this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
119 points (100.0% liked)
games
20975 readers
262 users here now
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
-
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
Rules
- No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or transphobia. Don't care if it's ironic don't post comments or content like that here.
- Mark spoilers
- No bad mouthing sonic games here :no-copyright:
- No gamers allowed :soviet-huff:
- No squabbling or petty arguments here. Remember to disengage and respect others choice to do so when an argument gets too much
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Portal 2 clears stardew as a 'game'. What I mean by this: I actually finished Portal 2 & the co-op story. I never felt compelled to finish stardew.
Love both, but this is only happened because portal 2 is old and rating games is useless. apples & oranges etc.
I finished Portal 2 cuz it was shorter but was compelled to put more hours and energy into stardew thus it clears Portal 2 as a game.
Edit: being a bit less shitposty, using game clear compulsion is just a really odd metric. Arguably my favorite game of all time, Rimworld, I've never been compelled to complete but I think it is a far more interesting and compelling game and interactive experience than I found Portal 2. If anything Portal 2 is something that I completed because it was more compelling as a 'narrative' but the gameplay loop of stardew was more interesting making it the better game. If anything I'd argue that Portal 2 was mostly there for being the polished version of something that felt inspired, much like ToTK.
The metric you used is something I could make see as an argument for saying something is a better narrative, but I think most people wouldn't define games but desire to complete, especially since many people's favorite games or genres are defined by inability or extreme difficulty and deterrence of completion.
I’ve played 600+ hours of Baldurs Gate 3 across multiple characters, never finished it. Played well over a thousand hours of BG2 and BG1 combined, only finished them each once. I agree completion isn’t the best metric, but also even for narrative games. Not everyone plays them the same and even the completion rating for games like that is really small.
Oh yeah I mostly was considering the idea of it being an evaluation of the narratives ability to make someone want to see it through, due to the variety of things that make up a game this is also competing with a bunch of other factors so not exactly a perfect metric. but I can at least see how completing a story can be indicative of its narrative strength (given considerations for general game difficulty and gameplay style) whereas completion has almost zero connection with the strength of the gameplay loop, which makes it a particularly odd choice imo for describing how well something works as a game.