A Discussion About Your Values of Gaming and Modern Gaming

What do you value the most in a video games


  • Total voters
    23
May 23, 2012 at 3:34 AM
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Thanks for the kind words, Fab.

I think that just because a game is lacking a bit in the gameplay area doesn't mean that it entirely rules out the great aspects and automatically makes it a sucky game.
I agree

Yume Nikki... It has a lot of weird things in it, and apparently some people like to interpret the shit out of these ... For me, Yume Nikki was about being trapped in a nightmare...

Everything in the game that was even a little abstract looked wrong. Wrong in the sense that looking at it made me feel uncomfortable. If this was intentional, then I have to commend the developer for making worlds that I hated being in. If that is the intentional atmosphere, then the art and music in Yume Nikki are extremely well done, and create a game that eliminates any need for a story. You just walk around, feeling uncomfortable, until you find something weird and the game is like "WELL LOOK AT THIS CRAZY SUBCONSCIOUS SHIT, WHAT DO YOU THINK IT COULD MEAN????" ...

Sounds like my cup of tea. While I'm off topic, by the way, has anyone read House of Leaves? It's psychological and trippy and stuff, too. Great book. We can talk about it in the Satellite Lounge.

All this talk of Yume Nikki makes me want to go play/experience it. Hmm...
 
May 23, 2012 at 8:51 AM
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"Samey" Gameplay (i.e. Call of Duty games)
Never understood the appeal in CoD. Apparently everyone likes generic shooters and CoD is king. The same shooter formula has been recycled for years now and people still hit the counters and say "take my money". When someone does something different they hardly make anywhere near the number of sales. I gave up on Pokemon when gen 4 came out for the exact same reason. It became obvious that they hadn't evolved since gen 2 and they had been recycling the same old plot from gen 1 over and over again. Black and White look interesting though.

Paid Downloadable Content (DLC)
All paid downloadable content is tied to a service. One day that service will need to be taken down. Your purchased games? Gone. The games you were going to buy? Gone. The content unlocked by DLC? One day you won't be able to do that anymore. Games that require the service to run? Expensive paperweights. Online multiplayer is already a victim to this.
 
May 23, 2012 at 3:16 PM
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In the same way ambient songs are still technically "music," but you won't hear any of it on the radio.

I say Yume Nikki gets good once you stop expecting a game to he there, because there isn't.

Anyway something essential for me that I don't think too many people have mentioned yet is music. There are very few games in my list of favorites that I haven't listened to the music for separately. I'm not saying you can't have a good game without music, I'm saying it's hard to have a great one without it.
 
May 23, 2012 at 4:38 PM
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There are some games that drew me in because I heard the music. Touhou and Ar tonelico being the most notable. I can't say those 2 are my favorite games, but the music is incredible and I still listen to it all the time. I don't think music makes a game good, if your main focus is gameplay, but it definitely adds to the experience and atmosphere. Also, nostalgia factor.

I made a point earlier about motion controls. What are your opinions on that? Unnecessary gimmick or immersing?
 
May 23, 2012 at 5:07 PM
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GAMEPLAY:
This is the ONLY THING that matter in a game. I have played games with literally NO graphics that were pretty good to rather awesome.
PLOT:
Means nothing. NEXT.
ART:
A favorite debate of mine. High res, realistic graphics do NOT help a game. While BAD graphics (You can't tell where the floor ends and the wall begins.) do hinder gameplay, low res graphics do not. If graphics will prevent you from playing a game for any reason besides "I can't tell what I can and can't walk on," then you CANNOT call yourself a gamer.
MUSIC:
While I love good music in games, it still doesn't matter. I've played games with no music and still enjoyed them.
MOOD:
THIS is a dumb reason to hate a game as well. Let's take, for example, Super Mario Galaxy. Good game, right? There are a lot of people who will hate this game PURELY because of it's childish, non-serious atmosphere.

That is all.
 
May 23, 2012 at 6:49 PM
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Paid Downloadable Content (DLC)
All paid downloadable content is tied to a service. One day that service will need to be taken down. Your purchased games? Gone. The games you were going to buy? Gone. The content unlocked by DLC? One day you won't be able to do that anymore. Games that require the service to run? Expensive paperweights. Online multiplayer is already a victim to this.
I can't play floppy disc games anymore. I need an emulator to run DOS games. Many games for Windows 3, 95, and 98 aren't compatible with Windows 7. Outdated games are nothing new, and we find a way to play them no matter what. If Valve went under and took Steam with it, piracy would increase eleventy jillion percent. ALSO, DLC doesn't necessarily have to be tied to a service. I haven't played enough games to give more examples than Knights of the Nine, but there's something. The exception to the rule, I guess.
 
May 23, 2012 at 10:57 PM
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I forgot to mention that a game's intentional lack of music can count as music. Looking at Minecraft and Journey (PS3), a lack of music (however brief or extended) can give what little music that plays meaning, or make your experience feel more isolated.

