Dyskolos

Considering steam had it at “overwhelmingly negative” reviews a while after release… It’s maybe somewhere between 😁

Indeed. This sounded much like an agenda and not like science.

Yes! Especially “measures of a man”. Peak writing. If not the best episode of them all.

Yeah exactly…and it was - who would’ve thought - 1.5x the content. At best. Just stretched to fill the land. Everyone thought (and still seems to think) that size is everything in an open world. Only procedural games like No mans sky beat this with even less soul. While being technically fascinating, they’re ultimately boring once you’ve seen all the “ingredients”.

Good point about the travel in KCD. And yes, i actually found the battle in KC1 extremely unsatisfying. KC2 had it a bit better. But still, my patience grew thin over the last decade, i must admit :-) For me, personally, that skills-approach doesn’t went well with an RPG. Skills belongs to things like Destiny(2) (which i love btw), but in an RPG it should be about the character I’m playing, not ME. As it’s literally in the name RPG :) But no complaints, I love everything that is not US-centric for a change and KC totally wasn’t.

Totally agreeing with you on the map-size-topic. I really hate the bigger-and-bigger-trend that usually (logically?) comes with less and less value. Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!” (or whatever, but THAT was the leading argument) And G3 was “EVEN BIGGER!” …and what was it? more walking, less exploring, less interesting stuff, just large plains of nothingness filled with filler-mobs. Nonetheless G2 was absolutely great, and had a fucking great Addon (when addons actually were like 1/3rd more of the base game, not just cut content resold as “DLCs”). G3 was …good.

Also questing in G1 was really great. And actually felt absolutely fitting. Not some “kill a dragon” shit but “go clean the toilet you piece of shit”. Or “steal this”, then you steal it, and they give you a beating not a reward :-) You really work your way up. Every weapon-, armor- or skill-upgrade REALLY mattered and changed everything. Back then it also had a fantastic unexpected gimmick in it (which now is removed due to licenses): Suddenly in act 2, a famous midage-band had a “live-concert”. Back then it was one of my favourite bands and suddenly they perform in game…that was a chin-dropper :) And it was one of the (or the?) first game(s) that had NPCs do have an actual job/routine. They ate, drink, pee, work, sleep. Ah you see, I could go on and on …

Skyrim was very vast, but at least they really tried to fill it meaningful. Most of it. So exploring mostly paid off. But without mods it was just okay-ish anyway. But it’s THE game that got the greatest mod-community there ever was (and sadly probably will be). Last time i spent like hundreds of hours modding until i ended up with like 2000 mods, kid you not. Didn’t actually PLAY for half as long :-) BG3 was also incredibly good. Very memorable!

Oh right! I forgot about the wc3 mod which spawned a genre. So yeah, another example.

Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow. It even managed to be realistically boring most trips. Not in the sense of “omg this is how I’m gonna die” but more like “this is a forest. And that’s about it”. If that makes sense? It also felt artificially hard, like the souls-games. Hard for the sake of being hard. Maybe I’m just getting too old but it didn’t really click with me. Sadly so, will try again though.

The oblivion remake really deserved the label. I expected some new ai-upscaled textured slapped on the old shit, but no. Completely redone from the ground. The hate it gets mostly stems from the modding-community (which actually kept those games afloat. Without mods they’d all be long gone to, well, oblivion). Same with skyrim. Another new base to re-make eeeeeeverything. Fragmenting the modders AGAIN. Despite that, if you never played oblivion and don’t wanna fiddle with mods, there’d be no reason to use the old one.

Remakes are hard to do anyway. Either you fuck up or you can never meet nostalgia. Also you get cussed at for doing nothing new OR for doing something new. Gothic new could be super awesome but would never ever be Gothic again. Like playing half-life today. It’s never the same, no matter how great it is. But a great remake at least gets the franchise floating again due to younger people who can enjoy it the same. Maybe.

As for time I am probably more blessed, I game at least 5hrs a day since the Atari 2600. Besides my servers, smart-home and wifey my great passion 😁

But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial. If even. It’s just not empty wasteland. Every step has an importance and no hand holding. You learned where not to go by dying 😁 By today’s standards that map-size would not fly. But it was nore than enough. Still is. It respects your time. Quick save and exit anytime and continue exactly there. How it should be.

As if I’d care about some murican’s opinion 😁 Now go back to work/school.

True. If you weren’t knees deep into the scene it all went by unnoticed unless it went nuclear.

Lol. OK that is amongst the funnier things. But could’ve been. Counterstrike was once just a nod/gamemmode too.

If you’re not into RPG or not German,Polish or Russian (that seems to be only still active people who keep the original alive to this day) you might’ve missed it. It was a revelation like half-life back in the day. For once not USA-centric, it used a fitting harsh language (can only speak for the original german VO) for an original idea. You’re no superhero but just a regular are able to maybe lift a stick and kick a bug 😁 Small world but every item counted, blahblah I could go on for hours :-) With all modern updates and fanworks it still works and better than ever. Remake not sucking has low probability though. Expectations are most likely impossible to fulfill even if they do a true remake with no bullshit.

Luckily, as being no die-hard rts-fan, this went by me (or I just forgot…). But it sounds bad. My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”. After all those many many years it really gets one.

Of course I don’t remember every flop. But also not every success. But if just checking AAA releases of the last 5 yrs, I could name a loooot of games with >40% bad reviews. It might still be a financial success though, and this is what sadly really counts. Especially established franchises usually just go down, in tendency. If something releases a part 4, my expectations are already at zero. The louder the hype, the worse the product.

I would have to think a while longer to name good games that also were hyped. Cyberpunk? Even through even that one got a lot of hate since release. All others that come to mind were Indis.

Luckily you actually already know the exact proportion of good vs bad games, and even over the last 3 decades. That is awesome.

And “never been easier”…yeah sure. Except we went from one-dude-did-it-all-in-a-week to hundreds of people working for years and spending even tons of millions of moneyz.

Nah, totally no nostalgia. I wish it would be just that and AAA was still good.

And yes, I did speak of “big money makers” AKA AAA. Also speak for yourself, but failures like e.g. duke nukem forever or even ET (on Atari) were memorable.

And? It was still awesome. Shit today is bad AND broken. Not so say it’s OK to release broken stuff. It sure ain’t.

Yes. With great regret I remember this 😔

As usual I won’t read shit about it, pirate it when it’s out. And if it doesn’t suck (no pun intended) I’ll buy. I’m fairly optimistic with this one though. The expectations surely are high, but it would be a horrible shame to fuck this great series up. Especially considering it’s kinda niche customer-base. It’s not the next multiplayer war-game or FIFA.

Sure. But there was a time where even AAA didn’t suck so much. Where a failure was memorable. Now the ones that are great are memorable. And I’m gaming since the Atari 2600. The amount of re-iterated boring crap, filled with micro-transactions, pre-order and ultra-mega-deluxe bundle with season pass. All that highly calculated to please the least common denominator.

Touché 😁

Please

Don’t

Suck

Like most major releases the past decade.

Haha I remember that time too well. Luckily I had a CC and I bought everything on the net back then and was so fascinated by it. Typing a number in and getting stuff. I ordered crap from the other side of the world, it was incredible. Yes, porn included. How could one resist that temptation back then, I was 12 or so 😁