Season 15, Episode 36

Summary: Giving it the ol’ in-and-out. Yeah, probably not the best starter I’ve ever come up with, but it’s in relation to those moments in gaming when we turn the game on and something about it just makes us turn it right back off again. It isn’t out of something like forgetting you had something else to do and couldn’t play at that moment or anything like that – it’s specifically a design choice, or a gameplay mechanic, or something else about the game that makes you give up before you even started. This happened recently while trying to play Doom Eternal on Gamepass. The download of the game took forever (we couldn’t find where to download JUST the single player portion so it pulled down the whole thing), then when we finally started it up, it asked us to sign into a Bethesda account and if we didn’t have one we needed to make one. I couldn’t find any option to skip this part so we could just play the game. So we turned it off. I rarely “nope” out of games on a superficial level. I hate underwater sections where air is crucial. It’s not a trigger or anything like that, but it’s anxiety on a level I do not want. I love the Burnout games but I absolutely cannot stand and dread, in fact, their time trials. Then there’s this whole thing where to play a game you have to have an account with the developer/publisher. Not a fan. And most, I believe, give you the option to play without signing in/up and you’ll miss out on some stupid extras or something, but when they completely close the door to the game until you do, that’s bad design. It’s corporate design, and it’s bad design. One quick note…in regards to the counter below that I’ve been doing for a while now. That will continue until they release the game. We’ve gotten word that a new Splinter Cell is probably in development, but it’s a rumor right now and nothing official from Ubisoft. So until it’s released, we’re still counting the days. With that said…Ubisoft, it’s been 2,986 days since the last Splinter Cell release (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise or VR exclusive).