Computer Games

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.
noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

Mr. Perfect wrote:Anyone know how you break into this business.
much the same way as breaking into the pop music business.. aka lots of contestants but not many winners.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Mr. Perfect »

I'm curious if you develop some kind of demo and pitch it to established companies, or if you take your concept and build it from the ground up or if big concerns just develop everything in house and you try to get those gigs, or whatever.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

its exactly like the music business.

you can either chase the massive distribution and advertising of the big boys and accept 1% of lots of sales and less say in your product - or you can do it independant and make 100% from fewer sales and have total control.

their is no rule and just like music some do better with the bigboy support and others do better doing it themselves.

im currently playing with some ideas in my spare time and if they come good ill be doing it independant but thats as much a personality decision as a profit maximising one.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

the worst option is coder for hire on someone elses project no matter if its corporate or independant, much like the worst option in the music industry is low end session muso.

the most disposable, the least well paid with zero profit sharing or ownership in the product.

which is what i currently do - in the corporate technology industry.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

The whole business is a scam, and not the fun types of scams you get from music and movies either. It has grown too fast, too soon and when its bubble pops, it's going to get ultra ugly.

Mr.P, maybe you can work the numbers better than I, and you probably would have a better financial base to start from; but I've put some serious research into it and I can't see a way to make it work if I want myself and my potential partners to eat anytime soon.

The smartphone communities are a mess unless you are a name- and those free to play games have slot machine mechanics; and that's a whole other bag.

When you get to the console/computer games (in a more traditional sense) you've got your indie and your triple AAA titles (as noddy mentioned) with nothing in between, and the indies, as far as I'm concerned are going the way of movie indies more so than music indies. As a songwriter/crafter/producer, whatever you want to call it- I could make an independent living by playing regionally and helping regional bands on the side with their arrangements, lyrics or what have you without having to go near any sort of corporation.

I look at independent video games and it's dominated by personalities, many who already possess extensive connections to the major league companies. Oftentimes, these small studios are really doing the heavy lifting on the major titles. How do you compete with the team of people who just finished working on Luigi's Mansion 3ds for Nintendo and decide to go to Kickstarter for funding? What do you do when the guy who made Mega Man decides he'll make Mega Man again by using crowdsourcing, then turns around and say he's open to major publishers financing the game as well?

Starting from nothing (no instruments/equipment/studio), give me 2000 to 3000 bucks and I can guarantee you a lo-fi album that would be competitive enough to make your money back and grow your brand/touring/etc. You're talking tens of thousands of dollars (maybe even hundreds of thousands) for a similar standard in video game, and that is before you account for investment of time differences.

...I guess you'd have to start more from noddy's position as a programmer to maybe have a shot.

A guy like me who has embarrassing computer skills (I'm working on it) has no chance, even when I'm sitting on two incredible ideas.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

definately high risk and low statistics on success - im only prepared to throw time at it, not folding money.

as an independant the trick is getting it right for a niche and not losing focus trying to make it right for everyone, and as in all things, the network and self promotion you do to get the ball rolling is perhaps more important than the product itself.

i am also frustrated/intimidated by the different pros and cons in terms of picking a platform and am currently doing lots of evaluation on the cross platform technologies to avoid making that choice.

http://www.monogame.net/ is looking ok for me because im very comfortable in the dotnet cli however its missing the vital ingrediant of a good 3d scene graph and while my skills are capable of developing one of those, the act of doing so would use up any time i had for the actual game itself.

artwork is the other huge time/money sink but im hoping i can use my copious amounts of fun procedural and parametric experiments to cover alot of that.

two incredible ideas you say nap. i have lots of half arsed ones :)
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Speaking of games, one of the best war/strategy games I have ever played, no joke:

Image

Pikmin 3

You can point to games like StarCraft or XCOM games all you want, personally I have a great fondness for the Age of Empires series, but this one is equally brilliant and perhaps more impressive considering its significant limitations. It's beautifully streamlined for its hardware, the level and conceptual designs are excellent, it is a rather balanced length with little filler and great replay value, the choice of control schemes is interesting, and it is emotionally engaging in a way few of these games are- how many of these type of games really bring the impact of cannon fodder to the forefront? How many of them actually (and perhaps cruelly) remind you of your responsibility for the deaths of your soldiers by tempting you with a replay button? For the hardware used, it is visually simulating and refined while avoiding all the dumb cliches where everything has to be "dark" "gritty" "edgy" "heady" "hardcore" to be taken seriously or engaging. It may be hard to imagine but, it does the whole space fantasy thing better than 90% of everything else on the market. This is one of Shigeru Miyamoto's best games, up there with the first few Mario Brothers and the original Zelda and it's a shame it's being overlooked because of the overall Nintendo failure and the bright and colorful graphics.

