henke on 7/9/2011 at 09:46
Quote Posted by UnrelatedComa
now games dont strictly fall under 3 rigid categories of genres.... you know what dont worry about it.
Are you saying that before the FPS there were only 3 genres?
Yeah ok. I'll take your suggestion of not trying to figure out what you mean because frankly a lot of it is nonsense.
Matthew on 7/9/2011 at 13:25
Created in the 80s, evolved in the 90s, if we're going to get all technical about it.
Yakoob on 7/9/2011 at 19:40
Regarding the "Golden Age," honestly, I cannot find the comic, but everything is best when you are 12. Everything is "new" and "revolutionary" to you then. And even today, there ARE innovations; and if you do not have historical background, they might seem just as impactful as the early days of ours.
I would agree that there are many more polished/streamlined/simplified/consoletarded/etc. games today. That's because the gaming industry is much more of an "industry" than before, and so gamers and publishers demand a certain minimum level of polish, and find it easy to identify with certain repeated gameplay mechanics (from waypoint arrows, to our hated item hilights). You will see the EXACT same in the film industry (studio boom) or music (record labels). It's just nature of medium/art.
Quote Posted by henke
No.
The 90's didn't break the first person genre out of the FPS mold. It
created the FPS mold. More specifically Wolfenstein 3D and Doom put a very clear idea in people's heads about what to expect from a first person game, and when something like Thief came along and didn't conform to people's expectations, a lot of people were turned off by that. They didn't see a first person game that was doing something new, they saw a first person shooter that didn't work as it should.
Well, yeah it did, but more-so because of the technical breakthroughs allowing for FPSes rather than some abstract "creative golden age." And later on and today, innovation and molding still happens - how many new tropes and mechanics did Halo bring (not to mention
de facto proving FPS on consoles can work on a much greater scale than Golden Eye), and even CoD (with it's "cinematic railroad" type of a gameplay) - it did "innovate" certain aspects and build on predecessors. Maybe in different or even lesser way than, say, Thief, but innovation and establishment of new rules are still happening.
And to a gamer who HASNT played many games (hence my "being 12" comment), those innovations seem just as ground breaking today as thief did to us back in the day. I'd say.
I would say more but the cafe is closing down so internet going bye bye.
heywood on 8/9/2011 at 00:39
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Regarding the "Golden Age," honestly, I cannot find the comic, but everything is best when you are 12. Everything is "new" and "revolutionary" to you then. And even today, there ARE innovations; and if you do not have historical background, they might seem just as impactful as the early days of ours.
That's why we should be objective about it. I'm old enough (39) to remember when Pitfall came out and while that was impressive at the time, I still think PC gaming from the mid 1990s through early 2000s was the golden age.
Quote:
Well, yeah it did, but more-so because of the technical breakthroughs allowing for FPSes rather than some abstract "creative golden age." And later on and today, innovation and molding still happens - how many new tropes and mechanics did Halo bring (not to mention
de facto proving FPS on consoles can work on a much greater scale than Golden Eye), and even CoD (with it's "cinematic railroad" type of a gameplay) - it did "innovate" certain aspects and build on predecessors. Maybe in different or even lesser way than, say, Thief, but innovation and establishment of new rules are still happening.
Did you realize Halo came out 10 years ago in 2001? I would put that near the end of the golden age, not "later on and today". Call of Duty isn't that new either. It came out in 2003 as a PC only release. And besides, the rail shooter thing had been done first by Half-Life and the WWII thing by Medal of Honor in the 90s.
The film industry is stale too - I completely agree with you about that. In fact, I think convergence of the film and video games industries is killing video games. Too many people who wish they were working in film have found jobs in the game industry.
june gloom on 8/9/2011 at 00:57
Technically the WW2 FPS genre got its start with the Saving Private Ryan mod for Duke Nukem 3D. That same team would go on to make WW2GI, which sucked.
(Wolf3D doesn't count because it's really just a maze game with Nazis, and the paper-thin plot is more along the lines of DERRING-DO-BEHIND-ENEMY-LINES spies and intrigue nonsense.)
Volitions Advocate on 8/9/2011 at 02:49
Back on topic ( I think )
I'm a really big fan of Maximum PC magazine. I bought the first issue off the newstand in '97 (when it was called Boot magazine)
I find them to be a mostly bias free group of people who always want the best of the best and do their best to tell us what we should expect from future PC tech.
