1. Being careful and observant is important, I can’t speak further without an actual example
2. Fair, I feel like the upgrade is a little late for how important it is
3. What, waiting a day? The game wants you to have plans and threads at all timescales.
4. Presumably you didn’t click on it when it was relevant, but it’s well established that constellations aren’t “active” until you do so
5. Yeah that was my least favorite part of the Gallery but I understand the wordplay
6. There’s information in-game and it rewards experimentation
7. What’s wrong with Door Boss Rush? Or were you dissatisfied with the ending? (I consider those puzzle boxes the “ending” and everything after as post-game, as they represent the end of a narrative arc and directly confront your experience as the player)
8. Yeah that’s the finicky late-game thing I was referring to
9. Red herrings are an important part of a good puzzle, they make you actually have to think instead of assuming everything you see is equally important. And they flesh out the setting.

Disco Elysium is one of the only games that I restarted immediately after finishing too. Really fascinating stuff and I had to see it from other angles.

Frankly I got very bored with it and did not finish. Maybe it’s because I’ve never felt “existential dread” or maybe it’s because I had already run into and come to terms with the Teletransportation paradox as a thought experiment so the concept wasn’t new, but the horror completely missed me so all I had was the walking around and getting increasingly frustrated at the character’s ignorance. I looked up the plot synopsis after I had enough and it’s just… yep.

When the only way to progress the level is to commit a war crime, and then I’m supposed to feel bad about it as if there was an alternative, it just sucks.

This feels a lot like saying “books can’t have an emotional impact, you just read the words in the order they were written”.

GunZ: the Duel Carpal Tunnel Destroyer

Also, Titanfall was pretty intense and really rewarded movement mastery.

What does 3 bring to the table that sets it apart so much? I played a bunch of the first one but only dabbled in 2 then fell away into other games.

I don’t feel like any of my 120+ hours were wasted time. I personally didn’t much like the Gallery and a couple of the late-game puzzles are finicky/hinted poorly (the

in particular) but nothing I would call a “terrible solution”. As a spiritual successor to Christopher Manson’s Maze it’s very effective.

Birding! Cornell’s “Merlin” app is free and an excellent identification/logging tool.

Try being honest.

Systemic racism might play a factor here.

Might? Centuries of being held down at every turn and prevented from accumulating generational wealth “might” be a factor in modern poverty?

Well that’s a blast from the past.

The PS4 remake modernized the experience somewhat (the PS3 remaster might have done as well) but it’s never put me off. What about them?

I love how Draw/Junction is intrinsically connected to the plot instead of simply being a gameplay conceit. But yes, it’s poorly explained and easy to break or underutilize and kinda ruin your experience.

It is weird that the enemies scale with the character levels but not the GF levels, so you can grind AP instead of XP and become overpowered (or the opposite and make the game hard as shit). I’d add “the story gets rushed in the final chapter” as a complaint. I don’t mind that it’s weird or ambiguous, Disc 4 just feels like they ran out of time (ironic). That and there isn’t any really challenging fights if you take full advantage of Card Mod and Status junctions.

Born in 91. I was “there for it”. What you’re defining here

the experience of playing Ocarina of Time in 1998 will likely never be topped, simply because we will never again see a leap as massive as the transition from 2D to 3D.

is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the reason so many people like FF7 so much. They’re good games on their own merit and historically significant but that feeling is attached to the cultural context of when they came out. It’s not a trait of the game itself.

It’s also kinda like how everyone’s favorite Pokemon game is the first one they played. It creates the baseline all others are compared against but set in an emotional foundation that later experiences cannot match. I’m not even going to claim I’m immune to this. Hell I put “Brave Fencer Musashi” on my top 5 and I stand by it, fully aware that it isn’t as magical for other people but I replay it every couple of years. I’m just saying it’s overrated in the modern context.

It’s the best puzzle game ever. Better than Myst, Portal, Monkey Island, Fez, any of them. Happy to die on that hill.

Alien Hominid is a niche pick, hello fellow ~35 year old.

OoT is a top 5 overrated game for sure. It’s a good game and I have to respect its impact on the medium but it’s status atop so many “best games of all time” lists is pure nostalgia.

A fellow FFVIII enjoyer! We never get any love.

Admittedly I never had a PSP so I’m missing a chunk of the series. Ranking just the main numbered Solid entries: 3, 1, 2, 5, 4. I’m not sure where I’d slot in Peace Walker and the Sub-versions and such. (I do know that Twin Snakes would be way down the list)

Beat Hazard is an unusual pull but I respect it. That game does very well with elaborate power metal (stuff like Rhapsody of Fire or Amon Amarth)