True Gaming Can a Single Player Game be too long? |
- Can a Single Player Game be too long?
- Why is navigation through the world/environment far and far less a part of games?
- [Rant] Battlefield 5 beta flop
- Why are there no games based on the Korean war?
- When franchises aren't just one franchise
- Do we tend to take for granted how hard it was to develop games for retro consoles? Especially those now easy to emulate (and with games that don't take up much storage space)?
- Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield are arriving at a perfect time, just when high fantasy/medieval settings are getting old.
- Is Ciri from the Witcher white in the books? (analysis)
- The anger about Battlefield V's customisation is overblown and ridiculous.
- I'm a 31 y.o. gamer and think Fortnite is legitimately one of the most fun games around and is unfairly hated on because of much of its community
| Can a Single Player Game be too long? Posted: 08 Sep 2018 12:31 PM PDT Or, in other words, is there such a thing as too much of something being bad, when it comes to entertaiment? Ain't one of the basic things is more = better, and this is why some of us base our buying habits on how long do a certain game lasts? But even with that in mind, I find myself with the clear idea that some games were simply too long and those extra moments somewhat ruined the game for me. So, let's talk about it. I was absolutely in love with Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube. The towns were filled with interesting characters, the items had multiple uses and the dungeons were very fun. Even the 'cinematic narrative' had a gripe on me, I was blasting my way thru the game following the narrative and enjoying every second of it. And then I hit the middle of the game. While the first half felt like someone threw you a surprise party with a giant strawberry cake, the second part is you eating the same cake for the rest of the month, supper and all. Kakariko Village became a hub for a delivery fetch quest that made you go back to all the previous places you had gone. You had to explore every nook of the world map searching for "owl statues", and what was once a breezing experience of passing thru areas and being amazed at how much more than the main storyline you had to explore, now became ah "oh, it was a two-fold act". Doom (2016) is another example of this, in the first part of the game you're given all these new and cool weapons, you face off against this plethora of demons, learn the double jump and all the mechanics you're supposed to master. And then you get to Hell and you think "that's it, I'm nearing the end game!"... And no, not really. You're midway thru. Sure, you'll get the BFG later on and that's sort of a "special gun", but this is where my definition of a "two-fold act" comes from. The first act awes you with a ton of unique content, the second act reuses this same content. From a gameplay perspective, it makes sense: You're first given the tools, now you're supposed to master it. But in all other aspects, sometimes, it just feels like you're now running in circles at the same place. [link] [comments]  |
| Why is navigation through the world/environment far and far less a part of games? Posted: 07 Sep 2018 11:46 PM PDT Yeah I know I may have an unpopular standpoint because I will "attack" an recent popular and charming game and I know gaming has come a loooong way for being where it stands now with all of its conveniences but I can't help that I'm more and more unsatisfied of exploring modern game worlds. I'm playing Dragon Quest 11 right now and one of its biggest issues to me is its minimap at the left-down corner on the screen, which is impossible to hide. When I'm thinking back at previous entries like dragon quest 8 (the first one with a 3D environment) there was no such map, even when it was released at a time, where minimaps where becoming standard for assisting you to navigate through game worlds. In fact in DQ8 was a map which pops up on pressing a button, but even this map does only show your approximate location, by showing you the environment around you but not where you stand and in such a scale that no details or names of significant places are shown. The dragon quest 11 map shows you at the start of each area the whole location and important npc's like quest givers, the next destination and every resident area where you can go next. I would be able to ignore it, if it wasn't for the minimap where you don't have the choice to deactivate it. It may be a small detail for most of you but in my case it has a great effect. Because it is located at bottom-left of the screen (which is by the way rarely seen in non-strategy games, because the focus of your eyes lay on the lower half of the screen) you can't get it out of your eyes, it's always a stain which distracts you (or at least me) from enjoying the beatiful scenery of the game. In more cramped locations I caught myself for laying my attention more on the minimap than of the actual