Great video, man, but I felt the need for more direct examples of some things you were talking about, and sometimes I couldn't tell if the game playing on the background was relevant to what you were saying or not. You could've also put the names of the games as they were playing, because it can be quite hard to track down the name of something I might've found interesting, for example.

i really think you sold Valheim short there...

"Videogames Have Terrible Worldbuilding" as a gross, misleading clickbait title for a more general complaint about how bad fantasy writers mishandle exposition, something that has been true of bad writers in every genre for the entire history of the human race, is the kind of thing that genuinely deserves a click on the "Don't Recommend Channel button," and I have done that. I know it won't matter, but I hope others do it also.

Ahh, Vampire Survivors, a mere shadow of the true gambling king, Noita

21:01 I like how you’ve used satisfactorys music without mentioning them. That song is so deeply rooted in my brain.

Absolution is a great game. All the nerds hating on it need to check themselves. you can have your own opinion not shout what everyone else is saying.

this may sound weird but i specifically clicked on this video to see if reus 2 was there, and it was!! love to see it

Undertale should been GOTY. Its about, how, DESPITE EVERYTHING, it is possible to be a abetter person, is hard, that´s why the hardest route is the pacifist, you have to think, to strategies, to solve puzzles, while being a bad person is actually very easy, thats why the neutrals and the genocide route are more like a slasher, the only thing you have to be worry about is to find the people to beat. In theory, its not as hard, and thats the message, in life you could either go easy and go for neutral, effort a little bit more to be a bad person, or give everything of you, mind, soul and strengh, and be a good person. Despite everything, we can be better

regarding Xcom: if a 95% hit chance (meaning statistically 95 out of 100 shots should hit) misses multiple times per mission for many missions in a row I am perfectly in my rights to question if the 95% actually represents 95% or if I was lied to. This is not selective memory, I made a list back in the day. I was on the fence while playing the first Xcom, but the second one definitely lied about the hit chances.

Thanks for the vid

This is why we're all going to die in a fiery inferno of negligence. Because smart people like you care more about "temporal mechanics" than the real world.

S-e

9:21 evangelion reference ??!??'?'11?1

because games does one of or both of these things 1: treat me like an idiot/somone who never touched a video game in my life 2: endless popups wityh wall of texts explaining basic things and sometimes even sprinkle advanced information into these wall of text that you then miss because you dont need to read 20 sentances on how to move you camera

Great essay and a very great game thank you adam for introducing me to disco Elysium

I will not tolerate Hitman: Absolution slander. 1:45

What is the name of the game at 0:55?

FALLEN LONDON MENTION!! no but fr i ended up making my bg3 character based on my fallen london character bc i was THAT invested in her and wanted to see her realized

Hey, I am looking for a game that became popular about a fishing boat, but I can't remember its title, can anyone help me? Thanks in advance.

I never played Vampire Surviver, but I had to uninstall Magic Survival because I was so addicted to it lmao

I understand what you've said, and I like how you highlighted the use of manipulate mathmatics. However, I really don't think its a big deal. Vampire survivors is £4 on steam, and most players probably have under 50 hours in-game. Vampire survivors compared to gambling in casinos is worlds apart in terms of ethics and morals. A large amount of people are addicted to gambling and literally can't build wealth because of their habit. The way I see it, the devs of vampire survivors have added the manipulative maths to the game to make it a more satisfying experience, and I think of this as a positive instead of a negative for this particular case.

The Union isn't communist, but rather social democratic

One key world building rule is that "I don't know" is not only an OK answer, but in many situations it's the BEST answer. We (humanity) have been here through our entire species' world building and there's so much we don't know. We've lost more history than we have memorialized. We like to think we know so much, but there are so many questions we have and that is part of our story.

Outer wilds. the best game I've ever played.

