this makes me think of tetris 99, where you can naturally guide the energy of your game (more so in the early game) by making good selections about who you're attacking. it's of course a battle royale and not a matchmaker, but it felt like a system where i could be clever and aim for strong kills or just chill and play my own game if i wanted

aaaaaaaaa!!! like imagine if you filled out a questionnaire before queueing up to let the computer know what kind of match you're looking to have, and it took that into account !!!!

(i want to try something new, give me an easier matchup // i've had a long day and i need to obliterate noobs // i'm looking for a challenge, give me weaker teammates than usual // i'm looking to goof around, set me up with people doing wacky strategies i'm not used to seeing // pair me with teammates who are into clear communication and who prioritize working together // i don't have a lot of time, match me with people who tend to surrender early // i want to play a slower paced game, match me with people who don't go on high-tempo nonstop combat sprees)

the accuracy of "but when i do well it is maybe the most fun ive ever had in a video game" has been haunting me ever since i first read it.

i am imagining how consistently scintillating [the] games would be if matchmaking were designed entirely around architecting the closest matchups possible instead of optimizing for low queue times.

like i'm fairly certain the matchmaking just looks at account win/loss, but there's so much more you (hypothetical juicy team matchup designer + data freak) could take into account toward the goal of orchestrating the heart-poundingest nailbiters ever— and on the regular.

decisions that take place after a match is found but before a game begins could be moved to before queueing up also!! like the game doesn't have to feel like emotional gambling ("the computer wanted me to win/lose to bring my track record closer to 50/50" and/or "my teammates/opponents were abysmal/godlike, thus taking all the joy of struggle out of the game. a win or loss was inevitable due to forces outside of my control"). the most fun you've ever had in a videogame could happen more often, i think.

i dunno,,

it's a good post! you could even put less effort in next time if you want to. i am simply happy to read

metroid prime 4 sucks
I find it kinda embarrassing to talk about it in paradise where I already talked about how donkey kong bananza sucked but like where that game sucked because it offered many compulsive dark patterns and gave basically nothing to top-end players while also releasing a bait dlc in the first month, mp4 (that's metroid prime 4) sucks because we knew it was going to suck. I'm not going to engage the spoiler culture here, if people in untitled social somehow are interested in the game, consider this a psa

we always knew it was going to suck. it was announced as a launch title in 2015 for the switch and clearly never came to exist until nintendo was able to requisition Retro Studios, the original developers of the Metroid Prime trilogy to do it. this happened in 2019, but we know that Retro was definitely working on different shit at the time so they probably had to reorient quite a bit, so let's say 5 years of development time. it also was likely required to be visually stunning (and it is) given the switch 2 hasn't really had a title to show that off yet, unless you count mario kart world which I have not played but it's not exactly realistic. knowing what we know about how long it takes to develop assets at this fidelity, there was probably very little time to work on the actual structure of the game, probs a year at most. from scratch. when you weren't expecting it. it's certain to be a disaster.

so why is the game bad?
first, it's stunningly linear. metroid prime games tend to have a formula of nonlinear exploration before you find some tech shit that is linear then, you get an upgrade and then go back to wandering. it does tend to have backtracking and the original game had a very funny rune quest where you had to find these sigils at the end of the game throughout the world and solve little puzzles to get to them. in normal play you'd probably find very few of them.

this game? it's just the tech shit you linearly walk down. first area? jungle. find the temple, get an upgrade. second area? factory. get to three bottoms, get an upgrade. third area? ice zone. get to a lab and get to the bottom. fourth area? lava field. get to a facility and get to the end. fifth area? get to the bottom of a mine. the middle three of these, I shit you not, follow the same formula where you get to the end and have to activate something and then escape because it's dangerous now. for a game series known for having stunning environmental art that sure is a lot of enclosed spaces where they don't have to sell that at all! it's extremely linear to the point where the only option you have for "taking a different path" is usually the fucking save stations which actually don't matter because the game employs a checkpoint system because it's so fucking linear that it no longer can rely on it's staple mechanic that makes exploration feel meaningful

anyways. fine. it's linear. they are allowed to change tack a little bit, but there's a problem: backtracking. as a common complaint about the series, it's actually something quite good about the game since it keeps you moving through the spaces and learning them instead of just forgetting everything like metroid: dread so untastefully did. however when the game is linear, you aren't trying to figure out the best way back to a space, you are just transparently wasting time as you realize the devs are padding for length. there's an upgrade you get that literally takes no additional effort to unlock you just have to go back and get it because it happened to be unavailable at the time.

this game is trying to have it both ways. it is trying to streamline a game series that relies on not being streamlined and through torturing its existence, everything just falls to pieces. it's funny, my experience of the public imagination of nintendo is that they are somehow the only big games company still making good games and maybe all these things I've talked about do help the geriatic millennial who grew up playing these games go to bed or maybe it makes the games more appealing to the next generation but shit man it just reeks of the same garbage other AAA studios are up to. nintendo is not somehow free of all the pressures of other games companies. they will cleave away at games until they are palatable chunks to congeal over. and some series are amenable to that. we can turn mario into sludge. zelda took some imagining but it can become sludge. metroid cannot become sludge, it resists it and trying to force it has failed miserably. maybe if they had more time, but a delayed game is an embarrassment forever while a released game is only an embarrassment temporarily

did I mention that after you get through the five areas they make you spend about an hour or two driving around an empty desert to run into some crystals before you can access the final boss? that there is no final area, just some cutscenes then boss? that actually there's not even any metroids except in the most superficial sense? that they absurdly added talking npcs but kept samus mute? that the game is perhaps 10-12 hours with the bullshit and sub-10 without it? that, I remind, this is a $70 game ($100 CAD??) if you buy it for the switch 2?

I missed like a whole generation of nintendo games because I took one look at super mario odyssey and breath of the wild and I knew this shit was not for me. I bandied past the affirming discourse because I saw dull open world for what they were, but that positivity stuck with me and I somehow convinced myself to pick up sequel titles to series I really cared about: donkey kong and metroid prime rather than the more mainline nintendo offerings. and I do think it was valuable to revisit these characters in these modern spaces as it allows me to really deconstruct what I found interesting as a kid. it is expensive to do but now I know firsthand what I've always known: if I want to find the joys I experienced as a kid in playing games it will always be in the small, new, and rare. any large calcified company will never be able to serve me.

anyways, sorry about the rant but I am mad. is this a good post or should i put in more effort next time?

i empathize so much... i played 6 games of valorant yesterday because i was so close to plat... just barely ranked up this morning. its not good for me!!!!!!! but when i do well it is maybe the most fun ive ever had in a video game

woah! new post! I've always wanted to get good at games like this but I would never commit the effort. It must be hell to get to the limit of your ability, forced to basically coin toss after that. sure there's always ways get to better but plateau happen because the effort requires just increases...

disorganized longform thoughts is cool too !!!
we're all friends here, there is no need to feel pressure to twist yourself into an unfamiliar shape for any reason

i have a friend who plays a lot of league and this "gotta end on a win" loop is really familiar. it really doesn't help though when it bleeds out of the game and he starts to feel unlucky in life and uses the game to fuel a vicious cycle. when it's not doing that though, i always love to hear him talk about the game and the scene cuz there's a real drive and passion. have fun and take care of yourself

maybe!! i sometimes think about writing here but i'm not very good at writing longform stuff so i get lost trying to organize my thoughts... i may just write more short stuff...