Your controversial gaming opinions?

[GamerJM]

The retro game scene is far, far too expensive. That being said, it's actually not so expensive that it's not worth it yet. A lot of those classic Nintendo games and SNES/PS1 JRPGs are genuinely worth $100+ for a secondhand copy. I make decent money and have basically no financial obligations so my perspective here is skewed, but I don't feel like it's a waste of money to pay someone 200$ for used Pokemon games or Lufia 2 or whatever because those games are endlessly more fun to me than basically everything else being released right now.

 

[TheGamingNewsGuy]

A lot of female King of Fighters designs are straight up bad and pandering. Isla is a fantastic character design though.

 

[Nameless]

Falling hard for Cruelty Squad and Boneworks recently reinforced the fact that I love games that don't give a blue fuck about me - all art really. Works that are uncompromising & unwavering in their vision, audience be damned. Don't pander to me or hold my hand - certainly don't hold the work back on my account. Grab me by the throat and shove me into flames.

 

[cognizant]

A lot of female King of Fighters designs are straight up bad and pandering. Isla is a fantastic character design though.

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I love the design of Isla....except for the floating hands which ruin it. Just get rid of them and she'd be perfect.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

Given the technical issues that Elden Ring has, the scores seem absoluely absurd.

I know a game can surpass technical issues but... it just makes me think there was a "the patch will fix this" mentality from publishers for reviewers.

 

[nextgeneration]

Given the technical issues that Elden Ring has, the scores seem absoluely absurd.

I know a game can surpass technical issues but... it just makes me think there was a "the patch will fix this" mentality from publishers for reviewers.

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I don't see this ever happening, but this is what I hope some reviewers do in the future. For titles that have problematic, technical issues (like Elden Ring), at the very beginning of the review, they should state that this title has various technical issues that may impact your enjoyment of the game. State that as the very first thing in the review, so the consumer knows right away that maybe, just maybe they should off on purchasing the game.

 

[liquiddragon]

Lightning Returns is one of the best Final Fantasy games :D

 

[Triggerhappytel]

My son has recently started replaying Monster Hunter World, and I think I hate this game. Everything about it just feels clunky and unintuitive, and I really hate the UI. It's a shame because I like the premise and I think the presentation is mostly fantastic, but actually playing it and finding my way around and selecting the next mission and all this important stuff just feels super fucking oblique.

I bounced off it when I bought it a few years ago, but now he's asking for help with doing certain things and it just made me irrationally hate everything about this game because I really think it's poorly designed.

 

[OtterX]

All right, time for some hot takes, wear gloves before reading.

As a filthy casual returning to fighting games after a long absence, I've binged a bunch in the last year or two, and I have a take about the King of Fighters series, which is about to have a new entry soon.

I've seen a lot of people, new to fighting games, over the years ask if KOF is a good entry to get into. Almost always people say yes and defend KOF's reputation.

"Is KOF easy to get into if I'm new to fighting games?"

KOF 13: "Definitely, this is the easiest one yet."
KOF 14: "Definitely, this is the easiest one yet."
KOF 15: "Ok, but for real this time. This is the easiest one yet. I swear."

My hot take is that this enticement of newcomers is wrong. KOF is not a game to entice people into the genre, it is liable to scare them off. KOF is a game for people who already love the genre and want to take things to the next level.

In KOF you have to learn to play 3 characters. I got into KOF14 in the last two years of its lifespan, but I cannot find a single match for Single Versus mode. People just don't play it. The series is famous for its team management after all. Before you retort "the game is dead, what do you expect?". Actually, finding Team matches was no issue at all, even right now as XV is about to release, people are still playing XIV (on PS anyway). But not Single Versus mode.

As a result, I couldn't really practice against real people, and I didn't really feel comfortable jumping into Team Versus, as I still haven't learned how to play 1 character adeptly yet, let alone 3. KOF requires a hefty time commitment from the player, you can't play other games at the same time. Learning the ins and outs of 3 players (who don't have move parity like Samurai Shodown) is akin to homework.