The only negative would be that it could use an online mode. If it weren't Nintendo making the game, protecting its IP image, it'd also allow more war-like tactical game play in head-to-head multiplayer than a bingo card. Being as it is, if you are in my situation where the people I can occasionally get to play aren't strategy fans or very casual game players, it provides a pretty balanced party game experience that's pretty fun in itself, which I guess is Nintendo's trademark. It's not the end of the world.

Image
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

hah, those screenshots are actually one of the looks ive been playing with in my head, inspired by the french kiddies shorts called "miniscule" which ive seen on the tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtagJ9ZH6Gg is one i just plucked out of youtube - nature videos with 3d rendering on top.

i have many thousands upon thousands of reasonably nice nature pictures so using them as backdrops to some kind of platform/adventure game makes the bulk of the hard to achieve artwork easy :)
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:hah, those screenshots are actually one of the looks ive been playing with in my head, inspired by the french kiddies shorts called "miniscule" which ive seen on the tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtagJ9ZH6Gg is one i just plucked out of youtube - nature videos with 3d rendering on top.

i have many thousands upon thousands of reasonably nice nature pictures so using them as backdrops to some kind of platform/adventure game makes the bulk of the hard to achieve artwork easy :)
Sounds intriguing. Blending the animation with real backdrops in a way that looks good and allows for good level design always seemed like it would be really difficult. Have you gotten any further than platform/adventure and would the adventure part mean that it's a collect-a-thon type of game?
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
noddy wrote:hah, those screenshots are actually one of the looks ive been playing with in my head, inspired by the french kiddies shorts called "miniscule" which ive seen on the tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtagJ9ZH6Gg is one i just plucked out of youtube - nature videos with 3d rendering on top.

i have many thousands upon thousands of reasonably nice nature pictures so using them as backdrops to some kind of platform/adventure game makes the bulk of the hard to achieve artwork easy :)
Sounds intriguing. Blending the animation with real backdrops in a way that looks good and allows for good level design always seemed like it would be really difficult. Have you gotten any further than platform/adventure and would the adventure part mean that it's a collect-a-thon type of game?
ive mostly got the method of the blending sorted, however the actual gameplay is the half arsed bit because i havent yet nailed down the exact style of play i want out of it.

unfortunately for me the engine and tech behind the game is as much an interesting problem as the game itself... the vague plan is to get that working nicely first and then maybe doing several types of game with it.

it moves slowly in spits and spurts because my energy and desire to code at home after doing it all day for money is purely on an inspiration basis.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
noddy wrote:hah, those screenshots are actually one of the looks ive been playing with in my head, inspired by the french kiddies shorts called "miniscule" which ive seen on the tv.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtagJ9ZH6Gg is one i just plucked out of youtube - nature videos with 3d rendering on top.

i have many thousands upon thousands of reasonably nice nature pictures so using them as backdrops to some kind of platform/adventure game makes the bulk of the hard to achieve artwork easy :)
Sounds intriguing. Blending the animation with real backdrops in a way that looks good and allows for good level design always seemed like it would be really difficult. Have you gotten any further than platform/adventure and would the adventure part mean that it's a collect-a-thon type of game?
ive mostly got the method of the blending sorted, however the actual gameplay is the half arsed bit because i havent yet nailed down the exact style of play i want out of it.

unfortunately for me the engine and tech behind the game is as much an interesting problem as the game itself... the vague plan is to get that working nicely first and then maybe doing several types of game with it.

it moves slowly in spits and spurts because my energy and desire to code at home after doing it all day for money is purely on an inspiration basis.
Yeah, customizing the engine and tech seems the biggest headache. I had two people invested in contributing their talents, a tech guy and an art guy, with the hope of doing it as a full time (go for broke) kinda job...and it seemed the tech guy was having trouble pinning down the best way to do the first idea we agreed to do. It got to the point where he wanted more "toys" to fool around with, which is great and all but I was already footing the bill for this exploratory stuff and it was a bit rich for me. I thought about trying to flood the market with cheap fart button apps to see if I could hook some funding for more tech; then when we got a engine and demo up going to people with real money...but we never got to the point. Which is a shame.