You mentioned Pokémon’s Pokédex as a good way of imparting knowledge to the players. I would disagree. I always felt unimportant in the process of discovery because the thing I’m “discovering” already has information available within the device that I feel artificially locked out of. If information about a Pokémon was already in the dex, why didn’t I have access to that information before “discovering” the Pokémon? Surely if the professor wanted me to find and do more research on the Pokémon it could have guided me. I love Pokémon don’t get me wrong but from my perspective it feels expository instead of exploratory. Imagine what they could have done if you go to find a Pokémon but something is happening to its habitat and the Pokémon have migrated to a nearby region. That would have made the world feel so much more alive and driven an incredible story focused on the Pokémon world itself instead of just a journey to becoming a Pokémon champion . To me the world has been unimportant and the challenges presented in combat are the engaging factor for me.

What’s the game at 1:31 ?

18:11 I felt that pain all the way 💀💀

Completely agree about Tactical Breach Wizards. This video makes me think of Fire Emblem Three Houses and Unicorn Overlord, and how disappointing I found those games. I found a good enough strategy to grind my way through the games that made the games monotonous grinds, and I subsequently lost interest part way through. In Three Houses, you can usually move someone just outside of attack range of a few enemies at a time and then dog pile them when they move forward, which largely trivializes the game, at least through the part I got to. In Unicorn Overlord, when I actually thought about how to program priorities for how units should operate and was iterating on that, the game was fairly interesting. However, you don't unlock abilities for individual units very fast, and I pretty quickly put together units that were good enough to just grind through every enemy I encountered on the map. At that point I didn't feel a need to engage with the interesting part of the game, and the whole thing became a slog.

this guy put me onto balatro and its my fav game ever thanks guy ur the best

3:37 doom should have a fishing minigame

Technically that's 69 games........... Except, there were 3 joke games which brings the total up to 72, and one of the 50 games was un-recommended which brings the total down to either 68 or 71 depending on whether you count the joke games. But... We can still take all of these into account if we treat the collection of 50 games as a single over-arching game independent of all those 50. So we're back and 69 and all is good. Or, rather, all is... nice.

Basically Adam admitted he didn't spend any time in the Cloud District 😂😂

I think this is why ES3 Morrowind is still loved..... mostly by the players who can learn/adapt to it's unusual stone age mechanics lol tutorial takes 5 min tops, main quest is to get to Balmora and find a guy.... when you find the guy, after talking to npcs and getting to know the area, he tells you to go out and adventure to make a name for yourself... you are free to go where you like, the story line ENCOURAGES you to do this.... there are no "go here dummy" markers... all NPCs who give you a quest tell you WHERE IT IS.... and to figure it out yourself from there..... on top of that loads of places give you proper rewords..... like one temple out of the way has daedric breast place, another has daedric helmet, another with a super good spear, ect ect ect all "one of a kind" artifact type items those who adapt to the Morrowind jank, eventually grow to love the morrowind jank..... and those who are smart can acknowledge that, atleast the combat and spell mechanics are jank, and not well designed, but its still something that after a while feels rewording to over come

erm nuh uh (u can die once)

Yeah, this video pretty much explains why i'm easily burnt out and just quit playing the game entirely. I have tons of games in my library and still wondering what to play. I search for guides before playing the game, spoiling me the fun.

0:29 The fact that a man with a British accent having to clarify that he was saying terror and not Tera is hilarious to me 😂😂😂

At least now I understand better why I couldn't get into FFXIV =)

13:10 I'm so glad you mentioned FromSoft games because this was the exact thing that happened on my Elden Ring playthrough. I realized on my second playthrough with the DLC that I was needlessly hoarding items that I might need for crafting at a later difficult bossfight, only to never use them period. So on my second playthrough, I actively went out of my way to ensure that I exhaustively used every resource at my disposal at every opportunity I got. It really added a layer of fun factor for me that I kicked myself for missing out on the first time around, and realizing that this is an experience many people overlook for the exact same reason saddened me.

46:19 rhetoRICK ROLL

I think the real strength of Disco Elysium is even in a game set in a poltically charged world, players with such opposed political views and interpretations of that world as you and I can come out loving it. I remember when I got to the end I realized that someone with left wing views would probably have a completely different interpretation of the last boss fight, and would probably enjoy it just as much as I was- and that realization floored me. It's present throughout the whole game, but that moment drove the depth of the writing home in spectacular fashion.