screen, because by exploring it shows me asides from heights every little place I can get to, which results in another problem: the world becomes more artificial because you can always see the borders of the map right from the start, knowing where your'e able to go and not to go and giving away potential surprises and secrets. I was really looking forward to explore these areas on my own by experiencing the borders of the game world for myself, when I look at all these great environments at first I wouldn't recognize that they are just a few inches walkable, the illusion without a minimap is just to good for that, which allows me to immerse better in the game world. The designers put a lot of effort in that regard, in early trailers it even looked like an open world game which it is not. Unfortunelately the designers didn't put much trust on the player for navigating and finding a way for their own - even on such an more linear game - and that really huffs me because Dragon Quest 11 is not the only game, but at least it was a game which was always (and still is) labled as an old-school rpg which follows old traditions... well the newest entry does a lot of compromises with quest markers, minimaps, side-quest-logs and so on. I really miss the sense of wonder and surprise which I can only get when games don't tell me to much about their world from the start. At least allow me to play the game without all these informations. I feel much more engaged when I'm more encouraged to give more attention to my surroundings, beeing able to get lost may sound harsh, but it's always a pro for the game, because most games don't even have that freedom that you can get lost. Maybe you feel a bit annoyed by searching the way back, but at least you feel something. It would be much more organic and significant to place clues and distinctive marks inside of the actual game world, instead of giving you an navigator for the whole game, In any case it's always better to reduce the UI as much as possible so that the player can concentrate on the actual game. I'm really not that much obssesed of finding everything that the game can offer me, as long it's not highlighted... like showing the exact amount of exploreable sidequests in the game right from the start. (Yakuza does this also) Do you know what I mean? What I don't know won't hurt me. I'm really sick of checklists and the teasing of hidden content. That's doing stuff just for the sake of completion. Let me have my own adventure, allow me to miss things, allow me to play a game a second times after years and be still suprised. Many old games can still accomplish that, the reason why is, because they don't share the same design paradigm than actual modern games share. All these help should be optional extras for players who struggle to finding their way. Instead it's the other way around and players who want to get more immersed have to rely on options for disabling it, which is not always the case, like in Dragon Quest 11. And even when it is, the game is to often not designed for that, hiding away integral informations or illogical descriptions for tasks, because even the designers tend to forget that the NPC's couldn't know of things that are UI related. [link] [comments]  |
| [Rant] Battlefield 5 beta flop Posted: 08 Sep 2018 03:38 PM PDT I played the battlefield 5 beta for the last two days and am honestly shocked and sad of where the game is headed. Not only there are less tanks and weapons there is little content overall. It reminds me a lot of battlefront 1 beta and how everybody was shocked about how little content the game offered. I remember battlefield 3 and 4 has a lot of weapons, vehicles and airplanes. Another point that annoyed my is how they made the map smaller compared to previous gigantic maps on the previous games. Some might argue that operations maps are massive, yes that's true but they feel like 3 small maps combined that you transition from one point to another you can't go to your previous locations. Am afraid that the game is following the footsteps of disappoints titles like battlefront 1 instead of following the foot steps of battlefield 3 or 4. [link] [comments]  |
| Why are there no games based on the Korean war? Posted: 08 Sep 2018 11:04 AM PDT Title is self explanatory, I can think of a few reasons, but I want you guys to discuss the topic. You can find either milisims or arcade games based on pretty much every modern war (edit: where the US was directly involved) except Korea [link] [comments]  |
