Dino Crisis 1 wasn't marketed it as "survival horror"

Here are two official ads literally marketing Dino Crisis 1 as survival horror:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/2822/dino-crisis/promo/group-62394/image-787834/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/2822/dino-crisis/promo/group-62394/image-691715/

Also Signalis is great. One of the best horror games in recent years.

Well it wouldn't make senses for Main + Sides to be longer than just the main story, right? Games with a small amount of data aren't very accurate so final estimates are sorted to avoid what you are pointing out.

Ah, I see, thanks!

Well it wouldn't make senses for Main + Sides to be longer than just the main story, right?

I have been wondering about that since I noticed these times and I guess this might be indeed possible. In case of those Mega Man X games, there are optional items that expand the players life or life refil containers and other upgrades. Getting those are clearly optional, but also make the game easier. It might not be totally unreasonable to think that the detour to collect at least some of those items might be shorter than playing the whole game without any extra items.

But overall I am also not sure if this is really a wider problem that needs to be adressed.

I am a bit confused by the Mega Man X8 16-Bit times. There are apparently 4 times polled - one for main story and three for main + extras (but only two are visible in the completion tab). The main story entry is for 6h hours, while main + extras is for around 5 hours (in detail: 5h 15m, 5h). Now in the header main story has 5 hours, while main + sides is 6 hours, but shouldn't it be the other way around?

Here is a picture:


And a link:
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/157555

I really get your apprehension of this being legislated against poorly, it would definitely be par for the course for lawmakers to misunderstand a situation and then half-ass a solution that doesn't even handle the issue.

But I think the real issue here is just doing nothing at all. A half-assed solution that does "nothing" isn't entirely nothing, it finds boundaries in law where none exist right now that honestly need to be established, like "is a game actually a service or a product? and what defines that" instead of getting a million conflicting answers, one definition under law so people can move forward from there.

Doing nothing though, that's the real danger. Poor legislation is a potential, but the slow attrition of whatever rights we do have currently, being pushed by publishers is an existing and evolving reality. And not just in the gaming space I might add. I'd rather be afraid of what I know is going to happen rather than be afraid of what might happen from a myriad of potential outcomes.

The worst thing down the line really is going to be a push for subscription based libraries. The OUYA and Stadia's failure was a blessing, I honestly dread the next time this attempt comes around, where better implementation accustoms people to not even having the files on their system and everything lives with perpetual impermanence in the cloud. So many games existing at the whims of publishers and profit, available only for those free and cognizant during a brief moment in time and willing to experience it. It's so ridiculous that it even has to be considered that way.

But I think the real issue here is just doing nothing at all. A half-assed solution that does "nothing" isn't entirely nothing

But mate, my problem is not that there will come "nothing" out of this and the major problems will be left unsolved. My concern ist that we might actually shoot ourself majorly in the foot, as some people might not know what they are actually doing, while the rest is sitting on the side line and cheering sunny phrases that makes them feel good. Because again, if we demand offline modes for every game, how would we ensure that Europeans aren't simply blocked out if develpers and publisher aren't willing or even not able to implement such an offline mode? I still haven't seen any answer to that problem, because as previously seen it's apparently more important to point out that some streamer who posted a video eleven month ago is seemingly mean, a liar and has ties to Blizzard (last part is evidently a lie).

Anyway, I also don't believe that doing nothing is the worse thing, because this initiative went for a whole year. And this was the easy part. If they screw this up and this simply just fails in the end, then this will be a major time lost. Worse, it will make it harder to have this conversation again in the future, wasting more time. Measure twice and cut once, but I don't have any trust in this movement to be able to handle this properly.

Because I wanted to explain why the number of signatures had stagnated (until last week)

And because you reacted so strongly and passionately defended the streamer in question, I looked it up more.
What I found was not in favor of this streamer. Personal attacks aimed at the founder of this initiative (why?). Spreading false information. I also watched a few videos of the founder. As far as I saw, he never attacked the streamer personally. He himself offered to have an open discussion. But the streamer declined.

Today I came across this video on youtube. Nice explanation of how it all can work, such as using API adapters for online games. The community can be very creative. At least when they are not held back as in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txrp2whwnmE

This is the last time I reacted to the dramatic situation because the focus must remain on the initiative.
Just before reaching 1 million signatures, the EU site went down. You could almost think of a conspiracy...

Because I wanted to explain why the number of signatures had stagnated (until last week)

And this is the absolut ridiculous part of this movement. A guy made a video 11 month ago (!) and you people still blame him to single handedly halt this entire movement. Even though he might not have any reach in Europe. I get it, it is way easier to engange in drama and to have a scapegoat ready to blame, instead to actually sit down and retroactively think about what went wrong and what could have been done better. And instead of answering any of my questions how this is supposed to work out in detail, you are doubling down and engage in more gossip. Let me also point out that you don't post a single source to any of your claims about that streamer and I personally don't believe in some random bs I see on the internet.

