The Steam Discovery Queue Is Just Depressing

 

Every so often when I have a couple of minutes to kill or if I'm procrastinating something I'll fire up Steam and take a look at the discovery queue.  At first, the discovery queue seems like a good idea because it apparently looks at games you play and then suggests you things based on that but at this point I'm sure that's bullshit because the Steam discovery queue is equal parts depressing and anger inducing and I don't know why I keep clicking through it

I'll start by saying that it's not a totally useless feature, I do occasionally come across a title in that list of games that I'll either buy right away or at least put on the wish list for later because it looks interesting but titles that do that are few and far between.

One thing that discovery queue has done for me is given me a fair bit of contempt for the indie game scene as a whole. I thought that indie games were cool because they were free of things like investors breathing down their necks to make a certain amount of cash and therefore could be a bit more creative and experimental except that's not what is going on at all.  Zelda-Clone, Soulslike, pixel graphic boomer shooter, low poly 3d horror walking simulator, Slay the Spire rip-off or the worst offender, action roguelite.  Just a constant barrage of samey, uninspired dross made by tossers that lack a single creative bone in their body trying to cash-in on whatever is the indie trend at the time.  I used to love roguelike games, but then 2011 came around, The Binding of Isaac came out and was really good but then the store flooded and is still flooded with rougelikes and now nothing will get me to hit that next button faster than seeing that tag.  Take some notes from Dennaton Games or Lucas Pope and try and make something at least a smidge original, will ya?

But it gets worse than that

The reason I think that the claim that discovery queue suggests stuff based on what you play is because every so often I'll get suggested a game that looks something akin to a low effort platformer than you might have found on Newgrounds around my middle school age.  Keep in mind that games on Newgrounds back then.  I got suggested one piece of shit looking game called Bok which looks EXACTLY like some piece of shit game some idiot would have made when trying to learn FlashMX.  The difference now is that it's some piece of shit trying to learn Unity or Godot or some such crap and they want money for it

 

Yeah it's only 2 quid but I'd rather stand in Siberian winter and have someone pull my ear lobes than give you money for that sack of shit.  Purplexingly it fed me that one because of Cuphead and......Bendy?  Whatever algoritihm they got for game suggestions is pretty drunk

But Bok isn't even the worst offender.  I did a couple of queues back to back and found this one guy who had made the same game 3 or 4 times, re-skinned them and jigged the levels around a bit and was selling each game for like 5 bucks each.  If I ever find them again I'll put them on twitter but the lack of quality for those games was absolutely shameless.

While I'm at it, let me also touch on the "Adult Only" games that occasionally pop up in the feed as well.  Why is it that almost every adult game on Steam is the ugliest looking piece of shit I've ever seen.  I've played A LOT of hentai games in my time and if there's one thing a Japanese ero-ge developer will put a lot of time into it's the art, because that is what is pulling in most of it's userbase.  Adult games on steam though all seem to use the exact same ugly looking 3D models with godawful animations and some of the worst "erotic" voice acting I've ever heard.  If there is anyone out there getting off to steam adult only games that aren't a translation of some Japanese thing, let me know because I'm convinced these people do not exist.

It makes me wonder if Steam has anything akin to quality control since the store is just HEAVING with garbage.  A sad state of affairs but luckily there are accounts on places like Twitter and YouTube that will filter through the bullshit better than any discovery queue ever could so tell that queue to go fuck itself and go there instead

Was Tomb Raider Ever Good?

 

Obscenely late to the party once again thanks to my insanely large backlog, I picked up a cheap copy of the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot on Steam and finally started playing it not too long ago.  It's a painful "OK" game, competently made and fun to fiddle about with for 30 minutes to an hour at a time but nothing special.  It's the gaming equivalent of eating a piece of plain bread or a bowl of plain, unseasoned rice with no side dish.  Not terrible enough to really complain about but not something you'd want to consume regularly.

The one thing that keeps going through my mind as I'm playing it is "why does this exist? we already have Uncharted".  Everything that set Tomb Raider apart back in the day when Lara had a lot more polygons and significantly stiffer movement is completely gone in favor of making it just Uncharted if it was a semi open-world game.  The problem with it being so similar to Uncharted is that it sucks at being Uncharted and it sucks at being a semi open world game.  The Japanese island that Lara runs around on in this game just isn't an interesting location and I find myself sort of glazing over as I'm playing.  The only real interesting thing about the game is how much effort went into the animations for Lara getting beaten up and killed and quite frankly I don't get that much enjoyment from watching game over screens and Saw-Lite levels of gore.

But here's the spicy hot take from the title, was Tomb Raider ever really good? 

I know there are plenty of people that claim to like it, it was a hugely popular franchise for a while and triangular tittied Lara Croft was and still is a video game icon but the games are just So. Fucking. Boring. I remember when I first got my Sega Saturn that had a playable demo of the first Tomb Raider game and I fired that thing up and prompty put it down.  At first I chalked it up just to being too young to "get" it, so when I was older I gave the classic Tomb Raider games another shot and gave up a few stages deep because I was so painfully bored.  The sequels I also gave a fair shake too but didn't fair any better and then as the series moved to the PS2 I feel everyone came to their senses with Angel of Darkness because I've never seen anyone defend that game. 

Then the reboot comes along with is bombastic cinematics and modern gameplay but still sufferes from being just painfully fucking boring.  Only this time instead of stiff movement and boring levels it's generic gunplay and boring semi-open environments I'm expected to scour for trinkets.  At time of writing this post I stand by the idea that Tomb Raider is, by far, one of the most boring franchises to ever exist in the history of the medium.

Granted I've not finished Tomb Raider 2013 and what it does have going over the original games is that I do feel at least somewhat motivated to at least get to the end, which is a huge step up from the original games.  Also I'm not sure how far into 2013 I am, I'm trying to fix a fuse box on a radio tower or some shit and maybe in a few hours more the game will get really good and my opinion will completely change.  The other thing I'm willing to consider is that maybe I'll have a lot more fun with the later games in the reboot series, Shadow and Rise of the Tomb Raider.  Maybe I'll come back after playing those games and have a completely differernt opinion and gush endlessly about what a masterpiece of gaming they are....

But I fucking doubt it