One problem with the column.. was there anyone out there who actually did think X-Com looked good?
E3 Killjoy 2010
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
"It was near future, and anime styled"
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What the hell? I just watched that and I can tell you that is definitely NOT anime style.
That looks much more like American cartoon/comic style to me.
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What the hell? I just watched that and I can tell you that is definitely NOT anime style.
That looks much more like American cartoon/comic style to me.
"Anime styled" is a better description than the '50s Bioshock style they're going for. Even then, I can see where "anime" came into mind what with spiky hair.Legendsmith said:
I seriously expect XCOM (Not X-Com) to fail. It'll be a boring, repetitive, annoying game that will sit around a 74 on Metacritic because we all know that anything under 80 is an immediate failure.
This whole thing over motion controls makes me facepalm. It didn't work for the Wii, how will it work on the two more mainstream platforms here? If hardcore gamers aren't going to adopt, how will it take off? It seems like the 6-person family across the street is more of the gaming industry's target these days than me, the guy who spends WAY too much on games because I'm ****ing stupid. Despite what Kevin Butler may have said, I seriously think Sony and Microsoft are starting to date other people, even after the marraige.
Escapist and Shacknews are the only places I know that have said anything intelligent about this game. Can't believe I used to pay to read PC gamer all those years ago or maybe it has just gone really downhill recently.SlyderEST said:
Dear me do your research next time. As many people have said TOR has tons of gameplay footage out there, some of it coming close to a year old.
With all due respect, Shamus, all the points you covered in your article preety much reflect the thoughts a lot of people had of the games/devices mentioned. So effectively, with the possible exception of people looking forward to The Old Republic, you weren't a "killjoy" for anybody.Shamus Young said:
Anyway, I think there are two reasons why the 3DS isn't receiving more flak from the public:
1. Nintendo is not forcing 3D gaming down people's throats. With the Wii and DS, it often felt like Nintendo was trying too hard to sell their unique control schemes to people. They practically made it a requirement for game developers to implement the motion sensor/stylus touch-screen mechanic, no matter how convoluted and tacked on it may be for that specific game. A lot of people were turned-off by this as a result.
In this case, however, Nintendo implemented a slider with which you can determine the amount of 3D depth you want to have and you can even shut it off completely. As such, it remains a selling point for those that are interested, while the rest can focus on other aspects of the handheld without the 3D aspect forced on them.
2. There is enough variety between initial 3DS games. It is practically a tradition for Nintendo to release their consoles with a strong library of games. However, people always complain that they are either a) dedicated solely to the casual-gaming audience or b) are merely rehashes of Nintendo's core franchises.
This time, Nintendo preety much topped themselves. Not only do they have a staggering volume of games for their starting lineup, the variety between them is also very impressive. You have platformers, RPGs, adventure games, fighting games, sports games, puzzle games, rhythm games...Simply put, no matter who you are or what type of gamer are you, chances are that you will find at least something in the starting library that appeals to you. Not only that, most (if not all) of them come from well-established and popular franchises and Nintendo tapped into some of the franchises they had previously ignored (such as Kid Icarus and Star Fox).
Basically, what I am trying to say is that the reason people are mostly not complaining about the 3DS is beacuse there is not much to complain about. Infact, other then Miyamoto's awkward demonstration of the new Zelda game, Nintendo handled this year's E3 conference quite well and they have preety much left it as the undisputed winners.
Well the thing is that this is not a "story" as much as a competitive, faction-based MMO. As such both sides need to be presented at their best. If the game was single player, this kind of marketing would make sense since it would be get people stoked for the uphill battle. In this case however where The Sith and their allies are playable characters this is far less of a good idea.rsvp42 said:
Given the nature of the game, I think that the material so far shows a great amount of favortism towards the Sith side.
In the KoTR single player games, the main characters were left to be customized by the player, so it makes sense that they spent that much time on the apperance of the bad guys who would only be viewed one specific way. This is however no longer a single player game, both sides are being customized, and truthfully the good guys should be just as interesting as the bad guys.
People have been making cool heroes for a very long time, and truthfully when things look as one sided as they have been so far, it leads me to believe that the developers aren't making as much of an effort on the good side of the equasion.
I've mentioned this before, over a period of years actually, I even said something on the Bioware sites (though I haven't been harping on it). With the game a little over six months away I'm guessing I find it slightly disturbing that we haven't really seen much of a shift in focus away from the "Sith are cool" promotions. I haven't seen the good guys really strutting their stuff, and really I think that side of the game needs some love.