Especially when

What I found was not in favor of this streamer. [...] Spreading false information.

Which you also literally did in your first posting, fourth sentence.

All of this adds why I can't support this initiative.

Well, anyway, the good news is the petition has apparently reached one million peeps. The bad news is, if this will fail there won't be anyone to blame.

While I disagree with Le Don's concerns about the streamer in question as I think any drama about him shouldn't be impacting something like this, I do have to agree with his concerns about the way law makers take action and how it could negatively impact us in the EU as it's very plausible to end up like that.

Despite that I'm still willing to sign this petition, hopefully this can help the gaming industry and the consumers.

While I disagree with Le Don's concerns about the streamer in question as I think any drama about him shouldn't be impacting something like this

Just to clear this up, my concern is not that there is some drama, which itself I couldn't care less about. My concern is how this drama is being handled (by spreading lies, misinformation and stirring up more drama) and if this is any indication how this initiative will be handled, then this has the potential to hugely backfire on us.

If you paid for a game you should be able to play it for the rest of your life. That's the essence of the matter.

The drama created on social media, by streamers and the people who respond to it should be of no concern.
But I see that it unfortunately influences people not to sign in the end, as you also indicate.

An example is 'Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes'.
The original version on steams got an update that made it as good as unplayable. Then it was removed and a new version came 'Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes - Definitive Edition'.
People were downed to buy it again. We should not tolerate such practices.

The same with games that are originally only playable online. The developer/publisher has every right to stop supporting a game. But then there must be a possibility that people can continue playing the game in an offline mode.

Especially in a time where digital gaming is increasingly being forced upon us, it is important that the consumer is protected.
For that reason, it is important to sign this EU initiative.

In the meantime the UK has reached its threshold and we are only 73,000 votes away from the EU threshold :)

@ OldiesGoldiesGoodies:
Yea, nah, mate, the admins are totally on the case to ensure that every discussion is free from lies, because I could totally be lying about my nativity, because... profit, I guess :>?

@ Olympic:

The drama created on social media, by streamers and the people who respond to it should be of no concern.

If it's of no concern, why did you bring this up in the first place? I am genuily puzzled how "Here is some streamer drama about a guy I don't even know about" is supposed to make people sign a petition.

But let's get back to the petition itself. You mention Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and you say that it is as good as unplayable. I can't comment on the state of the game, but you are implying that it is still playable and checking the current player base on steamcharts.com I see that the average number of players per month is at 10 to 20 people, while the average number of the definitive version is also at around 20 players (a bit higher which is to be suspected with a newer version). So that means that the game is de facto still playable and being played. That means the initiative wouldn't change anything about this. An initiative making games playable for a lifetime doesn't prevent cases in which games might be playable badly for a lifetime.

Now you want offline modes for games that are only playable online. But how exactly is that supposed to look like? What about games that are just designed to be playable online like mmo's or online shooters? The online component is the crucial element of those games. In a shooter like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch you can surely have the player walking around in empty maps, but that wouldn't reflect the original game and game preservation would fail. People still wouldn't be able to play TF2 or Overwatch, they would walk around in empty maps. That means the developers are basically forced to make at least some bots or some other form of offline mode, which has to be made. But instead of having to do that, they can also just refuse to sell their game in the EU (as we saw Sony straight up removing Helldivers 2 in some countries), so we have all EU players being blocked off. How do we prevent that? This is also if their budget allows to have a choice in this matter, because smaller developers might just not be able to implement some form of offline mode for their online-only mmorpg. So the EU would also have to ban all those games.

I get what this initiative is about. "Paid games should stay playable" and "Protecting the consumer" sounds good on paper and there might be cases in which developers used scummy practices. But what I still don't see is a detailed plan how we are actually suppoed to get there without creating new problems and to actually solve the issues we originally had.

Don't know much about System Shock other than it's made by some of the same people that made BioShock. I have the enhanced edition so I'll try to get into it sometime this month.

I looked into this via the credits on mobygames.com and the overlap is not as big as you might think. There were only three employees who worked on both games, which were Dorian Hart as a designer on both games, Robb Waters as an artist to become concept artist and do additional UI support and Sara Verrilli, who did QA and became assistant lead. But there is certainly a bigger history between both games, as many employees who worked at Looking Glass Studios on games like System Shock and Thief joined Irrational Games to work on System Shock 2. It looks most of them weren't around anymore for Bioshock a few years later - actually, between System Shock 2 and Bioshock were 9 years, which is a long time. And of course, System Shock was the first game with the famous 0451 code and its variations, which were later used in Bioshock and so on.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, System Shock is a great game and you guys should play it. It certainly shows its age (which is kinda impossible not to at this point), but it's really interesting how much there is in this game, that is still kinda relevant like audio logs (see Bioshock) and some examples of environmental story telling. It's also interesting how distinct each floor is and how this is basically a sci fy dungeon crawler.

