On that note, I'm almost entirely positive that modding was the entire point behind Oblivion. There is a default story there, but it just felt like they were throwing an engine and modding tools at the players.

 

Aye, you all know my viewpoint on Oblivion. I had to mod the fuck out of that game to make it even remotely playable for me.

 

Try running around a hundred mods at the same time.

Game actually becomes surprisingly fun, then. >_>;;

 

I think I installed like 40 or 50. I never wound up doing the actual storyline very far, as I wound up enjoying hunting and doing the mod stuff more. There's one that made the woods dangerous as shit, and another that I liked, that rebuilt Solace from Dragonlance in the trees in the middle of a forest.

How the hell did you get replayability out of it? I ran through it once on xbox and once on PC, and did everything. It was a RPG for kiddies, not anything serious.

 

Endings:
1) good alignment + throw sword in vortex
2) good alignment + kill sis
3) evil alignment + throw sword in vortex
4) evil alignment + kill sis

The only difference is a few lines in the dialouge. But hey, if you had fun with it, good for you. I'm still dicking around with DoW 2, I want to finish it, but it's boring as hell. Going to go make a run at it now and try to knock it out.

Then I'm actually going to try to finish Witcher, and surprisingly, going to reinstall Spore, and play a batshit insane conquerer race using the new expansion.

 

Honestly, I'm going to agree with Midknight here. The near-constant graphical upgrades and the cross-porting has ruined a lot of the replayability games had, not to mention most storylines. It seems that games either do one of two things with story: they either take the Metal Gear Solid route (which has its ups and its VERY deep downs) or make the story so utterly pointless that one might as well not bother.

I'm part of the group that thinks that Halo did ruinous things to the FPS crowd, and I remain one of the group that will readily play CS over that or Gears of War. And it's a damn shame that most FPSes chose to follow Halo's path (which is one of the reasons I consider the story modes on most FPS games (when there is one) to be mindbogglingly easy). I still hold JK II: Jedi Outcast as one of my favourite FPSes, if only because it was one of the last few Star Wars FPSes that were still good. Anyone remember the ORIGINAL Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, or hell, even the original Dark Forces? It might be flawed by today's standards, but it was fantastic and incredibly replayable back in the late nineties.

And maybe it's just me, but the whole eruption of 'sandbox-based games' hasn't done a lot for the third-person genre of shooters either, not to mention storylines. Frankly, Assassin's Creed, while being frustratingly easy once you have the short sword, was one of the best in this format, and was at least immersive enough to draw you in. Otherwise, only the Godfather game and Just Cause feel worth a damn in this format (GTA series never really caught on with me). It feels like open-world freedom is being offered instead of a story, and while that works for some gamers, it never really clicked for me.

And on the subject of RPGs... well, the relative decline of D&D into idiocy with the 4th Edition hasn't helped the setting (not to mention that the Eberron campaign setting sucked donkey balls), and with MMOs stealing a shitload of the market share, it's getting harder and harder to find a truly enjoyable RPG these days. I still hold Neverwinter Nights (the original one, not the glorified piece of shit they called the second one) both for story, replayability, and sheer modibility as one of the best in the format, closely followed by Diablo II (it's preference, and a liking for the D&D system that gives NWN the crown). It also remains the only game, in my opinion, to do the moral choice system RIGHT. And I'll agree with Xipho that Shenmue was fucking incredible. One of the most underrated gems in gaming.

I don't tend to play a lot of RTSes, the most consisting of the Total War series, a bit of Sins, and a shitload of WC III, but even still, are there any real prospects on the horizon in this format besides Starcraft II?

When I look back on my old gaming years, I see games I miss fondly and still play, even when I have top of the line hardware. Who here remembers adventure games like Grim Fantago or the Monkey Island series, or space sims like the X-Wing series (back when Star Wars games used to be good (discounting KOTOR, obviously, though it was never really my cup of tea))? I still hold the original TIE Fighter (and that's back in the mid-nineties, when games came on floppy disks and 3D was worth mentioning in the title) as one of my favourite games, with an excellently crafted story and some truly pulse-pounding action.

And a side rant here: why the fuck did Lucasarts stop making space sim games? They could be fucking incredible with today's graphics, and there's so much goddamn material for stories in the SW universe. It makes me fucking sick to see such a damn good genre go to waste.

And yeah, I sank hundreds of hours into my Pokemon Red and Silver, but really, who didn't back in those days? Pity they utterly ran that franchise into the fucking ground. How about the days when there was 250 Pokemon? Don't we all miss those days?

So, looking to the future, the only games I'll likely play will be Assassin's Creed II (if only to find out why the hell the ending of the last game was so fucking bad), Starcraft II, and Diablo III. And that brings me to another point: all these games are sequels. Why the hell don't we see GOOD original ideas anymore, developed by GOOD game designers who can hire writers with half a working brain for the story?

