As many regular readers probably know, I am a game hopper. I usually bounce between anywhere between 4-5 games at a time. This works great for the blog for many reasons. I usually have something to write about here at all times because I’m constantly experiencing new games, and I generally have an assembly line of games that are slowly getting finished as well. If I were to just play one game at a time, I would have a lot of weeks where I’d be in a pickle for what to write about, while keeping my two posts a week schedule.
A few times a year, a new game comes out that completely takes over my life and makes it where I don’t want to play anything else. Right now, that game is Metaphor: ReFantazio. That game is awesome and massive. Since the game released two weeks ago, it is the only thing that I have played. I’ve been able to write about it in various ways the past few weeks, but now I’m out of ideas until I finish it.
While I have a few things brewing, this felt like the perfect week to return to a gimmick that I haven’t done in many months, the mailbag! I asked for questions on my various social media channels and managed to get a few questions I could easily tackle. Thank you so much to those who asked questions!
I also wanted to take a brief moment to thank anyone reading this post right now. If you decided to read a mailbag post, you are probably a regular reader of this blog. The past few months have seen some awesome growth here. This month is going to be the first month that the blog passes 1000 page views. In part, this is because google picked up my piece on playing Metaphor on hard, but also I’m seeing much more regular readership in general. It genuinely means a whole lot to me. With that said, let’s get on with the questions!
What is one of your favorite trends that has developed in this generation of games?- @TheJolson on Twitter.
I’m not sure if it developed in this generation, but accessibility seems to have truly become the standard in this generation in particular. This makes me really happy for the many gamers who legitimately need accessibility options in order to play games.
For me personally, I love that more games are allowing for options to change text size. I don’t have the best vision, even with glasses on, and it’s so frustrating when I have to lean forward to read text in menus. Especially in games where you spend a lot of time in menus like in RPGs.
Next up, we just need soulslikes to all start adopting difficulty settings. Then we’d REALLY be cooking.
If you could have any developer make a game in any genre what combo of developer/game would you choose?- @TheJolson on TwitterI’
What a great question! I really thought long and hard about this one. My favorite developer in the world right now is CD Projekt Red, so I wanted to think about something cool that they could do. I thought about how interesting it might be for them to take on a Starfield type of project. Basically, do what they do but on that scale. But the more I thought about it, while I legitimately really liked Starfield, I think they would also encounter some of the same problems Bethesda did taking on something like that.
The most logical and coolest thing I can think of is Kojima doing a 3rd person stealth open world cyberpunk RPG. Think of it as Kojima doing a 3rd person Deus Ex game, but with the openness of Cyberpunk 2077. He already has all of the tools. Death Stranding and Phantom Pain were phenomenal open world games, and Kojima can definitely craft a sci-fi story. The one thing he has never done is truly lean in on the RPG elements. I think that a game like that would take over my life. Now I want it really bad. Damn you, Jolson.
What’s a game in your backlog that you know isn’t getting enough love and why do you think that is?- @Kingbeacheye on Twitter
Right now, nothing in my backlog is getting enough love. I’m too wrapped up in Metaphor: ReFantazio to play anything else. I am really eager to try Neva in particular, which looks like an artistic masterpiece. I just played the developers’ last game, Gris, and really enjoyed it, and this looks like it is on another level.
Otherwise, the real answer to this is probably Nier: Automata. I attempted it for the second time this year, and while I got further than I did the first time, I still ended up putting it on hiatus again. It sucks because every time I see someone play this game, they seem to end up totally blown away by the story in particular. I personally was beyond blown away by this game after 5 hours. From there, the open world gameplay just isn’t very compelling to me. I really hate navigating the map. It just feels way too vague and barebones. The combat gets a little repetitive once the coolness of the shmup elements wears off a bit. The story also hits a bit of a lull in hours 6-10 from what I played that made me lose interest. I abandoned doing any side quests early on because none of those were interesting to me either.
But I feel like if I got a bit further, the game would blow me away again. I just need to power through for a little longer. It’s a sad situation. I hope attempt three is the one where it all clicks.
What’s your area of expertise you like to write about?- @antranaut on Threads
Video games! But seriously, I think the coolest thing I can bring to the table when it comes to video games is my willingness to rank just about anything. If there are multiple games in the discussion, I WILL FREAKING RANK THEM.
I am super excited about posting my game awards at the end of the year. I really went all out with ranking things. I’ll have my top 10 best combat systems of the year, which mixes action, turn based, strategy, and everything. I rank my top 10 characters, my top 10 stories, my top 10 soundtracks, etc. I go all out! I think it’s going to be really cool and not quite like what anyone else does.
Do you like crafting in games? I’m always amazed at how many games seem to shoehorn crafting in (even when it doesn’t make sense). Like there is an unspoken rule that you GOTTA HAVE CRAFTING- @hypecaster on Threads.
I love this question! Because I absolutely do not care for crafting in almost any game!
The big thing that it comes down to is that crafting systems tend to entail a lot of mindless and repetitive menu work that I don’t enjoy. There usually isn’t tons of thought needed when crafting in a video game. It’s just scrolling through dozens of items to find the two that you want and then pressing “craft.” And some games even force you to sit through a stupid 3-second animation every single time, too.
I like spending time in menus if there is compelling stuff going on in there. I loved being in the menus in Unicorn Overlord and tweaking my formations and moves. It was strategic and interesting. Crafting systems just aren’t in my experience. This is why the crafting survival genre is one of like two video game genres where I can’t seem to play any of them for more than 1 hour before giving up.
Luckily, I think most AAA games that throw in a lazy crafting system as a marketing talking point make it mostly painless. They just take a few minutes every few hours, usually. So it doesn’t really bug me all that much. But I do agree that it is almost never a big positive for the game.
Thank you for reading! Next week, my hopes are to do my top 10 ps1 games and my “dark horse MVPs” for a bunch of different video game genres. Hopefully I finish Metaphor: ReFantazio soon as well.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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