Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tellemurius]

im already starting to see a new business strategy. companies are now digging into the nostalgia crap and see if they can find a game they can "improve" it, examples would be fallout 3 and X-COM. im fine with some remakes (if i can think of some) but most companies don't think over on how to connect with the past storyline with the series which why they fail winning over the nostalgia crowd.

[dogstile]

It's you.

Good games never disappeared.

Yes, one only needs to know where to look!

Yep, you look in the 80s & 90s.

Yeah, because every game in the 80's and 90's was the BEST THING EVAR.

totally >.>

[Karnewarrior]

I'm actually getting into Lost Odyssey. It looks like they spent a whole lot of time working on the story, then spent about 2 days ripping the gamplay from Pokemon, and spent the rest of their time on graphics. Which is better than just EVERYTHING ON TEH GRAFIKS!!!!11!!1!1 , but I still wish they had a better combat system. It just doesn't feel right that I fight of 2 bosses and an army and then the next battle I face I lose to three assholes and a pair of cavalry, just because the threee assholes make all damage done to the cavalry 12, instead of 189 or summat.

[Zangi]

There is no come-back.  Its always been gem digging.  Unless your standards of Good are lower then mine.

Though, I have a 'good enough as a rental' rating.

[madk]

Oblivion was a castrated and dumbed version of Morrowind, with pretty graphics.
Not even a spark of innovation.

Since when has a game have to be innovative to be enjoyable? Innovation sells copies, of course. Nobody wants to have 20 identical games, and that's where innovation puts its strength. But innovation isn't everything. Just because I played Need for Speed doesn't mean I never bought and enjoyed another racing game. Just because I have HL2 doesn't mean I never bought another FPS. All titles are going to be unique in their own way, of course, but I personally see no need for companies to just churn out bizarre ideas.

[Calhoun]

Oblivion was a castrated and dumbed version of Morrowind, with pretty graphics.
Not even a spark of innovation.

Since when has a game have to be innovative to be enjoyable? Innovation sells copies, of course. Nobody wants to have 20 identical games, and that's where innovation puts its strength. But innovation isn't everything. Just because I played Need for Speed doesn't mean I never bought and enjoyed another racing game. Just because I have HL2 doesn't mean I never bought another FPS. All titles are going to be unique in their own way, of course, but I personally see no need for companies to just churn out bizarre ideas.

I have to agree. Innovation doesn't necessitate good games. That is actually one of the reasons there were so many god awful games in the 90's. People would make games based on totally absurd ideas.

More often than not, a game which doesn't do anything really new, but refines existing mechanics will be better, in terms of actual game play, then one which tries some insane new mechanic. A lot of games full of new ideas never really pan out, because while the cool new mechanics are fun, the gameplay suffers in that overall it is below average, and things are usually buggy like hell.

[Zangi]

Oblivion was a castrated and dumbed version of Morrowind, with pretty graphics.
Not even a spark of innovation.

Since when has a game have to be innovative to be enjoyable? Innovation sells copies, of course. Nobody wants to have 20 identical games, and that's where innovation puts its strength. But innovation isn't everything. Just because I played Need for Speed doesn't mean I never bought and enjoyed another racing game. Just because I have HL2 doesn't mean I never bought another FPS. All titles are going to be unique in their own way, of course, but I personally see no need for companies to just churn out bizarre ideas.

I have to agree. Innovation doesn't necessitate good games. That is actually one of the reasons there were so many god awful games in the 90's. People would make games based on totally absurd ideas.

More often than not, a game which doesn't do anything really new, but refines existing mechanics will be better, in terms of actual game play, then one which tries some insane new mechanic. A lot of games full of new ideas never really pan out, because while the cool new mechanics are fun, the gameplay suffers in that overall it is below average, and things are usually buggy like hell.

Actually, presentation has a lot to do with it.  I can bet someone out there can spin 'totally absurd ideas' so that it would entertain enough to forgive short-comings.

Also, Demon Soul's.  In this day and age, we would not have seen that game ever being made since its so far out from the norm.  They got lucky and I'm happy for that.

And Mirror's Edge, spoiled by the need to inject traditional 'action'.  Honestly, it would have been better playing 'mail carrier' through the whole thing... instead of getting shot at and fighting people.

[Virtz]

Oblivion was a castrated and dumbed version of Morrowind, with pretty graphics.
Not even a spark of innovation.

