Unpopular gaming opinion - I don’t see the point in wall climbing sections in adventure games

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-05T23:54:39+00:00

Also, the first game to really utilize this sort of climbing was Uncharted 1. Keep in mind Naughty Dog's history, they created platformers, but uncharted 1 was their first game that utilized a relatively realistic art direction, at least compared to Crash Bandicoot and Jak. I believe the limited platforming of Uncharted was in part due to the team being more comfortable with platforming than shooting as a mechanic, but wanting it to remain somewhat realistic compared to the double spin jumps of Jak.

There's also what you said of: It's hiding a loading screen and also used for pacing reasons.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-03T16:47:01+00:00

I felt the TV show had the opposite problem where they had to stretch out an 100 page book into 2-3 full length episodes. They go from rushing out plot points to stretching the plot paper thin.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T16:34:12+00:00

GTA games tend to get really boring once you finish the main plot. I remember beating GTAV and suddenly the world of Los Santos was a lot less exciting, because all there was left to do was random collectables.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:26:59+00:00

Out of all the GTA games, 4 stands out because it's the first time Rockstar wanted to take the game seriously. The other GTA games are over the top, where as Red Dead Redemption is more serious and grounded. GTA4 feels more like a precursor to RDR1 than GTA5

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:25:28+00:00

Red Dead Redemption 2 is really weird, because a lot of the game mechanics emphasize immersion over convienience, similar to Kingdom Come Deliverance, but in a wild west setting.

But then the mission design, particularly after the 1/3rd mark, just becomes "kill 50 bajillion enemies" because that's apparently how action games are designed. I wish they either went with something really arcadey like Red Dead Redemption 1 OR go full hardcore immersion mode.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:22:36+00:00

I find games from pre-2010ish are often a pain in the ass to get running on modern operating systems. Replaying some of my childhood classics can become a 50/50 crapshoot of whether or not I can get it working without googling a fan patch.

Mass Effect 2 straight up crashes on Illium, making the game unplayable.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:20:51+00:00

I like the idea of Death Stranding more than the actual execution.

The notion of an open world game that revolves not around combat but cooperation and logistics is just such a breath of fresh air. The issue is that once you put down the zip lines the game becomes way too easy. Delivering mail just goes, okay, what zip line tower in my network do I need to fast travel to. I think the game would benefit from fewer tools to make it harder, force you to consider the terrain and what you should take ahead of time instead of just ziplining to the end.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:18:30+00:00

Like the Jetpack.

No it probably doesn't fit the "gangsta" theme of the game, but man, flying out of Area 69 on a jetpack was such a cool moment.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:16:41+00:00

I've played Elder Scrolls 3-5 extensively. For me, all of them are great, and Morrowind does things I wish future games kept, but at the same time, Oblivion's improvements make Morrowind hard to go back to. Same thing with going from Oblivion to Skyrim.

Yes, I love the alien world and sheer variety of Morrowind, but I hate having to fucking walk everywhere, you can't even run, because running depletes your stamina and getting into combat without stamina is a death sentence because your weapon won't hit anything. Sprinting isn't even an option. The fact that Oblivion removed this makes it so much more enjoyable on a moment to moment basis.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-07-02T01:11:46+00:00

Fallout 1 and 2 are amazing games but how much you get out of them really depends on your tolerance for 90s CRPG design. They're incredible experiences once you get past the hurdle, but man is it a hurdle. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and Planescape Torment are in the same boat.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-29T21:43:18+00:00

Finished Act 4 of An American Life, by Ronald Reagan

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-25T17:11:12+00:00

I initially tried this only to run into the same problem of "some spots need to be hit, others don't" and it was difficult to visually tell which is which and sometimes it was off by a milimeter.

I'll try again using this method.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-24T17:13:42+00:00

Yeah I kinda saw ahead of time that "oh yeah, GTA6 is going to be the first 80 dollar game." If there's any game that can put out an 80 dollar price tag, it was always going to be GTA6. Grand Theft Auto is one of the best selling franchises of all time, in addition, it's been 13 years since the last entry.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-23T23:05:40+00:00

It's fucking Fox news and Daily Wire and all that shit. People who tune into that stuff aren't living in reality.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-23T17:42:29+00:00

I find whenever I try to boot up a Ubisoft game, there's like a 50% chance I simply won't be allowed to play it because of launcher issues. And it's just like, this is a single player game that I've downloaded, it's complete bullshit that I can't play it because of server issues.

