Are next gen games getting shorter?
- Thread starter Zera
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that really added something to the converstation... (sarcasm)
Epic (Gears of War) did a pretty good job, actually, certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It's only flaws are that it is based around macho, macho men, who don't even look human apart from their faces (artistic license allows for it though) and a plot that isn't exactly... original.
Epic (Gears of War) did a pretty good job, actually, certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It's only flaws are that it is based around macho, macho men, who don't even look human apart from their faces (artistic license allows for it though) and a plot that isn't exactly... original.
Yes save for the laughably weak AI, and terrible gameplay; it is truly sad that they somehow managed to take a perfectly functioning cover mechanic and destroy it so thoroughly, then force the issue by removing the target reticle unless one looked down the sight of a weapon, or took cover. Then there are the things you point out, though I would say that the character designs in Gears are actually of a closet homosexual nature. They are so macho that they all strike me as trying too hard to appear manly to actually be manly in the first place.
Sorry...but the grav gun is a freaking gimmick...... it felt out of place in HL2 was only so useful in the few puzzle/no wepaon zones it was placed in.Alex Karls said:
The adventure element was removed from it for the most part,the vehicle levels felt weak, the level design is blander than it should be...I dunno I feel HL2 could have been done better but even so tis better than most other series that have sold out completely(Doom,Quake,Unreal).
the only game I can think of to be as well or better built than HL2 is maybe fear and EA is looking to kill that series dead....
Ouch, but you have a point there is no reason to remove the targeting article without making it a choice alot of things should be a choice in games when a dev pulls off the wall sht you can at least chose to flip a toggle in the options menu and fix the some of the crap they wrout, options are everything in controlling the controls of a game the lack of them shows that they have not the time nor care to let players decide how to play their crap feasts....shadow skill said:
Isn't it a Japanese thing/saying the more manly you are the more gay you are, prehaps they should have done it in fluffly macho style (the game name is a loss to me right now but tis that shooter that has 2 flying muscle bound men in it, the whole thing screams macho gay)
However infuriating it was to play it, i still thought it was a pretty good way to go about it, real realistic.shadow skill said:
Of course, Realism isnt a valid argument in a world where lizardlike Commando's are crawling out of the ground and shafting mankind. but still, its kinda cool.
EDIT: I felt the grav gun was a gimmick, and i'm irritated that Episode 1 and 2 focussed on it so heavily. I felt the grav gun puzzles were frankly.. I dunno, they felt forced.
HL2 was originally intended to be much more epic than it turned out, however time constraints, the beta leak, and sheer perfectionism all combined to cut corners till it came to a nearly perfect circle. Not to say that the game was perfect, but there wasn't that much more they could remove from it before it wouldn't be worthy of the title, "half-life". They were going to have a cyberpunk theme with continuous dark skies caused by a ridiculous air poisoning factory that merely served the purpose of making the Combine seem even more incredibly evil. Also they were going to have many more Xen forms of wildlife that don't appear, like the bullsquid or hound eye, or either of the 2 creatures you see in the citadel during the "willy wonka" style trip before the final challenge. I'm sort of glad they ditched the cloudy sky bit and the re-processing plant, but I would have liked to have seen the original intro sequence where you board a razor train from an Overwatch Outpost in the woods (which is still mentioned by the woman waiting at the gate for her husband) and then go to City 17, hitting a Gargantuan on the way, hence showing why the razor train looks like a giant razor blade, other than to scare people half to death. I would also have liked more combine tech around and possibly some full combine buildings other than the citadel, as right now it looks like beige, beige, an more concrete color beige in the city, which gets a bit boring, whereas Combine blues combating the beigeness of the city might have been more interesting.
