GTA 4. Failed genre from game design perspective?

GTA 4 is huge. It's interaction space is limited however. The emphasis was put on your feeling that the world is big and you can live like gangster. The main vision for the game is gangster simulation. And huge amount of work was put into cinematic characters and story variety.

The game has a great and funny feel to it. It's obvious though that different parts of the game were designed by different people with different goals. You should make up your mind if you want to make immersive game or fun arcade game. I think that it's the job of creative director. Some things should not be in the game. Instead of doing stuff like arcade machines, games within the game you should develop gameplay more related to the core experience of the game. Variety in this game is huge. But content does not mean quality of design.

Dishonored. Stealth system.

Dishonored decided to innovate on stealth formula. Going in shadows does not give you 100% invisibility. If NPC is close enough you will become visible. What does it mean for NPC to be close enough? You never know.  You have the ability(Darkvision) to see NPCs field of view but it does not give you precise information(I miss Metal Gear Solid's radar). For me it was trial and error. If they saw me I reload. Thank god that reloading time is non-existent. Basically it's the clash of realism and black magic(Darkvision is magic in this steampunk world) which is strange.

Dishonored. Evolution of modern rpg systems. General praise for the game.

When games like this come out I want to beleive that everyone will notice it and try to change their game design perspective. The game is an RPG without character stats. No old school game design bullshit. We moved on!

FTL. Upgrades in games should be more like perks.

Fallout did this. It was long time ago. Perk system. By now every developer should realize that +5% percent to speed/damage/evade is pretty bad design. It does not give you new opportunities immediately. And FTL devs realize it too. Although they use 1.5x, 2x modifiers but not +5%. 2x is more noticable. Player should have feedback when he does something. Actions without feedback should not be in the game. FTL devs know this and that's why FTL is so good:). Although there are some strange things - like you need to invest two points to get one shield. They probably used "1 point = 1 shield" mechanic at first but then balanced it to make the game harder.

Saints Row 3 world design restrictions

So, Saints Row The Third. Nice game, eh? In terms of style it feels like juvenile GTA. But that is not what I'm going to talk about. I wanted to talk about sandbox design and its implementation. I played GTA long time ago but I think it applies to this series as well. How can you implement a world that feels alive but does not require a lot of resources? Cities in sandbox games are big and I always wondered how devs can pull this off on consoles with limited performance.

La-Mulana and perceived complexity

La-Mulana is a great game. But what does it mean exactly in terms of mechanics? Style is fresh, beautiful(more so for the new game) and satisfies me 100%. Story premise is interesting - it's kind of like Tomb Raider's archeological story which poses questions about history of some ruin or artifact.

What about gameplay? That's where it gets interesting. Gameplay is very hard. But not in a good way hard. It's hard in a way that you have to look at wiki or die trying to figure out some stuff.