The second reason I wouldn't recommend KOF to newcomers is that it has the hardest inputs of any series I've played to date. A strong emphasis on swooping circular motions over buttons, that are a nightmare on pad. Very tight windows too.

---

Speaking of which, here's my second scorching hot take of this post: I've seen a lot of comments online from people who say that fighting games are designed for pads because over the years games of this genre have adapted to controllers.

Bullshit, I heartily say. Fighting games did not adapt to controllers. Controllers have adapted to fighting games. The likes of Hori, Madcatz and Razer have literally created new styles of controllers to provide for fighting game fans, and how do you think these fightpads are designed? What does the layout of these devices resemble?

Fightsticks! Hilarious.

Anyway, I'm not saying fighting games are impossible on controllers, but to loop back round to KOF, I think that game in particular (perhaps most SNK games) is definitely more comfortable on a stick than a dpad. Dpads feel like an afterthought to console makers in this day and age, which is really unfortunate. They should be comprised of separate buttons, not all attached to a cheap bit of plastic. Razer Raion's didn't even have a pivot, and apparently the new Hori OCTA is subpar too.

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FWIW I've been playing a lot of KOF 13 lately and it's perfect on the Series X dpad. It's a great dpad for all fighting games I've tried. Im hitting combos and specials I've never hit before on a consistent basis.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

We don't need 50 different Elden Ring threads. Stop making new ones.

 

[Aloy38]

We don't need 50 different Elden Ring threads. Stop making new ones.

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Yep, it's getting a bit ridiculous now.

 

[Genesius]

I think perspective on Elden Ring will cool off considerably in a year or so.

They did some good things with the open world formula, but I think it took a hammer to their particular design strengths.

There are a lot of repeat mini-bosses in the game, the cookie-cutter imp catacomb assets, the bosses aren't particularly memorable or iconic, stuff like that. Most notably, the balance of the game feels very all over the place. You feel like you're stagnating in early game for forty hours and then you'll beat a boss that crosses a specific story point and all of the sudden you'll feel like you're in late game.

The combat is still great and you'll *eventually* get to a point where you feel like your character is effective at doing what you've been speccing to do, but it takes a while and there were several parts where I was exhausted by galloping around desperately searching for literally anything that would push something forward. The idea of "just go somewhere else" is a nice one in theory, but it can also lead to a LOT of unintentionally dropped quests or obfuscation about what's actually important.

There are moments where you get some classic level design and will be like "yes, this is why I'm here" but the very few highs I've experienced are getting muffled by the lowest lows I've had in a From game to date.

It sounds like I hate the game, and I don't. We're still talking about a Miyazaki joint and even the lows there are considerably better than the faff that a lot of other companies put out. I just think that once the heat dies down and people get more perspective, it won't get as many GOAT exclamations that it's getting now.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

I think perspective on Elden Ring will cool off considerably in a year or so.

They did some good things with the open world formula, but I think it took a hammer to their particular design strengths.

There are a lot of repeat mini-bosses in the game, the cookie-cutter imp catacomb assets, the bosses aren't particularly memorable or iconic, stuff like that. Most notably, the balance of the game feels very all over the place. You feel like you're stagnating in early game for forty hours and then you'll beat a boss that crosses a specific story point and all of the sudden you'll feel like you're in late game.

The combat is still great and you'll *eventually* get to a point where you feel like your character is effective at doing what you've been speccing to do, but it takes a while and there were several parts where I was exhausted by galloping around desperately searching for literally anything that would push something forward. The idea of "just go somewhere else" is a nice one in theory, but it can also lead to a LOT of unintentionally dropped quests or obfuscation about what's actually important.

There are moments where you get some classic level design and will be like "yes, this is why I'm here" but the very few highs I've experienced are getting muffled by the lowest lows I've had in a From game to date.

