Fallout 3, Bioshock: Videogames or not?

[Trithne]

Megaman was a skill game. Timing and whatnot. Yes, memorising attack patterns was a big part of it, but is that not also a skill? Similar arguments can be aimed at the Touhou games, but that doesn't stop people saying they're fucking hard.

Toad has it right with the "possibly lose" part. Losing isn't cool, it annoys the kids who have to repeat. Can't have the game be a real challenge can we?

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Megaman was a skill game. Timing and whatnot. Yes, memorising attack patterns was a big part of it, but is that not also a skill? Similar arguments can be aimed at the Touhou games, but that doesn't stop people saying they're fucking hard.

Toad has it right with the "possibly lose" part. Losing isn't cool, it annoys the kids who have to repeat. Can't have the game be a real challenge can we?

I have to agree on this one. Different game types require different types of "skill", and yet one would not call Touhou games easy because it's "oh-so-simple" to memorize all the patterns. Whoever said that should go try and see what kind of nightmares he'd be having

 

[UncannyGarlic]

1. 
   It all depends on the game. Lives (or rather limited continues for games that had them) weren't so great for a lot of console games but at the same time, it's part of what gave the game replay value. I'm also not a huge fan of having to play for 40-60 minutes between save points, it's highly inconvenient (temp saves [more prevalent in handheld games than console games] is a good compromise of convenience and dificulty). Having to replay a level or, in games like the original Mario, a world is not unreasonable but getting kicked out to the main menu in a modern game like in many classic console games is a real bitch. The problem with continues is that unlike on an arcade machine, you almost always have a limited number that is chosen by the devs rather than by your pocket. I love Mega Man and have no problem replaying a level until I can beat it, it requires you to be good enough to proceed and beat the boss levels (when it's designed right) and the unlimited continues combined with the password (later replaced by saving in the X games) and later mid-stage continue points (in MM8, which was at the edge of reasonable level length) made it completely reasonable.
   
   I agree that games like RPGs should not generally use arcade design philosophy (except for with time limits) and that it should instead use logic puzzles but the puzzles need to be a grab bag so that the player doesn't have to play through the exact same puzzles every playthrough (have at least 3-5 variations the game randomly chooses from). Hell, I think that good puzzles from adventure games would mesh nicely with RPGs but the problem with a good logic puzzle is that it's hard and restrictive, thus the developer needs to make multiple levels (at least easy, medium, hard), which requires more work. I agree with what you said about dialogue and it fits with this.
   
   

   I'm sorry but I totally disagree.
   Observing boss patterns, figuring out what the designers want you to do, then doing it - that's valid gameplay. Sure you lose a couple times while you're figuring it out, but what have you lost? A lil' bit of time. If the game is fun, you don't mind.
   Also with these old games, execution was as important as knowing what to do. Sure it took practice, but it was a punch-the-air moment when you got past a tough bit.
   Boss fights are pure awesome when they kick your ass 20 times in a row and you start cursing the screen. That's why they're bosses, after all.
   The final boss of MGS2 is a great example. He kicked my ass for about two hours before I beat him. I was almost jumping around the room when I did it.
   That was entertaining.

   Agreed and MGS2 is a great example, it lets you retry the boss without having to go through all of the other crap before him so that you can practice on where you need practice rather than having to redo everything. I too remember retrying him many times until I finally defeated him and it bloody excited me (Vamp was another big one and I'm bloody on him in my few year old save on very hard [or whatever the hardest difficulty is]). If it's boring to replay the same enemy then that says something about the gameplay, not the concept behind it. Sometimes it's not the core gameplay but just the AI for the boss (shit that is a true crap shoot and can one shot you if you get unlucky and it uses the right move [can't think of the title of the game but I know of one]) and sometimes it's the implementation of the gameplay (Castelian).
   
   

   Games are about more than just memorizing where at platform goes or how a boss attacks... Some people like that sort of thing, and there's no shortage of games for those people.

   Actually they've become increasingly rare.
   
   

   Yup, think games like Devil May Cry. Dfficulty setting makes enemies faster, makes them hit harder, and if it does make anyone tougher, it's the bosses. The regular enemies die faster.

   The original game had the best approach which was to replace them with more powerful enemies. It not only made the game harder but more interesting, thus giving it more replay value. That said, it suffered from a lack of level select.
   
   

   Edit: I agree 100% with the criticism made against FO3 difficulty settings. Settings that increase monster HP and little else are outdated and primitive. A better alternative would be to see smarter AI, larger groups of monsters, less forgiving factions, or smarter AI. (did I mention smarter AI?)

