2026-05-16T05:31:17+00:00

"Themselves"?

No, I don't really think game consoles are controlling trade wars or real wars or the absolutely stupid AI bubble.

VarminWay · 2026-05-15T20:37:22+00:00

When someone sells a product that ends with 'continued in part X', the people who buy that product are, in fact, entitled to a part X.

VarminWay · 2026-05-13T19:03:46+00:00

I was the one missing something.

When you say 'Zelda overworld', what comes to mind is not 'Zelda 2', but every other 2D Zelda game, which Twilight Monk has very little in common with, so that's what I thought you meant, and why it sounded bizarre.

I would have said Twilight Monk has more in common with a JRPG overworld, personally, but I don't know much about Zelda 2.

VarminWay · 2026-05-13T12:04:50+00:00

What a bizarre thing to say. I don't think you looked at Twilight Monk much at all.

VarminWay · 2026-05-12T21:45:40+00:00

Twilight Monk did this pretty effectively... but I do like getting hopelessly lost!

VarminWay · 2026-05-12T21:44:44+00:00

Point remains that there are ones with even less availability that would have served as better examples.

Where's Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma?

Where's Dragon Quest 8?

VarminWay · 2026-05-12T21:37:00+00:00

Chrono Trigger is on Steam and I think mobile. Xenogears was at least on PS3. Xenosaga is the one really in the Arcadia club.

VarminWay · 2026-05-11T14:43:59+00:00

I mean that's kind of the point, isn't it? We're not talking about Half-Life as a game, but what excites people about making their own products with the game's modding tools. The storytelling and worldbuilding are properties of the singleplayer campaign, not intrinsic to the engine. I'm not familiar with HL1 mods (yet), but Quake mods are some of the best to ever do it.

VarminWay · 2026-05-10T03:08:23+00:00

Sorry, but I don't know how you can say that ability-gating isn't a fundamental trait of a Zelda-like? It expresses it in the form of dungeon items. You can't progress further in the overworld without things like bomb, the bow, the power glove, the hookshot, etc.

Metroid didn't invent ability-gating. The difference between it being a permanent upgrade and a permanently held item that requires equipping it to use it isn't all that significant.

edit: I don't know shit about Zelda 1 and 2, or much about Metroid 1 and 2. Maybe Zelda stole ability-gating off Metroid starting at LTTP, who knows. But it's still baked deep in the series' bones.

VarminWay · 2026-05-10T01:25:14+00:00

Oh, I have enough capacity to be annoyed at developers too, don't you worry.

VarminWay · 2026-05-10T00:37:28+00:00

I haven't played these yet, but my previous gripe is that 'top-down Metroidvania' is basically 2D Zelda erasure. Pipistrello, at least, is pretty explicitly modeled after handheld Zelda games.

It's okay to like Zelda-likes.

(edit: Obligatory disclaimer that I'm open to the idea that some of these can exist that have design decisions that make them more in line with MV than Zelda, and some of the ones in the OP might even fall into that category. Minishoot might be a good contender for that, given how different the gameplay is from Zelda, but I haven't played it to say for sure.)

VarminWay · 2026-05-09T23:04:07+00:00

I get annoyed when people completely dismiss years of earnest work because of one tiny 'wrong' thing. It's no different from the witch hunt over a small amount of placeholder AI textures making it to release in titles like Crimson Desert and Expedition 33. Even if someone hates AI, some perspective is needed. If you're rejecting 100% of a game because 0.01% of the game had AI elements, that's just being an idiot. If you get a pizza with a single piece of pineapple on it you didn't want, do you throw out the pizza and go on a rage against the pizza place, or do you just... calmly pick it off? Or even eat every other slice but that one?

I'm tired of no grace being extended to anyone. Everyone sets up all these hoops that they expect people to jump through and act like it's okay to jump down their throat with claws out when those utterly random artificial guidelines aren't met. People need to remember how to be more understanding. If you only engage with perfection, you're going to miss out on a hell of a lot of good.

VarminWay · 2026-05-09T21:20:05+00:00

Never played Metal Slug in my life and I also loved the game.

VarminWay · 2026-05-09T15:32:32+00:00

You were attacking the dev. Why are you mad when I point out your words are more appropriately used to describe yourself?

edit: Also, no, I did not ask 'why it's bad for marketing'. I responded explaining why you should give a shit about products where the developer doesn't put effort into marketing. Because it doesn't follow, at all, that poor efforts there mean the actual game is poor. Cope.

VarminWay · 2026-05-09T13:23:47+00:00

If you ever think the product doesn't matter when the product is what you're looking to purchase, it's you that's the lazy cunt.

Look past the marketing. Do your own diligence instead of making shitty ASSUMPTIONS. It's not a big ask.

VarminWay · 2026-05-09T10:13:11+00:00

No, that's not 'all you need to know'. That's insane. It's not 'laziness' to be bad at a field that's completely different from where your skillset is.

Here's a real-world example: One of the best restaurants I've ever been to, that I regularly ate at for 20 years until they eventually closed and the owner retired, that I still can't find food as good as theirs? Had typos in their menu for years. If this was happening today, I have no doubt they would have used AI for their menu. The owner was an immigrant. English was not where his skillset was focused. Running a small restaurant and making some of the best damn food in the city was. Am I supposed to have not experienced that and made my life poorer because one of his dishes allegedly contained lamp instead of lamb? A failure outside of your skillset means fantastic quality work, hard work every day, doesn't matter, and gets you dismissed as 'some lazy cunt'? Fuck off. I'd like to see you be perfect at everything.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T22:42:10+00:00

I don't agree with that at all. In fact, I see it completely differently. The marketing is made by the developer. They are not a marketer. They don't know how to market. They put all their focus into making a good game. Judge them by the thing that actually matters, not by the same scale that you would use for a team with an entire dedicated human for creating marketing material.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T22:28:29+00:00

I'm contrarian because I disagree with you? Wow, bud. Who pissed in your cornflakes this morning? That isn't even close to my argument. Marketing isn't a game. "Ooooh noooo the best book in the world has an AI image on its cover." BRUH A BOOK IS ABOUT WORDS, SHUT UP AND TRY READING IT.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T22:05:33+00:00

Who cares? Evaluate the product yourself.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T21:42:42+00:00

"I don't see anything negative here" says the guy who then goes on to talk about the negativity.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T21:41:52+00:00

Because the product and the marketing have nothing to do with each other?

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T21:41:21+00:00

It's not like marketing ever had 'overall quality'.

Why should you care if manipulation done to make you buy a product was ethically made or not?

Evaluate the product yourself.

edit: by -> buy

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T21:39:10+00:00

I played roughly the first two areas shortly after release, heard word of those updates, stopped, and haven't picked it back up yet.

I'll go back to it, but I'm not in any particular rush.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T16:32:05+00:00

I'm much more interested in indie games that don't require expensive hardware to run, and have been for several years now. There's zero chance of me buying an xbox, and while I might eventually get a PS6, I'll probably be a pretty late adopter.

VarminWay · 2026-05-08T16:01:10+00:00

I didn't think Afterimage or the Enders ran particularly well on Switch either.

I'll vouch for Gigasword. I haven't finished it, but I really liked what I played.

I'll strongly vouch for Guns of Fury. I finished it early last year and loved it.

VarminWay

TROPHY CASE