San Andreas is certainly the best when it comes to the variety of music on offer.
Your video game hot take(s) thread
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Technically true, when San Anrdeas is compared to the other PS2 titles, but 2 actually has the most music variety. What helps is that GTA2 really doesn't use many mainstream artists. All of the artists on the soundtrack are either lesser known, underground, or indie. You have rap/hip-hop, rock, hard rock, country rock, rap and rock, classical, blues, and techno music. Go to YT right now and pick any random song from the GTA2, and each one is distinct from one another.
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Last I checked, Vice City didn't have reggae in it. GTA III might have had some reggae, but it's been too long for me at this point. I know San Andreas did. Keep in mind though, GTA2 was in 1999, and not many video game soundtracks had that much variety at the time. Especially when it came to licensed songs. Sure, these are underground or indie songs, but they were still licensed out.
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There are long games that definitely do buck the trend and justify their length well, but I would say that the majority of them do not.
MMOs are more about the social aspect, and they're also constantly getting new updates which means ever changing mechanics. Loot games are similar in that the loot tends to significantly change the mechanics of the game, thereby allowing things to be fresh as long as you're interested in trying new builds, especially in aRPGs that have seasonal content that can significantly change up mechanics.
I think the strength of GTA soundtracks since GTAII has been the variety of music they've offered... You can usually find at least one in-game radio station that doesn't make you want to jam knitting needles in your ears. In most games with licenced music I end up turning the music off because it just shits me to tears.
Having a gander at the daymare: 1994 Sandcastle game description...
Hollup! Critically acclaimed Daymare: 1998, you say? Big if true.
Hmm. Someone's been telling porkies again, haven't they?
Hollup! Critically acclaimed Daymare: 1998, you say? Big if true.
Hmm. Someone's been telling porkies again, haven't they?
I know Daymare has its fans, and it was made by the people who tried to make their own unofficial RE2 fan remake, but the game does have problems. I really don't know who they're trying to fool with this.
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Maybe it's like what bad movies do, where they pay one "publication" to say nice things about it and then plaster a blurb on the poster.
I was listening to this on the way to work and at this point in the conversation they talk about franchises with yearly releases, wondering why people buy into that, especially with sports games:
(I hope I did this right, it's at 24 minutes in, I tried to link right to that spot)
These are smart game guys who know a lot, but it just struck me how I think they missed something so obvious and it's because professional games people are so out of touch of "normies."
My hot take is: there's nothing wrong with the yearly release franchises! Sports games like Madden and the no-longer-FIFA, Call of Duty, and yes Assassins Creed (not yearly any more but still). My corollary hotter sub-take is that these franchise actual offer good quality- but I am using quality in its engineering sense which I'll explain in a bit.
Sometimes- we just like a thing. And only one IP or franchise delivers that specific thing, and we want more of it. It's like another season of a beloved TV show. Not all of us are looking for freaking art or innovation all the time, here. It boggles my mind how this is so hard a concept to understand. It doesn't make fans suckers or stupid or ignorant about other or better games- it's ok to not give a shit, honestly.
For sports games, the value of the yearly release is the updated rosters. Madden uses current actual players, who of course come and go. I think it's fair to assume that many if not the vast majority of Madden players also actually watch NFL football, bet on the games, play fantasy football, etc (I recently had a conversation with someone where I mentioned that I no longer watch football and he asked "what do you do on Sundays?") Sports matter to people! Gamrs don't care, that's fine, but it's real. So you play Madden and of course it's cooler with the same players represented in your game. Plus you're playing with your friends so having the same, and latest, version, makes obvious sense.
It's funny that in the linked podcast one of them does mention roster updates without realizing how crucial that is, and that's just because games people aren't into this.
Call of Duty gets mocked for it being the same thing every year but... so what? It's not actually the same- the graphics are better, the campaigns are new- it's an iteration. Making fun of it for not being radically different or just going away is extremely snobby. I have and will continue harshly criticize nostalgia and unoriginal remakes and continuations but that is different than iterating on known experiences. New Call of Duty games, AFAIK, aren't trying to tap into some weak nostalgia or promising anything they aren't- it's like, hey, you like to do a war, here's another war.