Thank GOD someone finally made the point Ive been harping on since 2008. This is two years running now, where all we have to show for our slavish devotion to TOR is some pretty cinies, and some concept art/comics.
Im as big a fan of KOTOR as anyone else. I fully intend to play this game when it comes out. But BioWare has had legions of fans begging on hands and knees for 3 freaking years now, and we dont even have a confirmed, solid release date. I mean, cmon people.
I hope TOR is all its being cracked up to be. I appreciate the sweet spice of anticipation. The carrot on a stick. The "around the corner" hype.
But 3 years is way too much spice, the horses legs are getting tired, and while this corner may have alot of pretty corner dwellers to look at, Id like to get to the main freakin street already.
Im as big a fan of KOTOR as anyone else. I fully intend to play this game when it comes out. But BioWare has had legions of fans begging on hands and knees for 3 freaking years now, and we dont even have a confirmed, solid release date. I mean, cmon people.
I hope TOR is all its being cracked up to be. I appreciate the sweet spice of anticipation. The carrot on a stick. The "around the corner" hype.
But 3 years is way too much spice, the horses legs are getting tired, and while this corner may have alot of pretty corner dwellers to look at, Id like to get to the main freakin street already.
RobfromtheGulag said:
I'm assuming you're fairly young. There were several pretty good Star Wars titles -- Lucasarts put out a few back in the 90s, and the X-Wing / TIE Fighter titles were pretty fun, also from the 90s.
Honestly I'd say there have been more good SW games than bad... but that taken per cultural weight, bad is bigger than good due in no small part to that abysmal Star Wars MMO.
That isn't anywhere even close to true.Therumancer said:
DAoC was *all about* factions, and is still the only game to actually get faction-on-faction conflict right. EQ had a (poor) attempt at factional conflict as well (good v neut v evil) -- and even though EQ's PvP servers were.. not that great.. at least they had the good sense to stick with 3 factions.
Warhammer just failed because Warhammer was an abortion unto game design. It had a lot of promise but was killed because they were too afraid to make it too like DAoC (3 factions, real PvP endgame) and to afraid to make it too *un*like WoW (liek zomg everyone lieks pveeeeee endgame).
Basically, 2 factions is cool if the factions don't fight eachother. If they do, small differences in population will make a big difference. Ya make 3 factions all fighting and it's a lot harder for 1 faction to be totally dominant -- unless one faction gets more than the population of the other two combined and that is not likely.
anyway, certainly not my killjoy. if you gathered all the reviewers on this site, gathered all the games they've panned and discluded any good reviews and were just left with the grand total of all games that anyone here said were garbage, you'd still not be able to keep up with how absolutely shitty and terrible I find most games to be.
if any of the games mentioned aren't abominations unto gaming it only could be because god himself came down and revealed his glory to mankind and bestowed some super special divinity to the game. anything shy of that will fall short.
.. except for maybe the kirby game, that sounds pretty neato keen.
But that just boils down to personal perception. I watched that cinematic and got more stoked about the Trooper and Jedi Knight classes. I mean, that one trooper was a beast, trying to take on those Sith, then the Jedi with the double saber? I found those characters to be a lot more appealing. The sith just seemed like more red-sabered bad guys, but again it's really subjective.Therumancer said:
When I was talking about storytelling, I was talking about storytelling for a cinematic. A cinematic needs to tell a compelling story, even if it means showing favoritism to one side or the other (unless the cinematic is meant to be just clips of different classes looking cool, which is a different case). I realize that the entire game should probably have a sort of narrative balance, but you can't take a particular bit of marketing and use that as a basis for criticizing faction balance in an unreleased game. Not only is it based on individual perception (like I think the cinematic showed favor to the Republic and the Jedi), but it's jumping the gun on criticizing the game. Like I suggested, you may be completely right and the Sith end up being the favorite of both players and developers, but I'm not sure we could say that with any confidence at this point.