   Actually that's exactly what good FPSes do. I wouldn't call it great anymore but both Goldeneye 64 and Perfect Dark did well on this, they added more objectives, more enemies, less armor, less ammo, and made enemies do more damage and more accurate. That said I guess it's a little more challenging in a wasteland game because it'll feel overcrowded if you throw swarms of monsters at the player (not that Fallout 3 doesn't already feel overcrowded from what I've seen and heard) but the rest is all possible, with the added possibility, brought up by someone else, of making the player less accurate.
   
   

   Toad has it right with the "possibly lose" part. Losing isn't cool, it annoys the kids who have to repeat. Can't have the game be a real challenge can we?

   Indeed. That's part of what ruins games for me these days, only a handful are actually the right difficulty on normal, most I have to pump up to at least hard and some need to be harder than that (which they don't always have) to be reasonably challenging. Some games can be fun despite it for a playthrough but most aren't worth even a second playthrough without something else to make up for it (NPC interactions in VtM:B being a borderline example of this [for crappy combat rather than too easy of gameplay]).

 

[Toady]

Megaman was a skill game. Timing and whatnot. Yes, memorising attack patterns was a big part of it, but is that not also a skill? Similar arguments can be aimed at the Touhou games, but that doesn't stop people saying they're fucking hard.

Toad has it right with the "possibly lose" part. Losing isn't cool, it annoys the kids who have to repeat. Can't have the game be a real challenge can we?

Another example of this is auto-healing in shooters. Many of today's gamers say they like not having to look for medkits anymore between fights. For someone like me, the thought of not having to fight with the health you're given removes the challenge, fun, and realism. You eventually realize that auto-healing shooters are more about letting the player feel like a badass going into every fight and not about the challenge of survival. I like feeling like a badass, but not to the point of boredom.

 

[k9wazere]

It's probably a desire to avoid situations where you have just faced one battle, successfully, but are too low on health to face the next battle.

Assuming you haven't saved for a while, you'll have to replay a lot of the game. The auto-healing means that you can face every challenge and just (barely) scrape through. You don't have to worry about doing it well, just doing it is enough.

Arguing fun and challenge is valid, but neither approach is realistic. What's in these med-kits, that they can restore me to full health after I've been riddled with holes? In a future setting you can say "nano bots recreating tissue" etc, etc, but in a CoD setting? That's no more realistic than Max Payne's "the pills eased the pain" painkillers

A compromise solution would be to use health and med-kits, but at certain checkpoints allow the protagonist to fully heal, under the guise of catching his breath, or something.

In terms of challenge I prefer console checkpoints to the PC quickload/quicksave mentality. With QS/QL you can totally destroy any game (and its challenge), regardless of how harsh the healing (or lack of it) is.

 

[kohan69]

I just call them console games, because thats what they are. Designed for somebody who wants to have five minutes of fun and somebody who can't stand losing.

Yeah. I wish I could go back in time and destroy the concept of making a microsoft console.

It was bad enough with playstation...

That's easy!
Destroy Sega 32x/CD/Saturn and just release the dreamcast in 99 after the GENESIS!!!!

The dreamcast was the innovator of modern console games.

QUAKE3ARENA online with a controller, anyone?

But at the same time, it was much less intrusive to the PC gamign market. PC games were ported to IT, not vice-versa.

and the compatability was great! 4 people could play q3a online split-screen in the same server as 10 other PC gamers!

NO OTHER console did that since then!


But what I'm trying to say is, if Dreamcast was successful, and sega stayed in hardware, XBOX would never exist, and PC games (and hence console games) would be infinitely better

 

[Szeder]

Actually, when it comes to analysing dumbed down games and wanting to find the reason why they are so stupid/simple/primitive it is not a good idea to look for scapegoats like consoles.

What is happening to computer games is called consumerism. The same kind of consumerism which consumed movie and music industry. Computer games and entertainment are younger and thus this dumbing down and serving the masses attitude touched it later.

In my opinion it all boils down to the fact that competition is getting harder and harder while people get dumber and dumber.

Unfortunate it is to see that once people listened to Pink Floyd, now they do not even know what it is. There were lots of great, meaningful movies, now movies being spectacular is everything, content is nothing.

There were games like Fallout 1-2, Planescape Torment, now there are games like Fallout 3 and Bioshock.

Yes they are video games allright, arriving at this sad stage only to keep up with the dilapidation in taste which is present everywhere.

 

[Corvin]

People still listen to Floyd pretty regularly... and I bet they do in Hungary too. Without a consumer market there wouldn't be any games other than open source and small programmer projects... but I bet there wouldn't even be nearly as many of those. What was the state of gaming in Hungary pre 1989? I bet it wasn't nearly as good as what you have available now.

