this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
213 points (98.2% liked)

Games

43512 readers
1387 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What are some things that just get under your skin about games?

For me, it's games that do not allow controller rebinding. I have neuropathy and my fingers don't all work. If I can't rebind buttons so that I have necessary moves (for example: parry) be on buttons I can reliably press the entire game becomes unplayable.

And on console, where I can't refund a game after I downloaded it (fuck you Sony) then it really screws me over wasting what limited funds I have on games I just can't play.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] vateso5074@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

This is my peeve, over-tutorializing.

I know there are folks out there who are profoundly bad at games, and that's who these things are made for. I'm reminded of that one gaming journalist who gave Cuphead a bad review because he couldn't figure out how to double jump and never got out of the tutorial.

But just make it a quick selection when starting a new game. "I'm new here, show me guides" and "I'm an expert, skip tutorial content". Or even just make the tutorials an optional object interaction in the game that you don't have to touch if you've already figured it out.

But the best games are the ones that teach players how to play organically. Level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros is the common example. Setting the camera controls in the older Halo games was also a work of genius. Newer games are a bit too dense to be able to cover everything quite as quickly and organically as Mario, but you can still offer some similar diegetic hints and just add a little "Help" button for anyone who can't figure it out on their own.

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thats seriously mental to me. Who the hell can write about games while unable to even double jump?

Its like being a music journalist and not even hearing about the Beatles.

[–] vateso5074@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Yep. Not to say that people who struggle with games aren't valid or there shouldn't be accessibility options to cater to them, but when writing professionally about games, you should be a near-expert in how to play those kinds of games, at least at their baseline difficulty.

It's fine to say "I don't quite get this game, but I'm sure there are people who do and who enjoy it." But that can't be a "review." When you're a reviewer, you're supposed to be an authority. If you admit to not being an authority, then you're not quite qualified to review it.

It shouldn't honestly matter, but knowing how many publishers tie aggregated review metrics to their developers' wages/bonuses/raises (or even if anyone gets to keep their jobs at all), it's crazy for a publication to have journalists who don't actually know how to play games just reviewing them on vibes alone. It's too easy to run the risk of not understanding a core part of the gameplay and just assume it's the game that's wrong instead of me (because I want to continue getting paid to review games). So I assign it a negative score because my lack of understanding made the game feel bad, and then a level designer somewhere loses their bonus because the aggregate score was half a point lower than the total stipulated in their contract.