Hello again! I finally wrapped up Bluey: The Video Game with my son, and I am proud to say we collected everything! He really enjoyed visiting all the classic locations from the show. Like I said in a previous post, it’s a little rough around the edges but it does what it sets out to do for the most part and the $40 price tag makes it a little more tolerable.

I am looking forward to playing The Finals soon. Got it downloaded but haven’t really had a chance to sit down and sink my teeth into it. I haven’t played a multiplayer shooter in a while, so I’m hoping this one delivers!

I have also been plucking away at my second playthrough of BG3 and while a lot of the issues revealed themselves on playthrough 1, I am still very much enjoying it. You really can change your experience in wild ways if you want to!

So what is everyone playing right now? What do you have on the horizon?

Back with the weekly thread!

My son and I have been playing Bluey: The Video Game. He has definitely enjoyed it. It is basically one big collect-athon where you are doing an interactive episode of Bluey, more or less. At $40 I would say the price is fine but it’s a little thin/janky at times. Still, they got the voice actors and my son seems to love it, so the primary check boxes are definitely ticked.

We get to spend 20 to 30 minutes running around memorable locations from the show, many of which are pretty much carbon copy lifted straight from the show, so he’s happy haha!

What have y’all been playing?

Hey everyone! As this is "True Gaming," we would of course love to see a few sentences elaborating on your thoughts of what you are playing.

I actually took a solid week away from the computer and games! My wrists haven't been great so figured some time away from it the phone and such was a good call. Excited to dig into Cocoon and Dead Space this week. Also might get the Bluey video game for my son, we'll see.

So: what are you playing?

Hey everyone! Going to test out a weekly "what are you playing?" thread to encourage some discussion. As this is "True Gaming," we would of course love to see a few sentences elaborating on your thoughts of what you are playing.

Right now I am putzing around in Baldur's Gate 3 trying to see what whacky things I can pull off or incur in my second playthrough. I also have the Dead Space remake tee'd up for play soon and have been occasionally playing Arcade Paradise with my son, which has been a real delight - once you beat the game it's just a fun arcade to run around working on high scores in. He just loves picking up all the trash and the little "gamified" aspects of the arcade himself!

So: what are you playing?

I love FMV's in games, plain and simple. I think they're so rarely deployed that at this stage it's almost always to great effect. Sam Barlow is the obvious one that comes to mind (Her Story, Telling Lies, Immortality) but there are also some famous examples from the past such as the often campy/ham-fisted but always fully-committed and enjoyable performances in Red Alert and Command & Conquer. I also really enjoyed Dr. Darling in Control.

All of this is to say that that FMV's as a component or the centerpiece of games frequently comes across, at least to me, as being film's "found footage" equivalent in video games. FF films got a bad rep for "shaky cams" or being a way to mask cheap productions, but some of the best films I've ever seen were shot in that style (for those of you who haven't seen [Rec.] do yourselves a favor). Every now and then the style gets a brief moment in the sun and everyone moves on. Perhaps it's just seen as too gimmicky but I don't want to get too thick in the weeds here.

I've now seen several great examples of FMV's and I feel like there's just this barrier it can't cross. I'm not sure if it's technical - asking developers to also be versed in filmmaking, even though many of the same principles in games translate such as lighting and camera angles is maybe too big of an ask - or if it's just not something that interests many devs yet. Either way, I'd love to see more of it and I'm curious how people think it can be deployed in new and interesting ways. Immortality is a great example because of how it integrated not just the footage but the very tools used to edit films. The UI is a gamified moviola which was necessary for editing and reviewing back in the day. Having editing experience myself actually made the game play better, but it was still very accessible to my friend who had never edited a clip in their life.

I know this is sort of half rant/half question, but I just really wanted to talk about FMV's so here we are!

It's a common issue at this point: a game releases, gets years' worth of updates and DLCs, and then eventually the developers move on to developing a sequel. The sequel comes out and... the depth and amount of content is nowhere close to what players have just been experiencing in its predecessor. The sequel may have many of the quality-of-life features that didn't arrive in the predecessor until later updates, but it simply can't launch with a full game's worth of content plus years of DLC's worth of content. It only gets worse for games that support modded content, too, because they'll have years' worth of mods on top of the developer-created content.

We've seen this a lot already: the Civilization series is infamous for the sequels not living up to their predecessors until they've had years of support themselves; Crusader Kings 3 was seen as lacking in long-term replayability for passionate fans of the series; Destiny 2, upon release, was seen as shallow and sparse compared to the first game; and, recently, Cities: Skylines 2 developers spent the lead-up to the game's release trying to reel in expectations because they didn't want fans to expect the game to have comparable amounts of content to everything that's available for the first game after eight years of post-release updates and DLC.

To compound this, many of the games that benefit from extensive post-release support are less story-focused games. They often offer a mechanical foundation and a sandbox wherein players can create their own experiences, stories and lore - Civilization has no plot, nor does Cities: Skylines or Crusader Kings. They're similar, in fact, to tabletop RPGs - like Dungeons & Dragons - in that sense. And they share another issue with tabletop RPGs: sequels sometimes just aren't necessary. When there's a new story to tell in an existing world, or for an existing character, it obviously makes sense to make a sequel and tell that story. But if the game is more of a mechanical foundation that's already sound? Well, major overhauls to that foundation are a reason to make a sequel, but sometimes it can just feel like "reinventing the wheel" for the sake of releasing a sequel, not because it's necessary or because it improves anything.

It feels to me like a problem that will only become more and more pronounced as more games opt for live-service models or extended post-release support, too. Can anyone think of any examples of games that had extensive post-release support through updates and DLCs where a sequel was then released that wasn't seen as disappointing or a step backwards?

We had an interesting discussion on the discord about "hand holding" in video games. To describe a game as "hand holding" is 99% of the time a pejorative when I see it. So my question is 1) what constitutes "hand holding" and where would you say the line is? Is there "good" hand holding or is it always a bad thing akin to babying or not respecting the player? Always love good examples but mostly just curious what people think here.

Capcom Exec says Videogames need to be more expensive

Just thought it might be interesting to get a conversation going around this topic. Obviously it's stirred up a lot of opinion.

What's your take on it?