Variation did begin to pick up once they started making indie games for consoles, but I was referring to games you could find on the shelves for an average home console. And I wasn't going from memory, I was going off something I read a while back.
Since as long as I've been a gamer, the average MSRP of a game has been quite steady despite the fact that the purchasing power of that price tag has completely collapsed.
An average Atari 2600 game cost $39.99 but that's closer to $170.70 in today's money. A game for the PS4 had a sticker price 50% higher, but the actual value of that money is nearly ⅓ as much.
If you have better data than the article I'd love to hear of it. I hated how they referred to typical MSRP as the "average" price when it's clearly the mode and not the mean.
My only point was that the price of these games has been at a certain level without regard for the drastic decline in the value of the dollar. Demand for games should be on the elastic side, so it's weird that (most) prices have been so steady.
It's just really hard when we've been for decades conditioned to largely see every game as priced at something like $60. It's created a group of consumers who are incredibly price sensitive, but also likely to look on anything priced under $60 with a jaundiced eye.
They're very different games in some respects, but Silksong for me so far is very much a direct continuation and elaboration of the creative aims of the original. Same ideas, taken further. It's early for me, but it feels a little like it was taken in more of a Sekiro direction with the combat precision and more deliberate choice of weapons loadouts.
I can't spoil shit, haven't even beat the first major boss yet.
The fun of this game for me is a lot like back before GPS and ride share apps, how you might be lost at night and walking home, broke after a satisfying night out. You don't know where you are exactly, but you feel a creeping recognition as you make your way through unfamiliar areas. Then you get a moment of pure elation as your mental map puzzles it all out. Your world feels bigger, you feel safe again, and you're ready to return home with a true sense of satisfaction.
Then there's the way this game trains you to fight like the main character. You can't make too many mistakes because HP is limited and healing is often a high stakes moment, so you quickly learn a way to use the moveset - and when it clicks, it looks good.
You learn how to fight like Hornet, and the way she fights speaks to her story. Being the royal progeny of a spider and something eldritch, her style of combat is graceful yet intense, smooth as silk and totally merciless.
The surface elements (the storybook aesthetic, the gobbledygook bug-talk from amusingly forlorn characters) keep it all from becoming too grounded. If Team Cherry ever tried to make their work seem grounded in realism, I never noticed it. They use real things (like the "needle" you use as a weapon) as only small reminders that this is a story about bugs. These bugs are fully capable of metallurgy and heavy engineering, so anything that refers to the human world only exists to keep the sense of scale in focus.
To add to what you're saying, the game changes on you so much. From the start it's no Hollow Knight, but as you gain new abilities and ways to arrange those abilities, the game changes almost as fast as you can get good at it. I can't wait to get into the second act.
You know what sucks about it though, being a deeply sarcastic asshole? I wasn't able to replicate the same damage in my son. He's so earnest and genuine. He has an uncomplicated delight in praise and an open countenance that I will never understand. I feel like an artist who has created one masterpiece by accident and will never know how they managed it.
Dude will be like "daddy, you make the best bread in the world" and by the time I mutter "don't patronise me" he's already talking about something else - and not listening. He keeps getting away with it.
So yeah I like being sarcastic but it has lost some of its shine lately. It's no fun being sarcastic with him.
I agree on a lot of particulars there, but I feel compelled to quibble on behalf of historical contingency. We are separated from the past by an infinity of momentary possibilities, and just as people in the past did not know what was going to happen, we can never know what possibilities did not come to fruition. It seems impossible that there was ever such a thing as a foregone conclusion in light of the sheer amount of things that are left to chance every single day. Any historian worth the time of day will tell you that their subject is a litany of unintended consequences, and I am happier knowing that no fate is preordained, especially not war.
Concerned-antocommie is such a troll alt username