HowHammerYou

As I've said before, I'd love to see From Software make a soulsborne-style Zelda game. Others that come to mind are: A 3rd-person shooter prequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn set during the war with the Faro machines, A Resident Evil game where the main character uses a claymore or similar big sword instead of a gun, An offline single-player version of World of Tanks, and a 3rd-person military shooter set in the FFVII universe where you lead a SOLDIER squad.

Mine was the SNES. I only ever had 2 cartridges for it, though. Thankfully, one was the pack-in Super Mario All Stars + Super Mario World, probably one of the best pack-in games ever made. I didn't really get hardcore into the hobby, though, until the N64 and Gameboy Color.

My first Sony console was the PS2. Since then I've owned at least one example of each except the two VR systems (I have no interest in VR) and the PS5. Currently I own: PSOne (mothballed), PS2 fat model (mothballed), PS3 slim, PS4 Pro, PSP 1000, and PS TV. I'll probably get a PS5 within the next couple of years, but I'm waiting on more info about a slim or pro model as I don't want the gigantic ugly original model.

To its credit, the half of the game that they finished is damn good. I was having a blast playing it until about the halfway point. Then right after the big fight with Leviathan, the second half begins and it becomes very obvious that they ran out of development time. The game develops a very on-rails feel to it (sometimes literally) and starts racing through new areas and plot points at lightning speed. Then it got really good again right at the end... except the fans didn't like the old ending because everyone died, so Square wussed out and wrote a completely different ending which was patched in and changed the story. At first I thought it was no big deal and that they would patch in the stuff that was missing from the second half of the game. They did for some things, but the trouble is they paywalled it behind paid DLC. Then they spent years making a fishing sim and other pointless stuff nobody asked for instead of just finishing the second half.

For me it was Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. From a gameplay standpoint the game is great, it has tons of features and plays like a dream. But the story, the thing people play the Metal gear series for and the thing this game was supposed to tie together and send off with a bang? The story was an absolute dumpster fire. Now to be fair, each game in the series has some off-the-wall story elements in it, but they were never on the level of "people can pull full-sized battle rifles out of the palms of their hands because they found rare skin parasites that let them do that." The sheer amount of character assassination they did to Big Boss, who at the time was one of my favorite fictional characters, also really turned my stomach. Not only do I regret ever playing the game, it was also one of the major factors that persuaded me to no longer buy Collector's Editions or pre-order games. Getting burned a second time next year by Square Enix's half-finished Final Fantasy XV put the final nail in that coffin. Dishonorable Mentions: Final Fantasy XV, Zelda: BoTW, Fallout 4.

I don't really have any fond memories of it. When I was a kid I tried to get my parents into video games so we could play together. They'd act interested for maybe a half hour and then go off to do something else. All I took away from it was that they didn't really care about anything I was into, so I gave up on it. Now that I'm older, everyone I meet already plays video games, so there's no need to teach them. I do plan on teaching my own kids whenever I have them. I'll start them off with an SNK micro-console or one of those Chinese rom boxes so they gain an appreciation for good 2D gaming, then when they're older I'll get them an Xbox 360 or PS3 so they can play some of the earlier (and better) open-world stuff. I'm never getting them anything curren-gen, though. If they want a current-gen system so they can play the latest multiplayer hyper-monetized lootbox fest, they can get jobs and buy it with their own money.

I know I have too many games, probably around 300-400. It's to the point where I have a hard time deciding what I want to play whenever I do play video games. For that reason and others I've decided that from Gen 9 onwards, I'm limiting myself to only one console per gen and only 10 games per console. Not sure what I'm getting for gen 9, though. My plan was to get a Switch 2 so I could at least play pokemon games, but given the serious quality control issues with the most recent pokemon games I no longer feel like they're a safe choice. I might get a PS5 Slim instead (or Pro if that turns out to be real).

How ironic! Spacer's Choice was notorious for making unreliable and shoddily built products, talk about jinxing your own game. "It's not the best choice, it's Spacer's Choice!"

This kind of bug is inexcusable, especially after the game has been patched several times. It should have been caught in beta (if beta testing even exists anymore). Like you, I'm glad I didn't buy either of these games. After how poorly Scarlet, Violet, and the Diamond and Pearl remakes turned out, I'll be very careful about buying any pokemon games in the future.

Not immediately, but I do think Nintendo will start to run into bigger problems if they don't release a new console by the end of 2024. It's crazy to think about, but the Switch will be 7 years old in 2024 and badly in need of a replacement. The recent batch of Switch 2 leaks/rumors, and Nintendo's efforts to silence them, make me feel like something's coming. I'm now expecting a reveal in summer/fall 2023 and a release by the end of summer 2024, but I won't complain if we get something sooner. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

I really wish they'd just sell the Metal Gear IP to Sony or Ubisoft. I ended up hating MGS5, and Konami blew their first shot at a post-Kojima Metal Gear game with Survive. However, Sony and Ubisoft both have proven track records for making great stealth-action shooters (Sony had SOCOM, Ubisoft has Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon). I'd love to see either one do a clean reboot of the franchise

Right now it's just Hogwarts: Legacy and the Resident Evil 4 remake.

I think we'll get at least one more generation of consoles with physical media (at least from Nintendo), but after that things look pretty dark. The type of physical media may change as well. Even the 4-layer blu-rays we have now are going to be inadequate for 10th-gen games, which are likely to have install sizes ranging from 500gb to 1tb. We may see vnand flash-based cartridges become the norm, or they could decide to go old-school and ship out bulky game cases filled with multiple cheap dual-layer blu-rays (like how PC games were sold back during the CD era). Personally I'd find the latter hilarious.

Golden Sun. The first two were some of the finest JRPGs ever made. Then they had one mediocre DS game, and the series fell off the face of the earth. SOCOM. Easily one of Sony's best first-party franchises from the 6th gen. I'm amazed at the lack of interest Sony has in reviving it, especially considering how obsessed they are with keeping military shooters on their platform right now.

Most likely some big megacorporation, so my bet would be Amazon, Google, Disney, or Meta. Realistically, the number of companies that could release a new console today is pretty small. The R&D alone costs millions of dollars, and then you have to be big enough to lose hundreds of dollars on each unit sold until you start to see profits coming in from the sale of games. I'd love to see SEGA and SNK get back into the home console business, but realistically, neither is really in a financial situation where they could.