like sure sure you can have fun with that kind of game, I’ll confess to it too, but to me it seems to be so obviously the video game version of junk food, that people are only gobbling up because normally the only thing we get of that size is poison
we can ask for better than edgy, uncohesive pokemon, people
all your points about why it’s good are just “doesn’t do [x] incredibly predatory thing”, which, like, yeah, fine, but is the game actually good, or is it just a skinner box? every aspect of the game’s design has, to me, suggested it’s just a skinner box
most of these things just seem like things that should be basic expectations which says more about the release states of games nowadays, rather than any of these things being particularly exemplary lol
those aren’t points about why the game is good though, that’s just a list of things it doesn’t do…
like there’s a reason that’s in a separate post that is expressly and only about how I’m glad the game doesn’t do those things lmfao
exactly
excuse me for reading that as your actual argument for why the game is good considering the only cogent point you said aside from that is “game fun :) me likey”
games are supposed to be fun
I also didn’t know I had to present some argument for why a game I find fun to play is “good”
if you ask me that’s a weird thing to just assume when I’m just talking about a thing I like
if you’d like I could certainly write some words to that effect but the fact I need to make an argument here is news to me
i think it is kind of necessary when the game makes a lot of people massively uncomfortable for various reasons, and just reads like poorly designed pabble designed to placate the deadened tastes of reddit users
okay
counterpoint
have u played it
no because i have fucking seen gameplay of it and had to stop watching after about an hour of the stream becasue looking at that game made me massively uncomfortable in how quickly it violated so many conventions of game design and common decency
like yes it is objectively mashing a bunch of things that people like together
but A so is basically literally everything on some level and B there’s no part of that that means the result is automatically bad
I think we’re just conditioned to think it should be from people that do so carelessly
such as?
genuinely curious here
alternatively, we could expect originality and actual design from games instead of “oooh the numby go uppy :)”, which is the actual result of combining creature collection with survival gameplay; the worst elements of both are combined and create a viscious negative feedback loop
this is just personally, for me, but while I like the survival formula on its’ own and i like creature collection on their own, each of them does have within them the tendency to devolve into an empty skinner box, dragging us by our dopamine emitters as the numbers go up. combining the two genres basically inevitably makes the game take on the worst habits of both
personally I would instead view it as combining the exploration aspects of an open world with the discovery aspect of a creature collector
because throwing those two things together effectively is what really drives the core of my enjoyment, personally
the world is super engaging to explore because there’s new things around every corner, be it sick landscapes or really awesome-looking new creatures I can maybe even catch
okay but the pokemon the pals are ripping off look better
you know this right
like a number of them have made me go “WOAH THAT LOOKS SO COOL” out loud upon seeing them in the wild for the first time
which is honestly a pretty hard reaction to get from just terrain in an open world
some of them are (very clearly intentionally) pretty 1:1 but honestly a large amount are not
like Eikthrydeer is a great early-game example of something that doesn’t have anything from Pokemon you could realistically call a direct analogue and looks fucking awesome the first time you see it