I recently took a chance on Redacted because I saw a youtube review and it looked like sci-fi Hades. And honestly the gameplay is fine but the announcer making already dated pop culture references and being unfunnily snarky turned me off so much that I refunded it at around 90 minutes in.
It basically is Hades some minor mechanics tweaks, slightly less open environments and a "rivals" mechanic that adds another layer of both strategy and randomness to each run.
I didn't hate it but nothing was so good that I didn't uninstall after the announcer said "this isn't barney the dinosaur" after I died to the level boss.
Game link here if anyone has a stronger stomach for that stuff than I do: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2229940/REDACTED/
The worst trait of millennial creatives--even worse than their tendency towards leftoidism--is their aversion to sincerity. Everything is a joke, everything is self-aware and self-deprecating, every heartfelt moment needs to be undermined by comedy. It is their shield against criticism. The blame is no longer on them for making something that doesn't connect with the audience, but on the audience for expecting their media to take itself seriously. It is this very lack of creative integrity that leaves their media open to hamfisted political messaging, because if the art doesn't matter, why not use it as your soap box?
My theory is that it's rooted in some generational insecurity, but I'm open to alternatives.
It’s 100% insecurity imo. I don’t think that millennials are uniquely too self conscious to tell an earnest story though so much as pop culture has dumbed down to the extent that easier-to-produce ironic schlock is just served up more and more frequently