Then just call it "Fantasy"... problem solved!

Me, I have no issues with calling it science fiction. There's no rule that says that science fiction can't be completely... fiction.

That the word "science" is right there in the name is that rule. Embracing fantasy would appeal to me, but Ass-Creed has a better identity as an anthology of period-pieces. My preferred solution invokes neither Science nor Fantasy, each story should literally just be a historical setting with no reference to anything outside its own scope. Besides, a major part of my rant is that the responsibilities of sci-fi aren't remotely unreasonable because there's a way to do it without molesting the audience's intelligence.

Also game manuals which are something sorely lacking from most games.

And that the science doesn't need to be possible is the fiction part. Just another example: most time travel stories. (Assassin's Creed is actually one of those) Or do you consider those "bad scifi" too?

Anyway, don't mind me... I know that I shouldn't waste my time with replying to posts wherein people write their opinion or preference as if it is a fact. You don't like science fiction with/about impossible science and that's a perfectly valid preference (why wouldn't it be?).

Many stories about forward time travel include backward time travel. It's more of a semantics thing - the advancing of time (without going back) isn't usually called "time travel" (but technically speaking, it is of course - everybody is time traveling all the time, at the speed of 1 second per second).

Oh, here's an easy one.

The baffling popularity of the gritty & shitty Call of Duty series; especially since it's in fact a twisted lying mouthpiece for Uncle Sam's dick. (And funded by it too since America's Army went nowhere.)

I mean I get it, things have been downhill since Maze War but there's even a mode called Zombies that seems to be inexplicably popular even though pop-culturally, Zombies have been beaten into such a fine dust as to be ruined as monsters?

It's like the choices are scarce and that first person shooters aren't one of the most oversaturated genres.

This is more of a dry rant where I roll my eyes across the desert for a while before trying to pick them back up.

Wait, wait, wait, where would JRPG's have been heading in that alternative timeline without FF7?

I think they could have very well been less cinematic, more gameplay focused, and importantly, less linear.

Looking at big name JRPGs in Japan late in the Super Famicom era, we see a decent number of less linear titles, including:
* Final Fantasy 6, which after a certain point, becomes non-linear, with tons of side quests that are important both story and gameplay-wise. (This starts when you get the second airship.) Furthermore, the game is balanced for players who do most of the side quests (unlike more recent games that are balanced for players who skip most of them, and which often put superbosses in them).)
* Chrono Trigger, which is like Final Fantasy 6 in this regard.
* Dragon Quest 6, which has a decent non-linear section (it starts when you get the ability to go underwater). You do have to complete certain tasks, but you can choose the order in which you do them.
* Romancing SaGa 3, which, like the other Romancing SaGa games, is non-linear throughout. (I note that one aspect of the Romancing SaGa series, enemies moving in real-time, did appear in other JRPGs later, but it's actually one of the things I *don't* like about the series.)
* (Does Dragon Quest 3 SFC count here?)

(One counterpoint, however, would be Super Mario RPG, which is linear and minigame-heavy; the minigame heavyness didn't feel as out of place here as they do in RPGs that tend to be more serious, like FF7.)

I am a Win 10 user, and even i find it ridiculous they were bothered to make compatibility with next gen for Cyberpunk 2077 but not Linux.
Easy to explain. It's a well known brand, so casual gamers looking to have fun with a simple shooter will eat it up like McNuggets

Remembering the endless excuses they gave to avoid having to make a female protagonist, that reminds me of "Why come no girl" in Legend of Zelda where all they had to give was a shitty excuse about the "balance of the triforce".

It was doubly stupid for Ubisoft because they already had playable women in Brotherhood multi-player and Liberation. So the one time (the French Revolution) where an assassination was famously done by a woman, and they stupidly throw it away because their completely broken co-op was more important.

Any game without quicksave, I'm usually ranting about the lack of it in the back of my head the whole time I play. Especially games like Dark Souls which are proud of their lack of saving and forcing me to repeat content.

I could mention the Dragon Quest series. Dragon Quest 3 and 4 both have the option to make the hero female, but the Dragon Quest 5 took it away (one could argue it's due to the importance of marriage in the game's plot), and it didn't re-appear later in the series (despite the justification being gone) until DQ9, and even then for just one game (I don't count DQ10 for the same reason I don't count FF11 and FF14 as main series FF, as they're not the same type of game and should not have been given main series numbers).

It's also worth noting that, from a feminist perspective, DQ4 is far better than DQ5. In particular, just looking at the roles of female characters:
* In DQ4, we have Alena, who is a strong woman. That's true even in the literal sense, where she has the highest Strength stat of all the characters in the game (and is notable for being the only female character in the series to not get any spells or MP at all). She doesn't go alone (though she wouldn't mind doing so), but only because the developers decided she needed some magic backup for her chapter. During the course of her chapter, she, a princess, rescues both a fake princess and the princess of another kingdom.
* Also, in DQ4, we have a pair of girls who adventure off on their own to avenge their father. The only reason they end up needing help for a man is that the game isn't balanced in a way to make pure mage parties viable, and even then saifd man is considered less important by the game (if he's the only one alive, it's considered a game over).
* I could also mention that the hero can be female.
* In DQ5, on the other hand, the female characters just aren't as interesting. Young Bianca, who shares the (always male) hero's love for adventure, is the closest exception, and even she goes out with a male character and is a mage from a gameplay perspective.
* There's Bella, who is a minor character, much like that one guy I mentioned in DQ4; she's only with you for a couple dungeons, and she is not capable of leveling up.
* Flora and adult Bianca seem to have no purpose other than serving as wife choices for the main character; they really don't have their own agency. (Note that Debora was not present in the original version of the game, so she doesn't really count.)
* There's sexism when it comes to the main character's children. The protagonist and his wife have two children, one son and one daughter, but of course it's the son who gets to be the legendary hero, and the daughter isn't even that useful in battle.

(Another series that took out the female character option is the Ultima series, specifically Ultima 8 being when the option was removed, but my Ultima rants are too numerous to fit in this one post, so they will be saved for later.)

E-Sports
It's the desire to make an olympic event out of every day gaming that attracts a lot of non-gamer investment to employ a handful of gamers to 'work' at gaming.
The on flow effect of this is that companies see this as advertising and change their games to utilize competition, which of course is now an excersize in competitive business like any recognised high level sport (one with investors).
Till the very core of any multiplayer experience in the market devolves into nothing more than committing to the 'job' (once of course any fun variability like asymetrical levels/maps have been removed) or not having fun.
The response - 'Get Gud'
No thanks i'll pay for my 'entertainment' in the proviso that it is entertaining for me thank you.