An interesting companion piece (or rather after game) to play is Ultima Underworld, which is kind of a developmental precursor. That game already had conversations with npc's and dynamic lightning.

I don't know if it has been mentioned here yet, but last year an initiative was launched in the EU to protect (online) games.
In short, they want to get legal rules when a company stops supporting a game. So that people who bought the game can still play it (in an offline mode).
The initiative was opposed by a streamer (i don't know him) with ties to Blizzard.Big surprise there....

In any case, the initiative did not yet have half a million last week. While 1 million signatures are needed.
But it's back on track and now has over 780 000 signatures! At this rate we're going to hit 1 million by the end of this month :)

Only residents of the European Union can vote. Link to the official EU site:
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
At the top right you can choose your own language (globe icon).

There is also a chance for UK residents to vote. They need 100,000 signatures by 14th July (at the time of writing there are 83,600 signatures):
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

If possible, try to make the initiative as widely known as possible. Many people have not heard of this yet.

The initiative was opposed by a streamer (i don't know him) with ties to Blizzard.Big surprise there....

This is a straight lie or at least highly misleading. The mentioned streamer is an indie developer who worked there, as is or was his father. Maybe he has still friends there, but I don't know about that. That's the amount of ties he has. But even if he would still work there, he wouldn't get a damn thing out of this. He was just an employee and not a higher up, who might profit anything if this peition fails. The bigger surprise would rather be if he would say something positive about Blizzard, as he does talk a lot of shit about that company. You would know that, if you would actually know him.

Anyway, the first time I head about this petition was a few weeks ago in his video. A few days ago I read about this petition on reddit and without exaggeration the most upvoted posts were about him and drama people were make up. When people weren't making him the scabegoat and spreading lies, they argued about what this petition is actually about, as people didn't seem to understand what the goal is or at least how to get there. One comment claimed this will lead to refunds when a game is getting shut down, which is impossible to legally bind and was also straight up false. Now I am reading again about him, instead of an actual plan how this is actually supposed to work out.

All this brings me to not signing this petition.

I am glad to be an European citizen. But not going to lie, sometimes the way things are handled are just stupid. Take for example consent management for cookies that websites nowadays are required to implement. The idea was to prevent companies to make money out of the personal data of their users. Now as a user for every webpage you visit you have to confirm the consent options for their cookies - on every damn webpage! Having recently worked for a bigger company, we also had to implement a solution for this, which was a pain in the butt. I don't want to imagine how smaller companies are dealing with this. And the worst part is, this doesn't prevent anything. You are basically forced to give consent to use some webpages and the shady companies will still sell their user information, while every other company is now forced to also implement a solution for cookie consent.

I don't trust European law makers and this movement to handle this topic properly. Because the worst thing that can happen is certainly not nothing. The worst thing that can happen is publishers and developers not releasing their games in the EU and maybe even geoblocking the users, so they don't have to deal with whatever will come out of this. The worst thing that can also happen are small indie developers not being able to make certain types of games. Those will certainly suffer more than big companies like Blizzard. Or the employees working there.

So people should definitely work together with developers to work something out that is actually useable. But one developer spoke out against this ten month ago and people are still stirring up drama and accusing him of being a Blizzard plant or something. Without even actually knowing him.

Nevermind I guess. Soulcaliber is surprisingly easy for a fighting game. I beat Arcade mode with Nightmare.



Best Possible Game: The Punisher is a game I've been wanting to play since I bought it a few months back, and I'm definitely playing this even if I don't roll it.

S: Tenchu is a game I know nothing about, but it sounds cool and I want to try it. The Evil Within looks amazing, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD is a very good game.

A: Tomb Raider and Turok are classics I've been meaning to get to. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier just sounds really good to me right now. I know it'll probably be a 7/10, but I'm craving some junk food. Thief is by the same guys who made Deus Ex so it's probably good. Turmoil looks like fun and I was happy when Epic made it free. I never got very far in Twilight Princess, but I think I'd really like it now.

B: The Captain and The Desolate Hope both have very interesting visual styles. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest is a harder version of one of the greatest games of all time (according to Metacritic) so I want to try it. I've never played a Tony Hawk game and American Wasteland is the only one I own. I kind of want to try it even though I know it's one of the weaker entries. The Outer Worlds is made by Obsidian so it's like Fallout: New Vegas in space. The only thing I know about the Saboteur is that there's a DLC that adds a strip club, but other than that I've heard good things. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon would be higher if it wasn't the Wii version. The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom's copying mechanic looks like it has a lot of ways to break the game, and I want to find them. Skyward Sword is another game I never got very far in, but it's still good.

C: I already used my handshake thing I don't know what else to put here.