There seemed to be alot of things that they just couldn't get working correctly and tossed away, like the hopwire, which to this day is rather cool looking and useful for blocking doorways (nova prospect might have been a tad bit easier with this, but it was already damned bloody difficult unless you grav gunned the 2 turrets from before all the way to the second turret and defense area and took every heavy object you could find to bar the entrance way till the AI figures how to use grenades to unblock the doorways. The hydra looked awesome, but they felt it wasn't fun to fight, so they tossed it out, but it could have been quite entertaining as a sort of indestructible danger much like the various trains, explosions, and other unpreventable dodging situations that more often than not end up killing your foes rather than you. The female assassin was badass, albeit not quite fitting with the rest of the Combine menagerie, but still would have been something entertaining to fight, much like the current Hunter.
The grav gun may be a gimmick, but it isn't useless. By far I almost never had to fire any rounds till I got to late Nova Prospect because I simply had so much fun chucking stuff at enemies, and it usually worked. Hell, everything is a bit of a gimmick when it's new, but they're getting better at making levels around it. One thing they could do is give a little more control over the object, possibly like garies mod where you can rotate it. So many objects would have made perfect shields were it not for the fact that they were turned the wrong way.
There seemed to be alot of things that they just couldn't get working correctly and tossed away, like the hopwire, which to this day is rather cool looking and useful for blocking doorways (nova prospect might have been a tad bit easier with this, but it was already damned bloody difficult unless you grav gunned the 2 turrets from before all the way to the second turret and defense area and took every heavy object you could find to bar the entrance way till the AI figures how to use grenades to unblock the doorways. The hydra looked awesome, but they felt it wasn't fun to fight, so they tossed it out, but it could have been quite entertaining as a sort of indestructible danger much like the various trains, explosions, and other unpreventable dodging situations that more often than not end up killing your foes rather than you. The female assassin was badass, albeit not quite fitting with the rest of the Combine menagerie, but still would have been something entertaining to fight, much like the current Hunter.
The grav gun may be a gimmick, but it isn't useless. By far I almost never had to fire any rounds till I got to late Nova Prospect because I simply had so much fun chucking stuff at enemies, and it usually worked. Hell, everything is a bit of a gimmick when it's new, but they're getting better at making levels around it. One thing they could do is give a little more control over the object, possibly like garies mod where you can rotate it. So many objects would have made perfect shields were it not for the fact that they were turned the wrong way.
Except that the whole idea to the system was you aren't really going to be aiming well without cover. The complaints some of you guys give, particularly Shadow Skill, makes it sound as if you have absolutely no clue that the purpose of the game was to redefine a cover system to play more as you would in a real war situation. Which you do. No, there's no targeting reticule when you're not behind cover, but you're not going to be very steady in such a situation anyway. You're going to be laying down some random bullets to hope to distract the enemy enough that you can get out of there.
I don't believe I'm even trying to explain this system to a group of supposedly intelligent people. Epic came right out and said all this before the game even came out, really. I mean, open up the instruction manual and Cliffy B tells you the idea for the gameplay came from when he was playing a game of paintball and realized that the first person shooter has done a horrible job of simulating combat.
Sometimes I think you guys hate something for the most idiotic reasons and call it smarts.
While I'm grabbing a lot through GameFly, I actually own more this generation than I did for the PSX era, or for the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era combined. I have somewhere between 12-15 games on my Xbox 360 alone, and I'll be grabbing CoD4 and Assassin's Creed two weeks in a row for the system. That's not taking into consideration the three Wii games I still need to grab.
While I'm renting a whole lot of games through GameFly (some of which get returned instantly as I catch up with reviews, such as Jericho), I'm still buying plenty of titles.
I think the problem a lot of people on these forums are having is they aren't finding much replay value in a lot of their titles. When I look at my library of titles, there are plenty I'd like to play through again once I get the time. I mean, that's what I did when I was younger and had the NES and SNES, after all. I must've beaten Mega Man X a thousand times, but to this day I still find it enjoyable to plug in and kill an afternoon with. Same even goes for Master of Orion 2. Played it plenty, but it's a nice way to kill a few hours with despite how often I've played it.
