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[Rilder]

They need more games in this 'genre' its such a good play type, allows you to actually think instead of spamming stuff like RTT and RTS games.

Sadly silent storm is a linear storyline game thus 'meh'

If by linear you mean 'having played it before doesn't mean you can skip to the end'.  It's more of a string of pearls design.  On the bright side, it works, and the play balance isn't buggy as hell.

No I mean, its a series of missions tied together in a linear fashion, Mission A leads to Mission B, etc.

Games with linear storylines are worthless, no matter how good the game play is.

(before someone whines, this is my opinion, Every linear storyline game I've played would be better without the storyline)

Half life and sequels.

Played it, hated it.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

That cuts out most single player games...

[Rilder]

That cuts out most single player games...

There's still a lot a games though. Besides it saves me money.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

So what about multilinear stories like Way of the Samurai? (Well I don't think there actually are any other games like Way of the Samurai besides Way of the Samurai 2 and 3)  What about games with a linear story that you don't have to pay attention to like the X series?

EDIT: I'm not sure if multilinear actually means anything, but it seems to fit for a game with multiple scripted paths leading to multiple scripted endings.

[ChairmanPoo]

I am not opposed by default to linear storyline games, I just prefer open-ended ones, when avaiable.


As for Half Life: I didnt like it too much, not because of the linearity, but because of the implementation. IMHO Deus Ex (The original Deus Ex, that is), was far better. It was a matter of pace, if you like. Half Life storyline wasn't bad, but they tried to tell more that the medium (aka: the game levels play too much like Doom or Quake)

[Puck]

IIRC HL1 was one of the first, if not THE first, proper FPS with proper AI. Fighting against the marine squads felt like fighting squads and not a random collection of independent acting zombies.

It was linear to the max, but that was alright, just a chain of endless more or less different "tactical situations". I dont get why people are so obsessed with the franchise, the story, the protagonist. It was a friggin solid shooter and not the reinvention of pussies and wheels rolled into one convenient package.

[Sowelu]

Half-Life was also one of, if not the, first FPS that had proper seamless* level transitions.

_{*yes I know it had loading times, but thematically it LOOKED seamless, and that made a HUGE difference for immersion.}

You could actually feel like the whole thing happened in one big facility.  Well, except for the parts that happened Somewhere Else (and which weren't anywhere near as good IMO).

Just think of how much more freedom you've had in each successive Mario game...2 let you scroll the screen back to the left, 3 let you tackle levels in different orders, World let you replay levels and discover different exits, 64 had multiple objectives to complete in even more different orders.  Having the ability to go back to old areas in HL1, even if you didn't have any reason to, helped immersion for me.  Weird.


Nonlinear gameplay doesn't increase replayability.  Done wrong, it can make games a lot worse.  There's a sizeable genre of really bad games that use the "do stuff to make money and upgrade your ship while following a plot at your own whims" model.  Fallout would be an awful game, if they removed half the stuff you could do, or replaced it with random missions.  If you're going to go nonlinear, you still need GOOD WRITING at least...either that, or a lot of tactical freedom and no plot at all.

[ChairmanPoo]

Nonlinear gameplay doesn't increase replayability.

uh, yes it does.

Done wrong, it can make games a lot worse.

granted.

There's a sizeable genre of really bad games that use the "do stuff to make money and upgrade your ship while following a plot at your own whims" model.

granted

If you're going to go nonlinear, you still need GOOD WRITING at least...either that, or a lot of tactical freedom and no plot at all.

Granted. Is it just me or you are referring to Freelancer? That is one game that would have benefitted from having no plot at all (and possibly better balanced ships), as it was sloppy as hell. Would have been better as a "Patrician-like game" set in space.

[Granite26]

There's a lot of room between 'open-ended' and 'completely linear'.

Games where you can go anywhere and do anything at any time bug me, because there's so many ways to break the game... (Fallout 3 was HORRIBLE at this.  Finding consumables before you know they are collectable, skipping to the middle of the plot, finishing dungeons before you get the quest to do them...)

Nonlinear gameplay doesn't increase replayability.

uh, yes it does.

No it doesn't... What increases replayability is fun gameplay.  An open ended game isn't more fun because it's open ended, it's open ended because the gameplay supports more play than a storyline.  If the gameplay is exhausted by the time you finish it, it's not replayable, even if you can do things in a different order.