D: The adventures of Dino Ricky doesn't look great. The House of the Dead 2 & 3 have limited continues which makes it pretty hard to beat them. The Hunter: Call of the Wild looks like it'll either be fun or boring, but I'm leaning more towards boring. The witness doesn't look very fun, and I'd have to play it before playing The Looker so I can fully appreciate the satire. I didn't like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, but I've heard Chaos Theory is really good so I bought Pandora Tomorrow to continue my journey through the series. I'm not expecting it to be great. I'm not a fan of Borderlands and Tiny Tina's Assault on Wonderland was originally a DLC for Borderlands 2. Turok Evolution is infamously not great.

F: Taito Legends is a collection of Arcade games, and that doesn't sound like much fun. The Legend of Zelda: tears of the Kingdom and The Elder Scrolls: Online are both just pretty long.

Worst Possible Game: The Witcher 3 is a good game, but I'd like to play 1 and 2 first. I own both physically so I can't play them right now due to my disc drive. It's also be over 100 hours for all of them so I don't want to do it anyways.

For the second time today, let's roll:



I'm gonna pass on this



The Saboteur it is! I'm looking forward to this, it sounds good.

Thief is by the same guys who made Deus Ex so it's probably good.

Just a minor correction, but Deus Ex and Thief weren't made by the same people. I was curious about this myself and checked the credits for both games. I couldn't find any overlap between both games (aside maybe some entries in the Thanks section), as many people who worked on Thief (like Ken Levigne) would later go to Irrational Games to work on games like Swat 4, System Shock 2 and the Bioshock series. But there is certainly some spiritual overlap, as both games are part of the 0451 family and kinda spawned from Ultima Underworld and System Shock. Regardless of that, I think you might still enjoy Thief.

I get where you're coming from about language differences, but since this is an English site, it's reasonable to follow standard English sorting rules. Just to clarify, I’m not suggesting we rename games like A Short Hike to Short Hike — only that they be sorted under “S” instead of “A.” This is how libraries and media lists typically handle English titles. The full title would still be shown, just reordered for sorting — for example, Short Hike, A. The syntax for this is Title Proper, Article, like Legend of Zelda, The.

I understand that you disagree, but sorting rules are based on convention, and personal disagreement doesn’t change how they’re applied. These conventions exist to make the sorting process consistent and easier for everyone, regardless of personal preferences. Disagreeing with these sorting conventions is like disagreeing with how words are spelled or how grammar rules are applied — it doesn't change the fact that these rules are standard and widely accepted.

So first off, if you reorder a title, then you are in fact also renaming it. You are changing "A Short Hike" to "Short Hike, A," which is not the title.

But anyway, you are right that this is an English site, but it also has an international audience and therefore I question wether applying this specific sorting convention would actually be helpful, which seems to be a major part of your reasoning. Which leads me to this specific quote from your other post:

As for consistency: since the site is in English and titles are mostly in English, applying English sorting rules helps both native and non-native speakers alike by aligning with broader expectations.

Speaking as a non-native speaker - no, it does not! Applying this specific sorting rule is not helpful and does especially not align with expectations. This is the important part about language differences, as non-native speakers are not neccessary aware of this sorting convention and just end up being confused and might not even be able to find certain games.

I am speaking of experience. Because it is true that Steam also uses this and I have been through this. It's at least highly confusing, as they don't change the title, which means there is a T section in my W section (The Walking Dead seasons, The Wolf Among Us, The Witness), making the list harder to read. I also have a big ITunes music list with international entries and looking up some titles can be a guessing game, as some might be sorted with the article or not.

This is just my perspective as a non-native speaker, but I am also questioning wethere this is also the broader expectation for native speakers. For this I am going to point out that in the last six month you were the only person to request this feature (at least to my knowledge) and I wouldn't be surprised if literally no one else ever requested this. I could see an argument to be made if this were a recurring topic (like the handling of emulators or the implementation of starting dates), but it's simply not.

And while your disagreement with my disagreement is totally valid, your comparison with spelling and grammar rules is flawed. Because there is generally just one way to spell words and just one grammar rule in the English language. But on the other side there are multiple different sorting conventions (at least the two we are discussing right now) and none of them are mandatory. Ignoring articles when sorting titles is just one possible convention, but it is not an equally mandatory principle like the structure of a sentence.

In addition to that I did some research and I am going to quote from NISO, Guidelines for Alphabetical Arrangement of Letters and Sorting of Numerals and Other Symbols, 4.6 Headings Beginning with Articles:

An initial article in a heading should be treated as any other initial word. When it is deemed appropriate or desirable to arrange headings with initial articles by the word following the article (for example, in library catalogs where many title headings begin with an article) the headings may be structured to achieve the desired arrangement. Such structuring has two disadvantages: (a) it needs human intervention; and (b) the deletion of an article may distort the meaning of a heading, especially in titles

https://www.niso.org/sites/default/files/2017-08/tr03.pdf

Ignoring articles is not an universal rule.

