The state of videogames

Why do people get so mad at the prospect of the "Lore" of the Mutant TUrtles getting tampered with.... you didn't watch the show because of it's amazing story (which it didn't have) or great animation (which it sometimes had, but most of the time it didn't) but because you were a kid and the characters were colorful and had slapstick comedy thrown in, because the characters couldn't even use their weapons in any really violent way so the fights weren't that cool.
 
Jebus said:
Stanislao Moulinsky said:
Jebus said:
I think they're aweful too - but then I know a lot of ten- to thirteen-year-olds who love his movies. It's them he's making them for.
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I doubt it, given some of the jokes and scenes in his movies. And even if he were...it's a weak excuse anyway. Just because you are writing for kids doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a plot that makes sense or well written characters.
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Yes it is. I mean, when you were watching the Power Rangers etc. when you were a kid, did you want tight plots and deep characters?

As I said, leave the boys what little they have left.
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Things like the Power Rangers (which by the way I found incredibly stupid even when I was a kid, always surprised me the success it had) don't even try to pretend that they aren't dumb and silly. Michael Bay does and that's the real problem with his movies (and, frankly a lot of other movies), they lack self-awareness.

But as I said, I'm not convinced that Bay writes his movies for kids. Sexual innuendos, crude jokes, occasional display of violence, lot and lot of (useless) characters with lot and lot of (useless) subplots, all the Transformers movies are rated PG-13 (for what it's worth). Kids may love them but that doesn't mean they are made for them. When I was a kid everybody in Italy watched Hokuto no Ken and thought it was the coolest shit ever, even though it was ultra-violent and not for kids.
 
When I was a kid I watched Samurai X, or Rounouri Kenshin. My first memory of that show was when a group of para military insurgents get gunned down by a dude with an archaic Turret and we see the lifeless looks on their faces. People tend to understimate the things a kid can watch in their shows.
 
And I'm not denying that. Not only that, but we as kids wanted to see that kind of thing because we weren't supposed to (the forbidden fruit!), because it was for grown-ups. But Kenshin and Kenshiro weren't made for kids.
 
Jebus said:
Yes it is. I mean, when you were watching the Power Rangers etc. when you were a kid, did you want tight plots and deep characters?
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I completely disagree with the premise that the Transformers movies are aimed at 13-year-olds. I'd say 15-25, or even older. Even so, there are plenty of things for 13-year-old boys that are way, way, way better than the Transformers movies. The Transformers animated TV shows, for starters. Goosebumps...The Incredibles...The Goonies...I can think of lots of things.

There's no good excuse for crap just because kids lack the experience and mental capacity to tell the difference between quality and crap. In fact, that makes the crap even worse, because it's very often predatory and exploitative.
 
Akratus said:
Is anyone here excited for the new console generation, and the effect that will have on the pc platform? Also, what upcoming games grab your attention?
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It depends on what new Gen consoles bring to the table. Only better graphics or that additional memory and CPU power will allow for thing like better AI. I never owned a console, partly because we don't have service here, and partly because I am mostly fond of genres for which the PC is suited better. However, consoles are a huge driving force and effect designs docs of many multi-platform games(not just in terms of crappier UI for the PC), so any improvement that will not require me to buy a new GPU is pro.

Usually it takes time until development studious gain enough experience with the new platform and get better tools. So I doubt that will mean better games from the get go, only that a larger portion of the budget will be sunk into engine/bugs/graphics, with graphics getting the most attention, as they are the single most visible/expected thing. In fact I suspect that for some time many old gen titles will still be very competitive even in the way they look.

I am hopeful that new consoles will lead dev try to monetize on older titles and give us some PC ports, I heard good tings about red dead redemption and I always wanted to play in a western theme. Also little unrelated to new gen's but the PC gamer in me hopes that Beth work with Mod will lead the way for more developers doing the same.


However, I am more excited about tablets. I know that many hardcore console players and even old' timers, will sniff at this weak or shiny toy. But, for an old time RPG fan as myself they are perfect, they are suited for a point and click interface and can run even the most graphically intense top down games. They are gaining popularity and even biting market shares from consoles(unlike the PC which has been loosing to laptops), thus creating a market which developers wont ignore, they also had most in common with PC in terms of development process. We already see some RPG remakes(like BG) who went that way, new titles which go that way and who knows maybe with push of the recent kickstarter success it might lead to a new RPG Renascence :)

EDITED.
 
I was just thinking... what about the state of how graphics are represented. I've had to put down a few recent "hits" due to... EYE BLEEDING BLOOM SHININESS.

Why is every character wearing patent leather? Why are the walls and floors all painted/stained in high gloss?

High Dynamic Range pisses me off too. It's the same thing. I think it's all mostly overdone and poorly implemented.

On some games these effects are done well I guess. But everyish game has these effects nowadays.
 
Here's a comment on the writing in the game "Ryse"

""If you're about to point out that the great fire of Rome wasn't started by barbarians, you should know that Ryse has no regard for history. It's a kind of slapdash historical fantasy in which the Celtic queen Boudica rides a war elephant, England looks like Middle-Earth, Scotland looks like Transylvania, the Colosseum is a kind of clockwork Holodeck and someone has invented exploding barrels. Nero's two fictional and comically evil sons are leading the Roman Empire into a Caligulan nightmare of debauchery and mass crucifixions. Marius' fate is somehow linked, via a magic lady in a very low-cut dress, to the legend of Damocles, a wronged warrior who became an undead "spirit of vengeance" - which has precisely no resemblance to the actual , extremely well-known and very much Greek legend of Damocles."