The first idea was a new roguelike type game. I think the subgenre is ripe for explosion in Western markets, and elements of it are starting to show up in some very mainstream games. Considering where we were starting from, we were going to go for the 2D nostalgia-look which seems to draw people. I like a lot of the pixel art stuff but I am not a fan of nostalgia in general but whatever....I had the story and scenarios, characters largely set as well as what the game mechanics and artwork should be. Now that it is much easier to get the tech to randomly generate levels, I think some very interesting things can be done.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

their is much i could say about coders and the need to keep them tightly focused on specifics and allowing refactoring only in modest amounts but it would be a long complicated rant :)

both myself and my customers have learnt the long and hard way as to how to make it work and its a steep and expensive learning experience.

probably not the time to mention : http://7drl.org/roguelikes/ which is a large freebie collection of rogue alikes all written in 7 days , deadlines are a wonderful focus.

i have dabbled in that kind of game but im not that big a fan of them - however some of my friends in the past have been hugely in to them so i have exposure to it - i did get into fallout for a bit, it had more story to keep me vaguely interested.

diablo seems to be the state of the art dungeon hack n slash in the modern scene.
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Re: Computer Games

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Richard Garriott's suggestions for a healthy game development industry

By Samit Sarkar on Oct 10, 2013 at 9:30p @SamitSarkar

Renowned game designer Richard Garriott, creator of Ultima and now the Kickstarted game Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, has been around the world and seen it from space. He's been in the video game industry for more than 30 years, with much of that time spent in Austin, Texas, although he also maintains a home in New York City.

During a panel at New York Comic Con this afternoon, Garriott spoke about his history as a game developer, and expanded on what he saw as the important distinctions between the game industry in Austin and what he's noticed during his time in New York so far.

Austin quickly became a hub for game development, according to Garriott, because it's naturally a city that people in the art and technology fields flock to. But it's been suffering in recent years because it never developed the best educational institutions to bring the next generation of game developers into the industry. More importantly, Garriott explained, there isn't a lot of money for game development in Austin, because few game publishers and developers actually have their corporate headquarters in town. Instead, they tend to be located in California, and maintain satellite offices in Austin.

"Everyone in Austin is on the binge-and-purge cycle of the industry," said Garriott, noting that when companies have to make personnel cuts, they tend to lay people off at the satellite offices first.

New York has its own set of problems, as Garriott sees it. The vast majority of developers in New York are on work-for-hire contracts, performing grunt work such as coding but not sharing in a game's profits. Because of that, they rarely, if ever, get to create and own intellectual property.

Thus, said Garriott, the keys to a healthy development industry are these: Educate a base of young development talent; establish local corporate headquarters, not satellite offices; and "figure out a way to build original IP."
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:their is much i could say about coders and the need to keep them tightly focused on specifics and allowing refactoring only in modest amounts but it would be a long complicated rant :)

both myself and my customers have learnt the long and hard way as to how to make it work and its a steep and expensive learning experience.

probably not the time to mention : http://7drl.org/roguelikes/ which is a large freebie collection of rogue alikes all written in 7 days , deadlines are a wonderful focus.

i have dabbled in that kind of game but im not that big a fan of them - however some of my friends in the past have been hugely in to them so i have exposure to it - i did get into fallout for a bit, it had more story to keep me vaguely interested.

diablo seems to be the state of the art dungeon hack n slash in the modern scene.
Thanks for the link. It's times like this I wish I could share the bit we got done before we abandoned it.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of them either. But I know that the fans of the genre are rather dedicated, that it is a genre about to break out in western gaming (imo), and that the genre would've played to our best skills in making a game.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

HnyDqlng6pAI

This is the first Assassin's Creed game that is any good.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Ibrahim »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:HnyDqlng6pAI

This is the first Assassin's Creed game that is any good.
Is it really open-world? Can you do whatever you want? I've got a WiiU in the house now, and I keep seeing the commercials for this one......
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Re: Computer Games

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i found skyrim in the bargain bin and finally saw what the fuss was about, it was kinda cool but is losing me now ive played it a bit, the devotion to inventory management and menu digging in combat is beyond my meagre carefactor for such things.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:i found skyrim in the bargain bin and finally saw what the fuss was about, it was kinda cool but is losing me now ive played it a bit, the devotion to inventory management and menu digging in combat is beyond my meagre carefactor for such things.
That is one thing that keeps me from a game like that. I also was immediately dissuaded by the fantasy names. Maybe they do it very well, but I have a very low tolerance for imaginary language/terminology in fantasy settings.