Take Oblivion... You could get through the plot and have a max level character.  Replaying and going through different dungeons doesn't gain you anything, because the combat mechanics are minimalist.

[puke]

when people are talking about non-linear wargames, i dont think theyre talking about stories.

xcom, tactical and strategic.  play the strategic game in any way you want, take tactical missions based on the choices you made.

Civ, Total War series, similar games follow the same basic idea.

Imperialism 2 did an especially great job of this with their research tree, as it randomized the brances between games.  in one game, you might need woodcutting to get to roads.  in another it might be ploughs or something.  i might have that example wrong, but the basic principle is that any given tech might have 2-3 randomized prerequisites, and you cant be sure which they are from game to game.

games with stories are nice too, but its sort of beside the point of this topic.  Halflife was neat and all, but its harldy a TBT.  i mentioned the TW series, and those arent really TBT either, but at least the non-linear gameplay is in theme...

[Sowelu]

Freelancer is one of them, but at the time of writing I was actually thinking of Puzzle Quest Galactix (or whatever it was called).  The mechanics were awful, but the plot was worse.  WAY worse.  And it was somewhat unbalanced.

Elite and Starflight annoy me in their own ways.  Starflight...I don't know if I would call that nonlinear or not.  I mean, what it all comes down to is getting a doohickey from a place, doing a thing to another thing, getting another doohickey and then using that doohickey on something else.  But then, Fallout is the same way, Myst is a major canonical example, and Morrowind has like a seven minute speedrun, doesn't it?

Oh right...TBT.  Um, Protostar (Starflight 3) was -kinda- like that, though it was more RPGey.

I actually don't find nonlinear games to be very replayable.  Doom I can play over and over, on harder modes sometimes, seeing if I can beat it just running through sometimes, killing everything I see and getting everything sometimes.  Many options!  Fallout though, I dunno, I start it up and I think "Okay, I'm going to do the first few things in order, then I'm going to go here, get this armor, go here and use this broken skill to get great guns, then do these quests and win."  All that is thought out before even starting!  I might as well not play at all because I already know how it's going to go.  Oh this time I'll see what the evil quests are like...okay, that's one other playthrough.  Oh this time I'll try and beat it with minimal quests at all, just wilderness stuff.  Is that actually fun?  Who seriously says "I know!  I'll play Fallout 2 again, and this time I'll use method number FOUR to get my vault citizenship in vault city!"

[ChairmanPoo]

Of course, I am not saying that a linear game is wholly unreplayable, or that a nonlinear one cannot get too dull for replaying. Just that, in general, nonlinearility  tends to add to replayability, not substract. For instance: would any of those games you mentioned as open ended and non-replayable be more replayable if they stuck to a story? Or, would an open-ended game gain in replayability by removing the open-endedness (say, get Shogun: Total war and instead of the strategy map you get to play the linear campaigns).


As for Fallout: I liked that game, but I dont consider that the paradigm of open-endedness. Sure, there are some different endings, and optional quests (which DO make it open-ended), but I am thinking more of games like SMAC, the Total Wars, Nethack, Patrician, etc....

[Sowelu]

Aahhh.  I think of "nonlinear" as referring specifically to plots, most of the time.  Games like Nethack and SMAC are entirely a different category.  X-Com is teetering right on the edge--it kinda has a plot because of the way it's presented, but not...really...

Weirdly, I would kinda like to see a more linear X-Com.  It would need a rework of the mechanics, but it would cut down a lot on the boring parts (Oh boy, my fourth time sieging a supply ship with underpowered troops).  I would be way more likely to play it, and play it over again.  So yes, I think a new game based on X-Com but more linear would be more replayable than X-Com itself.  Maybe it's just me...but I've always found that its boring parts vastly outweigh its fun parts.  Same in Apoc even.

[Granite26]

Interesting... I feel the exact opposite about SS...

Of course, I have a tendancy to play to max out the characters and enjoy that (except for Disgaia... It kills all sense of achievement through blandness).

Anyway, I've often wished that there were more, larger scale SS missions, even if they were random/grindy, because I liked the combat system.  (Hated the mechs though...)

Also wished for a deeper skill tree.