Of course, people who play this for the first time might want to ignore all of this, especially Civilwarfare101's misleading bit at the beginning. There are multiple endings, but getting those is definitely not as convoluted as the first game.

The page seems to be broken (when clicking on the search bar)

So, this might be an elaborate request, but could we get a ignore or block option for certain users in the forum?

If we are talking specifically about emulators, I like to make a save state at the beginning of the playing session and one at the end. So the playtime is obviously the difference between those times.

Kinda sus
https://howlongtobeat.com/user/etailforest66

I also think it's quite jarring to go from the usual colors to the new pinkish colors of the stats page. It feels very inconsistent to the other pages, so I am not sure how to feel about the new stats page.

But I also want to add that I realize once again how much I dislike the time format XX Days YY Hours. My most played game has 8d 18h and my second one 6d 17h - I honestly don't know what to make with that information without using a calculator to get 8*24 + 18 = 210 and 6*24 + 17 = 161 hours, which is quite tedious. I don't get why that information is presented that way and I wish we would have an option to set everything in plane hours.

Not a new request, but I still think it might be a great addition for the yearly charts to have additional information besides just the number of played games, like the actual number of hours played and maybe the average rating of games per year (month when a specific year is selected) might be interesting.

EDIT: I also don't know how to feel about the "highest rated" section, which also only shows the first 6 games. Maybe a randomizer of the 5/5 rated games might be neat or showing all of the 5/5 rated games. The "most played games" section is more interesting in that regard, as it should be unlikely that an user has the exact same time for 6+ games.

Codename 47 and 2 are bad social stealth games on top of being bad games even for the time. Absolution at least has a fast crouch speed. I mentioned this already but eventually and many first time players of Codename 47 and 2 will and they will run and gun in those game too. At least Absolution gives you a cover mechanic where in Codename and 2 it's just hitscanners with no means of even avoiding damage. "It's certainly not a favorable argument for a Hitman game". I'm not talking about it as a Hitman game, I already said I was a casual fan of the franchise. Codename wasn't even a good game when it came out, people who played it at the time and critics pretty much disliked the game. You say stuff like how it's a "classic" and then say they it didn't age the most gracefully. And yup, I have heard this argument defending many awkward or bad first entries in a series, you know you can get things right the first time? This whole, "for it's time" stuff I never bought. Plus Codename came out the same year as Deus Ex and Thief 2 which makes the game look that much worse.

It does? If you run, you get spotted and if you walk the level goes by painfully slow. Hitman Blood Money is where the diguise system actually works properly. The only Hitman games I say does the concept it tries to do well are Blood Money and World of Assassin. Anything outside of those games are just varying degrees of sub par. Comparing Codename 47 and SA to Absolution is like debating which Highlander sequel is the worst. That already says a lot because many who played Silent Assassin recently will tell you that guards spot you without warning even Contracts is said to be the game where they remember SA playing.

Getting angry over a game I played over a week to decade ago is hard to do. I get angry in the moment after playing the game, but after a day or two I slowly forget.

I wanna be honest with you, I think some parts of your post are straight up silly. Apparently Codename 47 and Silent Assassin were bad games even for their time and people and critics disliked the game, while you provide no actual source for what people were actually thinking at that time and I also noticed that according to your profile you were 5 and 7 when those games came out. Unfortunately I can't travel back in time and send you the magazines I read, but the reception parts in the respective wikipedia articles pretty much confirm how I remember the reception of those games back then: Codename 47 was a good, but flawed first game, which was improved by Silent Assassin with general ratings going for 7 or 8 out of 10.

But that is not the main point I want to talk about. Let me quote from your first post in this thread:

Coming from someone who is just a causal when it comes to Hitman, I'm wondering what makes Hitman Codename 47 and Silent Assassin better than Absolution?

I'm just curious. I'm just asking and saying all this because I've seen Hitman fans say stuff like that over and over again.

So you were saying you are wondering why people think those games are better and that you are just curious. Now you got three people, assumingly more than just casual fans of the series (though I am only sure of one of them), explaining to you exactly why they think that is and now you are trying to argue everyone of them how they are false in their own opinion? Because according to you these games are just too slow, so everyone who prefers those games are just wrong. Please give me an honest answer for this question: Were you actually curious about the opinions of other people or were you just trying to pick a fight? Because I was writing to you assuming I could clear up your unableness to understand why people think that way, but if this isn't just an unableness and you simply don't want to understand, I can't help you.

Now I also noticed that you criticed Silent Assassin's lack of a cover system, but this is why it's important to look at these games in a certain context. I am not surprised you heard that argument before and I am also not surprised that you dismissed it before, but this is exactly why this matters. Appart for some few exceptions, games back then didn't have a cover system - the expectations for the player was to shoot down the enemies and maybe pick up a first aid kit. Other games that had no cover system and enemies with hit scan weapons: Half Life, Deus Ex. Criticising a game for something that simply wasn't really a thing back then is in my opinion a silly thing, but you are of course open to have that opinion.

