Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The shock of playing the Ouya, one year later

wololo.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 161 posts

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

#81

Post by twic »

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.

Generally, yes. But sometimes you can turn the handicap into something interesting.

Back in the day, some friends and i used to play a lot of Goldeneye on the N64. Like, a lot. We used to turn our health down to minimum to make it more exciting - a single hit with almost any weapon would kill you.

Sometimes, one of my friends' girlfriend was around, and we wanted her to join in. But she wasn't a gamer, much less a Goldeneye hotshot like us. So we gave her a handicap - she got maximum health, loads more than you'd get even in a normal game, and she played as Oddjob, who is half the size of any other character, and so harder to hit.

This still left game play a bit imbalanced; she could soak up huge amounts of damage, but wasn't aware or accurate enough to really take part in the highly mobile cut and thrust of deathmatch. So we played 3 vs 1, with our fragile ninjas darting around her indestructible, lumbering tank, desperately trying to get enough shots on target to take her down, while she spewed various flavours of death from her tiny bowler-hatted form. We called it Hunt the Freak, and we'd ham it up with an over-the-top commentary about the horrifying scenes of destruction wrought by the unstoppable Freak. All four of us found it highly entertaining, and often hysterically funny. It was so good, we ended up playing it even when she wasn't around.

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

#82

Post by wlesieutre »

rexf wrote: post #64
baby wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge problem with new consoles I find. I don't remember having to update my N64 every time I wanted to play it. But my PS3? Every time I want to play I have to spend like 30 minutes in downloading and installing an update. Every single time. I don't play that often but still do play from times to times and I haven't had a clean launch for years.

I have the same problem with my gaming PC. When I boot it up, I have numerous updates for Windows, Steam, games, etc.

But how often do you not turn your PC on for a month? That's much more common with consoles.

Steam is running all the time when my computer is on (and I use my computer every day), and games just keep themselves up to date. For a given game that I'm trying to play, there's maybe a 15 minute period every couple of months when I wouldn't be able to launch it immediately.

The Windows updates aren't required in order to play games, and they can just be delayed until the next time you're restarting. Not a huge deal there.

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

#83

Post by sp332 »

kevingadd wrote: post #75
sp332 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh :( I didn't think it was that ill-considered. Since the rest of the platform was designed to be very developer-friendly, it was nice to have a few pieces that were friendly to players.

The core problem is that it appears player-friendly, but in practice it is not, because it wounds developers. If you're an indie with limited resources, being forced to build a demo means you end up having to ship a bad demo (actually reducing your sales in many cases) or not ship on the platform at all. In an ideal world, 'all games have free trials' is good. The realities of game development mean that even for game…

You can just add a timer, like Bomberman did, or limit the number of levels or something. I played a puzzle game where the free version was limited to a certain number of moves per day. A timer would have worked fine for The Stanley Parable.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

Xylakant wrote: post #14
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by TylerE »

awj wrote: post #80
rexf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem with my gaming PC. When I boot it up, I have numerous updates for Windows, Steam, games, etc.

Sure, but that's been true of PCs for ages. We're all used to the idea that PCs need to be updated. To me one of the advantages to consoles was that they could pick up and play at any moment.

At least with my PS4, I've never been forced to download/install an update, either game or OS. You simply can't use online features if you aren't up to date.

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

#86

Post by katbyte »

rexf wrote: post #64
baby wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a huge problem with new consoles I find. I don't remember having to update my N64 every time I wanted to play it. But my PS3? Every time I want to play I have to spend like 30 minutes in downloading and installing an update. Every single time. I don't play that often but still do play from times to times and I haven't had a clean launch for years.

I have the same problem with my gaming PC. When I boot it up, I have numerous updates for Windows, Steam, games, etc.

unless something has changed, steam updates are usually optional.

Also pc's are often left on/used for other things so the windows, steam and game updates all kinda just download and install in the background so when you go to play its usually just ready, unlike consoles where you turn it on and it then has to download/install everything as you wait to play.

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

#87

Post by fit2rule »

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…

It probably only took 1 hour to do it because he hadn't been doing updates in months and months .. I'm sure if the system was in solid, regulary (say: weekly) use then it wouldn't have been such an issue ..

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

#88

Post by dublinben »

Osiris wrote: post #61
genericuser wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard really good things about the Amazon Fire TV + XMBC (Gotham) from multiple sources at this point. Haven't tried it myself admittedly.

That's what I'm doing and it works very well. As a media device, it's the best option I've found. Built-in wireless, fast CPU, lots of RAM, supports Netflix, Amazon Instant, Hulu, XBMC, Pandora, and more. Roku has more channels available, but doesn't have any options for streaming content over a LAN. I played a few minutes of Minion Rush on the Amazon Fire TV. It had some laggy moments, certainly not the gaming exper…

>but doesn't have any options for streaming content over a LAN

This is simply not true. Plex has been available on the Roku for years. It's one of the most popular channels.

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

#89

Post by orky56 »

baby wrote: post #60
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…

This is a huge problem with new consoles I find. I don't remember having to update my N64 every time I wanted to play it. But my PS3? Every time I want to play I have to spend like 30 minutes in downloading and installing an update. Every single time. I don't play that often but still do play from times to times and I haven't had a clean launch for years.

AppleTV is pretty similar. My parents use it only when I come home about once a month. At that time, there's an update that needs to get installed. Now my parents have the impression that the AppleTV just takes that long to boot up every time. Hard to change people impressions after they've noticed a pattern.
Post reply on HN