Open-world games are becoming more and more common, but many game studios misunderstand the true appeal of the genre and end up missing the mark.
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 still think RDR2 is the best open world game but Elden Ring and BoTW is close second for me.
Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA 5, and The Witcher 3 have more interactive, dynamic worlds than Elden Ring with easier to track quests. Elden Ring open world is far from perfect. At times it’s confusing. Boss are repeated with questionable balancing and a lot of the dungeons are redundant.
Elden Ring I can see it
BotW no
Empty and lifeless should be the new standard?
Ah yes, BotW, the game that invented all genres.