| When franchises aren't just one franchise Posted: 08 Sep 2018 08:57 AM PDT I've been trying out the Battlefield V beta. It's the most fun I've had with a shooter since Bad Company 2. I personally feel that literally every gameplay decision DICE is making is a good one. I hated BF3 and 4. They just weren't the Battlefield I remembered, to me they felt more like a large-scale Call of Duty with some vehicles and the name Battlefield slapped on. Point is, I'm massively exited for BFV at this point, now that I've played it. I remember a few years back DICE mentioned that they knew that a ton of people felt that BC2 was their best game, but they weren't quite sure why. It feels as if with Battlefield 1 and now V (though V is more of it's own beast), DICE really did look back and ask themselves what people enjoyed about Bad Company from a gameplay perspective and tried to bring some of it back (mostly, squads being very resilient if they stick together and some level of teamplay mattering). Despite DICE apparently thinking that most Battlefield players felt that way, whenever I look at chat in the beta, or see headlines about the game, nearly everyone says "I just miss Battlefield 4. This is boring." There's nothing wrong with that, but it highlighted something that I've been thinking about. Franchises aren't consistent at all. Battlefield is vaguely consistent in that it always involves large player counts broken up into smaller squads of players built around a class system, but that's about it. Battlefield 3 and 4 might as well be their own subspecies, just as the Bad Company games were, just like Battlefield One and V are connected, though frankly V is so different than One mechanically at this point that I'm not too sure about that one. Call of Duty is the same way. There's the original 2, then 3 happened which was sort of it's own thing and people trashed it as a result (which sucked because it was a really fun game, just nothing like Call of Duty), then Modern Warfare came out which felt more like the first 2 but were, again, really their own thing. Black Ops 1 had it's own feel that never really came back, then Black Ops established itself with 2 and it's crazy movement... And throughout all those transitions, and similar transitions in any big franchise (Assassin's Creed, Spyro, Paper Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Wars Battlefront, ect.) there has been drama because the game simply isn't what people expect from the franchise it claims to represent. So aren't companies sort of shooting themselves in the foot by doing this? Why use the name of a franchise when it should be clear that fans of that franchise (or it's current iteration at least) will be disappointed with what you're making? Why not make it clear that it's a different beast by the creators of X franchise? Wouldn't that save everyone a lot of drama and frustration? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Sep 2018 09:59 AM PDT One of the things I notice in retro review is how writers often always state "go for this version because its the superior one" and "the ___ version is pointless" and such statement about describing that a particular platform hands down has the superior copy of the game. This is particularly true for ports from the arcade and computer where retro reviews always state that since say the SNES of Street Fighter games is closer to the arcade, one should avoid the megadrive and other console ports because they are missing frames and other minuscule elements important in the competitive gaming of the original arcade and PC versions. I am wondering though do many people- not just passionate retro reviewers but also casual gamers who are AWARE of how to use emulators- underestimate just how difficult it was for developers to make different conversions of a single game? Especially PC and arcade ports? What inspired me to ask this question was because as someone who grew up in the 6th generation, I remember reading articles about how it was quite difficult to port games from one console to another and even systems with similar specs (Xbox and Gamecube) would have great difficulty trying to convert the game to another platform's format. Even the Xbox games had difficulties being converted to PC and vice versa despite how magazines often joked the Xbox was a computer in a box and how Xbox was described as being similar to PC in architecture and software coding. So whenever claims are made such as the SNES version of The Lion King being hands down the superior port because the sound is better and graphics are crispier so you should ignore the Megadrive port, I can't help but feel its an insult to the hardwork the developers had done trying to build versions for both consoles. I may not know much about older consoles development, but just because modern emulations make it easier to choose the best version does not mean that it was easy making the games (and it shouldn't mean we just shove off inferior versions)! I mean I remember witnessing the difficulty a video on Youtube of all the difficulty it took to port Ghost Recon to the various consoles and how they had to make major modification to the in-game engine, do weird tricks to fit in with the console's weaker specs that were quite below what the PCs had at the time, etc. This is in an era with easy development kits and lots of input from the publishers of how the console works and so on and even than it was immensely difficult. So I shudder at the thought of old consoles when the architectures were far far more confusing and game dev kits weren't as user friendly, etc. Does anyone agree? In particular I am curious about PC ports. People are always complaining the PC version (in addition to being a hassle to play), often take up considerably more space than counterparts on pre-CD rom ports so they play the SNES or Megadrive version both for convenience and to save space (or download the game faster). Is this an insult to the hardwork PC developers had to do to make the games playable on MS-Dos and early Windows? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Sep 2018 07:11 AM PDT Open world RPGs is by far my favorite genre of gaming. Over the past three years, I've been getting a little bored of the high fantasy/medieval-like settings. That isn't to say I don't enjoy those settings anymore, but I have yet to see a sci-fi open-world RPG that delivers the amount of detail and variability Bethesda and CD Projekt Red deliver. Don't get me wrong, I love the dialogue-intensive RPGs like Mass Effect - however, in my opinion, the level of detail and variability in Mass Effect are lacking in comparison. From a marketing standpoint, Bethesda and CD Projekt Red chose a perfect time to release sci-fi RPGs: at a time, in my opinion, when the high fantasy/medieval settings can't be perfected anymore and are getting a little old. A lot of people are noticeably excited for Cyberpunk, and I see no complaints, but I am also noticing a lot of people upset about the end of the Witcher series (caveat: I haven't read the books, so I don't know if that decision logically fits the story). Why? I look at it as one of those circumstances of a title we think we will miss, but when Cyberpunk comes out, we will miss the Witcher less than we think. Really random example, but, for the sake of the argument, I will use MTV as an example. I notice a lot of people say that they miss the old MTV, you know, back when it had music videos - but let's be honest, are we really gonna watch music videos on TV -no, that is why we have Youtube. The only possible way MTV can survive is if they adapt by making themselves unique. If MTV continued to place all of their emphasis on music videos, there would be nothing unique about them to keep people tuning in. That isn't to say the decision CD Projekt Red made had severe ramifications on their reputation (contrary to MTV or EA), but I think if they kept making high fantasy/medieval titles there is the potential of creating the appearance of "milking" a setting for money. The MTV analysis came from this video! What do you all think? [link] [comments]  |
| Is Ciri from the Witcher white in the books? (analysis) Posted: 08 Sep 2018 07:18 AM PDT Hi! As everyone in /r/witcher seems to be all up in arms about Ciri being 100% canonically white I thought I would present another point of view on this case that might not be necessarily in line with that. I am a fan of both books and the games and I also happen to be polish so i can understand the source material and the context (as can any polish person). I've tried posting to /r/witcher but I just get downvoted to hell so I thought I would try posting here. First of all Ciri is white in the games - this isn't really up for debate. That's why probably most people identify with Ciri being white, it's understandable. Is Ciri white in the books though? Let's see. How Did Ciri Look like in the books? The books are pretty vague about her skin colour. What most (English speaking) people seem to quote is this fragment from Sword of Destiny
Sword of Destiny page 416. Most people think "white complexion" is about her skin colour which is actually false but I can see how it could be interpreted like that from the context. However what the quote is talking about is just her hair "fair hair - ashen white complexion". Here is the same quote from the original books in polish:
Quote taken from: http://wiedzmin.wikia.com/wiki/Ciri/Opisy_z_ksi%C4%85%C5%BCek_i_gier From this quote it is very clear that Sapkowski is talking just about her hair (literally fair and mouse-like) and her green eyes. As I said the books are pretty vague about her ethnic appearance. The best we can get is that she was descibed as pale, green eyed and having ashen hair - none of those attributes can tell us anything about her ethnic background. Being pale doesn't necessarily equal white as it only describes the lightness of the complexion (same as tan doesn't mean "black"). Especially in polish the word for pale (which is "blady") means more that person looks anemic/ill or light-shaded. As for the ashen-grey hair, it doesn't exist naturally in the real world among children. That's why it's literally a fantasy and doesn't very well translate to the real world, eh? Ciri's parents & isn't Ciri "polish" or "Slavic"? The books state that Ciri has elven blood on her mother's side and on her father's side she is Nilfgardian. Nilfgaard is described as Southern Kingdoms in the books (as opposed to the Northern Kingdoms who are being invaded by Nilfgaardian