this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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God I wish we could force game journalism to never use to comparison again. It's basically impossible these days to parse the media on any given game without having to know an entire library of previous games first.
In this case, I know Bioshock, but my point still stands. Remember when Palworld came out? It was effectively impossible to find any review/preview/commentary on the game that didn't include something like "Palworld isn't a Pokemon-like, it's actually ARK with cute pals," which is worth exactly fuck all to anyone who isn't familiar with ARK.
Like I know we've been calling games journalism lazy for a long time, but it's gotten to the point where people don't even talk about game features or mechanics, they just list a bunch of other games with similar ideas instead.
Fuck, I might even prefer crappy ChatGPT articles to modern game discourse.
Important caveat: I did not watch the video and am only responding to the headline which clearly got under my skin for some reason, apparently.
Temba, his arms wide.
Temba, at rest.
I don't get this reference.
Don't worry, you're on Lemmy. The Trekkies will get you yet.
Ah, I looked it up. I watched TNG growing up with my dad, but it was so distant to be very hazy in my memories.
DS9 was my Trek.
How would you describe a new game in a single sentence that accurately conveyed the gameplay and feel? Especially for a game like palworld where most people will have the wrong initial impression. Especially even a genre like "survival" is so broad these days.
It's not like games media is the only type that does this. And people do this constantly with each other to establish basis.
Conversational language should inherently be different than journalistic prose. It was considered good form (really necessary form) for the vast majority of my life to fully define any non-ubiquitous terms in the text before using them. It only seems recently to me, and especially in games journalism, that they've decided to eschew the defining part of the process and just give the reference undefined.
Like it's okay, useful even, to say things like "Like ARK, Palworld utilizes X mechanic to achieve Y by doing Z." That's a great way to use a touchpoint for increased clarity to readers! But to just say "Palworld's combat is ARK-like," without defining what ARK-like is, is lazy and unhelpful to anyone outside the know already.
Exactly.
I really dislike the term "Soulslike" for a similar reason. Most "Soulslike" games have almost nothing in common with "Dark Souls," but they've latched onto one defining characteristic (tough boss fights) and ran with it, instead of using three words, "hard boss fights."
I get your point but I think you are off base with this one. The lead designer of this game, and the reason it’s getting a press cycle in the first place, is most famous for Bioshock. The comparison to Bioshock is absolutely called for in this case.
If you aren’t familiar with it, then fair enough but it’s more then a game design point of reference, this looks like a spiritual continuation of that series.