It sounds like I hate the game, and I don't. We're still talking about a Miyazaki joint and even the lows there are considerably better than the faff that a lot of other companies put out. I just think that once the heat dies down and people get more perspective, it won't get as many GOAT exclamations that it's getting now.

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Yeah, as someone who has put 150+ hours in since release and had to uninstall it yesterday to force myself to stop playing (so obviously I love the game), I also wonder if as many people are going to think it's the GOAT a year from now.

I think the open world, while really cool, did end up taking away some of the sense of progression that I liked in the prior games. Obviously the fact that I never got stuck in a way that I felt I had to throw myself at a boss over and over until I beat it and that was great. If I had trouble with a boss, I could just go elsewhere and come back later, which often wasn't as viable/possible in the previous games. But the other side of the coin was that I often came across bosses later, where I was obviously overleveled and it takes away a bit of the sense of satisfaction when I enter a boss arena and I watch my basic attacks take a third of its health per hit.

I don't think it would have been bad to have more content/areas gated and, I expect this to be quite controversial, I think some form of level scaling for the non-story bosses wouldn't have been a bad thing. Maybe something more like Skyrim than full-on level scaling, where each boss gets assigned a "level" at which the player is expected to encounter them and only scales a certain amount of levels over that. Say you're expected to encounter a boss at SL60, then the boss scales with you until you're SL80 or something, just to keep the challenge up a bit.

I also hear you on the repeating bosses. It kinda takes away some of the awe of encountering the story/quest bosses when you've already run into their mini-boss versions once before or maybe even multiple times.

 

[Servbot24]

I think Elden Ring is amazing so far, but it's also the one FROM game I'm never going to replay.

 

[Aurizen]

Square Enix moving away from turn-base has ruined their games.

 

[Servbot24]

Square Enix moving away from turn-base has ruined their games.

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IMO XII and XIII were the peak of FF battle systems.

 

[Aurizen]

IMO XII and XIII were the peak of FF battle systems.

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I think after X it fell from there...

 

[redflamingolingo]

Hidetaka Miyazaki is the best game director of all time.

 

[dtcm83]

1) Metal Gear Solid 3 is the ugliest (visually) of the main entries in the series...I played it once and, although the story and gameplay were great, I can't see myself going back to it due to the muted brown, grey, and green colors all bleeding together in most scenes. It was so messy a visual presentation it made my head hurt at times. Makes Gears of War 1 look vivid and colorful in comparison.

2) Horizon: Forbidden West is in an unacceptable state for a AAA Sony game from a visual standpoint. I am so frustrated with the image quality and performance that I might stop playing it until an eventual PC version hits or until a patch hits that cleans up the PS5 image quality. 30fps mode is a stuttering/blurry mess any time you move the camera (I've tried playing in this mode for a solid hour to see if I can adjust; I can't) and performance mode is so soft it feels like the game is often rendering at sub-1080p resolution. Just feels like both visual options at the moment are such a mess I simply can't focus on the game and enjoy it, which makes me feel simultaneously snobby and justified in potentially shelving it until things change or a PC version releases.

 

[Servbot24]

Hidetaka Miyazaki is the best game director of all time.

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I don't know if this is true... but I don't think it's a crazy thing to say at all.

Some people overreact if you say that a modern developer is the best of all time. But Miyazaki genuinely deserves to be in that conversation. He has made several games in a row, very efficiently, that could all be very high on "Best Game Ever" lists.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

)2 Horizon: Forbidden West is in an unacceptable state for a AAA Sony game from a visual standpoint. I am so frustrated with the image quality and performance that I might stop playing it until an eventual PC version hits or until a patch hits that cleans up the PS5 image quality. 30fps mode is a stuttering/blurry mess any time you move the camera (I've tried playing in this mode for a solid hour to see if I can adjust; I can't) and performance mode is so soft it feels like the game is often rendering at sub-1080p resolution. Just feels like both visual options at the moment are such a mess I simply can't focus on the game and enjoy it, which makes me feel simultaneously snobby and justified in potentially shelving it until things change or a PC version releases.

