Crispy Gamer, UGO, GamePro preview Fallout 3

[Stubs]

Thanks for putting that up for us to peruse to our or at least my ossified hearts content.
It had a couple of intresting snippets in between the wanton slaughter.
Aye all too many games ? these days just seem to be along the lines of see something moving, rush up, slaughter in appropiate way, loot then rinse and repeat ad infinitum (hrm or should that be ad nauseum)

 

[shihonage]

Hey, shihonage - are you older than 35?

I'm 31. Since we're making acquaintances, how old are you ?

why are you getting so upset about how a braindead game journalist plays the game?

Writing a big post does not mean that someone's upset. I was kind of having fun writing it because the reviewer did very little to except himself from the formulaic mindset I ended up accusing him off.

EDIT: ... but yes, I am passionate about Fallout.

And it frustrates me to see one game reviewer after another fall exactly into the neat little hole circled around for them by Bethesda. Bethesda's design appears to be SPOT-ON targeting the modern gamer. It is very precise, clearly researched to match and exceed "current" gamer's expectations.

This makes me feel that people like him bear a good dose of indirect responsibility for Bethesda's "reenvisioned" Fallout. So if you sense some resentment, you're not entirely off.

 

[Alphadrop]

The overly sarcastic short comments implied you were mighty pissed so you can't blame people if they misinterpreted your post a bit.

 

[Bodybag]

I'm 31. Since we're making acquaintances, how old are you ?

Older! My point was: with like two exceptions, the entire staff of Crispy Gamer is 35 and up (Crsipy Gamer, tee-hee get it?). Which doesn't lend much support to your assertion here:

Those qualities, if they exist, will be entirely lost on the current generation of gamers who were raised to judge an RPG on the merits of bludgeoning everything in sight and getting phat lewt from "bosses".

This reads like you telling the previewer to get off your lawn.

Gus Mastrapa was lifting quarters from his mom's purse to feed his Donkey Kong habit while you were still in diapers!

Ect.

 

[shihonage]

I'm 31. Since we're making acquaintances, how old are you ?

Older!

I gave you my real age, and instead of responding in kind, you are being an ass. Well played.

My point was: with like two exceptions, the entire staff of Crispy Gamer is 35 and up (Crispy Gamer, tee-hee get it?). Which doesn't lend much support to your assertion here:

If you read my post more carefully, you will see that I refer to "generation of gamers", not "generation of human beings in general".

This reads like you telling the previewer to get off your lawn.

True story: my grandfather, who is 85 years old (God bless him), expressed a desire last weekend to try playing a console for the first time in his life. If he plays the console for another year, he will be an "86 year old man who plays video games".

He will also become a current-generation gamer, raised on consoles.

If he played a Fallout sequel, he would be comparing it to the only experiences he would have - Mass Effect and Fable and Oblivion, and I would in fact tell him to get off my lawn.

I call them as I see them. If it walks and talks like someone mainly influenced by RPG-lites, then they will, by default, treat every new RPG as an RPG-lite. Which makes their evaluations of Fallout3, well, useless, because it is hard to distinguish the mental limitations of the reviewer from the limitations imposed by the game itself.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Of course, I'm missing part of the picture. I haven't played the Vault portion of the game. I haven't actually met my old man (played by actor Liam Neeson). But I get the idea that plot in Fallout 3 doesn't have quite the urgency as in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where a man as formidable as the actor Patrick Stewart tasked me in the game's first minutes with saving the world. Here, my old man's trail of breadcrumbs doesn't feel quite as alluring in this strange, deadly new world.

He thought that Patrick Stewart did a good job and that the main quest in Oblivion had any sense of urgency?

In Oblivion, [the plot] isn't presented in quite that same way. There's at least the appearance of urgency -- even if there isn't actually urgency -- whereas in Fallout we don't necessarily do that. You get a bit more of that as you start to play the main quest; you'll get more of a sense of the urgency. It is meant for you to ask, "Know what? Do I care where my dad is? Do I just want to go explore all this stuff? All I really want is a better gun." It's up to you to prioritize what's important to you.

Wow, the plot is going to come off as even less urgent. How wonderful.

[In response to setting "off in search of adventure" and finding it in killing bees] That's what everybody does. That's the fun. Just going through, whacking stuff, and taking whatever they've got.

Sounds like "Fantasy, for us, is a knight on horseback running around and killing things," is still the formula they apply to designing RPGs.

The method of presentation is terrible for an interview as he's not describing the game from an external perspective, he's doing it from an internal perspective and using way too much artful language to illustrate idealized forms of events instead of actually writing what happened. It's bad in some parts and other's it's not a problem but all in all, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.