Please do tell us how the game is going, have you given in or are you further along?
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Re: Computer Games

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Ibrahim wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:HnyDqlng6pAI

This is the first Assassin's Creed game that is any good.
Is it really open-world? Can you do whatever you want? I've got a WiiU in the house now, and I keep seeing the commercials for this one......
I don't know what your definition of open-world video game references. I do not have a lot of experience with the big modern ones. I played 15 minutes of Grand Theft Auto III in some guy's basement after school a long time ago. Talking with others, it seems the expectations of what is open-world is really diffuse and personalized. Some people get cute with the definition. So it depends on what your expectations of an open-world game is.

Have you tried any of the other Assassin's Creed games?

'Cause it's not too far from those- it's like the same twelve minigames bundled together with a convoluted plot pushed along by a lot of repetitive tasks while walking around visually interesting but interactively shallow locales.

The thing is, in my eyes, what has changed is that they have balanced everything spectacularly and they finally allow you to accomplish things at your own pace. I really enjoyed the sidequests and collect-a-thons this go around. It was the first Assassin's Creed game I've played that provides you the motivation to do them. For example your ship requires a whole host of expensive upgrades if you intend to survive on the high seas. You are going to want to max it out as soon as possible. You also can collect sea shanties for your crews to sing. You can go whaling/hunting for money. You can go island to island pilfering the funds. You can take assassination contracts for big money (and bigger money if you can carry it out while remaining totally undetected.) You can commandeer ships and sell the goods you get that way....there is even a minigame in the captain's quarters where you control a fleet of ships that sails the Atlantic and brings in huge amounts of money and other awards.I almost had everything collected before I reached the eighth chapter or sequence or whatever they call the main mission progression. It took me by surprise because I have a habit of doing the bare minimum in this series. The game benefits from having everything split into easily manageable sections (islands) and there are enough avenues where you don't have to overstay your welcome with any one segment of the game in a way you did in the previous editions.

The sailing, naval battles and commandeering vessels was a whole lot of fun, though I can see how others may find it a bit limiting since the parameters set in the game are not the most varied. I don't think it is giving it away that every time you board a ship, it asks you to kill a certain amount of men and occasionally another objective (like cut down the opponent's flag) depending on the class of ship.
Assassination contracts (both on land and at sea) return, but there is a lot more freedom and chance [almost stochastic?] in how they are carried out. I've now played three games in the series, and this is the first one I've not felt penalized for not following the designer's script in each and every mission. You have to follow so-and-so to the dock? Want to go by rooftop? sure. Want to follow closely in the bushes? Be my guest. Blend into crowds? Knock yourself out. It is a lot more forgiving too, which is nice because the controls are still your basic Assassin's Creed game. I mention this because a lot of reviewers seem to find them rudimentary; and I don't think it's a secret that in a lot of ways Assassin's Creed is not very far removed from a hold run+X button to win type game. But what Ubisoft did this go around seems to be that they finally figured out how to play to the strengths in what they've built. I don't remember a moment in the game where the game was unresponsive to my input (like I have with previous games) and the level designs largely eliminated the frustrations from the series where you'd accidentally run up a wall you didn't intend to go up on et al. I don't think they did anything different (though the new gun mechanic is very handy and works well) but instead of re-imagining the controls, they finally reimagined how the world should be around the controls they have. It's good game design and makes a much more enjoyable experience.

I've now played three games in the series (2,3,4) and it is the first one that I didn't run into many of those "area not available" walls they put up in previous games. I think I came across one once or twice, as opposed to constantly in the previous games. You are in the Caribbean and they do their best to make it feel like you are in the Caribbean. Very early in the game the whole map is available and it stays that way until the end. There is no loading time for boarding your ship and sailing to the many locations (what did Ubisoft claims, something like 40-70 locations) with only a few exceptions. There are plenty of fast-travel spots if you don't want to do all that sailing [and the Wii U loads the game relatively quickly] but I sometimes found myself going the long and slow route just to take in how impressive they made the environment. It is surely the most open world game I've played yet in this sense.