They've paid as much attention to the combat too. Or any semblence of fun.
 
mobucks said:
I was just thinking... what about the state of how graphics are represented. I've had to put down a few recent "hits" due to... EYE BLEEDING BLOOM SHININESS.

Why is every character wearing patent leather? Why are the walls and floors all painted/stained in high gloss?

High Dynamic Range pisses me off too. It's the same thing. I think it's all mostly overdone and poorly implemented.

On some games these effects are done well I guess. But everyish game has these effects nowadays.
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Well there are many games with good effects, or those who use a lot but don't overdo it. The way you feel about this in that post is the kind of feelings I have about the general industry, our opinions always bear over our ways to compartmentalize or critically think I suppose. But it's quite hard to see the big picture because this is such a large industry, with so many branches and with really no central core to it. It would be impossible for us to really get a complete view of gaming as a whole I suppose.

So I can only say that I FEEL that gaming overal needs to become more mature.

But I can also say, that there are some facts we do know. For example: Half Life 2. It was released in 2004, and I think most people can agree that it is a model fps. So why have so few other good shooters come out since? There's this perfect model for an fps available to all for already 9 years by now, and no developer seems to want to learn from it.

I feel that this is why our industry needs to look back, and look inward more before the aforementioned growing up can take place.

It is great to see small developers take a smart approach but they are along the sidelines and their type of thinking doesn't seem to spread at all.

It is a silly idea to think that the industry can make large changes in any quick fashion, though. I don't even know for a fact whether the games industry is less mature than movies or books overal because of the incompetence of the people behind it. Perhaps the young age of the medium is what holds it back, and it is simply natural.
 
My hypothesis is this; At one point there was a lack of system power to provide eye candy, and you had to have good writing or clever game play to keep your audience interested. Now we have the power to make eye candy work and no longer have to be smart to make a game.

There was a time when both where needed to pull of a decent game and where the so called "Golden age" was able to live.

It is easy to tell a story with pictures, and harder to do with words and it requires little effort to understand, and a awful lot of current gamers play a game to blow off steam and don't have the time or are willing to put the effort into understanding something more complex (I would also make a argument about this being related to he decline in reading as a hobby, but that is a different argument for another thread).

If we want to see a return to good games we have to pay attention to the root causes of the decline first and address them before we can see the rise of new classics.
 
Akratus said:
But I can also say, that there are some facts we do know. For example: Half Life 2. It was released in 2004, and I think most people can agree that it is a model fps. So why have so few other good shooters come out since? There's this perfect model for an fps available to all for already 9 years by now, and no developer seems to want to learn from it.
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Out of interest, in your opinion what makes Half life 2 the model FPS ?
 
Akratus said:
For example: Half Life 2. It was released in 2004, and I think most people can agree that it is a model fps.
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Actually, I heard HL 1 is the one which brings the linear shooter.
and some people say 1 is better than 2.
personally, I haven't tried both yet so I don't know who's opinion is right. but I think HL2 isn't model of (new or old)FPS.


Akratus said:
industry needs to look back, and look inward more before the aforementioned growing up can take place.
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I totally agree with you.
there are tons of games that are still revolution to game genre itself. too bad game today are just copying other successful games.
 
I am not certain why you guys are so obsessed with revolutions, who was first is only matter for the hall of fame. For example D&D was revolutionary in some ways, so what? does it mean its first or latest rule set are the best?

Same here, for a productive discussion, we need to look at a game from designer perspective, breaking it down to it's elements so we can focus on what made it special and see how we can use/improve upon it. Only this way you can go beyond list of everyone favorite titles.
 
woo1108 said:
Akratus said:
For example: Half Life 2. It was released in 2004, and I think most people can agree that it is a model fps.
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Actually, I heard HL 1 is the one which brings the linear shooter.
and some people say 1 is better than 2.
personally, I haven't tried both yet so I don't know who's opinion is right. but I think HL2 isn't model of (new or old)FPS.
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I would say HL1 was the first awesome FPS. Sure there was Doom, Wolfenstein etc before HL1 but they were a bit sketchy. HL opened up the FPS genre - and boy did it explode and go on to dominate the games industry excessively.
 
Don't forget Unreal. '97/'98/'99 were in general pretty good in terms of FPS. Quake 2, Unreal, Half Life, UT, Quake 3, Starsiege: Tribes... All groundbreaking or at least excellent games in some way or the other.
 
The game that got it right from me in terms of FPS PvP games was Quake 3 Arena, On the map bounce I can tell you they got it damn near perfect.
At the moment I am playing COD Ghosts, just for a bit of mindless gun play with friends (all COD fans) and I find it far from ideal in terms of balance, but with friends it can be fun.
 
Hassknecht said:
Don't forget Unreal. '97/'98/'99 were in general pretty good in terms of FPS. Quake 2, Unreal, Half Life, UT, Quake 3, Starsiege: Tribes... All groundbreaking or at least excellent games in some way or the other.
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Lately I have been wishing so much for a decent Sci Fi themed or inspired shooter similar to those older games, with an emphasis on action and exploring and less on cutscenes and scripted events.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
Hassknecht said:
Don't forget Unreal. '97/'98/'99 were in general pretty good in terms of FPS. Quake 2, Unreal, Half Life, UT, Quake 3, Starsiege: Tribes... All groundbreaking or at least excellent games in some way or the other.
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Lately I have been wishing so much for a decent Sci Fi themed or inspired shooter similar to those older games, with an emphasis on action and exploring and less on cutscenes and scripted events.
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Are we talking Decent? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game)

As that was one of the first games I was ever given and I would kill for a new version.
 
Nope, 'Decent' more as in "of an acceptable standard; satisfactory."

A new Decent game would be nice, doesn't Interplay own the rights?
 
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