@ewrankend: Here's hoping you get that bad boy. As for why the Dreamcast failed, while there was still a dedicated fanbase, Sega had poisoned the well with most fans with their scattershot releases prior, and said scattershot releases also drained Sega's coffers as part of the civil war between the western and Japanese branches of the company. Had they had a unified vision and the patience to actually stick to the Saturn or 32X (they admittedly did try with the Sega CD), things might not have gone SO badly.

@RSM-HQ: I dunno if I fully agree on you about the 8-bit Castlevanias. For the record, I have beaten the US version of Castlevania III, which was intentionally made more difficult compared to the Japanese Akumajo Densetsu (Seriously, play the Japanese version, it has more than a few things that make it far more forgiving).

Obviously, not everything was stupidly hard in the old days. Games like Solomon's Key, Dragon Warrior and the like were mostly fair, for example, and with the exception of the original Zelda, Nintendo's 1st party games were mostly well-balanced (which is kind of ironic given how the stupidly-imbalanced games were called "Nintendo Hard.")

I've only played through the first Uncharted, really do need to play the others, but I don't really remember it doing the puzzles for me. Honestly, the only games I've seen with "you suck, we'll do it for you" options were the Wii/Wii U Mario titles. Most games just drop you back where you were and make you do it again, which isn't exactly making it easier.

Hell, outside of Rhapsody (which I mentioned in my previous post), I can't think of any game that didn't require me to pay attention. I sometimes wonder if I've just completely missed something.

I can respect people who think modern gaming is too easy, but at the same time, the gaming community seems to have turned difficulty into a fetish. Obviously, a game needs to offer some pushback, but I think a lot of the talk from "old-school gamers" comes from a place of rose-colored glasses, ignoring the fact that the games of the 8-32-bit-eras were artificially difficult in order to either bilk kids for quarters or keep people from beating the games on a rental. With games being longer and more involved, there's no real need to make games that are unreasonably difficult. The days of games like Contra being beatable in 30 minutes once you learn all its nonsense are over.

Obviously, no one likes a game that offers no challenge at all. We've all played games like Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure or Granstream Saga, games with little in the way of difficulty, which seem like mindless busywork. However, we've also played games like those classic 8-bit games, the Castlevanias of the old days that were hair-pullingly difficult to the point of impossibility. Honestly, this is where playtesting is so important. It was something that struck me when playing through Portal with the commentary on, how much attention Valve paid to balance, to building up the difficulty as the game moved on and the player had more skills under their belt. I think if more publishers did playtesting like that - and listened to their testers - Games would be better balanced and more capable of riding the line between too easy and too hard.

Belt's always a good spot to start. Obviously the best idea is to start with the cheapest thing and move up.

You say that, but at the very least they haven't ruined the games by over-saturation (Hello, Assassin's Creed). That said, I find Farcry 2 and Farcry Primal the best of the games for gameplay, with 3 having the most interesting assortment of characters. Also, yeah, open-world games can be a drag if they don't hook you right away. Hopefully more publishers will realize that and we can get back to more structured games.

Damn, that's a sweet port! Always amazing to see what the ol' 7800 could have done with more support.

Always loved AMD, and between the opensource AMDGPU and the Vulkan driver, they've become the GPU of choice for those wanting to try systems outside the Windows/Mac world. They produce great products at fine prices.

@kvallyx: The game was going to make hella bank based solely on the name. HOWEVER, if the users are indeed this angry, that's going to cause issues in the future. This is the problem with trying to make absolutely everything a "live service" title - You need constant income to justify development. Let's not forget that Anthem sold well initially as well.

While technically publicly traded, the Yamauchi family remains the majority stakeholder, and until that changes, I see them leaving the games market long before they go 3rd party. This is a company that's been around more than a century, after all, and for good or ill, they do it their way.

Honestly, I think the world would be a worse place without Nintendo and their toymaker mentality. They're the only ones trying to make anything that's not super high-fidelity tech wank anymore, and they've become an effective safe haven for smaller companies like Natsume to have success without being drowned out by the tech arms race. They're also the only ones who respect the notion of games ownership (though they're more than a bit dictatorial when it comes to piracy). Honestly, I can see Nintendo once again being the ones to pick up the pieces after the modern games industry collapses under the weight of its unsustainable excess, and I'd rather see them continue to do things their way than Nintendo degrade to nothing the way Sega did.

@RSM-HQ: Oh Lord in Heaven, I forgot about that dumpster fire. Thank goodness for emulation keeping the classic versions alive.