Nextbox infinity anticipation station

[Pennilenko]

If you want to know what bores me to tears, it's indie puzzle games.

I'm glad you had the guts to say this here. I feel the same way.

[Margalis]

Could you maybe give some examples of what you consider "normal" games? I'm having trouble thinking of much that falls into the middle ground between that AAA/indie divide, particularly when it comes to games I would consider my favorites. As far as my personal preferences go, Rocksmith is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Maybe Dead Island which was pretty janky but I had a lot of fun with.

Games like Bayonetta, No More Heroes, handheld-style Castlevania games, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil pre-5, Mario Galaxy, Sin and Punishment, Muramasa, Dark Souls. That's not the only kind of game I like but that's the sort of stuff I mean by "normal." Games that are gameplay-centric and don't have many pretensions to be much other than fun games, at least not at the expense of the core gameplay. (I notice I didn't mention any western games beyond Prime - in theory I would like a game like Gears, although I don't in part because I don't like cover systems or the stop-and-pop gameplay style. I loved Unreal Tournament though!)

Dead Island is a pretty good example of that kind of game, though I didn't particularly care for it. The parts I liked least were the concessions to modern game design like the dull quest-based progression and the arrow that tells you where to go.

I like games with an emphasis on mechanics, some degree of challenge, control fidelity, a one-to-one mapping between input and actions, etc. Those aren't the only kinds of games I like, but that's what I'm talking about here.

A lot of modern games sacrifice these things in favor of better animations and helping the player along. For example in the new Batman games if I press attack what move I do is largely determined for me based on what animation will look best. In a game like Infamous if I jump somewhere the game tries to predict where I wanted to land and attempts to adjust my jump arc and animation to get me there. Whereas what I prefer is give me total control and if I miss a ledge and land in a pool of lava I die. Give me the power and responsibility - I don't want they player-character to be awesome unless I make them awesome.

If in Batman I could choose my moves precisely based on input I would have probably loved it to death. (Horrible plot notwithstanding - talking second one here) I really do not like the feeling that my input is a loose suggestion of what should happen.

To me what the character can do should be very precisely defined and map exactly to inputs, even at the expense of things like animation fidelity. That's the foundation of a "gamey" game - extending outward from the core rules of what you can do as a player. That also extends to things like prioritizing environmental readability over aesthetics.

[Paelos]

I got into an argument recently with a buddy of mine about what he considered good games. When I finally isolated why he liked what he liked, and why I hated what he liked, it was because of this reason:

- He enjoyed games with good stories, regardless of the game's mechanics.
- I couldn't really give a shit about the story if the mechanics are good.

Flailing around in front of my TV to play the most recent cutscene-centric game doesn't sound like something I'm paying for.

[Jeff Kelly]

OK a real answer.

In my opinion it's a matter of bias if you claim that only "blockbuster, middle of the road" AAA games sort of "blend into each other". I found it interesting that games from different AAA franchises sort of became the same even though they started out with their unique point of view, but that phenomenon is not limited to AAA shooters. You can compare games like Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2 and see that they are totally different games, the latter being more in line with what everybody else is doing. The same trend can be seen in other type of games though too.

Look at the self-proclaimed Indie sector (if you have a publisher and a team of fifty people you are no longer Indie IMHO) and you see the same. Well there are more experiments or avant garde type games, like 'Journey' or 'passport please' or 'don't starve' but I feel those games get too much leeway (except maybe Journey which is brilliant) for being 'different', if they didn't offer an entirely weird or different style of play more people would criticize their shortcomings because many of them sacrifice either story or gameplay to be 'different' and for me 'weird' or 'fresh' or 'thought-provoking' is no substitute for either story or gameplay.

The majority of 'indie' titles are what I'd like to call 'metroidvania' style affairs. Shadow complex was a great game but it's just an interpretation on the theme from super metroid. Super Meat Boy or 'Splosion man or Bastion are great also but even though they might be brilliant they also don't add anything new except being 'retro' (for certain values of retro).

Let's look at your list for a moment. You mention a few Nintendo games on there, a company that has perfected the art of selling you games that are slight variations on the same theme at full price. I grew up playing insane amounts of for example Zelda, Mario, Castelvania or Super Probotector but twenty years later I want more than just what amounts to basically the same game with updated graphics.

