[squall2072]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek /img/forum/go_quote.gif FFXII isn't about the characters, it's about the world of Ivalice as a whole. And the plot was great.

Each to their own

 

[redshifter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Born2bwire /img/forum/go_quote.gif Redshifer's growing up?!? Say it ain't so Red, say it ain't so. Well, good luck with that whole growing up thing then.

But I don wanna.

 

[Patrick82]

Find cheat codes for godlike mode and play against newbie bots. It works great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHLADaOEwIA

 

[gloco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter /img/forum/go_quote.gif i have tried driving games, sports games, rpg (ugh!), platformers, twitch shooters, music shooters, pc, puzzle, just about everything out there except morpg (which i have zero interest in). i have been playing video games since pong came out in the early 70's. i think i have played just about every kind of video game there is. if i get stuck i have no problem reading walkthroughs. maybe i'll try gow sometime. but right now i seriously doubt one game will change my mind. i think i have finally outgrown one of my previous hobbies, and i do not want to.

This is something I've been struggling with as well. I was a hardcore gamer as a kid, played nes, snes and genesis to death. Once the 32 bit era came around I bought a ps1, kinda liked some games, but I felt most games simply sucked. I bought a PC and loved some of the games on it (warcraft 2, starcraft, simcity 3 and 4). I never got into games again after the 80's came and went, they just lack something.....the fun factor. I still play games, namely the dota map on war3. It's a popular online map where you typically play 5v5...its a lot of fun but can be frustrating at times. Otherwise, I play games on mame for nostaglia's sake (wonderboy in Monsterland is a favorite of mine).

Here's my .02c: Go download mame and grab some roms and relive the glory years.

 

[Guii-ness]

You should go back to fps basic like BLooD, or Unreal tournament

If you really want something that will consume all your time with a relaxed relative skilll level you should try Universal Combat:Special Edition

 

[randerson3024]

I bought an X-Box 360 thinking I could pass some time while at sea, but the reality is that I am just an old fart who sucks at video games and will never be any good. Thank God for the external HD drive, at least I can watch high definition movies on it.

 

[robm321]

I just don't have time for games. Also, they don't draw me in like they used to.

In between relationships though, they definately help to escape.

I just always feel edgy and aggravated after playing.

The only game I still play on the PC (console game never were that fun for some reason) is COD2 online. Cuz I can jump in, shoot a bunch of people and get out without too much involvement.

 

[flamerz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have the same problem. I can operate a joystick and mash buttons, but my thumbs just will not do 2 joysticks. This is where I got frustrated with "Ratchet", the hoverbikes switched from a button pad accelleration to using the left joystick to accelerate, steer with the right. It could not be changed from the menu either. Maybe I just need more practice.

Ah, your problem. Go practice more. Most of my friends hate playing video games with me because they have no dual joystick coordination, while i've way above average in most shooters and such. I try to get them to practice with me, but they're usually immediately turned off just because they suck right now, with very little experience.

 

[scrypt]

Redshifter:

If your game lineage takes you from Myst to Ico, then you're probably lamenting the absence of certain kinds of literate dialog and imaginative narrative and imagery, not the failure of gaming itself. You have become part of a niche audience for whom few games are written.

It amazes me that the structure of games and the sophistication of game programming hasn't led to a renascence in the arts; to collaborations between accomplished novelists, film directors, fine artists, heady composers and programmers for an audience of readers, theatergoers, moviegoers and tourists; to enduring non-stochastic works of art. Potentially, there exists a huge audience of people who wish to stride about in a vast virtual environment without having to compete with anyone or win trivial points in a game that reminds them of the fight-or-flight competition they experience in everyday life. One begins by relishing the opportunity to transgress, and scratches that itch with games like GTA III. Then one becomes aware of the spatial freedom and capacity for free-flowing accident in the GTA trilogy and looks for that elsewhere. The thing that keeps many of us apartment-dwellers returning to play is the illusion of limitlessness.

Yahs ago, I was asked to be part of a symposium of writers at Brown U. There, I met and spoke with novelist Michael Joyce about the pitfalls of hypertext (the earliest example of which might be Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch). We had all written hypertext fiction but grew disinterested in what degenerated into a kind of multiple-choice test-taking narrative. The thing one wants to feel in fiction is fluidity, and test questions stop one's sense of the continuous snowballing of events.

When Joyce and I discussed the way non-passive fiction should feel, we sounded very much like were describing a modern game. So much so that I wonder why artists and writers aren't developing noncompetitive game environments in places like Canada and Belgium, where they could do so with government support and wouldn't have to worry about commercial failure. I wonder if they need a new word or idea or school to make the art form viable.

Ideally, games would not only be cinematic but could function as non-passive indie cinema as well:-- they would offer perfect writing, difficult subjects, zero knee-jerk payoff, maximum content and uncompromising aesthetic beauty.

Games approaching high art (despite various lapses in dialog, content and ultimate originality) might include Ico, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus and Katamari Daimacy.