As for quality- what I mean is, that stuff works the way it's supposed to. I think last year's Madden had some bugs and it was a big freaking scandal. For a yearly release franchise that's existed for, what, 30 years- think about how remarkable that is. Every year they release a game that freaking works. You can dismiss that because they just redo the same thing but, yes, sure.. every year they give people what they want well. Quality in this sense is not the same thing as innovation and originality. The Assassins Creed franchised sacrificed creativity for quality when they switched to the "RPG mechanics" model- I have not experienced a single bug in AC I can remember in 7 years. I rarely see complaints about quality for Call of Duty games, the complaints are creative choices.
It may seem silly to some that a person would buy PS5 and just play NBA2K and MLB the Show but it's not a wrong or bad choice for entertainment at all.
(I hope I did this right, it's at 24 minutes in, I tried to link right to that spot)
These are smart game guys who know a lot, but it just struck me how I think they missed something so obvious and it's because professional games people are so out of touch of "normies."
My hot take is: there's nothing wrong with the yearly release franchises! Sports games like Madden and the no-longer-FIFA, Call of Duty, and yes Assassins Creed (not yearly any more but still). My corollary hotter sub-take is that these franchise actual offer good quality- but I am using quality in its engineering sense which I'll explain in a bit.
Sometimes- we just like a thing. And only one IP or franchise delivers that specific thing, and we want more of it. It's like another season of a beloved TV show. Not all of us are looking for freaking art or innovation all the time, here. It boggles my mind how this is so hard a concept to understand. It doesn't make fans suckers or stupid or ignorant about other or better games- it's ok to not give a shit, honestly.
For sports games, the value of the yearly release is the updated rosters. Madden uses current actual players, who of course come and go. I think it's fair to assume that many if not the vast majority of Madden players also actually watch NFL football, bet on the games, play fantasy football, etc (I recently had a conversation with someone where I mentioned that I no longer watch football and he asked "what do you do on Sundays?") Sports matter to people! Gamrs don't care, that's fine, but it's real. So you play Madden and of course it's cooler with the same players represented in your game. Plus you're playing with your friends so having the same, and latest, version, makes obvious sense.
It's funny that in the linked podcast one of them does mention roster updates without realizing how crucial that is, and that's just because games people aren't into this.
Call of Duty gets mocked for it being the same thing every year but... so what? It's not actually the same- the graphics are better, the campaigns are new- it's an iteration. Making fun of it for not being radically different or just going away is extremely snobby. I have and will continue harshly criticize nostalgia and unoriginal remakes and continuations but that is different than iterating on known experiences. New Call of Duty games, AFAIK, aren't trying to tap into some weak nostalgia or promising anything they aren't- it's like, hey, you like to do a war, here's another war.
As for quality- what I mean is, that stuff works the way it's supposed to. I think last year's Madden had some bugs and it was a big freaking scandal. For a yearly release franchise that's existed for, what, 30 years- think about how remarkable that is. Every year they release a game that freaking works. You can dismiss that because they just redo the same thing but, yes, sure.. every year they give people what they want well. Quality in this sense is not the same thing as innovation and originality. The Assassins Creed franchised sacrificed creativity for quality when they switched to the "RPG mechanics" model- I have not experienced a single bug in AC I can remember in 7 years. I rarely see complaints about quality for Call of Duty games, the complaints are creative choices.
It may seem silly to some that a person would buy PS5 and just play NBA2K and MLB the Show but it's not a wrong or bad choice for entertainment at all.
The thing that causes reactions from “gamer” people is these are just that; iterations. Especially sports games. One one hand it’s understandable. They’re sports games so there’s only so much they can iterate each year. But OTOH, they’re essentially charging up to $100 a year for a roster update and small improvements that normal games would typically see in a big patch.