So you have that weird bifurcation of gaming. On the one hand you have the huge budget AAA titles that are basically 'Sports', 'Driving', 'first person rail shooter', 'third person rail shooter' and 'Mario' from different companies all working for one of the two remaining big publishers. On the other you have the whole 'indie' scene, that's really just as commercial as the triple AAA titles just with smaller teams and smaller budgets, that is looking backwards in time to find inspiration from gaming concepts that themselves are twenty years old. I mean the biggest news items of 2012 were four Kickstarter campaigns that promised you a new 'Lucas Arts style graphics adventure', Wasteland 2, a 'generic fantasy Baldur's gate type game' and 'something, something, Planescape Torment'

The one side caters to the large crowds that want a 'gaming experience' more than a 'gaming challenge' (gameplay-centric vs. story-centric is a false dichotomy in my opinion) and there are a lot of great games coming from that side (say what you will Uncharted 2, Red Dead Redemption or Fallout New Vegas are brilliant games), the other cater to 'challenge-seekers' and nostagics that want to experience the difficulty level and style of game from previous generations of consoles and maybe favour gameplay over story or state of the art presentation. If it weren't exceptionally hard with a huge learning curve 'Dark Souls' would be a rather bland game as would be Super Meat Boy. Two-Thirds of the 3DS lineup are just reissues or basically level packs to Zelda, Castlevania, Mario and Co. and as much as I liked 'A Link to the Past' or 'Super Mario World', I don't want to play essentially the same game twenty years later on another platform.

You might argue that it's better to look back at things that worked than to just offer what may basically just be an interactive movie and I'd agree if those developers hadn't limited themselves in similar ways the big studios did. When I have the whole gaming history as inspiration why are most smaller titles either platformers or hack-and-slays/shoot-em-ups? Where's the updated Elite? Where's the updated turn-based strategy game, the updated X-Wing or Wing Commander-style game, the updated Paradroid or M.U.L.E. or Populous?. Why does it have to be '8 bit style' retro graphics all the time? I was pretty happy when 'Legend of Grimrock' came out just because it was a different genre of retro game even though it also just updated a twenty year old concept and then I became sad because I realized that I was basically fawning over a 'Dungeon Master 2.5' when I could just replay the original on an Amiga emulator without missing much (except better graphics).

Finally if I'm interested in those types of games then I don't really need an XBox One or PS4. Bastion runs on an iPad or Android device. Dark Souls offers not that much more or new than Demon Souls and there's absolutely no reason it has to run on a PS3 etc. Monster Hunter or even an updated Pokemon game doesn't need a WiiU or PS Vita. I could just buy an Ouya or AppleTV for $99 and most games would still work so they don't really drive those console sales in the way a new Call of Duty does.

Yes I'm a jaded old fuck and I know it but I think that it's a fallacy to on the one hand dismiss all of the AAA titles for being 'story-driven' and not 'gameplay-driven' when some of them are in fact brilliant games and on the other hand championing smaller 'gameplay-driven' games that don't drive innovation either because they focus on familiar gameplay and presentation inspired by titles from gaming history and don't think about how they could offer a new twist to bring it into the new generation.

That's why most of the games I listed tend to be more story-driven than gameplay-driven. Even though Mass Effect, Uncharted or Red Dead Redemption offer a pretty similar type of gameplay they at least have stories that are different enough from each other and the story is a significant enough part of the game that it at least makes the fact that I'm playing essentially the same game over and over again more bearable.

[Jeff Kelly]

The fact that games that are sowmehat innovative need a public beta and hugely promoted Kickstarter campaign to just reach a five digit number of sales(FTL for example)  is sad but it's a consequence of one fraction of gamers just looking for the next blockbuster game and the other being content with getting another variation of a platformer or hack-and-slay-type game.

[Jeff Kelly]

I remembered the X-Com discussion a few pages back.

I get why people might not like the new X-Com. It is a streamlined and stripped down version of a turn based strategy game. It doesn't offer the depth of the old XCom or Jagged Alliance (I still own both game series and replay them from time to time) and for me that was the deal breaker that kept me from replaying the campaign on a different difficulty level.

