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Donating my Xbox

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Re: Donating my Xbox

#41

Post by baby »

lloeki wrote: post #32
baby wrote: post #13

> Strategy over button mashing! That made me think of QTE. We never needed those things, but still they gave it to us. And keeps giving it to us. It's lazy gameplay, it's a "I'm a developer, I have a cutscene and I'm too bored to integrate real gameplay into it".

As always there's balance to be had: done right it gives a sense of urgency and involvement in what would otherwise be another "lean back and watch things happen" cutscene, whereas done wrong it annoyingly interrupts the flow at best. Personal experience: God of War QTEs feel entirely disconnected and over the top, whereas (Square's) Tomb Raider QTEs help in breaking the fourth wall and draws me into the scene.

I was thinking of Tomb Raider when I say it was lazy gameplay.

Re: Donating my Xbox

#42

Post by OGinparadise »

I'm driven by ideals that fit poorly with an industrialized console monoculture: What if games can connect people? What if they can improve the world? What if they bring happiness and joy to our lives?

His company as founded a few minutes ago, 2010 in real years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spry_Fox . Give it a few more years before the holier than though attitude, who knows what you'll do during the next downturn. See Zynga

Re: Donating my Xbox

#43

Post by kevdigital »

unalone wrote: post #26
kevdigital wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, violent games and shooters have been around well before Halo. It just brought shooters to the consoles. God forbid other "bro types" enjoy games too. There's plenty of other inventive, creative games out there if that's your thing too.

> God forbid other "bro types" enjoy games too. Being a bro isn't, like, something you're born into. It's a certain mentality, a certain way of approaching the world. And while I like many facets of bro-dom, and enjoy the hell out of sitting down for some Smash with a couple of friends and a six-pack of Yuengling, there are some bothersome things about bro culture which that particular category of game emphasizes. I…

I just don't understand what is necessarily wrong with that. You don't enjoy the more competitive culture that games like Halo, COD, or Starcraft invite but that doesn't restrict other games from being made and enjoyed. There are plenty of inspired original games made every year.

I used to love playing Halo 1 over system link with a group of friends but now trying to hop into Halo 4 only to have a bunch of kids cursing at eachother it turns me off from multiplayer. I agree with you in that some of those elements from the hardcore competitive culture are disappointing, but that is just one facet of gaming culture as a whole. I still feel like there's plenty of other good parts that it doesn't bother me.

Re: Donating my Xbox

#44

Post by groovy2shoes »

unalone wrote: post #15

When I was a kid I hated the Xbox, hated Halo, and hated how it seemed to create a new model for playing games. It was released when I was in middle school, and I remember there being a sudden and abrupt shift in what kind of gaming mentality there was. Prior to the Xbox, console games were largely focused on lush, whimsical landscapes with mechanics that required some puzzling to figure out. At least, the games that…

Halo (at least the first one) wasn't completely serious. The Covenant often said and did silly things, as did your fellow marines if you shot them. The graphics were also more vibrantly colorful than any game in the Quake series. Microsoft even threw resources at Rooster Teeth for producing Red vs Blue, which is an absolutely silly and hilarious series.

Halo 2 brought some of the best multiplayer I've ever seen on a console. In Halo 3, they added a ranking system that attempted to keep the online experience fun for newbs and veterans alike.

Furthermore, not all modern blockbusters are self-serious. The Borderlands, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 come to mind as shooters that are completely and utterly silly. Gears of War has a little whimsy, too, though perhaps not enough for your tastes -- a chainsaw bayonet on the end of an assault rifle? Whimsy!

I understand your frustrations with modern mass-market gaming, but they're neither Halo's nor Microsoft's fault. This is how capitalism works. Maybe the market shift is temporary, leaving you in a niche for a while until the indie movement becomes large enough to push the "grittily" realistic games out of the way. Or maybe it's permanent, in which case you'll be stuck in the indie niche forever. At least the Xbox Live Arcade has no shortage of whimsical indie games to play.

Re: Donating my Xbox

#45

Post by potkor »

andrewcooke wrote: post #16
realo wrote: post #14

IMHO his article was a good read. I even fell for the Spry Fox thing and actually visited his website. Judging by the colorful first page of the site, his games seem cool and fun... Want to see them... I click PLAY, with a Sunday morning expectation of something interesting coming up. BLAM! A f *ing Facebook login screen. I am not a Facebook user. Never will be. Too bad. I look again at his web page with a sense of l…

I was similarly disappointed, but dug out an android device and installed something town for free. it was quite interesting - based on the mechanic where changing one square in a grid affects the state of neighbours.