Now here some questions you asked me.

you know you can get things right the first time?

Yes, I know. You know developers can sometimes improve the games they made with another game and sometimes get things right the next time? In case you don't believe me, you should play the very first Street Fighter, because it wasn't that one that revolutionized a whole genre. Just like Persona 3 was the game that actually started what people like about that franchise. And yes, not a direct question, but a game can be a classic and not age gracefully in every regard. A great example of that is Super Mario 64. And the fact that 10/10 games were released in the same year doesn't change the fact that a game might be 7/10 or a 8/10.

It does?

I am not exactly sure what you are asking, but Yes, it does! No, you don't get automatically spotted if you run, you have some leeway. And no, you also don't have guards spotting you without a warning, you have that little icon in the bottom corner giving you plenty of warnings. I don't care about other people you claim to exist without providing any source (again), but I can guarantee those points as someone who ranked SA in every Hitman 2 level first and not Contracts.

Getting angry over a game I played over a week to decade ago is hard to do. I get angry in the moment after playing the game, but after a day or two I slowly forget.

So I am honestly not sure what exactly you are going for with this weird flex. but you are also the one pretending to be curious about the opinions of other people and then spending your day telling them how they are apparently wrong in their opinion over a franchise you claim to have only a casual interest in. Just a reminder, but I didn't say I got angry over such a game, I said got reminded what pissed me off about that game.

I'm not the biggest fan of Absolution either, I haven't played it since around the time it came out but at the same time, regarding Hitman, Absolution wasn't even the first "bad" game in the series. That's how weird of a franchise Hitman is. If the series began with Blood Money apart of me can understand the massive dislike for Absolution but this isn't the case.

If the series began with Blood Money apart of me can understand the massive dislike for Absolution but this isn't the case.

You are also glossing over a part that Finnedorb mentioned and that is very important to that whole series. Codename 47 established a new and to this day very unique formular, that they nailed with Silent Assassin and upwards. Hitman is a game with sandbox levels, in which the npc's do their stuff and you figure out a way to kill the target. Absolution mostly abandoned that in favor for a more cinematic approach - tight levels to tell a (bad) story. As a result Absolution was just a stealth game and it would have been fine, if it was at least a good one at that, but it just sucked - I say that with stealth games being my favorite genre. Absolution is an unbelieable bad stealth game and saying "you can play on easy and gun your way through" is certainly not a favorable argument for a Hitman game.

It is certainly true that the classic Hitman games did not age gracefully. They did not, but I personally (and dare I say, most other people) look at these games with a certain context in mind. Those games are over twenty years old now and they had been done when developers still had to figure out how to actually make games (not just on a technical level, but also regarding the design).Codename 47 is the weakest one of the classic Hitman games, but when it came out back then it was a good game. Then came Silent Assassin and it improve so much of Codename 47, which is why it's such a classic. Over time some flaws are definitely more apparent, but Absolution on the other hand sucked right at the beginning. Which is why Absolution is indeed the first bad game in the series.

I fail to see how Hitman 2's disguise system is any better, you either walk or crouch very slowly making levels go by painfully slow.

Well, in 2 it actually works. Finnedorb mentioned it, in Absolution npc's can see through your disguise when you are one of "them," making disguises just useless. You might move slowly in the classic Hitman games, but that has nothing to do with the disguise system itself. But also, if I remember right, there is actually not a single level in Silent Assassin, in which you actually have to slowly crouch around. The classic Hitman games have a lot of leeway in that regard and most npc's are actually fine with the player running in disguise.

Man, now I am reminded of Abolution. And how much of that game pissed me now.

I noticed there is a little shake when quick adding a game, because of the highlighting. Was that always there? It's especially noticeable when selecting a plattform or a shop.

I have a suggestion regarding the alphabetical sorting of games on the site. Currently, titles that begin with articles like "The," "A," or "An" are sorted under the first letter of the article. For example, "The Legend of Zelda" is sorted under "T."

However, the conventional way to alphabetize titles is to ignore articles such as "The," "A," and "An," and instead sort by the first significant word in the title. In this case, "The Legend of Zelda" should be sorted under "L" for "Legend."

This adjustment would align the sorting method with standard practices and make it easier for users to find games alphabetically.

I heavily disagree with this and I roll my eyes when articles are exclude from the title. Especially since this only applies to English titles. To my knowledge, in no other language are people excluding the leading article in a title, which leads to a strange amalganation of some titles leading with the articles and some not. This also results in games like "A Bird Story" or "A Short Hike" being misnamed to "Bird Story" or "Short Hike," which isn't the actual title.

You might also want to create a collection and include all those games in that.