Since when has a game have to be innovative to be enjoyable? Innovation sells copies, of course. Nobody wants to have 20 identical games, and that's where innovation puts its strength. But innovation isn't everything. Just because I played Need for Speed doesn't mean I never bought and enjoyed another racing game. Just because I have HL2 doesn't mean I never bought another FPS. All titles are going to be unique in their own way, of course, but I personally see no need for companies to just churn out bizarre ideas.

The poster before suggested that Oblivion is cool, innovative, fun and has a good storyline(lol). The post you quoted merely stated that this is false, not that it's bad purely due to lack of innovation. Although that's a contributing factor.

I also like how you equate innovation to bizarre ideas. As if there was no middle ground between churning out a clone and creating a new genre.

[Calhoun]

Actually, presentation has a lot to do with it.  I can bet someone out there can spin 'totally absurd ideas' so that it would entertain enough to forgive short-comings.

Also, Demon Soul's.  In this day and age, we would not have seen that game ever being made since its so far out from the norm.  They got lucky and I'm happy for that.

And Mirror's Edge, spoiled by the need to inject traditional 'action'.  Honestly, it would have been better playing 'mail carrier' through the whole thing... instead of getting shot at and fighting people.

Demon Souls was not very innovative, as far as I'm concerned. The whole, Meta-gaming ghosting system was cool, but on the whole that game didn't do much new stuff.

Mirrors Edge is a much better example. I liked the game, and I agree, the shooty bits weren't to great.

But I've played many games where the general game play suffers because standard mechanics aren't polished at all, and the original mechanics are often buggy at best.

As an aside, Didn't Take-two promise a new IP a year?

[GaelicVigil]

I won't lie, the only reason why I liked Oblivion was for the graphics.  It was one of the first "this" generation RPGs using SpeedTree, FaceGen, the Havoc engine and a few other nice quirks.  But looking back on it, I've realized that without all the "shiny" features, there was really nothing interesting there.  In fact, I would argue that Oblivion was Bethesda's laziest TES game to date.  Most of the game's mechanics were outsourced to different companies, very little of it was actually done by Bethesda.  Oblivion is possibly the worst of the official series, perhaps on par with Arena.

This has just happened in the last few years (maybe since DF came out), and this may sound odd, but I don't like "fun" games anymore.  In other words, I don't like to sit down for 20 minutes and just shoot stuff or jump on platforms with pretty colors and nice sound effects.  I like my games to be painful.  I love it when the graphics suck, so I can use my imagination, I like it when the controls are difficult to learn.  I hate games that feel too polished, I like a few half-broken features here and there.  I love imbalance, that there is a chance that I will never ever succeed at winning sometimes.

I would argue that this is one reason a lot of us dislike modern games, because they are simply too "fun", they have zero learning curve, and are usually too balanced.  I don't like playing games where I know I can win every time.  A lot of the old 80s-90s games (and a few from the early 00s) were not fun, and yet that's exactly what made them fun in a special, gritty kind of way.

The best analogy that I can think of is rock climbing in the back-country vs climbing an artificial climbing wall at a fair.  It's the exact same thing, yet why is climbing so much more exciting when it's in the wilderness as opposed to doing it in a civilized location?

[Soadreqm]

Oblivion was a castrated and dumbed version of Morrowind, with pretty graphics.
Not even a spark of innovation.

Since when has a game have to be innovative to be enjoyable? Innovation sells copies, of course. Nobody wants to have 20 identical games, and that's where innovation puts its strength. But innovation isn't everything. Just because I played Need for Speed doesn't mean I never bought and enjoyed another racing game. Just because I have HL2 doesn't mean I never bought another FPS. All titles are going to be unique in their own way, of course, but I personally see no need for companies to just churn out bizarre ideas.

The poster before suggested that Oblivion is cool, innovative, fun and has a good storyline(lol). The post you quoted merely stated that this is false, not that it's bad purely due to lack of innovation. Although that's a contributing factor.

I also like how you equate innovation to bizarre ideas. As if there was no middle ground between churning out a clone and creating a new genre.

I guess the middle ground would be what Nintendo has been doing while remaking its two games over and over again. Super Mario Bros was pretty mechanically impressive at its time, with the scrolling environment and decent gameplay. And then Super Mario Bros. 3 brought the (quite linear when you think about it) overworld map, and new powerups that let you fly, letting you really move in TWO dimensions rather than just walking through what amounted to a tunnel. Super Mario World had levels with secret exits and hidden nooks and crannies, meaning that you often explored levels rather than just walked through them. Super Mario 64 was pretty much the first 3D platformer, I think. Super Mario Sunshine changed the whole gameplay to cleaning up things with a watergun. Super Mario Galaxy did weird shit with gravity.

