AAA gaming is a joke now. To the point that I am not gonna play AAA games other than MCC and CoDM with some exceptions
Games can suck or be masterpieces at any level of budget. The concept of AAA and AAAA is a marketing ploy against the masses of people who are conditioned to see big budget as inherently better. On the other hand certain genres of game don’t really work without massive budgets, while for a most genres it doesn’t matter.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is an obvious pick, but then I don’t think it really counts because it doesn’t do any of the heinous shit that AAA games are hated for. Sven Vincke may actually be a class traitor for how he looks after his workers and product quality. BG3 has made him a shitton of money but he could have raked in so much more with the usual post-launch enshittification and staff cutting the industry usually does. And yet he didn’t.
What counts as a triple A game? I still don’t really know the definition of that term.
It’s usually referring to the scope and budget of a game- AAA for big budget, AA for medium, and indie (which can be sometimes also AA or rarely, AAA) for those from small studios or individuals.
It’s not very well defined, but it’s something akin to blockbusters/A vs B movies.
It was borrowed from the finance industry, but it’s really just speaking to the budget. AAA usually means it comes from one of the big publishers who have the means to fund something like that, but not always. You do sometimes get AAA indy games, Baldur’s Gate 3 would be in that category but not a lot of indy developers can float that kind of budget.
I feel like these days a lot of people use it to mean “game from big publisher” in opposition to indy, but that isn’t always the case. Sometimes you even get lower budget “indy-seeming” games from big publishers, like Dave the Diver.
Last AAA game I bought or had interest in was Doom Eternal. Most of the games I play now are older than 2000 tbh.
From Doftware Soulslikes and FFXIV. That’s it pretty much
Anything that is good, honestly. I look at it on a case by case basis. I really like some of the big “prestige” single-player games that sony-affiliated studios put out, I love the Horizon games for example. Yet I have no interest in some of the other big releases like recent Assassin’s Creeds or anything Souls-adjacent.
Some years I play all indy factory automation games, and other years I have a top 10 that is all AAA blockbusters. My top ten of last year was almost 50/50 I think, looking back at it.
MCC is still good, especially with mod support.
To the point that I am not gonna play AAA games other than MCC and CoDM
Aren’t those- or at least the latter- some of the worst offenders? You do you though, not shaming what you enjoy or anything.
Personally I play (regularly and/or once in a blue moon) plenty of games that could be considered AAA, though I probably play just as much indies or AA titles. Genshin, HSR, soulslikes, Monster Hunter (deeply excited for Wilds), Guilty Gear, Civ, Baldur’s Gate, various Nintendo titles, etc… Minecraft if that counts…
I’m generally done with getting new Ubisoft games, and definitely not enough of a sucker to fall for, say, EA/Activision- but even then these all have good preexisting older titles that I already own and can jump into when I like, hell, once in a while Ubi does something interesting enough if you know what you’re getting into (and their games become dirt cheap within a year or two- for most games I’m absolutely a patient buyer).
The only AAA dev I’d say I’m done with completely is Blizzard, since their Overwatch 2 nonsense. I still like the characters (for OW) and have fond memories of playing Diablo 2 over LAN with my siblings (my dad is a gamer, and passed that on to the rest of us). But there are so many better games of the same or similar genres nowadays- many of them indie and yet far better and cheaper- hell, I don’t think I’d see myself returning even to D2 as a result. There was a bit of curiousity about D4 but I never seriously considered buying it, and that turned out pretty well IMO…
Blizzard are kind of my guilty pleasure games. I still play SC2 sometimes, and it’s the only “esport” I enjoy watching. D4 had some major growing pains (that seems to be a trait for the franchise) but has settled into…actually a really good game now. WoW I have played off/on for 20 years now, it is kind of comfort place for me.
Overwatch is the one game they made that did nothing for me, I think I am just not a shooter person. It also seems to be where all their trainwrecks have focused in recent memory. I also will always be bitter about what they did to my boy Heroes of the Storm.
I used to really like the Ubisoft formula, but I think there are other games that do the open-world-map-icon games better (like Horizon). The actual Ubisoft games just seem very stale at this point.
Fair, I never played Starcraft- and only a very miniscule amount of WoW, so it was just OW/Diablo for me. I did play some HotS though and agree, they really did it dirty…
I’ve not played Horizon though it’s on my list, I got it on sale quite a long while back at this point. Ubisoft’s open-world formula is definitely very stale by now though, I agree. But the titles nowadays are at least gay, my partner sometimes wants to play AC, and as a history nerd I enjoy AC’s settings, so there’s that at least.
I loved Zero Dawn, and Forbidden West was a lot better than I expected. They do a relatively good job, especially Forbidden West, of not overstaying their welcome of any given openworld activity. Probably my favourite of the open-world map games. There is a touch of Monster Hunter in there too, though not quite as “pure” as that experience.
I could see them not sticking the landing in the third game, as so often seems to be the case, but I choose to remain optimistic.
I’m a big Halo fan so and the original releases are console exclusives and even then no mods (which I am a fan of). CoD Mobile is somewhat fun but still not as a fun as 2019-21
Doom the Dark Ages got me to buy a new GPU
besides that, I only play indie and medium-sized games like Workers and Resources, Victoria 2, etc. I also play some VR, but the only “AAA” game there is half life alyx
I am a halo fan but I am only playing MCC with mods for now so i am gonna settle with an rx 580 for now until I can get an rtx 4070
nice! 4070 is a decent card. I got an AMD RX 7600 XT (more or less an RTX 4060 performance wise)
my power supply decided to die after I installed the GPU, but it was quite old. I bought a nice modular PSU now
Liminal space/Backrooms games like anemoiaplis, the complex found footage/expedition, and pools. also indigo park.
None. Quality of AAA titles are trash. Embrace indie games, support Bluedrake42.
I love the 2 Fear and Hunger games. A shitton of content, no bullshit.
Indie games suffer from the whole drip feed content problem too so I will just wait.
Fromsoft games and Resident Evil/Dead Space are the only real AAA games I played in the last couple years. FF7 reborn too I guess.
Basically just FromSoftware games and Baldur’s Gate, if that actually counts as AAA. Other than that, I only play indie games.