Hell, come to think of it, it seems like my problems with games are similar to a lot of the problems I have with fanfiction: a lack of original ideas, written by good authors with solid execution. Instead, authors go for the 'cheap thrills' (eg. fangirls) and accumulate thousands of reviews while most quality gems fall by the wayside. The same, unfortunately, seems to be happening with games.

tl, dr - it's no surprise I don't do a lot of gaming these days.

 

Sure, the gaming industry has totally been fucked, but can you honestly blame them? Everything is being totally screwed now, music, movies and shit went along time ago, while gaming was at least alright for a while. Plus, people still make mods, add-ons and extras for PC games, which is more than you can say for music. I have one question though. Why don't you just download your games? If it's gay, you didn't waste your money, and you can get them on the day they come out. Starcraft 2 will probably be available for download an hour after its release.

 

It's simple economics.

Games in the 80s and 90s didn't cost millions of dollars and require hundreds of employees to produce. In order to make a profit after the ever increasing amount of money spent on development, games either have to be sold for a lot more than they currently are or they need to appeal to a mass market audience.

So yes, we now have games where the main content tends to be shorter and easier. But there are also very often ways for players to reintroduce that length and difficulty back into their games. Play through that FPS campaign on hard mode. Finish side quests in RPGs. Go out of your way to complete achievements. It's all the same stuff you used to do back in the old days, but made optional so that people who don't want to throw their joysticks across the room in rage aren't forced to.

A lot of this is rose-tinted goggles and nostalgia. Sure, games took longer to complete back then and were often more difficult - but they were also needlessly frustrating and unforgivably repetitive.

 

Ive been seeing a lot of hate for the Halo series lately and I dont understand why. I loved the shit out of the first one, and even the second one (though the ending was gay). Didnt play the third one much since I didnt have a 360 until recently.

Could someone please explain to me WHY it seems like the cool thing to be hating on Halo now?

 

I'm going to be perfectly honest here when I say that I've never really gotten the appeal of a long single player campaign. If I ever had a chance between playing Super Mario 64 or playing Mario Kart with a friend, I'd take the latter every time. Nowadays, whenever I hop on my Xbox, I don't even waste the time thinking about the campaign. I just go multiplayer with my friends, or even random people if I have to. I don't know what it is, but I've just never gotten into it. As a result of this, I'm very happy about where the industry is going. Give me moar weapons, moar maps and moar online, and I'm perfectly happy. Maybe people like me are the cancer that's killing the industry. Sue me.

 

Probably because it set FPS development back five or so years.

Before Halo, FPSes typically had a much different standard feature set which makes for much, much more appealing gameplay at the highest level. To be specific, Halo did the following:

--Had a run speed that a recently assraped duck could match
--Had no sprint
--Introduced the "Pussy shield"
--Devalued the impact of firing a gun in a game (Before Halo, games were just starting to get the right "Oomph" from firing guns. Nope! Thanks, Halo, the only game of this generation that even comes close now is Black.)
--Completely underutilized the 3D element of fighting-- I can count the number of times I shot at someone in Halo multiplayer more than a story above me on one hand.
--Had a generic as fuck main character and backstory (Sorry, guys, space marines were around ages before Halo)
--Had boring enemy design (Yes, I just said that. Fuck the enemies in Halo 1 and 2, they're generic and pitiful.)
--Was staggeringly easy
--Had very little balance in multiplayer (Never played Halo 2 MP, so I can't vouch for that)
--Had weapons that did absolutely no damage (Okay, justified by plotline, but really. You unload half a clip into someone's chest, they die. If their armor blocks it, then your weapon DOESN'T FUCKING DO ANYTHING AND SHOULD BE UPGRADED. Unless you're a truly dumb son of a bitch, you don't throw rocks at tanks.)
--Brought the "casual gaming" crowd in by hordes, which in and of itself has only done horrible things for the industry. (Now it's too big to be making for a small but veteran fanbase, but just too small to have a comfortable level of niches for companies to fall into and provide services for.)

In short, it was a shitty game that got popular and had the current generation of games remove the twitch from FPSes, which I'll never forgive the developers for.

Alright, at least you're honest and up-front about it, but that's like saying "I hate what's on the pages of books, I just like to look at the covers and throw them at my friends."

 

After the first Halo, it [Halo] was more about MP than it was single player. And going that route, it's easy to hate the MP; if you can get around the 7 or 8 year olds talking shit, it's actually somewhat enjoyable.

Halo 2 had a better MP than 3 IMHO.

 

Hahahahahaha maybe so. But, personally, I'd say it's more comparable to reading a comic book and just looking at the pictures rather than reading the story. But I love your version too.

 

A better comparison is:

A. The group of kids who spend hours acting out parts from a single comic book.

Versus​

B. The kid who buys every issue of the comic book series, reads them all in a weekend, and wonders why he feels so unfulfilled.

Single-player games or single-player mode sucks, full stop - past and present. The glowing exceptions were already mentioned (Mario, Sonic, Shenmue, GB Pokemon, GTA2), but it was always going to be a multiplayer-dominated industry from the moment N64 came with 4 controller plugs and Dreamcast had a built-in modem. I don't necessarily think it was a matter of the industry looking to rush out games at the sacrifice of a quality single-player mission; it was just that people get more life out of a viable multiplayer format. Those of you that play games over and over (and over) in single-player mode are definitely the exception, not the rule. And frankly, no A.I. will ever be more challenging, or rewarding to defeat, than another person.

