Coelacanth

That was in my OP though, that most games can be thought of as puzzle games with extra steps.

I just don’t get where you’re getting “most games” from. If you would have phrased it like “many games can be viewed as puzzle games if you really think about it” you would have maybe had more people agree with you.

I understand your reductive approach - it’s just that there are so many games it doesn’t apply to that I can never agree with “most games”.

If you have 2 minutes to solve a puzzle, is it no longer a puzzle game?

Yes, clearly. It still behaves the way a puzzle - or puzzle game - would: knowledge of the solution trivialises the content. It’s just a puzzle game with a timer.

If moving certain colored pieces requires a button combo or sequence, instead of a simple action, is this no longer a puzzle game?

Depends on how the combo works. Is there an element of skill involved? If it’s like a rhythm game I would just call it a puzzle/rhythm game. Otherwise it’s just a puzzle game with extra steps.

For me, if the main challenge of the game is figuring out the puzzle, then it’s mainly a puzzle game. If a measure of skill is required in the actual execution of beating the game it is no longer a pure puzzle game - but it can still contain puzzle elements of course.

EDIT: I would agree that Tetris is not a puzzle game.

Knowing the optimal thing to do can be seen as but a higher order puzzle.

But knowing the right strategy and item build in DotA or LoL means fuck all if you can’t mechanically execute your hero properly, which - in my opinion - disqualifies them as “puzzle games”.

I think your definition of puzzle games is pretty flawed, to be honest. A puzzle does not provide additional difficulty once you’ve identified how the pieces go together, consequently a game should behave similarly to qualify as a puzzle game. The dichotomy is between conceptualisation versus execution.

Puzzle games can be solved or “won” by identifying the solution. Not-puzzle games require execution.

Guitar Hero and OSU! are not puzzle games. Games like RTSes and MOBAs can be argued to have puzzle elements in terms of strategy and meta, but knowing the optimal thing to do will still not give you victory which imo disqualifies them as outright puzzle games.

I suspect uncapping FPS would break physics and damage calculations. FromSoft are fond of tying those to FPS.

I’m not surprised about the rest either, though they really should start getting criticized for it in my opinion. No DLSS in 2024 is especially hard to excuse.

Can we not go after one of the few good guys in gaming? Please? If you want to hound someone Nintendo is right over there.

This is why the game lost me to be completely honest. I felt like the type of storytelling changed into more of a Sunday morning cartoon type vibe where the gang always wins and nobody ever dies.

There was a point during the story (probably Post-ARR through the beginning of post-Stormblood patch quests?) where it felt like there were actual stakes and risks of consequences and the lives of beloved characters were actually in danger and I loved that.

But instead more people seemed to come back from the dead than actually die.

I’ve played only Origins but this trailer is not doing a whole lot for me. Even visually I don’t like it (which is bizarre because I think Origins looks like shit and still I somehow prefer it). Don’t really like this art direction, personally.

Yes, definitely! Using the [email protected] works well for communities, but linking to posts is a bit of a headache honestly.

Impressive that enough people still care for there to be a backlash.

Sync is phenomenal, imo. It gets less traction here because it’s not FOSS and the price to remove ads is pretty high, but in terms of features and visuals it’s by far my favourite. Great customisation too.

I’ve tried probably a dozen apps, but can’t get anything else to look and feel as nice as Sync.

That really is one of the biggest flaws of Civ. It’s so hard to find a breakpoint where the gameplay “feels good” but still is challenging. If you’re at a difficulty level where the gameplay is mostly intact, the AI is just too dumb, and if you bump it up it becomes a meta game of playing around the AI bonuses.

Sounds like programming.dev might be a good fit, or perhaps dbzer0?

I don’t know, I never saw it as a meme but rather just shorthand in cases where no other term existed that efficiently communicated the genre or style of a game.

Do you have a replacement term available for Souls-like that sums up what you can expect of a game within that genre using two words or less?

I haven’t played 2 or 3, but calling DA:O bad is a bit of a hot take. What did you not like about it?

While the overall plot is fairly standard issue fantasy save-the-world fare, I think the execution and the RPG aspects were excellent. How the game really made your choice of origin matter was incredible to me, and I enjoyed several of the characters too.

It does look like shit though, I’ll give you that. I wish it was less depressingly brown-grey washed out looking.

Nothing compares to getting into the flow when you’re playing Spy, I love some psychological warfare. Stringing together long sequences of backstabs and hide-and-seeks with the enemy team is so much fun.

The knife that hides backstabbed corpses and instantly disguises you as them is also super fun to use.

I do agree that a lot of the find-the-symbols puzzles felt like an afterthought, but overall they didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game. The story and presentation were fantastic and I thought the blind trial was extremely well done and one of my favourite video game levels.

I haven’t played this since I was a kid but I used to have such a good time with it. I had almost forgotten about it so this was a great blast of nostalgia. I guess people are still playing it? Warms my heart.

I could be mistaken, as I don’t really play competitive games anymore. I thought between Overwatch, Valorant, Apex, The Finals and what have you there was lots of stiff competition.

I had a lot of good times and even more bad times with DotA over the years, until I finally freed myself from it years ago.

IceFrog being behind this backed by Valve bodes well, and I think the premise of an FPS/MOBA hybrid has promise, despite the market being insanely oversaturated already.

I’m not really interested in competitive games these days, but I hope it’ll be good to watch at least. Following The International was fun even after I quit DotA.

It was definitely the go-to abbreviation during the early days of the internet, at least in my circles. Nowadays we’ve become so anglicised that everyone just uses English norms instead.

I remember using asg as a kid/young teen, and I remember people at the time were looking down on those using “lol” or “rofl” instead, calling them silly posers.