Games approaching gratifying pulp fiction might include the following: Silent Hill 1 and 2, Fatal Frame I and II, Forbidden Siren 1 and 2, Kuon and Rule of Rose -- though all of these involve the sort of nail-biting stress of which you and plainsong have complained, and most are modeled after genre-specific horror flicks. (The Clock Tower series owes particular debt to Dario Argento -- The First Fear was inspired in part by Phenomena.)

Games like Blue Indigo try to bring a new level of writing to a noir-inflected True Crime framework but fail because, at their heart, they should function as films instead of merely referencing them. BI doesn't want to feel like the familiar grid of Darwinian social evolution that it is.

While I have no interest in competing with anyone (hence my lack of interest when certain HF members respond in verbal gunslinging mode), I don't mind death or carnage in the context of a game. It's stressful at first and then it never is; one reaches the threshold, as with gore in a horror flick.

While I'm not interested in sports games, and my gf likes FPS more than I, survival horror puts me in restful mood; the best examples involve a labyrinthine sense of space that resolves in ways that feel troubling: usually, the spatial resolution and passing oddities are far more creative than the plotting.

On my favorite game board, The Filth Room, people are compelled to discuss their obsession with Rule of Rose, a survival horror bonfire I love despite its having some of the most frustrating boss fights I've ever experienced (you might actually find yourself whistling during one endless zombie-mermaid-affixed-to-pulleys tuff-off). I play Rule of Rose because I like the aesthetic, the dialogue, the chamber music soundtrack, the sense of irony, the anachronistic environment, which looks as if it were created by Dorothea Tanning and Edward Gorey, and the disjunct unresolving landscape. Yes, Resident Evil 4 is fun and beautifully done, but the some of the storytelling and dialogue could embarrass John Carpenter.

I'd be a frustrating opponent for other players because I don't care about winning. For me, combat is rarely the high point of the experience. I care about the aesthetic experience, the sense of scale and the freedom of movement.

Perhaps you feel a bit like that yourself, redshifter, and hesitate to give up games because you can feel their potential; because you sense there should (and could) be something more. I feel something similar:-- that games are on the verge of birthing new forms of art and entertainment: works that combine the intelligence and beauty of great fiction with the freedom of travel. I feel parts of that in various games:-- ideal moments to be woven together in some later perfect work.

 

[trains are bad]

Quote:

Perhaps you feel a bit like that yourself, redshifter, and hesitate to give up games because you can feel their potential; because you sense there should (and could) be something more. I feel something similar:-- that games are on the verge of birthing new forms of art and entertainment: works that combine the intelligence and beauty of great fiction with the freedom of travel. I feel parts of that in various games:-- ideal moments to be woven together in some later perfect work.

Thanks for saying exactly what I meant better than I could have.

 

[redshifter]

Oh you will rue the day you disrespected John Carpenter, for his second coming is nigh!

Scrypt, what I liked so much about Myst and Riven was the unusual plot and devices, and the overall production design (for lack of a better term) of the games. Also, the music and ambient gameplay sounds were haunting. The voice acting was only adequate. Like you are saying, games are trying to be movies, but movies are trying to be games these days too--and the results are usually not the best either genre can offer.

Modern games that go for realism suffer from the same syndrome Roger Ebert wrote about, where the more realistic a computer generated actors is, the creepier they are. Take the most advanced graphics engine and make some NPC's and they still look like talking manniquins. Until they can fix this video games should strive for the kind of creative abstraction earlier technological limitations imposed on the first games. But with better graphics.

 

[atsang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by flamerz /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ah, your problem. Go practice more. Most of my friends hate playing video games with me because they have no dual joystick coordination, while i've way above average in most shooters and such. I try to get them to practice with me, but they're usually immediately turned off just because they suck right now, with very little experience.

IMO when it comes to FPS, you either have it or you don't. I have it

 

[atsang]

btw, anyone excited for Starcraft 2?

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh you will rue the day you disrespected John Carpenter, for his second coming is nigh!

Disrespect seems rather a strong word for a candid assessment. While I'm well aware of Mis-s-s-s-s-ster Carpenter's virtues, I think it's important to distinguish between what he does and doesn't do well. What he doesn't do well is unforced dialogue, which he tries to correct by encouraging actors to improvise. Sometimes it works, but when it doesn't, C's wisecracking tough-offs sound rather like bad expository cut scenes (such as the ones at the beginning of Resident Evil 4 -- a game that reminds me more of Carpenter than Romero).

Like De Palma, Carpenter excels at a particular kind of visual storytelling. But while De Palma, an operatic film geek, wears his smarts on his lens, Carpenter cloaks his cleverness in stealthy goofiness (the absurdly long fight in They Live being one of my favorite examples). Hence the virtuous side of Carpenter: humor, economy and intelligence that never tries to impress.

As for his Second Coming, I'm hoping Psychopath nets him a bit of the critics' praise generally reserved for Romero, since Carpenter's trim-the-fat approach to exposition makes sense increasingly in an ADD-afflicted age. Grindhouse pays special homage to Carpenter's soundtracks as well as his filmmaking, which means younger critics will probably pay more attention.

