Elden Ring is a truly ambitious game, but its lack of focus and inconsistent pacing bogs down the experience.
Some of the best PS5 games are exclusives like God of War Ragnarok and Astro Bot, but there are some indie highlights as well.
These are the best Easter eggs in video games—from Atari to Elden Ring. Hidden secrets, surprises, and scandals await.
Saving some trapped aliens in Super Metroid and seeing them escape. Daisy's third eye in Melee. Seeing Mario characters portraits in a window at Hyrule castle. Megaman X using Ryu/Ken's movesets in mutiple entries. Bayonetta cosplaying as Fox McCloud while using an Arwing to kill angels and demons. So many good ones throughout the years.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Halfway into the decade and the 2020s has been an interesting one for gaming in both good ways and bad, with the restructuring of the industry, a mix of innovation and the same old, and of course many, many long waits. But there have also been many quality titles, to be sure; the last three years in particular have seen a number of critical darlings. Something the most acclaimed ones have had in common (with the obvious exception of Astro Bot) has been an absolutely massive scope, easily boasting 100+ hours of content.
In my own experience that massive amount of content hasn’t always been a positive; in fact I would go so far as to call their slightly overeager strive for quantity a shared flaw of these games. I’ll be looking at four titles in particular here and going over the different ways in which these otherwise solid experiences became victims of having just a bit too much fluff."
To much unimportant content and bloat is mote likely to cause me to stop playing or never revisit it. Especially when it feels like you're forcing the player to do side quests to pad out your game length just to make it long enough so you won't have the player trade the game in to fast
One recent example for me is Hogwarts I enjoyed the story but despised the level gating there was no real reason to lock missions behind a leveling system it was just forcing the player to fly around doing side quests and puzzles so they could advance to the next chapter
omg hogwarts
i love every second of it but damn, does it feel like a chore to play haha.
Hogwarts Legacy should have stuck to what other games couldn’t do: Let us be a Hogwarts student. The open world aspect was just like any Ubisoft game.
Honestly wish it had more of a Bully feel. It was clear that 90% of the attention went to the school and town and the rest felt like the northern chunk of Just Cause 3's map. Almost like they had to justify the flying mechanic by spreading things out.
Yeah agree the Hogwarts castle and grounds is ripe for exploration. Look at the PS1 Argonaut game i felt like that old game did a better job with relaying what it's like to be a student at Hogwarts than what legacy did.
Legacy was like ok you've done a few classes learnt to ride a broom go spend the next multitude of hours exploring nearby towns and killing hundreds of goblins and spiders I don't think they did enough with the school grounds.
I appreciate them including Hogsmeade but I felt like it didn't need to expand past that point
Why don't we have more 12-15h single player stories for $45 is beyond me.
My guess is I recall around the late 2000s game trades were a big issue which resulted in publishers shifting away from standard single player campaigns that could be beaten in a month and we started to see more expansive open worlds that would take longer to see everything to keep the player invested long enough that they wouldn't trade in the game when it was going to be the most profitable retail window e.g the first month
With the rise of all digital games I can see those games making a comeback as there is no second hand market
Expecting a 12-15h game to be $45 is part of the problem. These games don't sell well at full price anymore and relatively speaking it takes a lot fewer resources to stretch it into a 30-40 hour game that can be sold for full price.
We can complain about padding all we want, but most people simply pay more for padded games.
Eternal Strands $48. 18 hours
Citizen Sleeper 2 $23 10 hours.
AstroBot (got as a gift) 16 hours and they keep adding levels.
Totally agree. I'm tired of the same bloated fluff that games present as 'content.'
Act 3 is massive. I think I finished the game 4 times for the platinum and I know I must have missed at least half the stuff in that city
i feel like Rebirth only really had Costa del sol as a bloat. but its a long game, so i dont blame the author
I put 150 hrs in so far & having a great time with the game. I have the final boss to tackle including about 8 more optional bosses then I'll be done with the game. The reviewer con says it doesn't really distinguish itself from previous games which I definitely agree with. To me it's basically DS4 that's now open world,one can travel with a horse & have the summons to help you fight everything else seems the same to me.
Have to say this review made many valid points. Wish the dungeons had more variety and the open world could have used more life activity other than the occasional deer, boar, goats etc. Using the same bosses later as mini bosses is lame. After fighting the cat statue for the third time it's hard not thinking about some other boss that should be there.
Elden ring is by no means perfect but it's still one of the best games to come out this year. It does more right than wrong and giving it a 7 is a bit harsh. I'd give it 8 minimum. Making it a must play for any gamer.
It is very much a continuation of dark souls with many flaws but I am having such a damn great time with it despite them. Great fun, great suffering. I'm glad it did so well for them and can't wait to see whatthey do next.
I read through it. I kind of agree with some of these points, but it's overly negative. To call horse riding "just a means of faster traversal with the addition of clunky combat" is an example. I thought the horse riding was great. The Torrent only double jump adds to the new platforming element for the series. The horseback combat was good. It's not clunky, you just can't charge and spam the attack button and expect good results, you need to time your attacks.
And to complain about having to level up your health... What kind of RPG can you get away with not leveling up your health?
This place is trying really hard here to justify giving it a 7, in my opinion.