At this point the only "true" way to tell if gaming today is going downhill as some claim is that if you look up all the recent user reviews on this very site for the new releases and 90% of them are negative and 10% just think it's okay, if that starts happening THEN I will believe it.

I'll admit, many of the user reviews on this site aren't very good and I don't take their word seriously at all but at the same time HLTB reviews slightly have more value than social media since most people actually play and beat the games they start or play them for at least more than 5 hours before quitting. The only other place that kind of does that I can name is Steam.

Just look at God of War Ragnarok, I remember many on Twitter attacking that game but at the time for being too "cinematic", anti speed running, the unskippable cutscenes making annoying to 100%(all though the funny thing is older GOW also masked it's load times with unskippable cutscenes and down time) and how cinematic games of old were all awesome like Metal Gear Solid or Japanese games because the cutscenes were skippable blah blah blah, but go to the user review on this site especially at the time for the game and everyone was like, "this game was damn good".

So really, how do you even know if gaming is going downhill? The people who actually play games enjoy them for the most part, and the only big issues is how the industry especially AAA games have an unsustanable business model but at the same time, game devs and studios have been losing their jobs in less than 5 years for as long as the gaming been around and why complain about bloated open world games with similar mechanics when you've been burned by them enough not to play them? I get disliking them if you once had an attachement towards the genre but if you never did, why get worked up with them releasing? That's like me getting angry over so many romantic comedies coming out, unless if I liked rom coms to begin with and I once got enjoyment from them MAYBE I can picture getting passionately worked up over them. You had to like the media at one point in order to still give it attention even if it feels you should just move on and find something else.

So really, how do you even know if gaming is going downhill?

I mean, dude, I gave you a whole text describing why I think it doesn't really look that good for the gaming industry. Which is an opinion you are free to share or not, but do me the favor and engage with it properly, instead of putting words into my mouth I haven't said.

For example

why complain about bloated open world games with similar mechanics when you've been burned by them enough not to play them? I get disliking them if you once had an attachement towards the genre but if you never did, why get worked up with them releasing?

Neither have I been burned by them, nor do I dislike them or had an attachment to them and I also don't get worked up by them getting released. My point wasn't "Gaming sucks because there are open world games!" My actual point was "It surely would be problematic if in the end there are only open world games left to play." Just like it would be problematic if there would only be romantic comedies being released instead of a wealthy selection of different genres.

I also want to mention I only brought up open world games to begin with because people in this thread mentioned there is an abundance of those. I believe this is a symptom of the deeper issue of the gaming industry not being sustainable. Just like I think other factors like microtransactions or games being released unfinished can be attributed to this issue. I would say we would have a richer selection of genres, less microtransactions and more games being released finished if the industry would fix the problem of sustainability.

Here another example:

You had to like the media at one point in order to still give it attention even if it feels you should just move on and find something else.

And I never said I dislike video games. The worse I said was I have "no big hype for new games," while I also said there are still some great games being released.

But again, you are welcome not to share my opinion and my arguments. I don't get why we should ignore the fact that 8.500 people have been laid off in 2022, 11.250 in 2023 and 11.000 just from Januar to June in this year (according to Statiska, link at the bottom), just because according to you people have always been losing their jobs. Again, the problem isn't that just a few have been laid off, it is the mass of people that have been affected. Here is an example to describe this: Let's say we would notice a big spike of... idk, the number of crimes commited by people - suddenly we have 10 mass shootings per day. The reasonable approach would be to say "Alright, what is going on, why is that happening right now; what can we do about it?" instead of being dismissive and say "Ah, people have been always shooting each other." Just like the reasonable approach in a pandemic is to say "Alright, the hospitals are full, what can we do?" instead of being like "Well, people have always being sick." Otherwise you are welcome to prove me wrong and show me that the sheer size of lay offs have always been this bad.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1458214/worldwide-gaming-industry-layoffs/

But otherwise I also don't get the approach to just look at the number of positive and negative reviews and determine the state of an industrie just by their relative values. Let's say the state of the industry gets so bad that there are only open world games being released - again, I don't mind open world games, it's about the diversity (you can also replace 'open world' with every other genre). Then you only have people engaging with those games that are really into those. Now those might be really well made, but I would argue an industry that can only provide one type of genre is not healthy. Now let's take this even further and say every developer has been brought up by one entity. And because there is only that one entity left we only get 2 open world games per year and nothing else. Again, those might be really well made and people who are into those might like them, but that wouldn't be a healthy industry.

Lastly, and I don't wanna be rude with this, but I dismiss everything that start with "I saw on Twitter..." or "Someone on reddit..." or "I remember many on Twitter... ". Firstly it's a blackbox argument: You can pull out anything out of that hat without me knowing what content or context you are explicitly talking about. Secondly the internet and social media is a vaste place and you can also find people on those platforms who seriously think the Holocaust didn't happen. But why validate every outlandish opinion out there? Saying "I saw on social media..." is like saying "I saw on TV someone saying immigrants are eating cats and dogs."