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Completely agree. I'm very unhappy with both visual modes.

And it truly is a controversial opinion on Era, akin to heresy, depending on who sees it. I got shat on hard for voicing my disappointment with the visual problems last week.

 

[Linus815]

the combat in stranger of paradise is more enjoyable than the combat in elden ring

 

[Skoje]

I think after X it fell from there...

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I would say X-2

 

[Puru]

Elden ring is the prime example of game i feel would be better with no leveling. The character building is not interesting at the end of the day and only serves as a way to restrict you from playing around with all the tools gives you, even taking in account the ability to respec. Spam vigor and mind, sprinkle some endurance, get your prereq gear stats and pump them up later, they are actually the least important stat in the game cause most of your damage will come from weapon upgrades anyways. I don't feel like i'd ever replay the game and beeline toward every items or spells i now know would actually fit my character. And really you wouldn't be exploring much at all in this case.
It's especially bad in this open world design because you just know 90% of the dungeons you will visit will reward you with spells, weapons or talisman that will never fit your character build. It also kinda impede your progression because some areas are clearly meant for you to be at a certain level threshold, be it through gear upgrades or vigor thresholds to avoid one shots as much as possible. And if you persist in going there first then you'll be overleveled and completely stop previous areas. Personally i get even less satisfaction from this.
I dunno, i know i'm the extreme minority at this point but i see no net positive in any of this. It's not interesting, it's not deep, it actually restricts you from truly making your own character and the build diversity of the game as a whole. I don't get it.

 

[dskzero]

Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel must be one of the most highly scrutinized IPs I can remember. In some people's minds, Guerrilla needs to shoot for the moon in all aspects because making a good game is not enough. If only people were that demanding and picky with other games...🙄

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I will present you :

DESTINY

 

[nextgeneration]

I think perspective on Elden Ring will cool off considerably in a year or so.

They did some good things with the open world formula, but I think it took a hammer to their particular design strengths.

There are a lot of repeat mini-bosses in the game, the cookie-cutter imp catacomb assets, the bosses aren't particularly memorable or iconic, stuff like that. Most notably, the balance of the game feels very all over the place. You feel like you're stagnating in early game for forty hours and then you'll beat a boss that crosses a specific story point and all of the sudden you'll feel like you're in late game.

The combat is still great and you'll *eventually* get to a point where you feel like your character is effective at doing what you've been speccing to do, but it takes a while and there were several parts where I was exhausted by galloping around desperately searching for literally anything that would push something forward. The idea of "just go somewhere else" is a nice one in theory, but it can also lead to a LOT of unintentionally dropped quests or obfuscation about what's actually important.

There are moments where you get some classic level design and will be like "yes, this is why I'm here" but the very few highs I've experienced are getting muffled by the lowest lows I've had in a From game to date.

It sounds like I hate the game, and I don't. We're still talking about a Miyazaki joint and even the lows there are considerably better than the faff that a lot of other companies put out. I just think that once the heat dies down and people get more perspective, it won't get as many GOAT exclamations that it's getting now.

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Yeah, I'm curious to see if opinions may change on Elden Ring a year or several years from now. I've put in 100+ hrs into the game so far, and while it's a good game, I don't think it's a GOAT game. I wouldn't even put Elden Ring in my top 50 best games of all time list. If/when FromSoft makes another Souls game after Elden Ring, I personally would love to see them going back to it being a non-open world game.

 

[Phendrift]

I think perspective on Elden Ring will cool off considerably in a year or so.

They did some good things with the open world formula, but I think it took a hammer to their particular design strengths.

There are a lot of repeat mini-bosses in the game, the cookie-cutter imp catacomb assets, the bosses aren't particularly memorable or iconic, stuff like that. Most notably, the balance of the game feels very all over the place. You feel like you're stagnating in early game for forty hours and then you'll beat a boss that crosses a specific story point and all of the sudden you'll feel like you're in late game.

