I almost never change guns mid-encounter. I play one to two guns at a time and stick to them while trying to level them up. Even when I play a game like Ratchet & Clank, which I love, I don’t constantly change guns. It sucks! So I spent the entire game using only one power for most encounters via the hot key. The other ones must be accessed manually via a complicated and difficult to access wheel in real time. It’s a FPS with special powers but you can only hot key one of the powers at a time. This was a big problem for me in my recent playthrough of Necromunda: Hired Gun. Sometimes I will change weapons/approach in the middle of the fight when my current method isn’t working, but I do not want to have to bring up a hot wheel more than one time in a single encounter. I absolutely hate having to keep bringing up a wheel menu mid-fight to defeat an enemy. Because of this, I have a deep abhorrence for combat wheels. This “lazy” approach to gaming applies to most genres of games I play. And this comes in an almost unlimited supply other than for the final upgrade level of gear, which is not required to beat the game. The only thing you have to worry about is crafting resources when upgrading your gear. Everything is done via swappable upgrades. There are no permanent spec choices you may regret later. Of all the games in the Soulslike genre I’ve played, The Surge is the simplest to play from a character-building standpoint. I don’t have the time or patience to try to read number charts and create complicated builds in order to get a 6% increase to my critical parry rate for a 4% burst of special damage, or whatever. I equip the gear I want, I equip the spells/special items I want, and then I attack things. For me, it’s all a big, annoying waste of time. ![]() I see posts on Reddit about the game all the time talking about things that I’m not even aware of. But to fully master the game’s many special mechanics you basically need to take a class. To the game’s credit, it’s extremely well balanced and allows players to beat the game solo without taking the time to learn most of that stuff. Nioh, which is my favorite franchise in the genre, has a robust system of both passive and active mechanics that I still don’t understand after more than 300 hours of combined gameplay across both games. It’s complicated, requires a ton of outside research to do effectively, and often nets unnoticeable results in the short run. I find leveling up in Dark Souls to be extremely annoying and borderline stressful. While I love the gameplay in this genre, I almost always hate the character development systems and passive mechanics. I have several more games in this genre sitting in my backlog like The Surge 2, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Lords of the Fallen. I’ve played Demon’s Souls, all three Dark Souls games, Bloodborne, Nioh 1 and 2, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, and The Surge. ![]() Some refer to this as accessibility, but I feel like that term has taken on new meaning in recent years and no longer addresses the specific point I’m making. I’m saying they need to be as simple and straight forward as possible. I am not saying games need to be easy for me to enjoy them. ![]() What that means in simple terms is the less complicated a game is to play the better. I am a believer in the path of least resistance from the UI. The first thing I need to address is my general approach to games. So I wanted to examine this question by explaining the reason I chose Soldier in my playthrough of Mass Effect. The Rock Paper Shotgun article poses a valid question: Why in a game where you can use magic powers and hack technology would you choose the power of just having more guns? When you lay it out like that, the 40% of players picking Soldier seems ridiculous, laughable, and a little depressing. Thinking back to my playthrough of the trilogy, I chose Solider as well. Meaning an overwhelming majority of players chose Soldier. The second most played class, Vanguard, comes in at just 21%. Soon after the infographic was released, Rock Paper Shotgun posted an article questioning the fact that 40% of players chose the Solider class. Now I didn’t play the Legendary Edition but I did play the original trilogy, so the information was still interesting and relevant for me to examine. Recently the Mass Effect Twitter account posted an infographic sharing data on the various choices people made in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
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