Quote:

Scrypt, what I liked so much about Myst and Riven was the unusual plot and devices, and the overall production design (for lack of a better term) of the games. Also, the music and ambient gameplay sounds were haunting. The voice acting was only adequate. . . . Like you are saying, games are trying to be movies, but movies are trying to be games these days too--and the results are usually not the best either genre can offer.

That doesn't sound different from my sense of Myst's virtues. Myst is also an early example of steampunk and, like Ico, features highly fun contraptions. My gf misses that game as well; I was thinking of buying her a copy of the PS version (and possibly Riven) until I tripped over the huge new online franchise. Apparently, there have been sequels upon sequels. I have no idea whether any of them are good.

Certain of my compulsive gaming friends can't understand why I love Rule of Rose, since the battles are often irritating. But the answer lies in all of the supposedly extraneous elements that made Myst engaging. With the exception of one tedious ditty that plays throughout the first half of the Funeral chapter, the music is as good as the Bartokian pastiches in Psycho; I actually prefer the music in RoR for its salon music intimacy. The soundtrack, ironically fatalistic tone, unusually good dialogue and Victorian morbid aesthetic -- all make RoR worth playing for a person like me.

Conversely, the Marvel Comics approach of God of War -- in which Ares could easily be a character by Jack Kirby, complete with triple-exclamation-pointed shouting -- annoys me slightly, despite the control decisions, battle design and programming, all of which are ingenious and in an entirely different class than RoR.

Thing is, I didn't grow up playing games regularly, as you did. I avoided them consciously from the age of six, when I made the decision to focus on becoming a composer/writer to the exclusion of nearly everything else. When I wanted to play games, I turned instead to the "game of tonalities," as Hindemith called it: I made satisfying puzzles out of formalist poetry and music composition by imposing various rules. I've always loved Stravinsky's quote, "I limit myself in order to free myself." I think it applies as much to gaming as it does to creating art.

I only picked up gaming later as an exercise, since I've always considered it an important part of collective experience and of any individual's personal skill-set: like mastering an instrument, excelling at gaming can help one to excel in other ways. That's why I could appreciate flamerz's irritation at friends who don't want to practice FPS long enough to improve their technique. When I began gaming, I actually wanted to find the equivalent of Czerny or Hanon -- a CD consisting purely of game exercises. I only ever found the equivalent in tutorials and within the games themselves.

All of which leads me to make a distinction between us, which might also extend to your love of Carpenter versus my qualified enjoyment and respect: I have no sense of nostalgia associated with my past, but it appears you do. Nothing wrong with that, of course; but I don't long for a period in which games were pure. Rather, my experience with various imperfect forms of technology-conversant writing causes me to see incredibly inspiring potential in the impurity of modern gaming -- future variants might be baroquely cinematic at the expense of conflict resolution, but in an artistically successful way; others might do away entirely with the idea of battles and competition, and function as leisurely surreal journeys through impossible landscapes. IMEO (in my egotistical opinion -- and, yes, I'm joshing), the beauty of Ico has little to do with story objectives. It has everything to do with gorgeous lonely environments (inspired by De Chirico, perhaps) and the personality invested in characters' appearance and movements.

Still: Kudos to game creators everywhere for injecting dreams with a shot of cold discipline, which is exactly what dreams require to be realized with humility and finesse.

Quote:

Modern games that go for realism suffer from the same syndrome Roger Ebert wrote about, where the more realistic computer-generated actors are, the creepier they are. Take the most advanced graphics engine and make some NPC's and they still look like talking mannequins. Until they can fix this, video games should strive for the kind of creative abstraction earlier technological limitations imposed on the first games. But with better graphics.

I like the idea of "creative abstraction," RS; I think it's possible to combine the cinematic and the abstract. Ideally, cut scenes should not exist as separate parts of the game. Metal Gear Solid has made strides in that area (where, for example, you can be shot while listening to ironic meta-meta explanations of the main character's objectives -- you're still in the game, not watching an arbitrary clip). The crude marrying of the improvisational to the fixed inherent in cut scenes shows why games like GTO San Andreas and Gran Turismo 3-4 are more enjoyable in free-form mode than when you're following the story (or are in "arcade mode"). One eventual development might be that the gamer's choices help to create the story itself rather than selecting one of four options from a menu of key points and endings. Another development might be that works of art loosely called games will incorporate improvisation and story in ways that don't depend on the usual structure of gaming. Such works might not appeal to gamers at all, but could herald the coming of bracing new forms in an era of played-it-all cynicism.

 

[Born2bwire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh you will rue the day you disrespected John Carpenter, for his second coming is nigh! Scrypt, what I liked so much about Myst and Riven was the unusual plot and devices, and the overall production design (for lack of a better term) of the games. Also, the music and ambient gameplay sounds were haunting. The voice acting was only adequate. Like you are saying, games are trying to be movies, but movies are trying to be games these days too--and the results are usually not the best either genre can offer. Modern games that go for realism suffer from the same syndrome Roger Ebert wrote about, where the more realistic a computer generated actors is, the creepier they are. Take the most advanced graphics engine and make some NPC's and they still look like talking manniquins. Until they can fix this video games should strive for the kind of creative abstraction earlier technological limitations imposed on the first games. But with better graphics.

Did you ever play Last Express? Fantastic game.