Triple Town. It's great though it's freemium (150 turns/day limit).

Re: Donating my Xbox

#46

Post by kevdigital »

thomholwerda wrote: post #27
unalone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wolfenstein and Doom were simple, playful, colorful. Even as game devices became more powerful, there was a playfulness to FPSes that you can see in titles like Perfect Dark and the Unreal series. One of Halo's major innovations was that it removed the health bar. In a shooter like Doom or Goldeneye, you have let's say 100 HP, and different weapons deal a different amount of damage. It's just like any fighting game w…

You seem to be missing a whole slew of games here, and most importantly, you don't seem to understand just how gritty, dark, and realistic Wolfenstein was for its time. You cherry-pick robo-Hitler in order to paint Wolfenstein as a fun and happy game - but the fact of the matter is that when it was released, it was the most realistic game ever made (give or take), in which you killed nazis. Nothing but nazis. In a fi…

Not to mention Doom was not at all "simple, playful, and colorful". Running around through Hell with dismembered corpses on spikes being chased but gruesome demons was frightening in the early '90s. Maybe it was just cause I was 10 at the time :)

Re: Donating my Xbox

#47

Post by DanBC »

astar wrote: post #38
thomholwerda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When Halo came out"? As opposed to the endless steam of first person shooters that came before it that were even more straightforward, simplistic, and violence-driven? Blaming Microsoft for this is insane. There is virtually no difference between Wolfenstein and Doom on the one hand, and Halo and Gears of War on the other - except for better graphics. If you think this is a trend of the past decade, then you either…

Halo was a standout because of it brought multiplayer to console, wasn't it the first console game to have 16 players? The coop campaign was also really fun. Maybe the article-writer thinks that Halo made FPS too mainstream? Unlike Doom/Quake, it was cleaned up enough in a pretty blockbuster-wrapper to make it the new model of gaming to follow?

Saturn Bomberman had 10 players for multiplayer.

I'm not quite sure I follow OPs point. Playstation had a bunch of thoroughly unfun uncute games.

Re: Donating my Xbox

#48

Post by kenjackson »

This is an odd post in that almost nothing rings true to me. The PC much more than the console was all about keyboard mashing.

And post Kinect launch MS seems even less about hardcore gaming.

We don't even need to spend billions to get people to play them.

What does that even mean considering I've never heard of them?

Re: Donating my Xbox

#49

Post by xtracto »

unalone wrote: post #23
thomholwerda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When Halo came out"? As opposed to the endless steam of first person shooters that came before it that were even more straightforward, simplistic, and violence-driven? Blaming Microsoft for this is insane. There is virtually no difference between Wolfenstein and Doom on the one hand, and Halo and Gears of War on the other - except for better graphics. If you think this is a trend of the past decade, then you either…

Wolfenstein and Doom were simple, playful, colorful. Even as game devices became more powerful, there was a playfulness to FPSes that you can see in titles like Perfect Dark and the Unreal series. One of Halo's major innovations was that it removed the health bar. In a shooter like Doom or Goldeneye, you have let's say 100 HP, and different weapons deal a different amount of damage. It's just like any fighting game w…

The game Soldier of Fortune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_of_Fortune_(video_game)) was pretty serious, and it came one year before Halo.

I also think you might be missing quite a lot of games you did not know.

Re: Donating my Xbox

#50

Post by brudgers »

astar wrote: post #38
thomholwerda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When Halo came out"? As opposed to the endless steam of first person shooters that came before it that were even more straightforward, simplistic, and violence-driven? Blaming Microsoft for this is insane. There is virtually no difference between Wolfenstein and Doom on the one hand, and Halo and Gears of War on the other - except for better graphics. If you think this is a trend of the past decade, then you either…

Halo was a standout because of it brought multiplayer to console, wasn't it the first console game to have 16 players? The coop campaign was also really fun. Maybe the article-writer thinks that Halo made FPS too mainstream? Unlike Doom/Quake, it was cleaned up enough in a pretty blockbuster-wrapper to make it the new model of gaming to follow?

In 1996, my wife would call my pager Tuesday night because I hadn't come home from the office. We were playing Quake over the Novell on our CAD workstations. It's easier now, but there hasn't been a quantum change.
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