The story is the best B-movie material they've produced. I don't know your experience with the series but I find the modern story a waste of time and the Templar/Assassin's stuff stupid garbage. To be honest, I wouldn't have played 2 and 3 if they weren't a gift. It seems popular sentiment is that two was the better game- especially story wise. I had the opposite reaction. The protagonist of the 3 was interesting if tragic in his own schlock-y way; while 2 was a boring caricature of male power fantasies the plot and characters in 3 were much better. The fourth game blows both of them away. The characters are still pulpy, but it is embraced and kept clean and streamlined. The protagonist goals are well clarified and he doesn't go through any bizarre and sudden personality changes just to fit the plot. They also keep him and most of the pirates on the periphery of the Assassins/Templar stuff for the better. It worked out better and seemed more organic than their previous integration of historic characters into their silly stories. That being said, it doesn't hurt that it isn't prominent names like Leonardo DaVinci that are shoehorned into the fantasy. I have a much easier time thinking the governor of Cuba or the Dread pirate Roberts would be involved in some sort of half baked esoteric power grab.

The game may play differently depending on what you want to get out of it. I could see that the story missions not working as well if you decide to play all of them before the side missions. There is definitely a bit of jumping around that would be a weakness if the game didn't encourage you to experience the side stuff alongside the main missions as if it were an integrated whole. I couldn't tell you what it's like in that context. The main missions are improved but not much different that what you got in previous games. Ubisoft seems to hold back a bit to allow a little breathing as compared to the other ones.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

i tried one of the assassins creeds games, cant remember which - abandoned it in the first half hour, it just didnt grab me and the style of cinematic set pieces in it really grates on my approach to games.

it doesnt help that i rarely like 3rd person games and much prefer the immersion and lack of camera angle stupids in the 1st person viewpoint, the only problem with that being that 1st person games are usually dead boring shooters i cant be arsed with either :)

red dead redemption was the only 3rd person i can remember playing for a fair bit - that worked well because the lack of tight spaces didnt cause the 3rd persion camera to get annoying and it was also very pretty, but i didnt see it through to the end, the variety ran out.

all of whch reveals just how much i bother playing games now days, which is rarely.

the bet bits of the original halflife set the standard for what i do enjoy, the perfect mix of environmental puzzles, action and an evolving story all in 1st person and without too much learning and devotion to the game itself, a few basics and from then on you just play and the environment is rich enough to provide the content.

that means i really enjoyed portal 2, most of the bioshocks and got an awfully pleasant suprise from borderlands 1 & 2, it was the best kind of b grade action movie with daft humour and mindless fun, rage was ok but too short and easy, even for me

which brings me back to skyrim, it ticked most of those boxes except neither the puzzles nor the action are quite to the standards set by the above and on the playstation i find the menus are annoying and the massive load times on entering towns and rooms really ruin the experience when you need to spend so much time doing that to get the most out of it.

ive tried a few times since i posted but less each time and its not far away from going into the pile of "whatever", which is the biggest pile of games i have.

the most comical part of it is how stupid your AI assistant is, i spend most of the time reloading because the dumb thing either triggered the enemy when im trying to sneek or it ran straight infront of my magic hellstorm and got itself killed.

it mosts reminds me of the later fallout games - i did finish one of them but got bored with the next and skyrim is looking more like the latter.

it is chock full of too many characters and towns with stupid fantasy names you cant be arsed remembering and constantly lose track of aswell, you got that right :)

this is mitigated by all the missions elements having big arrows hovering over them so you can mostly ignore it all.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Enki »

Mr. Perfect wrote:I'm curious if you develop some kind of demo and pitch it to established companies, or if you take your concept and build it from the ground up or if big concerns just develop everything in house and you try to get those gigs, or whatever.
Most software projects are orders of magnitude more complex, time consuming and expensive than most people realize. And for computer gaming even moreso because a video game is one of the most complex pieces of software that anyone produces. There are a lot of game engine type things like Unity 3D that take out some of the heavy lifting, but it still requires a lot of effort. Much more than recording an album. I mean your standard little mobile app isn't as hard, but there is no money there because people will make more or less the same game that you made if it's an easy concept. Tons of games produced by tiny little shops that take a basic concept, i.e. tower defense and then sink the vast majority of their money into the design. They can cookie cutter template these games.

We are making a game right now but it's being financed by a marketing firm so we aren't on the hook for any of the risk. Of course we aren't on the hook for the creative either.