There's so much more to offer with multiplayer gaming: tournaments, competitions, job offers - some kid was even lucky enough to gain an actual racing contract from having dominated the online GranTurismo community. Even overtly gay games like MarioParty are that much more fun because of the multiplayer factor. A major company investing money into a really incredible RPG won't suddenly breath life into the genre anymore, because honestly, they were looking to kill it off a loooong time ago.

 

Something about FPS.

I loved TF2. It was easy to die, took some skill for certain classes, and teamwork will rock the shit out of folks. It was fun to the next level. Me, Raven, TP, Jon, shit even Sree and Darius at some points were doing things to folks on the DLP server that were probably making folks think we were hacking. (no comparing TF2 xbox 360 to PC, i've seen it, good god are they worlds different)

But hey, go join a game developed for the console and you're lucky to get 4 on 4 matches +/- where everyone is hogging the uber weapon and the power ups, and no one is working together, because there's no need. They run around small as shit levels with the game specific energy sword, that's not fun. It's 2 dimensional, dumbed down for a controller.

You want fun, grab BF 2 on Wake Island. Get you a group of good friends, a fucking helicopter and a flight stick. I did things in that game, that I'm ashamed to admit, give me video geek wood to this day. I've jumped out of a helo, and sniped folks on the way down while deploying my chute. I popped a humvee driver in the face from half a map away when the guy was taking a patrol route too often, while the humvee was in midair, through the side window.

There's no auto aim there, no holding left trigger with a 30x zoom so you actually have a chance of moving the reticle to the target. No quad damage powerup. And the folks screaming in my ear weren't the computer, it was 31 other folks with e wood. Big maps you can't run across in 1 minute flat.

Look at what console gaming has to offer? My old helper PJ was raging about Halo, him and his friends loved that shit, buncha college kids. "Aw amazing graphics, blah blah" then I turned on BF2142, started a Titan match and blew his damned mind out of the water graphically and gameplay wise. This dude was WTFBBQing over the fact that our side had 20 something people alone, and we were worried because we were undermanned.

"Dude just throw up a shield, or jump shoot, or find a really big insta kill gun." Tactics to people like that, who are used to the console BS, means godmode, hacking, find screw ups in the game's code. He's used to maybe having to return fire (read that as, charge straight at, bunny hopping, while firing on full auto) on a guy a story above his head. He didn't know wtf to do with a gigantic ship raining down fire, that you have to tactically assault, or at the very least, defend against.

Jokes on me though, because as ElDee said above, it's not geeks For geeks anymore. It's a industry that's the biggest entertainment venue ever. And they're not going to grow it by making 30 hour long campaign games. They're going to make a buncha short as shit single player campaigns that are nothing more then glorified tutorials, while tweaking MP to allow you to take a 5 second fully auto burst in the chest from a SAW, so you can casually grab a controller and play some rounds with your buddies while laughing over who "wtf owned" that 12 year old, that they can crank out yearly.

I used to be SP only. Asheron's Call changed that some, Dark Age of Camelot, and then WoW helped get me used to playing with large amounts of people, made it normal. BF2/2142, and TF2 sold it. It feels different now when I'm not playing with a group sure, but it doesn't mean I'd rather play something with an awesome story, like Planescape, over Gears of War MP (which is SHIT, jesus christ can the maps be smaller? The game's good, but damn, folks pop wood over Gears Multi, really?)

Some of my fondest memories are of playing Super Mario 64 with my then girlfriend, now wife, along with Goldeneye and Mario Kart sometimes with a buncha friends, sometimes just us two. Games like those, and another standout, Castlevania SotN, just aren't made anymore.

Hell, take Goldeye for example, graphically and controller wise, now it's utterly unplayable, but it broke new group in multiplayer and FPS. It wasn't easy, I remember getting stuck in the big room towards the end with all the computer monitors for a very long time, I couldn't fend off the waves of people. Multiplayer was awesome, and the game was just right. Now imagine if you'd feel the same way about it, if it lasted 5 hours of brezzing through enemies?

Todays FPS are nothing more then graphical tech demos imho for the next game. Ohh look shiny, super easy game. Screw that.


Edit: and goddamnit, now I have to reinstall TF2 or BF2142 now, i was TRYING to knock off DoW 2 damnit =/ For such an easy game with 3 minute missions, there's a neverending supply of them... and I'm the sort of person who wants to totally beat the shit out of the game... even if it means playing the same exact map , with different colored monsters 10 times before you finally move on, rofl.

 

That is unbelievable. If you don't own any of the current consoles, then how can you say there haven't been many decent games?

The experience of playing games at a buddy's is totally different than playing your own games.

 

If people want want to spend money on a console or upgrade their their system, then the wont spend money. 'Nuff said.