Do you remember back in the day? How gaming used to be, it was so raw and elegant and so incredibly challenging sometimes, that you were at the edge of your seat trying to finish a boss/riddle etc! You weren't spoonfed on how to figure something out, or beat something. Like the beginning of Zelda Ocarnia of time, you are told a backstory dropped in your house and you just have to find out where and what you have to do! I finished that game at the age of eight ladies and gentlemen, I was eight years old and I managed to figure out riddles'n'stuff thats way harder then the things in modern gaming. This is not me like saying "yeah I'm super smart" Its more like "What the fuck? Why are games so easy? I mean like, I don't get what group they are catering to because if I am eight and I can do this, why can't the rest of em' do it?"
Like when something happens now in a game you get dropped somewhere and there's this guy standing in front of you. With a big and yellow ! sign above his head, like we get the POINT! You don't have to be " Hey talk to this guy! Hey walk that way! Hey go there! If you are in a riddle for 5 minutes, we will give you a tip THAT WILL FCKING TELL YOU the answer! *assassins creed* cough, cough..
Look at this boss fight for instance, have you played it? Do you notice how stale and boring it actually is? The lack of achievement in end after you finished that...
I remember playing baldur's gate... Dat plot, like why don't the big companies actually get good writers to do something with them? Like what annoys me the most, is when a see game designers/storyline writers etc. Doing interviews, and they are talking about the game like its mona lisa and how amazing the staff was and how their passion for game making is, then the game is turd...
I get it though guys its "business" crank out a gazillion games, waste 50% of the budged on the trailers for the game ( exaggeration ), they are catering to the majority of the gaming industry, the casual gamers and the hardcore gaming scene is practically not discovered... But like... ugh this is so stupid! I like played most of the "hard core" games in my early years, like how retarded is that certain community the game designers are trying cater too, if they can't figure out stuff I found out at the age of nine...
Games I would like to single out as complete rip off turd.
Prince of persia Call of duty (go figure, right...) The newest zelda games! Dragon age 2 Much, much more.
Then there are some games that are not terrible and may actually be pretty good, but their game quality in their series have certainly gotten worse over time, not gonna point any fingers, blizzard. ^^
Games that are relatively new and are really good and not a rip of turd
The first expansion pack to neverwinter nights 2, mask of the betrayer. Its actually really hard and you can perma die and you can almost never rest and you must plan your approaches carefully. They actually took a bold step and imo it went out great! Dark souls http://www.gamespot.com/dark-souls/videos/dark-souls-video-review-6337762/ nuff said. Civilacation V Shogun 2 Starcraft 2
Some more, though those are the only good ones that I like specifically really liked.
Its like the guys who invest the least time and care the least about gaming.... win... -.-
Re: Prince of Persia. I thought Two Thrones was really fun, if for no other reason than playing as the dark prince made you feel like the ultimate badass. It wasn't easy to die unless you jumped off a building accidentally, but pulling off snazzy combat combos still felt enjoyable. Sometimes the control system was really clunky, and it could have benefited enormously from better enemy AI, but it's almost 10 years old, so I'll give it a break on that count. I'm sure I must have played the other two 3D ones in the trilogy, but they weren't that memorable. They weren't that bad either, they were just like Two Thrones but minus the awesome dark side mechanic.
The 2008 version just titled "Prince of Persia" was great, in my opinion. However, that comes with a huge caveat -- the 2008 version is not even trying to be a challenging game, it's trying to be interactive cinema. The boss fights were annoying quick-time events I could do without, true, but exploring the environments and tracking down those last few light seeds was a wonderful time. The art made an otherwise linear game feel very open, and that's a good thing.
I didn't play any of the console PoP games, though, so I can't comment on the others or any overall trends in the history of the franchise.
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Re: Zelda. I'm interested as to which Zelda games you're calling the "new" ones that are bad, and why. OOT is in my mind the first of the "new" Zelda games, and as you say, it's pretty widely hailed as one of the best games of its type. Majora's Mask? Pretty neat, I liked it for most of the same reasons I liked OOT. I abandoned my playthrough of TP about 3/4 in, but only because I got bust with other stuff and then forgot all about it for a year and didn't feel like trying to remember what was going on when I stopped. Despite that, TP was fun too; it felt basically like OOT with more detailed but less snappy visuals. I didn't play WW because the graphics turned me off. I didn't play Skyward Sword because my emulator won't run it properly (LOL), but it looks promising, albeit not groundbreaking.
OOT, MM, and TP are all fairly linear if you pay attention. Everyone has these "fond" memories of tearing their elementary school hair out in the Water Temple looking for that last damn small key, but honestly, if you go back and play OOT again, I doubt you'll find it challenging. Fun, absolutely, but it's just not that hard if you're careful to not overlook things and explore everywhere. I think what set OOT apart as a really great game was that not only did it have that fun exploratory component, there were lots of small skill-sets you could perfect. I would guess that a nontrivial percentage of TL members have 3-heart-challenged it, etc.