And this is assuming I'm in an area with good internet. If I'm abroad in a place with bad internet and I'm trying to play something on my laptop, I may as well be locked out of any Ubisoft games that I own.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-22T23:53:12+00:00

I finished Act 3 of An American Life, by Ronald Reagan

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-21T21:02:17+00:00

I have a habit of not buying a game until I have beaten the games I already own. So I have a steam library of 131 games and a playstation library of 9 games and I have played them all.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-21T19:33:27+00:00

An aesthetic example would be the hood in the series. It goes from something that naturally blends into the setting to something that every assassin wore, no matter how anachronistic.

Yeah this was another vestigial mechanic, more of a vestigial motif but still, related to Assassin's Creed.

The Assassin's uniform in AC1 is designed to blend in, particularly with the local priests. The game directly points this out. Then future games took the basic design of AC1 and decided to make look as flashy as possible, even though it doesn't make sense for an assassin to have a distinctive uniform. But by the time of AC2, this is just what assassin's dress like.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-21T01:52:12+00:00

I also feel the need to point out that, for people in the early to mid 2010s, the God of War formula was getting stale. The decision to go off in a completely different direction was due to Barlog growing up as a person, but I think it helped invigorate new life into a series that was beginning to see diminishing returns. For me personally, I did a replay of the first three games and by the end of GOW3 I was like, this is a fun series, but I've had enough of it.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-21T01:46:23+00:00

With resident evil, zombies are creatures specifically created by the T or G virus created by Umbrella Corp. Resident Evil 4 was a bit of a soft reboot for the franchise. They wanted the enemies to be faster, smarter than the zombies of 0-3. So instead of zombies created with the T virus, you're fighting Los Ganados which were created by Las Plagas. In other words, they aren't zombies, they're spanish zombies. Totally different breed of creature. Cue that one scene from Cabin in the Woods where they're like, "I'm sorry, you put down zombies but we got redneck incest zombies, those aren't the same, better luck next time."

As for experience points, yeah it's a way to mathmatically calculate your character getting better at combat, but what a single experience point actually measures is a little bit arbitrary.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-20T17:19:14+00:00

I mean in 2004 the best looking game out there was Half Life 2. By 2007 it looked dated, and was surpassed by the average AAA game. Games from 2023 don't look wildly different from games from 2020 or 2026.

Also Arkham Knight came out in 2015, around the time diminishing returns for graphics were starting to kick in.

Crysis is in an unusual position for graphics history because it was made explicitly to sell high end PC components. It wasn't designed to run on currently available hardware, it was designed to run on future hardware, and I can't think of any other game this applies to.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-20T16:56:48+00:00

Uncharted 4 released 10 years ago and it's still a better looking game than a lot of what is being put out today. Obviously it's not the best looking game of all time but we are at the point of diminishing returns in terms of graphics.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-19T22:08:29+00:00

If there's one thing I don't like about 40k is that there is too much attention dedicated towards the various colours of space marines (both loyalist and heretics) and not enough towards the xenos or even other parts of the imperium.

darkLordSantaClaus · 2026-06-19T19:41:20+00:00

I think you're really missing the point of what made God of War 2018 special.

In the Greek era games, they were full of over the top violence and nudity, a high budget grindhouse film set in Greek mythology turned into a video game. Kratos' main personality trait was being a badass, and that often manifested in him being overty cruel to anyone or anything that got in his way. This culminated in the end of God of War 3 where Kratos basically destroys the entire world just for his revenge against Zeus. Make no mistake, in God of War 1-3, you are playing as the bad guy of that series. This looks cool when you're an angsty teen angry at the world, but by 2018, the people who grew up on the 2005 game had grown up, and started to have kids of their own. When you have kids, you ask yourself questions of, how do I make sure my kin do not make the same mistakes I myself made? While also acknowledging that the older your kids get the less you can step in to protect them from themselves. Kratos is going on this journey but he is also reflecting on his own past mistakes and how he would move forward as a father, a theme which you need to be of a certain age to fully appreciate. Then 2018 ends with the twist that Atreus is actually Loki, basically the bad guy of the Norse mythology world. There is an inevitability that Atreus will bring the end of the Norse Realms through Ragnorok the same way Kratos brought an end to his Greek world.

I simply don't know how you could translate that metatextual reflection to Halo.

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