On anything other than normal it becomes 'move one guy while everyone else is on overwatch' and any mistake or bad roll on the RNG and you're done and can start again that's because you don't have the strategic or tactical depth on a mission or with research or base development and so have to play extremely defensively to survive.

Yet it was refreshing to see something other than the umpteenth shooter and most people liked it enough to wish that it was successful so that you'd at least see more games from a genre you didn't get anything new for a decade.

That's the sad state of gaming we're currently in. We celebrate the release of a 'dumbed down' version, a decent if average reinterpretation of the original game, just because it finally is something different than the endless stream of 'me-too' games we usually get.

edit: grammar is hard

[jakonovski]

I'm thinking the industry is also plain running out of people who know to design anything except shooters (excluding sports and driving franchises naturally). High churn and burnout rates, as well as an entire generation who's played nothing but shooters coming to working age. AAA will never get healthy again.

[Jeff Kelly]

Do you have any personal taste? That might sound insulting, but it's my pet theory that the internet age has basically destroyed personal taste in many people. Your list is a list of generically good games. Is there any type of game or genre that you like beyond "well-produced mass market game"?

Is there anything else these days, really?

After you explained what you were trying to say I at least think that you deserve an answer.

The real answer is that it's easy to replay a game if the time between replays is long enough. For example I played Fallout NV when it came out in 2009 and again when the last DLC hit in 2011. I replayed Uncharted when Uncharted 2 came out and I replayed Mass Effect to get the story from the POV of both a renegade and paragon character. At least with those games the story is deep and fleshed out enough that you can replay those games without being too bored. I never feel the need to replay any type of gameplay-driven game, I finished it and starting again quickly becomes too repetitive for me although I have played Bastion a few times to see what changed.

I'm also not a big fan of the recent trend of 'New Game +' which is just code for 'the same game only much, much harder'. Well I would probably if the average game mechanic would be deep enough to let you overcome the difficulty with real skill, meaning something other than just being faster or quicker at handling a joypad. So even though I just dissed Dark Souls I can at least respect that kind of game, it's not my type of game but at least hard in that game doesn't mean 'we spawn an insane amount of opponents and you need to hit every button precisely and with only milliseconds to react'. If you master your character and the game you could theoretically play the game with a Level 1 toon and that's something I respect because it rewards skill and not just quick reflexes.

Taste is such a subjective matter though that I feel that listing games would just be a way of me being defensive about what I play but to answer your question:

A 'gameplay-centric' game I like needs to be one where 'challenging' doesn't mean 'twitch'. I'm 37 and literally too old for some games that require the reflexes of a twelve-year old. I never much liked real-time 'strategy' games for the same reason (the quicker person usually wins). I do want a challenge though which puts me in a very weird position as far as games are concerned because so many platformers and hack-and-slays confuse 'challenging' with 'you have to react very very quickly to hordes of enemies'. I've tried to play Parodius or R-Type on an emulator and although I've finished those games on the hardest difficulty all those years ago I'm now no longer quick enough.

It's also the fact that most of the type of games I like are no longer made. I'd probably pay an unreasonable price for another X-Wing or turn based strategy game but I don't really care for the hundredth platformer or 'Legend of Mariovania World'. If I have to choose a current game though I tend to favour story over gameplay because a great story can dteract you from repetitive gameplay while a boring gameplay-focused game has nothing else to motivate you. I've started out as a books and pen and paper RPG guy so I like my entertainment to be story focused.

So to make a long story short what type of entertainment I spend money on has shifted away from current gen games to other types of entertainment really. That's because it became harder and harder to find something I was truly excited about. Hotline Miami for example is interesting but it feels too much like a game I could have played twenty years ago on my Amiga to keep my interest. Xcom was decent but just reminds me that we once had a lot of those games but they were tactically and strategically deeper and more challenging. So instead of playing the 2012 version of that game I revisit my GOG version of the originals.

I tend to spend more on games I never had the chance of playing when they came out instead of '8 bit retro graphics nostalgia' type new games. I have for example recently played Chrono Trigger, I'm currently playing KOTOR on my iPad and I have ordered an Ouya to have something that I can play my emulated games on (there's already a MAME port for it and you can get most home computer emulators for it too). I've downloaded Planescape: Torment and Temple of elemental Evil from GOG and there are loads and loads of games from the last twenty years I've had no chance of playing yet and many of those get reissued on modern platforms so that I'm not really too concerned about whether or not the next gen of consoles will be a success or not.