Empire.) If you wanted to make an allegory to Europe Nilfgaard would be Spain, France and the like and Nothern Empires would be England, Germany, Poland etc. Spanish or Mediterranean people in general have more darker complexion than people from Northern Europe. Either way this comparison isn't really relevant as again we're talking about a fantasy realm but it might be a bit useful to disprove the claim that Ciri is "polish" or "northern". I mean her full name is literally Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, that doesn't sound very slavic or polish, does it? Sapkowski Now what is undoubtedly polish is the Author. But that doesn't necessarily make every character in the book polish like, does it? There is a little piece of information about Sapkowski's opinion on casting BAMA people as characters in the Witcher series -
https://kotaku.com/netflix-witcher-writer-tries-to-smooth-unfounded-racial-1825960625 "honoring his intentions as a writer" - this isn't really surprising if you know the general context and message hidden in the books. Books (and games to an extend) show a world where discrimination against different races - Humans, dwarfs and Elves - is common. Sapkowski wanted to show how prejudice and discrimination can be destructive. Same goes for making a lot of strong female characters in the series - there is a lot of progressive messages hidden in the Witcher series. Ciri is also gay in the books, she even has a special tattoo reminding her of her girlfriend Misiles. "World of the Witcher is POLISH, therefore every person is white" Again the world isn't polish. It's loosely based on medieval Europe and includes a lot of myths from all over Europe, not only Poland. For example The Wild Hunt is actually a very Germanic myth. It also includes dragons, mutants, trolls, water hags, witchers and all kinds of different beings. I mean it's literally impossible in that world for Ciri to be non white... Here is an interesting quote from an interview with Sapkowski about the boundaries in fantasy where he says:
Source: https://sapkowskipl.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/rozmowa-z-andrzejem-sapkowskim/ Thank you for reading all of this, sorry about the wall of text. [link] [comments]  |
| The anger about Battlefield V's customisation is overblown and ridiculous. Posted: 08 Sep 2018 10:31 AM PDT Let me start off by saying that I understand that some people would be pissed off that DICE have made a u-turn on the 'total historical accuracy' statement they made when BFV was first announced. That said, the outrage over the fact you can play as a woman or a person of colour is so incredibly embarrassing when you consider the reasons why the game has this customisation in the first place.
The BFV beta, in my opinion, is incredibly fun. I haven't had this much fun in an FPS since I was about 14, playing Halo Reach and Black Ops 1 with my friends over Xbox Live. Obviously there are issues that will be resolved, but that is what a beta is for. I think it's immersive and represents the time period far far better than how BF1 represented its time period. One thing I have never noticed in my ~10 hours of playing the beta is that a certain soldier looks out of place. You barely even see the faces of a soldier in the game, let alone have time to think about how said soldier may be out of place. So many people are getting so angry over a part of a game that really isn't important in the slightest. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Sep 2018 11:59 PM PDT I am a gamer who grew up playing NES and SNES games with my bro and have played tons of stuff from the best in some of the biggest Nintendo franchises to action RPGs to way-too-many-hours in CS:GO years ago. I recently got into FN on Switch and made a good gaming buddy there. Maybe it's because I play with more "mature" people who legitimately want to take the game seriously, but my experience has been that, especially with 2 or 4 good "buddies" the game itself is subjectively one of the most fun and intense gaming experiences I've ever had. A number of months ago I didn't really know anything about the game, but I didn't hate it either. I guess I thought it looked a little goofy, but honestly that craziness and lack of seriousness that works so well from the art style is what makes it so amazing. It feels like a digital world that knows, as a whole, that it is a digital gaming world. I didn't really get that about it until having played it for a while and it's so cool. The art direction in many ways what makes this game so fun. So yeah, I think overall, just like Minecraft, the game itself gets a lot of unwarranted hatred and vitrol from many people I think potentially haven't actually played it or judge it not objectively, but subjectively based on a perceived "overall userbase." [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from For those who like talking about games as much as playing them.. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
Post a Comment