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Anyway, I got rambly and lost track of whatever point I was originally going to make, if I even had one. Sorry. I guess my response to your blog is "different strokes for different folks." Not every game has to be Contra -- sometimes the fun is in exploring and not in winning. Certainly, the sheer level of difficulty of your average game has decreased dramatically over the last few decades. But there are still good, hard games now, and there were still good, easy games back then. Obviously we're seeing more games that spoon-feed you a victory screen now because that's what kids of the current generation are buying, and (dad's) money talks. If you're a game developer, why in the world would you not target your games for the largest market? Especially on TL, we love to look down on the "casual gamer", I do it too, but if that's where the money is, developers are basically obligated to direct their efforts in that direction. They aren't making games for our benefit, they're making games because they like being able to make games in exchange for a salary.
tl;dr You're missing the point with your last line. It's not that guys who care least win, it's that guys who are more numerous win, and it's silly to hold that against them.
Baldur's Gate was simply a d&d rip off. The mechanics and storyline both. that game owes everything to d&d.
ok, yes prince of persia (all of the titles) have rather shitty combat, but the series' strong points lie in the fantastic camera work (can you say that? :S) and the visceral cinematic feel of the game, as well as all the aerobatics etc. The prince of persia series is directly responsible for Shadow of the Colossus, Assassin's Creed, and the newer Castlevania games, among others. So.. ok. Prince of Persia is pretty bad, but it's NOT a rip off, in terms of mechanics and animation and music.
the 2008 version of PoP though was amazing. easy peasy game, but beautiful to play and experience.
bagging on CoD? come on now. What do you expect them to do with the game? Creatively, the game has been milked dry. It's not a bad game, never has been. Repetitive and stale, yea, but bad, never.
Zelda... yea. The new ones are mediocre, sadly. Havent played WW though. Twilight Princess was good, but i hated playing as the wolf, and the ice level stands out as being complete shit, and overall it was merely a refinement of the Ocarina of Time formula. I wish they had gone farther with the dark side thing and made the wolf mode as interesting as the variety in items and combos of normal mode.
Dragon age 2.... yeap. At least Origins had interesting mechanics to make up for its cliched Tolkienesque story.
If you're referring to Diablo... i don't know what you expected. It's the same shitty d&d ripoff dungeon crawler ARPG that diablo has always been. But with an even worse story this time :D
Dark Souls. Don't know, haven't played. Looks pretty damn good. Though it feels like this game gets praised mostly for its "difficulty" (i'm looking at you Ninja Gaiden T_T)
civilization is cool. truthfully the whole civ series bores me and i'd rather play total war, but for what it is it seems fine i guess :S
Shogun 2... ehhhh sorta :S Japan seemed too small and the game lacked the oomph of Rome. Nice change of pace, but too restricted in the end. But yea, the total war series overall is badass.
starcraft 2.... mehhh. I'll not comment. rofl.
oh and in terms of difficulty, all these games are piss easy (dark souls MAYBE excluded. from the footage it doesnt seem difficult, just punishing.) And all the childhood games you remember as difficult? piss easy as well, especially OoT. I don't think i've ever played a game that was actually challenging, multiplayer excluded. maybe... Spanky's Quest? Demon's Crest? Super Castlevania? it's been a while.
On July 11 2012 11:54 Fishgle wrote: Baldur's Gate was simply a d&d rip off. The mechanics and storyline both. that game owes everything to d&d.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha. hold on let me catch my breath. Let me just quote this so you cant erase it later when you realise what a colossal idiot you are for writing this. This is like saying "Starcraft is just a Warcraft ripoff... in space"
On July 11 2012 11:54 Fishgle wrote: Baldur's Gate was simply a d&d rip off. The mechanics and storyline both. that game owes everything to d&d.
Baldur's Gate was not a rip off of D&D, it was D&D. The story was from a series of books called Forgotten Realms and it was entirely based off of D&D and used the D&D system. It would be like saying SC2 is a total ripoff of SC1.
Edit: The guy above me got it out a little faster.
On July 11 2012 11:54 Fishgle wrote: Baldur's Gate was simply a d&d rip off. The mechanics and storyline both. that game owes everything to d&d.
I don't know if I can handle it. I just don't know.
As to the OP, I find it odd that you listed SC2 as a recent game that has done well. If anything, SC2 is the epitomy of a company selling out a great game for more profit.
On July 11 2012 11:54 Fishgle wrote: Baldur's Gate was simply a d&d rip off. The mechanics and storyline both. that game owes everything to d&d.
I don't know if I can handle it. I just don't know.
As to the OP, I find it odd that you listed SC2 as a recent game that has done well. If anything, SC2 is the epitomy of a company selling out a great game for more profit.
Not true, just because YOU don't enjoy sc2 doesn't mean it's a bad game selling it for more profit. It is a good game whether you like it or not. If it was a bad game people wouldn't play it, people enjoy it. I know it's hard to believe but just because you think the game is shit doesn't mean it is. (I am assuming you think it's shit due to your comment and I imagine you are like a lot of bw players today who think it's absolute garbage when it's not).