I guess what I actually value is focussed audio. For example, TF2 has no music, but the amount of audio in the game makes up for it. Since most weapons and actions have a distinct sound, the sounds of mass murder in turn become the "music" for a game.

On the flip side, meaningless music can be worse than no music. For example, Gears of War. Did you even know that that game had a soundtrack outside of cutscenes? It's completely forgettable, can even becomes incessant when you notice it.
Opposite that is Halo. Remember in Halo 2 when you have that scorpion and ate driving down that giant bridge and blowing the shit out of banshees and this awesome electric guitar comes in and you feel so epic as you blow the fuck out of everything? The music just amplifies the whole experience, turning something fun into something awesome.

/walloftext.
 
May 24, 2012 at 4:14 PM
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I picked option 5 on the top list. Atmosphere, to me, is the way a game combines all of its various elements to create an engaging experience; how the aesthetics, writing and even gameplay combine to drag the player into the game and actually make them eager to see what happens next. I don't worry if some elements aren't present, as long as I'm involved and don't feel I could get the same experience through another medium (e.g. book, movie). This might also explain my relationship with 'scary' games - I don't like playing them, but I often enjoy watching other people play because they have such compelling atmosphere. Additionally, I hold great appreciation for anything that shows me something I haven't seen before, or anything clever, or anything crafted with fine attention to detail. It's those little touches that really make a game great.

While I surely appreciate challenging/enjoyable gameplay (you do not go on a year-long shmup binge if you don't), my standards for judging it are slightly different. As a rule, no game, no matter how well designed, is going to be totally flawless, especially when you're a stickler for details. The flaws need not be crippling, or even a big deal, but over the years they will inevitably become a wee bit tiresome. Graphics and music, on the other hand, can quite easily be 'perfect' in the sense that they're good enough that they don't feel as though they need any improving. Not to mention the talent required to make them as such, which is worthy of immense respect, while with gameplay I always feel like I could improve it if only I could fiddle with a couple of numbers somewhere <_< Writing falls somewhere between the two, because again it's a very hard thing to do well, but it can still be fun even if it's technically wrong (e.g. Eggie drug back fuck). However, it does seem to be the part that gets botched most often, or that consistently makes games really terrible.

As for flaws... eh. I think what's happened/happening was largely inevitable, as video games became more mainstream, graphics more realistic and budgets/time constraints much easier to blow out. Most of my problems with eastern game development can be summed up as "animu bullshit", while with western development it's a mix of things like spaghettivision and DLC. These are mostly problems for big-name titles, obviously; indie games have their own bag of issues but are better on the whole, of course :mahin: My standards in general are pretty lenient, so when I really dislike something it's because I absolutely can't feel a skerrick of happiness for any length of time. As an example, I enjoy pretty much every genre aside from arcade-style fighters, but as some of you probably know I nurse a particular soft spot for 90's-style JRPG's play Mystic Ark, which have done almost nothing but plummet in quality over the last decade. Feels bad man :(

On a final note, I'll tie that into an issue that gets thrown around a bit regarding gameplay, which is that turn-based combat is outdated. I don't really agree, and what I think a lot of people don't realise is that the limit on turn-based input is a human one and not a technological one. For non-chosen-ones, it's impossible to exhibit such a high degree of control over more than a single target at once, at least without a lot of repetition and memorisation. Maybe when games can tap into our subconscious that will change, but until then it still offers something that other styles of gameplay can't provide, eye-em-oh.
 
May 28, 2012 at 2:48 PM
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I can't play floppy disc games anymore. I need an emulator to run DOS games. Many games for Windows 3, 95, and 98 aren't compatible with Windows 7. Outdated games are nothing new, and we find a way to play them no matter what. If Valve went under and took Steam with it, piracy would increase eleventy jillion percent. ALSO, DLC doesn't necessarily have to be tied to a service. I haven't played enough games to give more examples than Knights of the Nine, but there's something. The exception to the rule, I guess.
You still own the floppy disc games though. You physically own it. Also you can buy usb external floppy drives. I have one myself sitting under my desk. So you can still read floppies in this age of SATA.

But this isn't about outdated games. My point being that one day these downloadable games and content that are tied to a service will not be legally attainable. Be it PSN, Steam, WiiWare, X-Box Live or the App Store there will be a massive list of download-only games and content that you can't ever buy anymore.
 
May 28, 2012 at 3:54 PM
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But this isn't about outdated games. My point being that one day these downloadable games and content that are tied to a service will not be legally attainable. Be it PSN, Steam, WiiWare, X-Box Live or the App Store there will be a massive list of download-only games and content that you can't ever buy anymore.

If it's worth saving, then someone is bound to make it available for.. "acquisition". It's the service-based DRM that concerns me.
 
May 28, 2012 at 4:10 PM
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Some games have very superficial characters...like Crysis 2 had that hippie scientist who was saying "maan" too much :p
 
May 29, 2012 at 1:56 AM
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If it's worth saving, then someone is bound to make it available for.. "acquisition".
*ahem* I said "legally" attainable. ⌐_⌐
 
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