I probably spend more money on board games right now than computer games though. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on there and for me a great and strategically deep board game is a better multiplayer experience than repeatedly shooting somebody in the face at COD multiplayer.

[eldaec]

Wait,

I think a few posts ago someone described the original xcom as "decent but average".

 

[Jeff Kelly]

Bring on the heat I can take it. :D

In my humble opinion it's a decent game but it's limited tactical and strategic depth makes the game very repetitive after a while and makes you as a player very susceptible to its randomness.

A wrong move that uncovers aliens at the wrong time or an overwatch interrupt where everybody misses or they hit the wrong guy and you are done not only for the mission but probably for the game. This makes playing the game on anything other tha normal not fun because it's the wrong kind of 'challenging'.

edit: damn. I meant that the 2012 XCom was decent but average not the original. Stupid english language for being just my second language and being grammatically different in subtle ways from German.

[jakonovski]

Fuck XCom, it was a boardgamey travesty with horrible balancing.

[Fabricated]

To give the industry some credit the 15 minutes EA spent trying to do new IPs/ideas didn't turn out to be all that profitable (Mirror's Edge for example). Gamers are part of the problem.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's a multidimensional problem.

- Price: In my opinion a lot of smaller games would fare better if they were offered at a significantly lower price point than the usual. Look at steam or the success of Playstation +. Sixty dollars is still a lot of money to burn on a game you don't know and have to play to see if you like it, especially in the current economy. COD is like Wendy's or Burger King, it might not be the best food but you know exactly what you get while the local diner could be hit or miss.

- Competition: People have a lot more entertainment options, music, board games, TV and movies etc.

- back catalog: You could probably base your gaming entertainment around the PS2 and Nintendo 64 and you'd still not run out of games to play for a few years. Blockbusters and fan favorites from previous generations are reissued on current gen platforms so a GTA V not only competes with a COD4 but also with a GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas a lot of gamers haven't played yet.

- the sad state of game reviews: Any industry publication will tell you two years in advance about a new GTA or COD (the previews about GTA V started in 2011, more than two years from release which is ridiculous) but you'll probably see less about games with a smaller (or no) marketing budget. Also big budget AAA titles tend to have higher review scores than smaller games.

[jakonovski]

To give the industry some credit the 15 minutes EA spent trying to do new IPs/ideas didn't turn out to be all that profitable (Mirror's Edge for example). Gamers are part of the problem.

On the other hand, in the last five months EA released four shooters, none of which were a success (DS3, Crysis3, Army of Two, Fuse).

[Margalis]

XCom seems much less boardgamey to me than most tactics games. The rules of boardgames are all explicit but in X-Com stuff like how exactly cover and flanking and LOS works is a mystery even to people who have played the game a lot.

Jeff, I don't disagree with much of what you said. I would however say that AAA games are mostly becoming the same game, whereas indie games cluster around some currently in vogue game types but aren't unifying into a single game. (Maybe they are grouping into 5 different games though)

Again, I'm not a big fan of indie games in general. I'm generally opposed to trying to recapture the past, and most "retro" indie games are just worse versions of old games - no Metroidvania is actually better than Super Metroid or Castlevania: SOTN, nor do most of them even try to be. Mostly they seem content to be a somewhat worse version. I'm extremely tired of the word soup of retro, 8-bit, 16-bit, procedural, Metroidvania, puzzle-platformer, rogue-like - these terms have become a new dialect of marketing speak. "It's a 16-bit styled puzzle platforming rogue-like with procedurally generated music!"

I draw a distinction between trying to recapture the feeling of an old game (or any piece of media) vs trying to literally re-create it. The former is a very worthwhile endeavor while the latter is not. Many indie games do the former. I've always thought that instead of trying to directly invoke or reference something you should be striving to become the thing other people invoke and reference.