They've made more than their fair share of wrong predictions, but they usually admit to their folly, and I've avoided making many unwise hardware purchases because of their advice.
It's a magazine that helps me know that my beloved platform for computing is not dead.
(even if their forums suck)
UnrelatedComa on 8/9/2011 at 08:03
i dont really want to go gather all the links but has anyone been reading these ultra contrasting Dead Island reviews? eurogamer and joystiq seem really far off base. destructoid seems most accurate.
anyone played the game and agree or disagree with the press? i get the impression that most reviews are comparing the game to what they think in their minds that a zombie island game should be like, not objectively looking at what the game does right and wrong.
Yakoob on 9/9/2011 at 15:43
Quote Posted by UnrelatedComa
anyone played the game and agree or disagree with the press? i get the impression that most reviews are comparing the game to what they think in their minds that a zombie island game should be like, not objectively looking at what the game does right and wrong.
Game reviewers (and any reviewers, really) aren't that much more than just a random guy telling his opinion and getting paid to do so. Your best bet is just finding one or two whose likes align with yours and just use that as a gauge.
Oh yea, there is more professionalism needed (good writing, good analysis, good knolwedge of gaming medium etc.) but those can be often traded for lots of swearing, talking really fast, or naming your site after japanese words.
(not that I don't enjoy ZeroPunctuation or AVGN for their amusement factor, but I dont take their word on games any more than some random dude on the street. Sorry chaps!)
Sulphur on 20/9/2011 at 06:10
Every now and then, an article comes along that reminds me why I read Ars Technica.
(
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-gadget-ever-ars-reviews-a-99-android-tablet.ars) For the humour, obviously. That's the best scathing review of a product I've read in a long while. And that linked BestBuy blog article at the end is a hoot. I literally lol'd while reading through both.
But of course, I don't actually read Ars Technica for just the humour. The approachable yet in-depth analysis of just about everything is why, really. I don't own a Mac, don't even like Macs, but take, for example, John Siracusa and his (
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars) Mac OS X Lion review.
Yes, 19 pages is a lot. But Siracusa's a brilliant writer, and his tongue-in-cheek humour complements the analyses of the minutiae immensely:
Inline Image:
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/9284/macosxt.pngI don't own a Mac, don't even like them, but I almost read through this entire article just because it was really, really interesting to read. His breakdown on UI functionality, extending to even the differences between the scroll-bars from previous versions, and the lack of information projected in the new, iOS-influenced ones is well-informed.
And when he extends his capabilities to video games, you get an article like this lovely (
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/11/masterpiece-ico.ars) sum-up of Ico and what makes it special from both a technical point of view as well the usual subjective summary.
Yup, he writes a lot. But I wish more people wrote about things with as much passion and effort as he does.
Sulphur on 21/9/2011 at 20:48
More video game-y stuff. I've been trawling the depths of the net to find some real articles, and not the knowingly pretentious fluff that pretends to have a point, well-written or not, and...
Well. I don't know what this is, it's an interview with a Jeffrey Auburn who all of us have likely never heard of. It's 100% possible he doesn't exist. Eric Lockaby did just review an (
http://nightmaremode.net/2011/09/deliverance-3ds-review-10226/) imaginary game, after all.
But the interview... the article within the interview, draws interesting parallels to games and prose, which I didn't agree with initially, but it's a perspective from an interesting place by the end.
But I need to come clean: the primary reason why I read it at all is because it's titled
(http://nightmaremode.net/2011/06/your-homosexual-lover-is-in-another-castle-a-year-of-interviews-with-jeffrey-auburn-1-6558/) Your Homosexual Lover is in Another Castle.
"Brilliant!" I thought. And I read it. And the real description of the article is something more than a single two-syllable adjective could hope to contain. Maybe it's the real, actual, New Generation Video Game Journalism staring us in the face and we didn't know it 'cause we weren't looking in the right places. Maybe it's garbage. Maybe it's knowingly pretentious fluff pretending to have a point but well-written, though I doubt that's the case here...
Whatever it is, turns out it's worth the read.
Go read.
*Yes, I know 'brilliant' is more than two syllables. I'm blaming that gaffe on writing this at 2 A.M. when I should be sleeping instead, as usual.
