Don't you guys have phones? will live rent free in my head as one of the funniest on stage failures ever.

I kind of enjoyed Valhalla ... but maybe that's because I'd never played any other AC games in the past, so I didn't have any expectations to disappoint.

Overall, on the better side of mid. General gameplay and exploration was pretty fun, world was very detailed and beautiful. The AC parts seemed a bit shoehorned in. Hated the arbitrary parkour challenges, and really really hated the modern-day meta storyline. Kind of wish they'd just have let all the AC stuff go and just made a fun Viking game without any of that other bullshit. Still, I enjoyed playing it for quite a while. Maybe I'll play it again someday, but it's definitely not on my shortlist of replayable games I keep coming back to.

Word.

Borderlands 2 had my best game memories beating Vermivorous the Invincible with 3 friends, me playing as Maya. First of all getting it to spawn is tense.

I will miss those lighthearted adventures...

Blizzard is a corpse being puppeted.

It's just Activision. Has been for years.

I wouldn't say that about World of Warcraft. Its certainly a roller coaster with many ups and downs but I would say its up right now and Midnight is lots of fun.

Gay Tony died for this

It's going to get worse. Getting the people behind Fivem means it's going to go to the next level with VI. It's going to be Roblox meets the current GTA streaming RP stuff.

The Bungie Halo era games had problems, sure, but overall were a masterpiece of a series. Everything since then has been ok at best, and borderline insulting at worst.

So much retconning, characters with zero arc, contempt towards the fandom, and build up with no onscreen payoff.

From what Halo Studios has announced regarding Campaign Evolved, and how they've dug in their heels in response to fan feedback, I wish I were as hopeful as you.

In my opinion, Halo should have always remained a Bungie property with connections to the Marathon universe, and neither series should have ever been a live service game.

343 hasn't come close to knowing what the fuck they're doing

Halo

The games? Yeah, eh, one of these days I'd consider Infinite single player if it's like $10.

The series? I can't remember if people said Season 2 was...watchable...but that makes me sad...

I remember liking the books, though. The books were rad.

Halo was DoA for me after growing up with twitchy PC shooters like Unreal Tournament, Quake and Starsiege Tribes. The gameplay was glacially slow compared to what I was used to, but it did usher in online multiplayer to the console masses.

Wait, what’s wrong with Super Smash Bros? Is it just the DLC characters?

Ever since Halo 2 dropped my best friend and I have co-opped each one in one sitting. Infinite is the first time in 2 decades that we couldn't get through an installment. Open world was fun but empty, and they tried to have it cover for a plot. The entire 4-5-6 "trilogy" is more disjointed than the star wars sequels. Story was not compelling, no emotional pulls. Halo was legit top tier sci fi and infinite felt like it was written by a committee ina meeting room. Just sad.

I was (and still is) a Battlefield 2. I found battlefield 3 an alright sequel, though I wish they hadn't bullshitted with the whole "the game is too complex now for map and mod tools". But it is unreasonable how much fun Bad Company 2 was. I was one of the early haters of it because they took away prone and the faster paced gameplay. But boy did my opinion on it changed. Even my brother who rarely plays shooters sat and grinded out weapons on it. I know even DICE are questioning why it was such a success.

WOW- if it wasn't for classic and now anniversary, I never would have renewed my subscription.

Retail is just horrible and getting worse.

I bought FFXVI and both VII remake games on PS5 because I was still holding out hope that they could reignite the magic of the previous games. I mostly enjoyed them, but they didn't feel remotely like the Final Fantasy games of the past. XVI was more Game of Thrones than Final Fantasy, and the VII remake games were more XV/Kingdom Hearts than Final Fantasy.

I feel like the writing was on the wall as far back as X. There is very little variety in the combat, it's very much a hallway like XIII, the "world map" is a list of locations in the order you visited them, and there are multiple long stretches where you can't backtrack.

I've also tried playing Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey in the hopes that they would scratch that same itch, but I haven't been able to bring myself to commit to finishing them. I haven't played Fantasian, but I've heard mostly positive things about it.

13-2 is still, even now, my personal favorite Final Fantasy.

Agreed in general, Square has turned to shit - but XI and XII were not where it happened, those games are great and XII in particular was peak Square. Part of the problem was Tetsuya Nomura and the slew of spinoff shovelware games with half-baked Kingdom Hearts style stories they started shitting out. The other part was a combo of their embrace of mobile gacha-style bullshit, and the apparent lack of skill and experience that go into their games as they shifted from maintaining their own engines and in-house tools in favor of joining the Unreal and Unity bandwagons.

But don't worry, another "going back to their roots!" phase is just around the corner.

Planetside 2 at its peak was such a cool and unique experience. Shame it's withering and dying

100% agree. I was a Briggs veteran for a long time after the peak. My username (not this one) is in the RecordSmash official post recognising the 1158-player world record. The Daybreak takeover was concerning, but we pushed through.

But realistically I just "accomplished" everything I reasonably could have, and then they took my server away from me. My time with the game ended, but I have no regrets. What a phenomenal experience it was at the time.

Pokopia is great, though it was made by the dragon quest builders team, not game freak.

Otherwise, can't argue

I might have liked Andromeda if they had enemy variety or likeable characters. Everyone knows Shepard but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of Andromeda’s protagonist or any of the team members for that matter. Absolutely forgettable in almost every way.

I am ashamed to say that Pokopia (on my sibling's Switch 2) is pretty great. It's a sublime, cozy exploration game, basically absent of battling so far.

They made it into in A button simulator lol.

I only ever played DPP and BW/2 a long time ago, but I then happend to jump to SwSh when it came out and it literally became a live joke between my sibling watching me play to see how far we could go through the battles by only mashing the A button.

I think we made it to like between the 7th and 8th gym before I had to actually change my attack/pokemon using the c-stick.

In my opinion, Pokemon peaked in gen 2. Why? Because every game after added new gimmicks that distract from the core gameplay instead of adding to it. What is the core gameplay? As the motto goes "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Gen 1 had 150 monsters for the player to find and catch. Gen 2 added time of day specific spawn rates and Pokemon that you could only get by breeding. And that is it. None of the further games made the monster collection any more interesting until Legends Arceus, a spinoff title. The future games added fashion shows and secret tunnels (at least, I don't think so. I have not played all of them).

Pokemon Home is, obviously, a game changer, but it is something outside the game and too little, too late for someone like me who fell off the franchise.

Pokemon lost its way once they got rid of the shithead rival character. The "rivals" they have now are too plucky and lacking in antagonistic traits. I don't even think they choose a type-advantage starter anymore.

Pokémon here, too. I used to be more attentive to the franchise as a fanwork creative, but the franchise went into decline starting with G6 (X and Y) in my opinion. It got so bad to the point that I basically left the games back in Gen 7 (Sun and Moon) and go by mostly by the side games and fanwork by this point. For my contemporary work I mostly ignore everything from the games that is not the Pokémon themselves, and for when that's not enough I create my own Pokémon and also am working on adapting a few concepts from Palworld (Palworld will always be a nice, stingy reminder of what Pokémon can get back to).

Speaking of sidegames, the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are real gems that Nintendon't seem to remember anymore past getting us a "Kanto remake" of, and Pokken is a fun fighting game but rather restricted in roster and sad in retrospective in a "look at what we could have had if the franchise spun more in this direction" moment. Today Pokémon Close Combat exists which is a decent fangame in more or less the same direction.

Tiberium Wars is definitely peak and pinnacle...even tho I suck at it. :)