Again, I'm not worried about how short a game is. I'm worried about how much replay value it has. If it is both short and lacks replay value, then we have a problem. However, games like Gears and Halo may be short, but they can be replayed often. Even Bioshock, longer than both of those titles, has replay value to it.
ccesarano said:
To be fair, you don't need to be behind cover of any sort to bring up the reticule. You simply need to push the aiming button on your controller, and you can bring it up at any time. This is to simulate the fact that firing an automatic rifle from the hip is horrifically inaccurate. Then there's the fact that no militia run and gun the way most FPS games play. Cover is integral to survival in close quarters combat. The Call of Duty games work much the same way. The only difference is there is no cover button, you have to manually assume cover. Also note that the Call of Duty games require you to aim down the sight to increase accuracy. Yet I've never heard complaints about the mechanic in that title.
Hmm perhaps I think it odd to contrive a reason to use cover when other games integrate a cover mechanic properly using a third person view without removing aiming indicators. Keep in mind that Gears is a third person shooter so you really cannot use the gun models to even help you aim like you can in Call of Duty. Players do not need to be told that cover is integral to survival, it's obvious but what happens in situations where there simply is no cover and you want to put rounds in the general direction of the enemy and you are: A. Looking behind your character rather than through his or her eyes. B. Forced to look down sight which slows you to a crawl since the purpose of that is to shoot accurately.
The fact that you bought that bullshit from the Gears team just shows that you need to think more about the game itself. If they wanted to make it more realistic by removing the reticle they should have made the game an FPS so you could actually see the weapon you were holding. I have no problem putting rounds down range at someone while moving to a hiding spot, unlike in Gears where I am stuck looking behind my character and unable to accurately guage the direction because I cannot even see the fucking gun.
Would you like a game where they included a "lean" to the right for a gun requiring you to adjust for the lean? Can you imagine the spatial distortion for right handed people since the character would have to be holding the gun in their left hand for the gun to have this slight lean? It will become orders of magnitude worse when you start talking about melee attacks. Would you like to swing a sword with your right hand and have the cut come from the upper right hand corner down to the left?
Introducing spatial distortions like those found in Gears does not make for realistic gameplay, it just makes for needlessly fustrating gameplay. It also does not help that the Gears team made the descison to make cover a button press on the controller rather than a contextual event related to the sticks.
Now here is the problem with this..When you change the sticks from the default settings, particularly when you use the Southpaw layout. You can't manipulate the right stick and hold down on A at the same time so it becomes very difficult to move through cover, it is effectively impossible to run since that is also bound to A and there is no way in hell you will be able to hold down A and manipulate the stick with your right hand....
So lets see we have unnessecary spatial distortion, utterly shot button mapping..Oh yes such idiotic reasons.
The fact that you bought that bullshit from the Gears team just shows that you need to think more about the game itself. If they wanted to make it more realistic by removing the reticle they should have made the game an FPS so you could actually see the weapon you were holding. I have no problem putting rounds down range at someone while moving to a hiding spot, unlike in Gears where I am stuck looking behind my character and unable to accurately guage the direction because I cannot even see the fucking gun.
Would you like a game where they included a "lean" to the right for a gun requiring you to adjust for the lean? Can you imagine the spatial distortion for right handed people since the character would have to be holding the gun in their left hand for the gun to have this slight lean? It will become orders of magnitude worse when you start talking about melee attacks. Would you like to swing a sword with your right hand and have the cut come from the upper right hand corner down to the left?
Introducing spatial distortions like those found in Gears does not make for realistic gameplay, it just makes for needlessly fustrating gameplay. It also does not help that the Gears team made the descison to make cover a button press on the controller rather than a contextual event related to the sticks.
Now here is the problem with this..When you change the sticks from the default settings, particularly when you use the Southpaw layout. You can't manipulate the right stick and hold down on A at the same time so it becomes very difficult to move through cover, it is effectively impossible to run since that is also bound to A and there is no way in hell you will be able to hold down A and manipulate the stick with your right hand....
So lets see we have unnessecary spatial distortion, utterly shot button mapping..Oh yes such idiotic reasons.