Same with Zelda. Sometimes you spend half the game sailing across an ocean, sometimes you spend half the game being a wolf, sometimes you spend half the game driving around in a little train. Every new game is all the previous games with tighter graphics and a new gimmick or two. Rather than churn out a clone, you carefully craft an IMPROVED clone, that surpasses the original in every field and has psychic powers and shit. Then you do some playtesting to see if it works. If your clone can't punch its way out of its own growing tube, filling the floor with pink fluid and glass shards, and you can afford it, you should continue development a bit further. I kind of forgot where I was going with this metaphor.

[madk]

I quite loved the combat in Mirror's Edge. Sometimes I'd even go and commit suicide so I could play through a combat-heavy segment again D;

In my mind, ME combined two things better than any other game has - fluid and varied melee combat and normal everyday shooting. It was a joy to be running around with that pistol you just grabbed off a guy and shoot some riflemen as you ran by, finished the job on the chaingun dude at the end of the garage, and sprayed lead into all the blues, then melee the ones you didn't have the ammo left for.

[nenjin]

I put Mirror's Edge and Shadow of the Colossus in the same category. Great concepts that relied way too heavily on a single gameplay theme and their visuals, leaving you a real absence of game. I know people disagree with me there, but eh. I beat SoC, grudgingly. I couldn't make myself play more than 4 missions of Mirror's Edge before I was like "Yeah, there's no way I'm doing this shit for another 20 hours."

To me, ME was like Assassin's Creed 1 or 2, if the only thing they let you do was run across roof tops.

[Soadreqm]

I put Mirror's Edge and Shadow of the Colossus in the same category. Great concepts that relied way too heavily on a single gameplay theme and their visuals, leaving you a real absence of game. I know people disagree with me there, but eh. I beat SoC, grudgingly. I couldn't make myself play more than 4 missions of Mirror's Edge before I was like "Yeah, there's no way I'm doing this shit for another 20 hours."

To me, ME was like Assassin's Creed 1 or 2, if the only thing they let you do was run across roof tops.

So I guess these "gimmick games" SHOULD be short. Like Portal. A bunch of tutorial levels to explain the one gameplay mechanic used, a bunch of "actual" levels where you tightly pack every single set piece you can think using your gimmick, climax, credits. Sure, people might complain that it's too short, but that's far better than people complaining that the game is too long. "Too short" implies that they, on the whole, ENJOYED the experience and would have liked for it to continue longer and will buy a sequel if you make one.

[Mindmaker]

I guess the middle ground would be what Nintendo has been doing while remaking its two games over and over again. Super Mario Bros was pretty mechanically impressive at its time, with the scrolling environment and decent gameplay. And then Super Mario Bros. 3 brought the (quite linear when you think about it) overworld map, and new powerups that let you fly, letting you really move in TWO dimensions rather than just walking through what amounted to a tunnel. Super Mario World had levels with secret exits and hidden nooks and crannies, meaning that you often explored levels rather than just walked through them. Super Mario 64 was pretty much the first 3D platformer, I think. Super Mario Sunshine changed the whole gameplay to cleaning up things with a watergun. Super Mario Galaxy did weird shit with gravity.

Same with Zelda. Sometimes you spend half the game sailing across an ocean, sometimes you spend half the game being a wolf, sometimes you spend half the game driving around in a little train. Every new game is all the previous games with tighter graphics and a new gimmick or two. Rather than churn out a clone, you carefully craft an IMPROVED clone, that surpasses the original in every field and has psychic powers and shit. Then you do some playtesting to see if it works. If your clone can't punch its way out of its own growing tube, filling the floor with pink fluid and glass shards, and you can afford it, you should continue development a bit further. I kind of forgot where I was going with this metaphor.

This is true to some extent.
However I see those Nintendo games as niche markets.

I don't know much action-adventures which are equally fun, as any of the Zelda titles (even though it's true that the DS parts are pretty mediocre).
Same goes with Super Mario and platformers.

Or Fire Emblem. There hasn't been much innovation going on there.
But considering what share TBS games have of the overall gaming market, that's still damn innovative.