I also agree that indie games tend to get reviewed on a very generous curve. It seems that reviewers are often rooting for the little guys to succeed and factor that into reviews. You also have the phenomenon of outlets simply not reviewing indie games they don't like instead of giving them mediocre scores, which has the effect of making most of what is written about any of them positive. And you have things like the IGF which consists of a group of friends taking turns giving each other awards. It's very hard to take indie game reviews seriously when there is a pervasive "A for effort" attitude on display.

On the other hand, in the last five months EA released four shooters, none of which were a success (DS3, Crysis3, Army of Two, Fuse).

The downside of everyone trying to be the best COD / Gears is that only one of them is going to be that while everything else is going to be directly comparable and worse.

This is extremely evident in a game like Halo 4. Halo was not as big as COD eventually got but it had a solid place as the best Halo-style game on the market. With Halo 4 they moved from being the best Halo-style game towards being the 5th best COD-style game. The end result is that people who liked Halo for Halo aren't playing Halo 4 much and people who like COD just play COD.

One thing I think many publishers don't think about enough is the difference between sales that wouldn't otherwise be made vs sales that cut up an existing pie. A game like Fuse is at best going to supersede purchases of another similar game. It doesn't represent any sort of market expansion. Whereas a game like Animal Crossing or even something like Dead Space 1 isn't necessarily an either/or proposition with a competing game. If I want a AAA horror game and Dead Space and Resident Evil turn into action games there's nothing left for me to buy in that space, that just becomes a type of game I no longer purchase. Whereas once they become action games were they not to exist I would probably just buy Fuse instead.

It's like a restaurant that serves only main courses.

[Jeff Kelly]

You made an interesting point.

I really dislike the current industry trend in which reviewers try to find anything positive in every game.

As a gamer I want to know if I would enjoy playing the game. I hate that most reviews today list everything that 'sort of' worked or tell me that they got 'what the developers were trying to do' even if the result was mediocre. Or worse what the Giant Bomb people often do in their reviews: the 'developers and designers are under a lot of pressure from publishers and customers today so we totally get why this game didn't turn out as planned' review. A style of review where even a fail like the rushed ending to ME 3 or a creative mess like Bioshock Infinite gets some sympathy because the poor developers neeeded to ship something and ran out of time.

When was the last time anyone of you has heard 'this game is bad' or 'this game is unoriginal' in a review?

[Paelos]

I'm sure some reviewers have said it before their editor got a hold of it.

On the front end, everything gets a pass. On the back end, the players polarize into haters and fanboys. It's the meta-game of gaming.

[Azazel]

To give the industry some credit the 15 minutes EA spent trying to do new IPs/ideas didn't turn out to be all that profitable (Mirror's Edge for example). Gamers are part of the problem.

On the other hand, in the last five months EA released four shooters, none of which were a success (DS3, Crysis3, Army of Two, Fuse).

I never even heard of Fuse, but I see it released like a week ago. Not too early to call it a failure yet? (and what's DS3? - Dead Space 3?)

[jakonovski]

To give the industry some credit the 15 minutes EA spent trying to do new IPs/ideas didn't turn out to be all that profitable (Mirror's Edge for example). Gamers are part of the problem.

On the other hand, in the last five months EA released four shooters, none of which were a success (DS3, Crysis3, Army of Two, Fuse).

I never even heard of Fuse, but I see it released like a week ago. Not too early to call it a failure yet? (and what's DS3? - Dead Space 3?)

Anything's possible of course, but it was #37 on the UK charts on its first week, which means <2k sales.

And yes, Dead Space 3.

[HaemishM]

Do you have any personal taste? That might sound insulting, but it's my pet theory that the internet age has basically destroyed personal taste in many people.

snipped other really arrogant douchey stuff

Your beret is showing. Fuck me that was a really obnoxious set of paragraphs about how other people's tastes are so terrible. While your thoughts may have some merit in relation to the truly BAD taste most people have in well... everything, you still sound condescending as fuck. People like what they like, even if it is utter shit.

[Paelos]

You know what I'm tired of? Platformers getting passed off as some awesome piece of indie gaming. That's even worse than not innovating. That's getting in a fucking time machine and trying to sell me a game I mastered when I was 8.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's one step forward and two steps back.  I get that indie games want to bring back "classic gaming" but why make them look and play like shit? Maybe it's retro and hip but all I ever wanted was a super pretty and artstic new version of castlevania:sotn or metroid.  Can you imagine how much fun a 2d platformer could be with cutscenes, several hours added and more depth?

