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The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

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Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#21

Post by vertex-four »

ebbv wrote: post #8

> I have terrible memories of coming to a gamer’s place to spend the afternoon playing Fifa, Street Fighter 4, etc… in all these AAA titles, the guy who owns the game basically beats your ass so hard that all the fun is gone. This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead. Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the…

I find games with friends to be substantially less fun when people have to be handicapped. When I win, it feels like it's because of the handicap, not because I did anything right.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#22

Post by eloisant »

lhnz wrote: post #7

The problem with calling it the perfect "party gaming" console is that it completely doesn't work for that when "it took me almost an hour to update the firmware and configure the 4 controllers." I'm not saying that to hurt OUYA, I'm just saying that if they want to find this niche they should focus some effort on fixing that. Edit: I'm not implying that other consoles are better fitted to this. I'm implying that eng…

To be honest the Wii U launch day update was pretty bad. It took much more than one hour, and you'd brick your console if you powered it off thinking it was "stuck" during the update.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#24

Post by TillE »

everyone wrote: post #16
dpeck wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpicky, but generally the scale with something like that is AAA -> AA -> A

ok, but even that is never used. For instance no publisher ever announces the release of their new "AA" or "A" game.

AA is absolutely being used in the gaming press, particularly to distinguish mid-sized decently-funded (eg, Kickstarter'd) studios from proper indie games.

I doubt you'll find many instances of "AAA" in press releases either. It's an industry term, not intended for the general public.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#26

Post by wfjackson »

lhnz wrote: post #7

The problem with calling it the perfect "party gaming" console is that it completely doesn't work for that when "it took me almost an hour to update the firmware and configure the 4 controllers." I'm not saying that to hurt OUYA, I'm just saying that if they want to find this niche they should focus some effort on fixing that. Edit: I'm not implying that other consoles are better fitted to this. I'm implying that eng…

He compares it only to the PlayStations but in my experience the Kinect with an Xbox makes it a pretty good party console. One day at work, we had everyone including 60+ year old women who never played a video game have fun with some of the Kinect motion games. I can't imagine the learning curve for them to even press a couple of buttons on a controller.

The updates take long on any console though, so I wouldn't blame the Ouya, especially with its weak controller. The biggest problem Ouya has now is that it's competing with Xbox360 and the PS3 on price. You can used ones for around $100 to $150 and they have vast libraries of games.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#27

Post by prawks »

ebbv wrote: post #8

> I have terrible memories of coming to a gamer’s place to spend the afternoon playing Fifa, Street Fighter 4, etc… in all these AAA titles, the guy who owns the game basically beats your ass so hard that all the fun is gone. This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead. Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the…

The FIFA equivalent (which was how I learned the game with my roommate who was very good at it) is that the more skilled person picks a lower-ranked team and the new player gets their pick of any team. The difference in maneuverability between teams is enough to even most odds, at least after one or two games of getting used to the controls.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#28

Post by Xylakant »

nkozyra wrote: post #20
Xylakant wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if I let my PS3 in the box for about a year and then try to play a quick round of some casual game downloaded from the store, I'll have to go through the same ordeal. If it's used daily, then not. It's a function of how often you use your console.

I don't think anyone would argue the PS3 is the perfect party console, either. I bought the PS3 and Wii around the same time and obviously the "party console" prize went to the latter - particularly early on it seemed like every third time I put a game in there was 15 minutes of firmware and software updates.

It's not like the Wii never needed any firmware updates either.

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#29

Post by sanxiyn »

vertex-four wrote: post #21
ebbv wrote: post #8

> I have terrible memories of coming to a gamer’s place to spend the afternoon playing Fifa, Street Fighter 4, etc… in all these AAA titles, the guy who owns the game basically beats your ass so hard that all the fun is gone. This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead. Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the…

I find games with friends to be substantially less fun when people have to be handicapped. When I win, it feels like it's because of the handicap, not because I did anything right.

I find this phenomenon very interesting. I mean, obviously, you won because you did right things. You would have lost if you didn't. By definition, handicap should be set so that you have an even chance of winning.

This may be a cultural thing? In Go, handicap is a normal part of the game and everybody (but see below) is fine with using it. In Chess, people seem to detest handicap and insist on even game.

I live in South Korea, and I visited US Go club when I travelled there, and I was extremely surprised to find that some Go players there insisted on even game. Why would they do that? I mean, if you normally need 4 stones handicap in Go, you have exactly zero chance to win without handicap. What fun is that?

Re: The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

#30

Post by SahAssar »

vertex-four wrote: post #21
ebbv wrote: post #8

> I have terrible memories of coming to a gamer’s place to spend the afternoon playing Fifa, Street Fighter 4, etc… in all these AAA titles, the guy who owns the game basically beats your ass so hard that all the fun is gone. This is not a failure of those games, this is a failure of the person who owns the game to not be a dickhead. Street Fighter 4, for example, has handicapping. You can tilt the game wildly in the…

I find games with friends to be substantially less fun when people have to be handicapped. When I win, it feels like it's because of the handicap, not because I did anything right.

This is why certain games hide the "handicap" from the users, such as mario kart. It has quite a lot of rubberbanding but since it's hidden and unnoticeable for most players they don't mind.
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