We're going to get into some more immersive interactive experience type stuff hopefully. We have the connections to make really deep stuff, just not the budgets...yet.
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Re: Computer Games

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noddy wrote:i found skyrim in the bargain bin and finally saw what the fuss was about, it was kinda cool but is losing me now ive played it a bit, the devotion to inventory management and menu digging in combat is beyond my meagre carefactor for such things.
Dishonored is the first Bethesda game that nailed it for me. It's got a really good flow and menu mechanic so you're not taken out of the game when you want to select an item. Very fun ninja stealth FPS RPG.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Ibrahim »

Enki wrote:
noddy wrote:i found skyrim in the bargain bin and finally saw what the fuss was about, it was kinda cool but is losing me now ive played it a bit, the devotion to inventory management and menu digging in combat is beyond my meagre carefactor for such things.
Dishonored is the first Bethesda game that nailed it for me. It's got a really good flow and menu mechanic so you're not taken out of the game when you want to select an item. Very fun ninja stealth FPS RPG.
Saw a nephew playing this. Very interesting setting as well. Kind of a Victorian version of the city from Half Life 2.

The Assassins Creed series should have been more like this game, but set in medieval Arabia/Renaissance Italy etc.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:i tried one of the assassins creeds games, cant remember which - abandoned it in the first half hour, it just didnt grab me and the style of cinematic set pieces in it really grates on my approach to games.

it doesnt help that i rarely like 3rd person games and much prefer the immersion and lack of camera angle stupids in the 1st person viewpoint, the only problem with that being that 1st person games are usually dead boring shooters i cant be arsed with either :)

red dead redemption was the only 3rd person i can remember playing for a fair bit - that worked well because the lack of tight spaces didnt cause the 3rd persion camera to get annoying and it was also very pretty, but i didnt see it through to the end, the variety ran out.


I gave Red Dead Redemption as a Christmas Gift to my brother last year but he's yet to touch it. I'm curious what he thinks about it- it seemed interesting, we both enjoyed the first game and I was curious how much it changed- it's like a reboot, no?

I gave up on 1st person games a long time ago because most are dead boring shooters, I don't like the immersion, or how most control.

How many of them have gone completely black and brown with muddy textures for the sake of "reality" and "grittiness?"

And do I need another game with an anti-hero protagonist making his way through a dystopian universe that I'm suppose to care about. For some reason, game designers assume that I'll "get" it because they lay it on thick how "morally gray" everything is (which usually betrays how morally underdeveloped the creators are when they present juvenile dilemmas) and that the character is "badass" because he's, like, the "good guy" but he smokes, curses and interrogates NPCs by holding them by the throat; which looked really funny up until very recently- so I guess designers have a good grip on choking mechanics now.) [that should be the side of the new console boxes: "Now with Better Choking Mechanics!"]

Your right though that the Portal games are great, as well as the first Bioshock; Half-Life of course (don't remember trying the sequel.)

all of whch reveals just how much i bother playing games now days, which is rarely.
the bet bits of the original halflife set the standard for what i do enjoy, the perfect mix of environmental puzzles, action and an evolving story all in 1st person and without too much learning and devotion to the game itself, a few basics and from then on you just play and the environment is rich enough to provide the content.

that means i really enjoyed portal 2, most of the bioshocks and got an awfully pleasant suprise from borderlands 1 & 2, it was the best kind of b grade action movie with daft humour and mindless fun, rage was ok but too short and easy, even for me

which brings me back to skyrim, it ticked most of those boxes except neither the puzzles nor the action are quite to the standards set by the above and on the playstation i find the menus are annoying and the massive load times on entering towns and rooms really ruin the experience when you need to spend so much time doing that to get the most out of it.

ive tried a few times since i posted but less each time and its not far away from going into the pile of "whatever", which is the biggest pile of games i have.

the most comical part of it is how stupid your AI assistant is, i spend most of the time reloading because the dumb thing either triggered the enemy when im trying to sneek or it ran straight infront of my magic hellstorm and got itself killed.

it mosts reminds me of the later fallout games - i did finish one of them but got bored with the next and skyrim is looking more like the latter.

it is chock full of too many characters and towns with stupid fantasy names you cant be arsed remembering and constantly lose track of aswell, you got that right :)

this is mitigated by all the missions elements having big arrows hovering over them so you can mostly ignore it all.
Yeah, it seems to have all the trappings of western rpgs that I could never bother with.

That being said, I don't particularly care for japanese rpgs either. ;) But I'm a bit more sentimental about some of them since my mother was a really big fan and we'd play them together. (Well, she'd do most of the adventuring, grinding bits and I'd swoop in for the tougher boss battles.)
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