Yes, I'm sure making cover context sensitive to the analog stick would really help movement. Oh look, every time I pass anything resembling cover, my character suddenly sticks to it, intended or no. Thank you, no, I'll stick with the requirement to push a button to assume cover rather than have the movement in the game ruined. And you call Epic's decisions idiotic?
The game does not stop you from firing from the hip either. I do that plenty with the shotgun, and quite effectively at short range. The reticule is to simulate the use of careful aiming, something you can not do when shooting from the hip (have you ever fired a gun in your life?). I can also see my weapon just dandy, even with HDR lighting applied for extra sheen! May I suggest a visit to the optometrist. Might I also suggest you stop using south paw as an excuse, I'm left handed, and I have no issues with the control scheme. Never mind that left handed individuals are in the minority (In 1998, a study suggested that approximately 7 to 10 percent of the adult population was left-handed - Hardyck, C., & Petrinovich, L. F. (1977). "Left-handedness", Psychological Bulletin, 84, 385-404.).
The game does not stop you from firing from the hip either. I do that plenty with the shotgun, and quite effectively at short range. The reticule is to simulate the use of careful aiming, something you can not do when shooting from the hip (have you ever fired a gun in your life?). I can also see my weapon just dandy, even with HDR lighting applied for extra sheen! May I suggest a visit to the optometrist. Might I also suggest you stop using south paw as an excuse, I'm left handed, and I have no issues with the control scheme. Never mind that left handed individuals are in the minority (In 1998, a study suggested that approximately 7 to 10 percent of the adult population was left-handed - Hardyck, C., & Petrinovich, L. F. (1977). "Left-handedness", Psychological Bulletin, 84, 385-404.).
Oh guess what its nice that you don't have issues with the control scheme but ask yourself this question: Why do you think the cover button is bound to A and not say the up button on the Dpad on the default control scheme? It couldn't be because it would be next to impossible to operate the mechanic using the same hand that one is using to move around. Why do you think that melee and reload always end up on the right side of the controller when the left stick is used for movement? What the hell is the point of control options that punish people for actually using them in the first place? How does that create good gameplay? The number of people percentage wise is totally irrelevant to the discussion because they included the option to use such a scheme and then broke it.
This is pathetic its a simple fact that the control scheme is broken if you actually use anything other than the default but the best you can come up with is "Well I don't have a problem, so there must not be a problem This game rules!!!"
I could make a buildig where you open doors from wider areas into very narrow ones....and I would be an idiot for doing so because such a design is really nothing more than a death trap waiting to happen because it will greatly restrict the flow of traffic to exits in an emergency. The problem exists irrespective of whether or not it bothers you.
Oh by the way seven percent of 6.5 billion is around 450million, and ten percent is 650million both of these numbers are higher than the number of people inside the United States, so if you want to argue the minority bit you may want to rethink that since there are in fact people who describe themselves as right handed who use Southpaw layouts in addition to the millions of potential customers that may or may not end up getting screwed because the team does not take five minutes to actually look at their layout and adjust it accordingly or do what PC does and just give the user control.
This is pathetic its a simple fact that the control scheme is broken if you actually use anything other than the default but the best you can come up with is "Well I don't have a problem, so there must not be a problem This game rules!!!"
I could make a buildig where you open doors from wider areas into very narrow ones....and I would be an idiot for doing so because such a design is really nothing more than a death trap waiting to happen because it will greatly restrict the flow of traffic to exits in an emergency. The problem exists irrespective of whether or not it bothers you.
Oh by the way seven percent of 6.5 billion is around 450million, and ten percent is 650million both of these numbers are higher than the number of people inside the United States, so if you want to argue the minority bit you may want to rethink that since there are in fact people who describe themselves as right handed who use Southpaw layouts in addition to the millions of potential customers that may or may not end up getting screwed because the team does not take five minutes to actually look at their layout and adjust it accordingly or do what PC does and just give the user control.
