As a developer, the experience is so much better on Android for me. And I oppose the walled garden on a ideological level.

But I have to admit some of the features are compelling. Some of them aren’t even really Apple’s doing, such as Genshin Impact supporting wireless controllers on IOS14+, but not Android at all. Others are built in, such as the lidar scanning.

They haven’t yet tempted me over, though, because phones are incredibly expensive and even if I weren’t opposed to the walled garden, I’m pretty invested in the Android ecosystem now.

At some point I plan to borrow someone’s iPhone and try Genshin on it, and if that works well… Well, I might just switch anyhow. Or maybe I get sick of that game before that. ;)

I think the tutorial for Pikmin 4 is boring and painful for people who already know the deal. And I think the constant, slow interruptions absolutely kill the pacing, at least at the beginning.

I’m there for the gameplay loop, not to read the same recycled trash dialogue that every Pikmin game has, and it’s ridiculously similar to other basic games, too.

The devs seem to think I’d rather watch the UI do pretty things than play the game, and they couldn’t be more wrong. Maybe that crap snappy, let me skim through dialogue at rocket speed, and let’s get on with the fun.

It was really unfortunate that they included that. I continued to the end, but those were definitely the worst parts.

I think a lot of stuff could fit their tech, if they were willing to go the extra mile and develop standard game features as well. Pokemon Go could be so much more if they implemented more RPG stuff. Ingress might have reached its limit, I dunno… But everything they’ve produced since those has been incredibly bare-bones and boring. And they all sounded like they had potential.

They want to do the absolute minimum amount of work to support their main mechanic, and nothing else… And it’s killing them.

I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of them, but I don’t mind them. If there’s a game from that list that I really, really want to keep playing, I can just buy that game. In the mean time, I got to enjoy all the other games that were fun for just a short time.

I definitely prefer XB Game Pass instead, though, where the whole catalog is available no matter when you started and whether or not you clicked a button in time.

Looks like a gaming table with a screen in it. There’s a lot of custom builds like that on Youtube, and there are even a few companies that sell them, I think.