The combat is still great and you'll *eventually* get to a point where you feel like your character is effective at doing what you've been speccing to do, but it takes a while and there were several parts where I was exhausted by galloping around desperately searching for literally anything that would push something forward. The idea of "just go somewhere else" is a nice one in theory, but it can also lead to a LOT of unintentionally dropped quests or obfuscation about what's actually important.

There are moments where you get some classic level design and will be like "yes, this is why I'm here" but the very few highs I've experienced are getting muffled by the lowest lows I've had in a From game to date.

It sounds like I hate the game, and I don't. We're still talking about a Miyazaki joint and even the lows there are considerably better than the faff that a lot of other companies put out. I just think that once the heat dies down and people get more perspective, it won't get as many GOAT exclamations that it's getting now.

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I *kind* of agree. I don't think the game will become less acclaimed. It still pulled off amazing things. Even with the enemy reuse, the enemy variety and scope is STILL insane. It's unmatched imo, I've never played anything like it. The way it drops the handholding and encourages natural exploration has sparked industry conversations in a way I haven't seen before.

But I do think we'll see less people claiming that it is the new bar for *open world* games that top BotW in the open world aspect specifically. The traversal in BotW and world interaction still puts it above imo. Someone in another thread said everything in ER is centered around combat, and that's what makes the difference I think. There aren't many ways to interact with the world. There's also way less traversal options and I feel gated off more.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Horizon is just "yet another Ubi open world game" and I'd much rather they went back to the Killzone IP *sigh*

and for me the "robot dinosaurs" angle to it to does absolutely nothing for me; it's like the appeal of recreating a kids cartoon

 

[DyslexicAlucard]

Square Enix moving away from turn-base has ruined their games.

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I wouldn't go so far as to say it ruined their games, but I do feel having the sole focus of mainline FF titles being real-time (or thereabouts) is misguided. I think there's room for real-time combat in the series, but there was zero reason to assume turn-based combat was no longer viable. Hell, both times SE has released high-quality (but non-FF) turn-based games in the last decade -- Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller -- they were surprised by how well they sold.

Sure, some people prefer more action-based combat, and that's totally cool. They should have games for them too! But I honestly feel like SE leaving ATB-style systems behind is a big contributor to why so many people don't view the company nearly as fondly as they did during its "golden age" of the early nineties to early 2000s.

 

[Aurizen]

I would say X-2

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Yeah I can agree with that. even though it was the same models lol. ATB wasn't bad. I liked X CBT.

 

[Aaron D.]

We don't need 50 different Elden Ring threads. Stop making new ones.

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What makes me kinda sad is how Elden Ring gets dozens of new threads over the most trivial of subjects yet a breakout indie hit like Core Keeper (250K sales in the first week) can't even manage to get a single dedicated thread.

It's baffling how myopic Era seems at times.

 

[Chumunga64]

those meme GIFs sony makes for their games are so awful

 

[Solobbos]

The N64 version of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are unplayable due to their low framerate, now and when they released. Most of N64 catalogue runs so slow I have no interest in ever playing 'em again.

 

[Jetsun Mila]

What makes me kinda sad is how Elden Ring gets dozens of new threads over the most trivial of subjects yet a breakout indie hit like Core Keeper (250K sales in the first week) can't even manage to get a single dedicated thread.

It's baffling how myopic Era seems at times.

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Not surprising, the negative reactions I saw last E3 for the big conferences whenever some indies appeared only confirm that. Despite indie games are the most creative ones out there (understandable, since a huge budget means lower risks), the conferences dedicated to Indie games were like 3-6 pages or so. Considering all this it's really surprising the FROM games actually managed to get as big as they are now.

 

[SuperDevilJoe]

I've never beaten a single Super Mario Bros. game except the original, and it's mostly because I don't find them to be fun for long periods of time. Every time I try a new Mainline Mario game, I don't have see anything in it that makes me want to keep playing.