It's so relaxing going through your yearly videos. By this time I picked up so many of the mentioned games from random, crazy sales, Humble/Fanatical bundles that I even forgot about them. But making me think of what great games I own, showing new, interesting games, and overall reminding me how interesting, fun and unique games exist is a great feeling going into the new year

13:15 the reason i never use the damage boosting items in Dark Souls is this; I use lightning grass to make my sword more powerful, I do a decent amount of damage, then get stomped by the boss. I come back, I no longer have the item and am now doing worse than I did before

Those discovery games... what differentiates them from good ol' point'n'click games? I mean sure - there have been different approaches, like Lucas Arts where you basically couldn't fail and just had to figure it out - to Siestas more punishing approach to failure... But by and large those games were often more than simple 'puzzle' games. where you also had to discover a lot of combinations. And even when there was some kind of progressions you couldn't rush, you had, more often than not realtively free reign over the order you solve puzzles in a certain step.

Well - you can do a lot show rather than tell - even with world building. Instead of making everything a big lore dump - or a collection of lore books scattered through the game world, you can always show the aftermath. Ruins are a great example. I still loved the idea of the Ayeleid ruins in Oblivion. You see the world around you, you see this completely different kind of architecture, you see, that some of them still serve a function (like those mana wells)... You have research teams from the mages guild exploring them... Or simply the remains of all the old imperial outposts, highlighting that the haydays of the Empire and the big Imperial city are waning... There's always the possibility to have certain ancient dangers still lurking about... just spitballing: The last great Empire created in it's last days some mutated super weapon - soldiers that don't need much sleep or food, are always alert, highly effective and neigh immortal... Still not enough the Empire loses. And some of those soldiers are now the foundation of vampire legends of some kind... Imagine learning about vampires and all the superstition and mysticism around them - just to find some facility where they literally were produced as a weapon

whats the movie playing in the intro?

15:10... Oh wow. you did it. Now all the little soundbites for technological advancments and secret projects pop in my mind once again :D "What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before your senses; data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: You have received the information - now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output."

One part of A-EXP from Metaphor I ended up not liking is the 'Mastery levels', or over-cap levels. Archetypes level up to level 20, and after that, their 'experience track' gives you, essential, crystalized EXP. Similar to the Soul's games 'soul' items. This is a great mechanic in that it makes you less punished for chilling in a class after maxing it accidently. The problem is that it is 100% efficient, forever. I can sit in Seeker (or whatever) forever, and every 1000 A-EXP gives me a 1000 A-EXP item. This not only doesn't force you to swap classes, it actually lets you take a character, remove them from combat forever, and transfer all their A-EXP to another character you actually like. Additionally, you can use the same class forever, and instead of needing to play as a class to unlock their skills for later, you can simply siphon your crystalized A-EXP to a class you've never played as to grab its skills. I found myself sitting in a class forever on some characters just so I didn't have to bother actually leveling up in a different class with the skills of that class. Some way of still making it better to be in the class to level it up to change up the strategy would encourage changing classes more often, or even making it so the Mastery EXP can't be shared between party members, preventing you from shelving a character as an A-EXP transfer machine.

balatro is a genius fantasy not a power fantasy

What is a "role"? Is it possible to play "yourself"? (spoiler: no) The role in RPGs has always been the ROLE on the battlefield: fighter, cleric, thief and mage. Roles of players when clearing dungeons :) The RPG grew out of wargaming - and the role is the “role” of the unit on the battlefield: advance guard, support, line troops

because it all comes down to one "health" scale ; damage heal regen. Now let's assume that we add "movement". And now we have 3 more roles since units can influence movement: stop opponents, strengthen allies or move quickly. 3ˆ1 => 3ˆ2 And now we have new roles We add abilities that are strengthened/weakened depending on the speed of the unit - and we get different roles: A tank of dangerous allies - Paladin A fast-moving tank - Barbarian A tank that slows down opponents is a "hunter" who catches enemies.