CoD ain’t much different. Sure they have new campaigns but they are what, 8-10 hours of generic shooting and cinematics? The primary appeal is MP, and that is your general map pack with game modes that don’t change much from year to year. I’m sure the people who get every game have their favorites, but ehh. It’s a different mindset. I guess if thats all they really play then it might be a decent value to them, but everyone else can’t really be blamed for thinking it’s a rip.
Problem with that: Madden just has roster updates, the gameplay is just generic and homogenized gruel. Not to mention, EA bought out the NLF licenses in the early 2000s, meaning no other developer could make them. Leading to over 2 decades of the same shit over and over, with slightly prettier/"realistic" graphics, with some games being broken at launch. At that point, stop charging $60-70+ each year, and just make the game F2P with the microtransX. The annual release is a scam and you know it. At least MLB The Show games actually have an arcade mode, knows how to have fun, and still treats their customers with respect and not as rubes/thundering dumb asses.
AssCreed and COD may have different games, but each iteration varied or got worst due to rushing game out and crunch. Both series have lost their identity and don't even know what they are even more. While Madden and Fifa is much worse, COD ain't much better, and neither is AssCreed.
Took the words right of my mouth.
I sometimes grab a new FIFA or NHL when they're out at like 75-90% off... and it depends on what actual upgrades they've made to the bits I like (mostly single player career stuff... and honestly that shit rarely gets any upgrades, more often they chop shit out).
As for roster updates, yeah all the EA sport titles have roster updates. Some execs probably regret that they let that become a thing back in the day but they'd be crucified by their playerbase if they tried to take it out now (especially with FIFA/EA FC because soccer has 2 trade periods a year and the ability to loan-out players).
Honestly, the yearly releases serve as a forced annual reset on whatever Ultimate Teams bullshit the specific franchise line pushes... and that's the sort of crap they could make F2P and still make cash hand over fist.
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I think there's a big difference between a sports game and something like call of duty or assassin's creed.
For a modern sports game a roster update could easily be DLC. There is no reason that Madden needs to be a yearly release if the only significant change is a roster update. This wasn't the case 20 years ago, but these days pumping out a roster update in a 20 gig DLC instead of selling a completely new game would be incredibly easy for a studio, and would be better for customers. Roster update is not a legitimate reason for a new game if that's the only thing that's changing, even if it's an important change to the players themselves.
You're right about Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed though. They're "the same game" every year, in that every year they have the same themes, but the games themselves are still hugely different from entry to entry.
Take Call of Duty, yes every year you play a soldier man and shoot some guns, but the games are very different from each other. Sometimes they're in the past, sometimes the present, sometimes the future. They have different characters and stories. They often have very different looks and mechanics. You could look at Call of Duty Black Ops 1 and Call of Duty Black Ops 3 side by side and be hard pressed so say that they're from the same series. One is about the Cold War and is grounded, dark, and gritty and the other takes place in the future with jetpacks, wallrunning, superpowers and colorful characters and maps.
Or compare Assassin's Creed 2 and Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Yes, they're both games where you play as a guy in a hood who climbs on things, but the games have a very different feel with very different mechanics.
The only people who think that Call of Duty is the same game every year are people who don't play Call of Duty. The people who think that Madden is the same game every year are correct though. Madden is the same game every year BY DESIGN.
You can't really add more mechanics, change up rule-sets, or anything like that because it has to be NFL football. You can't change up the time period, you can't change the locations, because the game has to be the current football season. Football is the same every year, so Madden has to be the same every year. The only thing that's allowed to change is the roster. Unless there really is a significant jump in graphical fidelity from one year to another, a significant change in the game engine, or significant changes to how the game handles physics or animations there doesn't seem to be a reason that a new game would need to exist and couldn't just be DLC. And it's the same for every sports franchise. Unless the game is running on a new engine there's no reason for a new game to be released every year because there is nothing mechanically different about them. If each game is just a roster update then let it just be a roster update and stop pretending it's a new game.