Trine is a great step, its a gorgeous game and fun to play but it's pretty short and the depth is definitely lacking.  Unfortunately not many want to go further in that direction and all we get is pixels, pixels everywhere.

[Merusk]

While platformers certainly aren't innovation, it's nice to see them still get some love in the indy space. Like TBS, 4x and adventure games which aren't likely to ever see a resurgence in AAA space again.

They "look like shit" because art is expensive and sprite art even more so since it's a dead format.  So you get flash animation, which always looks fucking awful, or 3d iso rendered in 2d. Which is also awful.

[Bzalthek]

All I can say is QWOP is the pinnacle of indie gaming.

[Nonentity]

Or worse what the Giant Bomb people often do in their reviews: the 'developers and designers are under a lot of pressure from publishers and customers today so we totally get why this game didn't turn out as planned' review. A style of review where even a fail like the rushed ending to ME 3 or a creative mess like Bioshock Infinite gets some sympathy because the poor developers neeeded to ship something and ran out of time.

I'm having a hard time remembering a time when a Giant Bomb review did that. Harp on other reviews if you want, but if anything GB is more heading in the right direction than most other mainstream review outlets (with a few exceptions, like Edge and the like) in that they focus on getting out reviews from a handful of individual people who you can at least know their personal review style and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Regardless of the ending of ME3, I enjoyed playing the shit out of it, and I didn't really care either way about the ending. For me, if a game is enjoyable all the way through but has a bad ending, that doesn't necessarily impact my overall feelings towards the game. Stories in games are bad, yo.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I understand art assets are expensive and maybe I'm never going to get that out of indie games. It's just a sad world where I can be very interested in a genre but the only people making it are ones with not enough money to make them well.  

[Ingmar]

I feel like slaughtering some sacred cows today.

New XCom is more fun than old X-Com. Civ V is better than Civ IV (but not better than Alpha Centauri.) The gameplay in every Mass Effect game is superior to its predecessor in the series. New Vegas is the best Fallout game. Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game to be playable out of the box, and is by far the best in the series.

[koro]

All I can say is QWOP is the pinnacle of indie gaming.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfHCUM_OBCc

[Nonentity]

I feel like slaughtering some sacred cows today.

New XCom is more fun than old X-Com. Civ V is better than Civ IV (but not better than Alpha Centauri.) The gameplay in every Mass Effect game is superior to its predecessor in the series. New Vegas is the best Fallout game. Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game to be playable out of the box, and is by far the best in the series.

Never REALLY played the old X-Com and I can't stand Fallout games, but you're right.

[Fabricated]

The original XCOM was a classic from the days of DOS gaming when apparently everyone who played games was secretly autistic.

[jakonovski]

I feel like slaughtering some sacred cows today.

New XCom is more fun than old X-Com. Civ V is better than Civ IV (but not better than Alpha Centauri.) The gameplay in every Mass Effect game is superior to its predecessor in the series. New Vegas is the best Fallout game. Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game to be playable out of the box, and is by far the best in the series.

I must repel the assault!

You all know where I stand on the new XCom.

Can't say about Civ, they all started to blur in my eyes after 2. I do like 5 though, it flows.  

Mass Effect gameplay was horrible in every game, but I suppose you're right. It was really all about being the Shep and experiencing the story, and this is where it all went downhill.
 
New Vegas is indeed the best Fallout game. I love Obsidian.

Skyrim is right up there with Morrowind. What makes Morrowind special however is that it had ridiculously abusable game mechanics. Can't make boots to jump across the continent in Skyrim.

[Sky]

I spy wit my widdle eye....two Psychos.

I also agree with Ingmar, with a *Civ IV FFH2 > Civ V imo.

[Sky]

The original XCOM was a classic from the days of DOS gaming when apparently everyone who played games was secretly autistic.

[Ingmar]

The original XCOM was a classic from the days of DOS gaming when apparently everyone who played games was secretly autistic.

Secretly?

[MrHat]

When is E3 so the on-stage hilarity can begin anew?