 

[Servbot24]

Horizon Zero Dawn and its sequel must be one of the most highly scrutinized IPs I can remember. In some people's minds, Guerrilla needs to shoot for the moon in all aspects because making a good game is not enough. If only people were that demanding and picky with other games...🙄

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Both games got very good reviews, warm reception from fans, and excellent sales.

 

[Plinkerton]

This isn't necessarily related to Elden Ring, but my opinion on this has developed because of recent reactions to that game...

People in this community don't seem to understand that you can like, even love, a game without shitting on other games. So much of the reaction to Elden Ring has been about how crap "Ubisoft style" open-worlds are in comparison now. Similarly, there was that one thread linking to an article someone wrote for BOTW's 5th anniversary, and all the posts we're people saying it wasn't as good as Elden Ring.

Its fine for you to like a thing, but it feels like so much of people's enjoyment of the game is explicitly tied up in it being better than other games. Its like some weird, sad version of that "its not enough that I suceed, others must fail" meme. There's this strange sense of superiority around this game, but it isn't just restricted to Elden Ring - hell a similar thing happened with BOTW and other open-world games back in 2017, and I've seen similar reactions for things like Hollow Knight and Hades.

I get that people like to cheerlead for their favourite things, but I find it weird that you would take a positive (i.e., your enjoyment of the thing) and twist it into a negative reaction (i.e., shitting on some other thing).

 

[Phendrift]

Both games got very good reviews, warm reception from fans, and excellent sales.

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Yeah, I'm not sure what about Horizon warrants way better reception. Game gets the right reception for what it is imo.

I would say conversely that not every big first party game has to be considered GOAT tier or it's "underrated"

 

[Yossarian]

What makes me kinda sad is how Elden Ring gets dozens of new threads over the most trivial of subjects yet a breakout indie hit like Core Keeper (250K sales in the first week) can't even manage to get a single dedicated thread.

It's baffling how myopic Era seems at times.

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Why not make a thread about it?

 

[Aaron D.]

Why not make a thread about it?

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I know, right?

"Be the change you want to see." and all.

I'm just not into starting new threads.

Been here since Day One and I think I've started like 2 maybe? :p

 

[Aprikurt]

So any help with this? New games aren't appearing on Protontricks. I'm only getting a couple (Fallout NV and Prince of Persia SOT) show up. I want to fix Batman Asylum/Lego LOTR but can't :(

 

[Yossarian]

I know, right?

"Be the change you want to see." and all.

I'm just not into starting new threads.

Been here since Day One and I think I've started like 2 maybe? :p

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Fair enough. I've done a couple but… they're hard work. Game looks cool tho.

 

[Aaron D.]

Fair enough. I've done a couple but… they're hard work. Game looks cool tho.

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Yeah, I do wish I were more studious sometimes. Giving indies I'm passionate about a good shoutout.

But on the flipside I have made a dedicated effort over the past few years to review every indie I enjoy on Steam. So there's that at least.

 

[Aprikurt]

So any help with this? New games aren't appearing on Protontricks. I'm only getting a couple (Fallout NV and Prince of Persia SOT) show up. I want to fix Batman Asylum/Lego LOTR but can't :(

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D'oh, figured it out. Games were installed on SD card, which Protontricks doesn't have access to by default.

The sense of accomplishment at figuring that out is real tho.

 

[Aaron D.]

We don't need 50 different Elden Ring threads. Stop making new ones.

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LOL.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

LOL.

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Heh, I feel like it cooled down last week and now this week it started up again.

I've got 18 threads on ignore that either have to do with Elden Ring or Souls/Fromsoft.

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

Playing GTA V on the Series X and I love the Euphoria animations in Rockstar games and I'm willing to accept any sacrifices to character control it takes to keep them.

 

[Tophat Jones]

.

 

[ethanradd]

VR is already dead, but, and yes there's a but, it will resurrect in 15~30 years.

 

[Porcine prophet]

Destiny and BR's did more harm to the gaming landscape than they benefited it (given the success of there designs whether they deserved that success or not)