The people who buy Madden games every year aren't idiots, they just want to play their football game with their new players in the new football season. EA pretending that each Madden game is a "new game" are basically charlatans though.
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Not really buying that, you can stretch prettyfar within the platform of the same game to have jetpacks or whatever. While certainly not a counter-example to monetization, look at the sheer piles of nonsense thats been stacked on GTA 5. (Or the sheer mind boggle stuff thats been piled onto Warframe over 10 years)
The choice to not do it as DLC is probably a 50/50. One half being that its tough to market DLC or map packs as a full price thing (see Destiny's recent fumble in PR where they basically copped to not adding PvP maps because it was too hard to sell vs story missions). The other being that when you do do map packs, you immediately split the playerbase into the haves and the have nots of them. And that roads already been gone down and had obvious negative effects on the games that did it
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I'm saying that mechanically the games are different enough that claiming "her der it's the same game every year" is silly. It's like saying that Castle Wolfenstein and Doom are the same. They're just similar at a cursory glance.
Saying Call of Duty is the same every year is like your mom calling every video game a "Nintendo."
Remember, there's a bunch of different studios that make Call of Duty, it's not a homogeneous product. Each Call of Duty is developed by a different studio, usually on a 3 year cycle, and they do actually feel and function differently between the studios. There are some unifying design elements between them, but I would say that there's as much variety between the various call of duty games as there is among "military shooters" as a whole.
Call of Duty Cold War is a gritty "historical" spy thriller including stealth missions where you do things like sneak through East Berlin, and Black Ops 3 and infinite Warfare are basically Titanfall without the giant robots. They are very different games.
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This is tangential but your point about historical settings made me wonder why there’s never been (that I know of) DLC rosters for FIFA, Madden and NBA Pro that are of historical teams from the 70s and 60s. Like that sounds like something sports geeks would pay for.
Re: Madden, i see everyone’s points but i don’t think any of us play it? So while i stressed the value of roster updates, there’s likely more in each update. Like the damn rules do keep changing every year in NFL.
Releasing every year instead of DLCs removes retesting and fixing legacy code.
I mean of course it’s the greatest profitability model, my greater point is that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value to the players or that people who buy it are suckers.
Releasing every year instead of DLCs removes retesting and fixing legacy code.
I mean of course it’s the greatest profitability model, my greater point is that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value to the players or that people who buy it are suckers.
My brother played it, and even he got sick of it. Big bro was a Madden fan for a long time, until the early to mid 2010s. He won't even touch the stuff now. He'll still play NBA 2K (which has its own problems similar to Madden) every now and then, but he plays more than sports games.
Not really; especially when these games do get released broken, or have exploitive DLCs every other year and every year respectively. FIFA is not exempt from this either, and it's actually even worse with the exploitation of DLC and FOMO. The gameplay quality being "good/decent/functional" don't mean shit, when it's out to exploit those with addictive tendencies, or prey on kids and teens who don't know or understand the value of money.
‘Exploits Kids For Profit’: Multibillion-Dollar Loot Box Industry Under Fire As Campaigners Urge Regulators To Investigate FIFA Video Game Maker
Loot boxes, a controversial but popular video game feature, accounted for $15 billion in revenue industry wide in 2020, according to Juniper Research.
www.forbes.com
Teen spends over $8000 on FIFA on Xbox, highlighting EA's predatory game design practices once again
A distraught parent on U.K. parenting forum Mumsnet shines a spotlight on EA's predatory game design.
www.windowscentral.com
FIFA Game Loot Boxes Deserve FTC Probe, Kids’ Advocates Say (2)
Children’s advocacy groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. over its marketing of loot boxes to young players of its popular FIFA: Ultimate Team soccer game.
That is nothing more than weak "beauty is the eye of the beholder" defense. There is no value to these games when they're constantly doing shit like this, and taking up space in second-hand gaming stores. Tecmo Bowl, NFL Blitz, and the early NFL 2K games have more value than any modern Madden title
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