Actually, what's pathetic is the need to nitpick something because you've decided nobody else should be able to enjoy it, namely since you do not. Are you equally upset that many mice are designed with right handed use in mind (or for that matter most products on the market)? Or do your complaints only lie with console titles? And what do the numbers have to do with it? Left handed individuals are still the minority (650 million vs 6.5 billion - hmmm - sorry your spin is fruitless as a minority is still a minority). I have no more time for this, I won't dwell on things that I dislike, life is too short.
Thanks to an experimental version of Lasek surgery, I now have a targeting reticule at all times. @ZippyDSMlee, the game you were thinking about was Cho Aniki. I saw something called Broken Pixels where they played this game. It was hilarious.
But anyway, I just brought up Gears of War as a possible insight to the development process. I think the thread has kind of gone off on a tangent over this game. I agree it's good. I agree it's flawed. And I definitely think it is really short.
But anyway, I just brought up Gears of War as a possible insight to the development process. I think the thread has kind of gone off on a tangent over this game. I agree it's good. I agree it's flawed. And I definitely think it is really short.
Its alot easier to find a mouse that doesn't have a right hand contour, I'm also old enough to remember when mice were not contoured at all. Oh and I use a trackball and there is not one Operating System that does not let me set the mouse buttons as I feel like setting them so that really is a non issue. Think about how many games are sold if a single game gets three million sales that is considered a major success so if you want to start throwing out percentages then you have to realize that doing the dumb things that Gears did with their control mapping would be more or less equivalent to just not releasing the game in the United States which is one of the biggest markets out there for these things. In other words don't throw out statistics unless you actually have some concept of the numbers actually involved.
But you can't really dispute how broken the thing actually is given those settings so you have to accuse people of nitpicking and spinning things.
Oh and here is a little news for you but I can't think of a single PC shooter (Even a shitty port of a console game like Bioshock.) that does not allow full keyboard remapping so even if the mouse has a right hand contour its still relatively easy to aim and shoot. (Even though using a right contoured mouse does affect my ability to aim correctly because of the way the thumb rests on the mouse etc.)
But you can't really dispute how broken the thing actually is given those settings so you have to accuse people of nitpicking and spinning things.
Oh and here is a little news for you but I can't think of a single PC shooter (Even a shitty port of a console game like Bioshock.) that does not allow full keyboard remapping so even if the mouse has a right hand contour its still relatively easy to aim and shoot. (Even though using a right contoured mouse does affect my ability to aim correctly because of the way the thumb rests on the mouse etc.)
That's gotta be one of the most useless things I've ever seen anyone say. I'm all for supporting minorities, and 7 to 10% of a market is large enough of a minority for me to care as a business-person, but equating the influence of the left-handed market to the US market as a group of people that you want to sell videogames to... well, that's ridiculous. The US has a disproportionate share of the videogame market compared to their percentage of the world population (as do most developed countries), so the only way your statement holds up is if you have a study showing that while lefties are only 7-10% of the general world population, they make up a disproportionately higher percentage of the videogame market. Otherwise, its a far cry from "more or less equivalent".shadow skill said:
Geoffrey42 the point I was making was that even with that range of numbers it would be equivalent based on those numbers alone to just ignoring the US entirely. The fact of the matter is that there is really no way to know how many people will actually want to play a game using alternative so it is not a good idea to not include those types of options. In other words the stats regarding the number of people who describe themselves as left handed are useless as a justification for the lack of, or broken nature of a given control scheme. If you read my whole comment with respect to the stats you should notice this, it is the sentence you left out of your quote.
Why is it that pc games never seem to have this problem? Do you really think that they could not get away with just locking things into whatever layout they decided worked for them? The keys on the keyboard really do not even matter because the only thing that is important is the physical location of the keys not what they actually are.
Why is it that pc games never seem to have this problem? Do you really think that they could not get away with just locking things into whatever layout they decided worked for them? The keys on the keyboard really do not even matter because the only thing that is important is the physical location of the keys not what they actually are.