Pendulums swing in markets. There's plenty of folks that still love heavily dialogue based games out there. I've got high hopes for Alpha Protocol, for instance, all though they may be dashed. Fallout just got bought by a company with a lot of resources and brought to a broader level. It isn't likely to become unbought after the success of Fallout 3. We just have to do what we can to try to channel it in better directions.

 

[Szeder]

Fallout just got bought by a company with a lot of resources and brought to a broader level. It isn't likely to become unbought after the success of Fallout 3. We just have to do what we can to try to channel it in better directions.

I disagree. As far as dialogue, content etc. is concerned, it has been brought to not a broader but a dumber level.

As for channeling it, you have to see that the very fact of that game being a success will mock every attempt to "channel" it. Only the majority may have an impact on the routes a franchise may take, solely for financial reasons. If a publisher sees that the majority wants intelligent games, it will provide them with such products, so it won't go bankrupt.

Since the majority nowadays lack brains this "chanelling" is quite out of the question.

 

[Corvin]

I dunno. Blizzard's taken a fair amount of input on their successful sequels (apart from WoW as far as I can tell, ironically). It just depends on the company.

I think sequels are almost always made for money (pure profit or the resources to follow through with what was originally desired) though. What holds true in movies holds true in games.

 

[Crni Vuk]

*snip*

I call games like Oblivion or Fallout 3 "intercative movie". Cause of the way the story is prestend to the player [very railroaded and linear] and the gameplay only a mandatory cause thats what everyone expects and is the bare minimum. I cant say that I ever thought the combat you can get either by Oblivion or Fallout 3 is "rewarding". In Oblivion cause of level scaling and other reasons in Fallout 3 cause you have only in 90% of all cases the chance to play a "combat character". And that is how you solve most of the problems, except a few really interesting quest but as said. They are only very few. Frankly I did not liked that much the way combat was achieved in Fallout 1/2, but thast cause I prefer more turn based combat in sense of tactics or even better Jagged Alliance 2 and Silent Storm. But the story of Fallout allowed for much freedom which is not presetend with Bethesdas Fallout. The player regardless of "immersive" gameplay (which is not) becomes the second string.

I just call them console games, because thats what they are. Designed for somebody who wants to have five minutes of fun and somebody who can't stand losing.

Thats not true. This is not only a exclusiveness for consoles. Quite a few games on the PC as well lack real "chalange" for what ever reason. Its cause of certain games geting very simplified in game mechanics.

I loved games like Jagged Alliance or similar titles were you could spend much time to find solutions for very hard situations. But it was possible with the right characters, equipment and skills! (like sneaking inside locations without alarming anyone, or geting out of dicey situations without loosing any of your team members). Cant say this is the case with many PC games today anymore, not since they decided that companions are not allowed to die or even the main character (is it realy true that you always "resurect" again in Bioschock when you die?) ... Anyway.

(not that Fallout 3 doesn't already feel overcrowded from what I've seen and heard).

Its sometimes really extremly ridiculous particularly when you wander around the wasteland to run every 20-30sec. in some 3-4 riaders, talon mercs, 2 robots, animals (like mutated bears and deathclaws) and face some flying vetbird with 2-3 enclace soldiers jumping out of it just to later no 5min away find some community that has only 4 or 5 people inside ... yes. Some "villages" in the waste have not more then that. The more you play the game the more such things can become annoying. And the world is as well extremly small ... to small for my liking.

 

[k9wazere]

Really.

In 200 years, you'd expect most of the civilian populace to have banded together somewhere, for their own protection.

I wouldn't expect little pocket towns of 2-5 people, surrounded by 50 raiders in every direction.

Also, where is everyone getting their food from? I didn't see anyone growing crops. In FO1/2, you see most towns have a couple fields growing stuff.

I didn't explore everywhere, but I got the impression that in FO3, after 200 years, people were still living from scavenging the supermarkets.

That's right. 200 year old tinned food, which never expires, and never runs out!

 

[Ausdoerrt]

[
Thats not true. This is not only a exclusiveness for consoles. Quite a few games on the PC as well lack real "chalange" for what ever reason.

Because those PC games are ported from XBOX? Really, I cannot come up with exaples of dumbed-down games that are somehow not related to XBOX releases.

Another example of this is auto-healing in shooters. Many of today's gamers say they like not having to look for medkits anymore between fights. For someone like me, the thought of not having to fight with the health you're given removes the challenge, fun, and realism. You eventually realize that auto-healing shooters are more about letting the player feel like a badass going into every fight and not about the challenge of survival. I like feeling like a badass, but not to the point of boredom.

