For the past several months I've been kicking this around and decide whether or not I should bother with this list. I don't play quite as much as I used to, and in particular the last few years I've played less than ever. Writing, even inconsequential stuff, doesn't come quite as easy as it once did for some reason so that's made things even harder. Then this ridiculous pandemic happened and suddenly I've had more free time and started playing a lot more than I had in years, and it's jump started my interest in gaming again in a big way.
Still, the writing part hasn't quite clicked, but after a few false starts I decided to say 'fuck it' and just force it. If it sucks, so be it. Hell, 5 people at most are going to read it so really cares?
So what will the top games be? What will be number one? Will I finish my list before Vader finishes his Top 100? To find out the answers to these questions and more STAY TUNED!!!!
Isn't it a problem with triple-a development in general? (And probably not just triple-a development.) In any case, always wanted to play LA Noir. I probably actually should sometime given I have it on Steam. Also, there are two Australian games in your top 10..
I wouldn't even take it out of L.A., just move the timeline and set it in the 60's.
Yes it probably is, at least in Western companies (it's probably just accepted in Japan though supposedly Nintendo has stuff in place to prevent crunch). I don't think I've heard any bad stories about any first-party Sony Studios though. Anyway, go play it.
And what was the other game made in Australia?
Somewhat related, I remember watching some interviews with old anime artists and directors complaining that there wasn't so much crunch in the industry as when they were still working lol. Suda (allegedly) forces employees to take breaks, which is really leading by example given how little he seems to actually do!
The other Australian game was Hollow Knight.
#2. Monster Hunter World
When it was announced that Monster Hunter World was going to have some considerable changes from previous entries in the series, I had some doubts. Clearly this was a ploy to dumb down the game to make it more accessible to Western audiences. How dare they change so many core signatures of the game? I don't want to know how much damage my strikes are doing to a monster. I don't want to easily find my prey! Make me hunt blindly for the beast and lose half my gameplay time before I lose him ounce again because I didn't bring enough paintballs for tracking! Keep things the same and inconvenient so that new few fans are equally inconvenienced.
Yeah I was wrong. The changes were for the better. Monster Hunter World is definitely the most accessible game in the series, and a strong arguement can be made for calling it the best of the series. The QoL changes mostly just eliminated the frustrations of the most irritating parts of the game, and time you spent properly preparing for a hunt. So hunting prep is now at a minimum and hunting the beast is now truly the game's focus.
Good thing too, because the new lands you hunt in are massive and even when you know where you're going it's not hard to get lost. The very first level, the are you visit the most often can become an absolute labyrinth if you end up there at night during a storm. It's glorius really. And the new battles are still are fierce as ever. The monsters lack a little of the variety that MH3U and MH4U both had, but these monsters are giant and harder to predict. Hell, sometimes they even pick fights with one another, and then the shit really hits the fan. Capcom also did an excellent job of supporting the game with new content as time went on. A few extra monsters showed up over time, a cross-over with The Witcher, and real-time seasonal festivals (to say nothing of the Iceborne expansion that I still need to properly dive into) made it worth coming back to the game from time to time). It certainly was worth 200+ hours of my time at any rate.
Man do I ever love Monster Hunter World. Never really played much of the other Monster Hunter games, not that I wasn’t interested in them though, just something I didn’t get around to playing. I have put in nearly 1,300 hours into World and Iceborne combined. Still putting in more time here and there so total time will be quite a bit.
I would have recommended trying some of the earlier games, but I suspect it would be hard to go backwards after World. Controls are a bit better, but all those other little changes for prep and material gathering or what really make the difference. That said, some of the underwater sections in MH3 are pretty damn fun. Not too many to get annoying, so they always feel fun and different.Yeah I do think about trying out playing more of the earlier ones. I do have Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii. Played a bit of that and enjoyed what little I played. Also contemplate getting that Monster Hunter game they brought to the Switch. I think it might be MH4 Ultimate maybe. Anyway it’s always the factor of just having too many games to play and not enough time. They recently added Alatreon to Iceborne so I want to get back to that and tackle him.
While I did enjoy my time with MH World, I'm still not convinced of the QoL changes. Some were for the better, but others took away from the series' quirky charm for me. The accessability argument also doesn't hold up well in my opinion, as a lot of the menu's, especially concerning online play and co-op are still very convulted and user unfriendly, resulting in a game that still doesn't explain itself pretty well and makes playing together more of a slog than it should be.
My biggest gripe is how they tackled late game progression. Augmenting your weapons, or whatever it's called, didn't appeal to us at all. It's just random gaicha mechanics. You could argue that the randomness is also part of the series, as some elusive parts required for crafting specific weapons have very, very low droprates, but at least back then you could say 'I want to craft this weapon, so I'll end up beating the same monster dozens of times untill I have all the required material'. Now it's all up to chance what you get and how you can upgrade your gear. It also didn't help that the Nergigante weapons are fairly easy to acquire fairly early on and that they're better than almost anything you can craft through the main game.
Monster diversity also takes a hit compared to tri and MH4.
Anyhow, I can see a game like this make your list, but despite everything this game got right, it made some profound bad choices as listed above, that meant Ididn't take to the game like I did to Tri and MH4.
Didn't Switch receive 'cross' or something, which suposedly was a kind of 'best of' compilation of all previous games?
MH4 is ace. I played it on the 3DS. Next to the obvious dragons and dinosaurs it also has baboons, frogs and beetles to fight. There's also a lot of verticality in the world design as it's the first game that added mounting monsters.
Have you played Iceborn yet? I only played it for a few hours, as I was still dealing with Monster Hunter burnout, but that really does seem to have addressed a lot of the endgame issues that some had with World.
Also, I really wanted to love MH4, but fuck the 3DS. That will probably go down in history is one of my least favorite systems. I could never find a comfortable way to hold it and spending long periods playing it was out of the question.