AuthorTopic: Actual impact of Video Games  (Read 35504 times)

Offline Dusty

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #50 on: July 19, 2007, 04:46:46 am
Quote from: Adarius
oh really?  perhaps then i should think about actually playing further, i sort of assumed that once gone, she was gone for good.  still, those dungeons seem pretty boring to me, when the only thing you get is more outfits and ridepod bits.

we're OT now but i think that's allowed.
Well, there are a bit of bosses in the dungeon I believe, and at the end of it... SPOILERS!!!(highlight to read) you fight Dark Genie from the first Dark Cloud.
It depends really if you're interested in just kind of pushing a bit more into the game... DC2 never really offered much as far as making you want to get to the next part, as it was pretty redundant.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #51 on: July 19, 2007, 04:50:43 am
i thought things like spheda and fish-racing were cool, but underdeveloped.  If you are going to add minigames to something, at least make them, yknow, rounded out a bit instead of a total afterthought.

Harvest Moon, a series with great replay value, does this quite nicely.
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Offline huZba

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #52 on: July 19, 2007, 07:19:00 am
Xenogears is missing it's second half, or rather it's replaced with a lot of text. Halfway through the story you just stop playing and it has a very long text and pictures narrative that finally jumps you straight into the final dungeon. I think Square cut off the funding for the game. After finishing Chrono Cross the team left square and formed Monolith Soft, which is responsible for the Xenosaga series, which in turn had it's own share of trouble. The first game is only 1/6 of the story, while the second game tries to leap a bit and the third game takes the series to a premature conclusion. It's the most epic videogame story imo, but it doesn't really work for the benefit of a videogame series if you have to play all the episodes in order to make sense of the new iterations.

Flashback was just right for me, not too long or too short. A tight package is better than something dragging on for no obvious reason.
Oh and agree with Adarias, SD3 is one of the best action RPGs i've played... also bonus points for having megaman legends on your list  :lol:

Offline miascugh

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #53 on: July 19, 2007, 10:11:26 am
I was only allowed to use the computer/NES/SNES/N64 on weekends up until I was thirteen or something, which made playing games an even more precious experience to me, but also kept me from playing all that much. Games that deeply impressed me were:


World Cup (NES soccer game, best soccer game ever - read: the only soccer game worth playing out there ;) )

Monkey Island series & DotT & Grim Fandango

Civilization series (1, 2 and 3. Have yet to try 4)

Secret of Mana & Seiken Densetsu 3 (for nostalgic reasons and semi-nostalgic reasons plus improved gameplay respectively. We had to play the Japanese SD3 with an English script to keep track of the dialogues, and my English skills weren't quite up to par back then haha. The rest of the series were an ever increasing disappointment with every new incarnation) edit: almost forgot, Secret of Evermore. Basically my favorite RPG ever, but no co-op mode.

Super Mario World

StarCraft (though I wasn't very good at it or even beat all the campaigns myself, I actually still got something out of it watching my brother play)

Half-Life + Opposing Force (HL2 was awesome too of course, but not as much of an impact)

Megaman III & X (I don't think X 2 and 3 have ever been released here, but I would so have devoured them. Today I don't care much to play those too)

Earthbound (only played it later on an emulator, not sure if it even has been released here)

Zelda (I think I've played all the titles from 1 to Majora's Mask minus the GB/GBC titles. After that I stopped getting consoles. Maybe I was traumatized by the fortunes we spent on games and the N64, as my parents refused to support this plague called video games any further after Super Mario World)

Flashback was nice too, but I first discovered it rather late through Pixelation.



These days I play way too much again. Mostly DS, but I do have a CivIII relapse every once in while too. Also, I'm not a particularily good gamer, and am not intersted in getting hardcore, but yes, FFTA definitely was too easy... yet still enjoyable in my opinion.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2007, 02:18:31 pm by miascugh »

Offline Helm

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #54 on: July 19, 2007, 10:41:14 am
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The way i see it, to have a good story, a videogame needs nearly ten times as much time to tell it as a novel,

All these parallels between gaming and other sorts of art to experience like movies or book are meaningless for me. Nikujin is one of the toughest games I've played. Now that I know it well, I can finish it in about 15 minutes. However the experience has been on the whole, more full and substantial than Half-life 2 and whatnot. You really have to have a different sort of measure for videogames than other sorts of art, and it's not a measure of hours. It's a ratio of 'what is it trying to do' versus 'how much time and skill it takes to get it done' while throwing in the ubiquitus fun x factor. Generally, I think this whole '100 hours of gameplay' bullshit is the result of people playing today's japanese games which are tempoed so labouriously to kill time, most of which are very DULL to play, but have stories. So people watch the stories and press some buttons occassionally and call that a game and if it gives them room to escape for 100 hours that's awesome.

It's not. They're playing shit games. You can spend 10 minutes or 10 years of your life with N and you'll never be 'done' with its 'story'. It's just a pure, condensed video-game of awesomeness and it's not a book, nor is it a movie, nor can you quantify what you can milk from it in hours. Gameplay isn't a timetable.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #55 on: July 19, 2007, 11:44:21 am
I fully agree here.

Good examples of stories that unfold while playing and also mostly within the player and not through narrative are ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. And both those games are beatable in under 10 hours and are two of the most emotionally engaging games.