Auto-healing is particularly ridiculous in multoplayer-oriented shooters GOW *ajem* GOW. Counter-Strike has no medpacks and it is still probably one of the most popular multiplayer shooters.

In SP is just means that you don't really need to care about your health. Not having full HP for every battle is one type of challenges that, when removed, makes FPS more bland. Nothing to do with realism, really.

 

[Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude]

Auto-healing is particularly ridiculous in multoplayer-oriented shooters GOW *ajem* GOW. Counter-Strike has no medpacks and it is still probably one of the most popular multiplayer shooters.

In SP is just means that you don't really need to care about your health. Not having full HP for every battle is one type of challenges that, when removed, makes FPS more bland. Nothing to do with realism, really.

I don't mind the auto-healing in cod4 mp. Then again, I only play hardcore (1-3 shots are going to drop you).

(For me) It adds a layer of tension to firefights when you get clipped through a wall and hit the floor to avoid the incoming volley of bullets; knowing that the next round is going to kill you unless you wait a few seconds to summon enough strength to make a mad dash to real cover.

 

[bhlaab]

Yes they are video games.

 

[DOF_power]

Not so true about the RPGs. For example, FF series would make you think what characters/jobs/abilities to use and in what combination for different enemies. It took time to figure out. Knowing the game helped, but not more than for any other game. FO3 tells you pretty much outright "Shoot teh head!" and "Shoot the same place all teh time!"

Complaint that you can "practice the dialogue" goes pretty much for any game with dialogue trees, since that is the best type of interaction that exists. It would be ridiculous to argue that FO3-like dialogue tree that loops back to the same line regardless of the path taken, or even the absence of dialogue at all, is any better. It the best there is, it's not perfect but that's what we have.

Any game can be "practiced", but the older games made it a bit more of a challenge, so beating a game actually felt rewarding. If anything, the older games were "smarter" in that they offered harder puzzles and quests.

Problem was that Fallout 1/2 was about a lot stupid trial-error with the SPECIAL stats, the traits and the perks, until you realized to get the power armor + gauss rifle/alien blaster, maybe even the holy hand grenade, and then you're a god with 6 feet on one toe witch the blind and dumb guards/NPCs don't seem to realize.

So you're then forced to wipe out NCR, Vault City, New Reno and sections of San Francisco just to showcase your divine displeasure with the artificial stupidity and the drag-on-the-game mechanics.

F3 vanilla is too easy, but easily mod-able like all Beth games/ easy to fix, on the other hand F2 was either too easy or too hard and nowhere near that mod-able.


And the FF games are not RPGs.

 

[DOF_power]

Also DW:IW was the probably worst sequel of a great game ever made.

Almost every thing I liked about the game-play was eliminated.

 

[k9wazere]

Yes they are video games.

You've convinced me.

 

[k9wazere]

Auto-healing is particularly ridiculous in multoplayer-oriented shooters GOW *ajem* GOW. Counter-Strike has no medpacks and it is still probably one of the most popular multiplayer shooters.

In SP is just means that you don't really need to care about your health. Not having full HP for every battle is one type of challenges that, when removed, makes FPS more bland. Nothing to do with realism, really.

I don't mind the auto-healing in cod4 mp. Then again, I only play hardcore (1-3 shots are going to drop you).

(For me) It adds a layer of tension to firefights when you get clipped through a wall and hit the floor to avoid the incoming volley of bullets; knowing that the next round is going to kill you unless you wait a few seconds to summon enough strength to make a mad dash to real cover.

Yeah. My only experience of COD is COD3. I played on the second to hardest difficulty (I didn't have the cojones for the hardest setting :p).

And there were some sections that I replayed like 15-20 times. Charging up some hill with machine gunners everywhere. Inside some factory with soldier coming from above. In some burnt-out village encircled by tanks.

To say auto-healing is less challenging that med-kits is an over-generalisation.

Either system can be made easy; either system can be made hard. Neither are realistic.

 

[Crni Vuk]

[
Thats not true. This is not only a exclusiveness for consoles. Quite a few games on the PC as well lack real "chalange" for what ever reason.

Because those PC games are ported from XBOX? Really, I cannot come up with exaples of dumbed-down games that are somehow not related to XBOX releases.

Then compare shoters like Deus Ex, System Schock 2 or even older classics like Duke Nukem, Blood, Doom 1,2 to new shooters like Crysis, Far Cry, Far Cry 2. MoH and its expansions as well got a lot more chalangig missions compared to CoD 1. MoH was a port from the Plastation even.

Many of those games included many times a "hardcore" mode inside (Blood, Duke Nukem, Doom) which made it almost ridiculous to play the games. As said, it only seems to come from the console since a lot of games get released on all platforms in the same time.