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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

I've tried, but I just don't enjoy the PS-style "prestige" games. I want my games to above all be fun, and I just don't find the gameplay loop of the Horizons/GoWs/etc. to be very engaging. It always seems like there is more emphasis on the production values than in making sure the player is having a good time.

I own a PS5, and the absolute most fun I've had on the system is Astro Bot, followed closely by Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart. Everything else I've enjoyed has either been a PS4 game or an indie game.

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A useful shorthand for my taste is that most games that fall into E-for-Everyone on the ESRB ratings scale (or even the 10+ version) are probably not something I'm particularly attracted to. There are outliers, especially since Nintendo does their best to stay family-friendly to a fault because that's their brand/history. TOTK is E10, for example, and I certainly enjoyed it, but that's the "legendary franchise" exemption bucket again.

But stuff like Astro, Splatoon, Ratchet and Clank, whatever latest Mario title, anything Rabbids or Rayman, etc. don't speak to me at all anymore. I never played R&C in any of the Playstation generations, and I never liked Crash Bandicoot when I tried that. I sort of remember liking Spyro when it was contemporary.

Given the selection bias of who publishes what games where, it's hardly a surprise to me that I'm not getting much mileage out of my Switch. Nintendo feels like a brand that's tailored most of all for my kid nephew and any appealing titles for me are largely exceptional.

To some degree I think my tastes are a response to a trend that I hated during my formative years. When the sixth generation of video game consoles came out when I was in high school (Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, XBox), there was this sudden near-universal trend to make everything darker and edgier. Grand Theft Auto was making senators faint with concern, Sega gave Shadow the Hedgehog a gun and the ability to say "damn", Naughty Dog took Jak and Daxter from "Banjo-Kazooie on PS2" to "GTA-lite for edgy preteens", etc. etc. Everyone but Nintendo, who were cheerfully putting out Super Mario Sunshine, was doing it.

At the time, I was just starting to think of video games as an art form in addition to a source of entertainment, and the blatant fad-chasing I was seeing across nearly the entire industry turned my stomach. Of course the same thing had happened many times before and has happened many times since, but I wasn't in my formative years for any of those.

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