Also as far as FF goes, I finished 6 (actually good) and 9 (meh) and played 7 for about 80 hours or so being close to the end but not beating it. All in all it is a waste of time imo. All FF stories are more or less the same with slight variations and they are not even good stories, it's really cheap, kitchy stuff when you look at it objectively. I'd rather read a good book.
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Offline Rosse

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #56 on: July 19, 2007, 12:36:54 pm
For me, there are two kind of stories. The one which comes from the author (e.g. HL2) and the one which comes from the player (e.g. Metroid 1). In HL2 you have a path created from the author and HE is telling the story. The says now you are going there and now you are doing this and now you find this cool item. However in Metroid 1 (or Zelda 1) you have just a introduction or a small universe which you are told. The real game story is coming from yourself. Now I'm going there, OH I found the Wave Beam - cool. Or you don't find it and complete the game without it.
Both have it's right to exist. But once you have played HL2 and you want to replay it, it is the same game over and over again. But when you play Metroid 1, YOU are making the story. You can go there or there, you can skip the Wavebeam or the VariaSuit, can skip every Energy Tank. I really miss this "non-linearity" today. I want to play the games my way. In Windwaker, why can't the player go to every island from the beginning or let me swim as long as i want? This "baby-sitter" style is killing the replay-value imo. But fortunately most games have bugs which balances this fact.
A friend of mine completed Ocarina of Time the first time without the "fire armor / suit" (German "Feuerrüstung"). Which is quite cool. Thank to a small bug in OOT, whenever I play the game I start playing Lord Jabu-Jabu and afterwards Dodongo's Cavern.
Because of this I mainly play older games. Aren't there any new games which has this "non-linearity"?

Offline Helm

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #57 on: July 19, 2007, 01:58:59 pm
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But when you play Metroid 1, YOU are making the story.

This is silly in my opinion. Metroid is open-ended and has optional stuff, but that doesn't mean 'YOU are making the story'. That would include leaving the mission if you so desired, not killing the bosses, doing evil deeds instead. Metroid is just good at giving you linear goals masquaraded by the premise of non-linearity through options. What you have to do is what you have to do, in the end. From a game design standpoint, Metroid is a linear game. Exploration of a compact gameworld doesn't mean a game is not linear. A game is non-linear when you can do various, disparate, mutually exclusive things according to your desires and the game has responses to them.

Alter Ego, is the pure non-linear game.

Offline Rosse

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #58 on: July 19, 2007, 02:14:48 pm
You are right Helm. In Metroid you're not making the story. But you can make own decisions. Of course you have to beat all the bosses, but the game-experience can be different every time you play the game. Because you have the ability to decide. I miss this feature in new games.
I don't know many old games (I missed the NES era and never had my own console back then) so I have a little diffrent view of them as the 'old core' people.

Of course there are other genres - Sandbox games. I think SimCity goes in this direction (Spore as well?). Settlers and Anno 1602 (1602 AD in english?) has this capability as well. I really like them.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: Actual impact of Video Games

Reply #59 on: July 19, 2007, 02:20:07 pm
You really have to have a different sort of measure for videogames than other sorts of art

Perhaps you do, I've never found myself wanting to change the way i play or assess videogames.  My whole point is that for a good game, it doesnt matter if it takes 10 or 30 hours, which i view as within reason, but it needs to be full.  Flashback isn't quite full enough.

N is not at all for me.  Personally, I think it sucks in the sense that i do not find it enjoyable.  At all.

I can't help but feel that a lot of what people are saying about rpg's comes from not playing them, or just not enjoying the game elements that are present.  Like I said, every game I have played I have beaten in less than half the time you guys are talking about, and spent most of that time playing the game portion, not reading.  If the game portion is overcomplicated or perhaps in your opinion boring, than yes, there is no reason to play it.  On the flip side, a game with mediocre gameplay or worse, great gameplay in a style that doesn't appeal to you and no story is equally not worth playing in my mind.  If you took a story that I enjoyed, like FFT (a pretty good deviation from the typical FF story) and put it into a shmup, I would not play that game.

I;m not arguing that all games must take forever and have a massive story to be good, either.  My list again:
1 - Suikoden 2 - 27 hours by my memory card, story driven.  Gameplay is chief.
2 - Myst - GOD knows how many hours, story present but not important.  I suppose it's mostly gameplay.
3 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Countless hours, still have never beaten it, essentially without story.  100% good gameplay.
4 - Seiken Densetsu 3 - 19 hours according to the emulator, piss-poor story but great game nonetheless, 99% gameplay.
5 - FFT - 38 hours by my memory card, story driven but with great gameplay.
6 - Medieval: Total War (the original) - about 12 hours now total, does not have a story.  100% good gameplay.
7 - Conquest of the New World - countless hours, does not have a story.  100% good gameplay.
8 - Flashback, 10 hours sounds like a good guess, story present but not important.  99% gameplay.
9 - FF7 - 34 hours by my memory card, story driven.  Only game here where gameplay steps aside frequently to storyline.
10 - Megaman Legends - 21 hours by my memory card, story present but not important

No 100 hours, no crappy gameplay.

MarkusRosse - Legend of Mana feigns non-linear gameplay in that you may choose the order in which you play the missions, but it's still pretty rigid.  It's hard to make a good game that is open.  The sims is open, but lacking.  Jedi Knight: Accademy offers choice of missions and in the end the choice between light and dark, but it's still pretty straight-forawrd.  Good gameplay though, one of the few games with a decent lightsaber system.



The best we can do for Partisan is to have a linear "main story" with 2 branches depending on the side you take, each with close but different mission paths, supported by as many smaller choices and casual missions as we can think of as well as a reputation system which changes how people will react to you and the allies you can choose and the quests you can accept.  Oh and nearly everyone can be killed if not at any point than after they have moved their necessary part of the story.  Still though, there is a main storyline that must be followed eventually.

Original Civilization is a great game for its time and deserves and honorary top-ten status, but Conquest is more rounded.
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