I was just browsing the Google Play Store and I am getting frustrated seeing games being tagged with the genre, but aren’t actually simulating anything. E.g. Idle Miner/Mining Tycoon (can’t remember name). Nothing in the game is accurate or even tries to represent real life. It even has cartoon graphics. Now I’m not getting mad about the games themselves, just the fact that they are being labelled as sims. Anyone else annoyed by this?
Technically a simulation is some mathematical model that captures some but not all aspects of a system. (A model that captures every aspect is the system itself)
So like “Idle Miner” models the basic concept of buying capital then putting it to work extracting value. Yeah it’s an ultra-simple model, but it is a model.
Are there any good mobile games out there?
Krumit tale, Life in adventure, pocket city, lock screen, setting, kwgt
Stardew Valley, Terraria, Minecraft
OldSchool RuneScape
Bloons
Kingdom rush
Monument valley
Machinarium
The Room
Shattered pixel dungeon
They exist, you just need to hunt a bit harder and be prepared to pay a little for them.
Snakebird is one of the best games I’ve ever played, full stop
- baba is you
- jelly no puzzle
- Super cat tales
Play store is a shitshow. It’s so hard to spot the few actual gems in the absolute avalanche of ad-ridden asset flip time wasters that have the only goal of harvesting your data or running a monero miner in the background. The chances are better with paid games, but even then it’s hit-or-miss.
I gave up on mobile gaming long ago.Also, most albums tagged with shoegaze on Bandcamp are not shoegaze. It’s a travesty.
The shoegaze like emo music? like those emo kids in South Park that just look at the floor and kind of not dance?
Marketers gonna market. If “simulation” is a hot-selling category, then games are going to be sold as “simulations” if they bear even a slight resemblance to an actual simulation. This the same industry in which the customers con themselves into thinking that Final Fantasy is still a role-playing game.
What are the new Final Fantasies like? 8 was the last one I “beat” and then I never played 9 because the characters looked so cartoonish.
I played the sky pirate one and liked the Gambit system.
I played the one with lightning, but I never got into the whole crystals thing that is so prevalent in FF and it was just such a huge part of that, and they were trying so hard to make her the new cloud.
The newer games still have the same general story elements and themes that were characteristic of the entries you’re used to, but the combat is more like an action RPG. The sky pirate one is FF12(my personal favorite one) and Lightnings entries are FF13. Since 14 is an MMO you’ve really only missed two main-series games.
I’m waiting on the latest entry, FF16, to be released on PC so I’m no authority, but from streams I’ve watched the combat is pretty similar looking to the Devil May Cry series.
Since 14 is an MMO you’ve really only missed two main-series games
You can play most of it solo, aside from some of the major boss fights, and it’s both a “greatest hits” nostalgia trip and a damned good FF in its own right once you get into the Heavensward expansion and beyond.
I agree completely and generally describe it as a single-player MMO experience. It does a great job of incorporating the FF storytelling into an MMO environment and I personally love it. I haven’t played since they massively condensed the ARR content a few years back.
At the end of the day though, an MMO and a traditional RPG play very very differently and attract a very different audience so I usually give it an asterisk.