Now wether reviews on this site are more valid than other opinions I honestly wouldn't want to decide. "unskippable cutscenes are bad" is a valid opinion and if older games also shared that trait that opinion won't be invalidated by that. But it's not really surprising if at the time of a major release the majority of people are favorible to a game, because that's when mainly the fans of the franchise engage with it. Especially on a site in which people write reviews unpaid in their spare time as a hobby.

This was much longer than I wanted it to be, I apologize for that.

So I have a complete different opinion than most of you guys. I say gaming is currently in a bad place. Admittely I don't have the exact numbers, but so far this year had a crazy amount of lay offs, that very likely goes into the thousands and might be as high as never before. Shockingly this also includes the closure of studios like Tango Gameworks, which produced Hi-Fi Rush - a game, that was liked and quite succesful (again, I don't have exact numbers) and that shows, that apparently those kind of games don't seem to be enough nowadays to stay in business. [Having to add, I just read that apparently Tango was aquired by the South Korean publisher Krafton last month - I had no idea that happened]. A bad sign for other studios that partnered with Microsoft like Double Fine or Obsidian.

I have been saying this for ten years now, but the gaming industries has to learn how to make games in a cheaper way. In my opinion PS2/Gamecube/XBox was the golden era, in which there was a good balance between the capabilties of the consoles and the costs of making games. Games started to look good. I would argue some of those still look good to this day, but there was also the possibilty of taking some risks. But with every passing console generation that balanced shifted dramatically, until games became too expensive. That is why there is less willingless to take risks. Why is also why there are more games that are getting very similiar and that also end up in genres like open world, looter shooter or games as service, as those are the kind of games that are hitting big and also open up possibilities for DLC's and microtransactions. For the popularity of big games you can check this very site by looking at the most popular games, which easily go for 50 to 100 hours. Games with less than 20 hours don't stay on the first page for long (except for a few certain cult games). And those games are getting more similiar, as they try to appeal to everyone. So there are some light rpg elements, a bit of stealth, some mild puzzles. But not too much of those, otherwise some people might be scared off.

And that trend to open world games is only getting made worse by subscribtion models like Game Pass, which favor long games. I might be wrong, but if I am not mistaken game companies make more money if gamers spend more time with their games.

And while one could have make the argument that there is still the indie space, I would argue that they are currently suffering from a similiar problem. Nowadays it is hard (not impossible) to stand out when making a game with a small team, as many indie studios employ 20+ people. I also don't think the current trend of Metroidvanias is surprising, as I would argue Metroidvanias are the open world games for 2D, which leads to my argument above about studios trying to hit it big. Roquelikes are popular because streamers love them, as they give a ton of content and streamers constantly playing your game is good marketing.

Adding to my opinion about the current state of gaming is the fact that for me personally the last good gaming year was 2019. Which is not to say that there weren't any good games released after that. But the last year that really stood out to me was that year. And the last year I was really looking forward to games was 2016, which was a crazy year for someone like me, as in that year we had the release of games like Dishonored 2, Deus Ex - Manking Divided and Hitman (2016). With that you might get an idea what kind of games I personally like and so it might not be surprising, when I might be a bit cynical. After these games Eidos Montreal had to work on those Marvel games (one of those a 'games as service' game) with Crystal Dynamics, which didn't end very well. Arkane Lyon is now also working on Blade, another Marvel game. While it's sister studio Arkane Austin had to close after they were forced to make the looter shooter Redfall by upper management. So far this year I only played two new games. Last year it was only 5 and it might be less than that, if we exclude remakes/remasters. But admittely I also played 5 more 2023 games in this year and there are a few I have in my wishlist, but for me there is no big hype for new games.

And with the costs of gaming being so high I kinda hope this console generation will be the last one. Or the next one. The announcement of the PS5 pro shows there doesn't seem to be a lot more to get out of these things and that there just isn't a next gen experience to be have. It's crazy to me that in the middle of the current generation I can still play new released games on my non-pro PS4. Games like Armored Core 6, Elden Ring, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It makes me wonder when or rather if we will reach the ceiling of the current console generation that justifies an upgrade and since the last gen is still kicking, that ceiling might never be reached.

I am not sure if this was already reported, but I guess there might be a minor bug.

If switching from a game to one of the DLC's (or the other way around) the little diagram with the platforms and the number of completions at the very bottom of the page doesn't scale properly, if the number of platforms are different. Take for example Frostpunk, which has diagrams for PC, PS4 and XBox1, but the DLC's only for PC. The diagram is fine if you reload the page, but going back to the previous page also screws up the scaling.

Here's a link to Frostpunk (I am honestly a bit too lazy to make screenshots right now)
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/41585

I guess the same error occours for games and DLC's with different numbers of platforms.