Here, against an endless horizon of orange sand, progress is practically eternal. You can drive for hours, chugging at a constant 45mph towards a notional Las Vegas with almost no change in the scenery. Or you can drive for hours, hitting the ball into hole after hole across forever-undulating topography. Desert Bus and Desert Golfing are boring games. They’re designed to be numbingly repetitive; they do not reward us with showers of praise or nuggets of story, nor do you find new places to go and new things to do. And yet we play them. We even celebrate them, basing charity events around Desert Bus For Hope – and Desert Golfing got a sequel.
For a medium that’s meant to be about excitement, games can coast awfully close to boredom at times. While Desert Bus and Desert Golfing intentionally play with the notion of being as boring as possible, there are also slow games which trade on the passing of time, like Animal Crossing, games which eke out rewards day by day. Then there are games about grinding repetitive actions for XP and low-drop-rate items. There are games about watching numbers go up; games about waiting for cooldowns to finish.
Denne historien er fra January 2021-utgaven av Edge.
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Denne historien er fra January 2021-utgaven av Edge.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
BONAPARTE: A MECHANIZED REVOLUTION
No sooner have we stepped into the boots of royal guard Bonaparte than we’re faced with a life-altering decision.
TOWERS OF AGHASBA
Watch Towers Of Aghasba in action and it feels vast. Given your activities range from deepwater dives to climbing up cliffs or lumbering beasts, and from nurturing plants or building settlements to pinging arrows at the undead, it’s hard to get a bead on the game’s limits.
THE STONE OF MADNESS
The makers of Blasphemous return to religion and insanity
Vampire Survivors
As Vampire Survivors expanded through early access and then its two first DLCs, it gained arenas, characters and weapons, but the formula remained unchanged.
Devil May Cry
The Resident Evil 4 that never was, and the Soulslike precursor we never saw coming
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
With Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare has made a deeply self-conscious game, visibly inspired by some of the best-loved ideas from Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
SKATE STORY
Hades is a halfpipe
SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION VII
Firaxis rethinks who makes history, and how it unfolds
FINAL FANTASY VII: REBIRTH
Remaking an iconic game was daunting enough then the developers faced the difficult second entry
THUNDER LOTUS
How Spirit farer's developer tripled in size without tearing itself apart