However, looking at the site again, I can see why you'd pine for more updates from the Light Side. If they continue to use the Sith to showcase all the new content, then those of us interested in the Jedi and whatnot may be justified in wanting some more balance. But then again, just because the developers decide to use a particular faction to introduce new content, doesn't mean there's cause for worry. Hopefully coming updates will level the field a bit.Therumancer said:
I agree with it, all of it, and I fear for it too as I fear for it with every MMO I see going in production. The reason why it's happening is obvious; evil is simply so cool. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsCool] Star Wars is perhaps the worst and most obvious example in fiction. Especially for a younger, more shallow audience, aesthetics are important. And lets face it, these guys:Therumancer said:
I mean, come ooooon. Did they even try? Well ok they did with Han. But since then, everything Star Wars related is stuck with this stigma. I fear SW:TOR will suffer from it too and I doubt it'll be able to overcome it. The latest Hope trailer took a good shot at it, Republic troopers are pretty awesome.
Disclaimer: I know Ackbar is a tactical genius and I know Boba Fett isn't technically aligned with the Empire, this is just about aesthetics.
You guys do NOT need to worry about the dark side "looking too cool" and being overpopulated.
That's been the mantra of pretty much every MMO with factions that I've followed since.. good grief.
They said that with WoW -- guess what, Horde never outnumbered Alliance (contrary to what some other chap posted in this thread). Yeah, a lot of the organized guilds that rolled at release DID go Horde, an overwhelming majority of those types did in fact. Thing is, and what everyone forgot to take into account, is that those people -- and especially those people who make their choices known on internet forums -- are an EXTREME MINORITY. At one point in time, if I'm recalling things right, Blizzard only had 2 or 3 servers where Horde had a sizeable (more than a few percent) majority -- and 2 or 3 DOZEN where Alliance had a sizeable majority.
Same thing was said of Warhammer. Guess what! Never happened! At least not at release -- anything after the 2-week mark doesn't count, as most people figured out the game was bad at that point and quit playing.
I can't think of any other 2-faction MMOs that've come out recently but I'm sure whatever they are, similar things were said pre-release (omg the bad guys are sooo coooool no one's gonna play a prissy fancy fairy!) and at release all such nonsense was promptly forgotten the first time you got your face smashed in by a prissy fancy fairy brigade out zerging the soooo coooool bad guys.
that said, it's still a fact that any mmo that tries to incorporate large-scale PvP (or RvR as Mythic likes to call it, which is a better term), and uses a 2 faction model is just going to fail. You can't have prolonged conflict when it's always one guy beating on another, not and have open-world combat like DAoC had and like WoW for the longest time was constantly hinting that they were going to have (hint: it never happened and they've pretty much abandoned the idea). There's gotta be that third faction to sweep in when the others are weakened from a fight, that keeps the aggressor from over-extending, and most of all that keeps faction populations relatively sane with regards to one another. 45%/55% is a big difference, but 28%/28%/43% isn't a huge deal. The two smaller factions are vastly outnumbered against the single large faction, but together THEY are in the majority.
Then again, there really aren't any MMOs where PvP is much more than an afterthought anyway, and numbers don't really matter at all when all you're competing against are NPCs in dungeons.
That's been the mantra of pretty much every MMO with factions that I've followed since.. good grief.
They said that with WoW -- guess what, Horde never outnumbered Alliance (contrary to what some other chap posted in this thread). Yeah, a lot of the organized guilds that rolled at release DID go Horde, an overwhelming majority of those types did in fact. Thing is, and what everyone forgot to take into account, is that those people -- and especially those people who make their choices known on internet forums -- are an EXTREME MINORITY. At one point in time, if I'm recalling things right, Blizzard only had 2 or 3 servers where Horde had a sizeable (more than a few percent) majority -- and 2 or 3 DOZEN where Alliance had a sizeable majority.
Same thing was said of Warhammer. Guess what! Never happened! At least not at release -- anything after the 2-week mark doesn't count, as most people figured out the game was bad at that point and quit playing.
I can't think of any other 2-faction MMOs that've come out recently but I'm sure whatever they are, similar things were said pre-release (omg the bad guys are sooo coooool no one's gonna play a prissy fancy fairy!) and at release all such nonsense was promptly forgotten the first time you got your face smashed in by a prissy fancy fairy brigade out zerging the soooo coooool bad guys.
that said, it's still a fact that any mmo that tries to incorporate large-scale PvP (or RvR as Mythic likes to call it, which is a better term), and uses a 2 faction model is just going to fail. You can't have prolonged conflict when it's always one guy beating on another, not and have open-world combat like DAoC had and like WoW for the longest time was constantly hinting that they were going to have (hint: it never happened and they've pretty much abandoned the idea). There's gotta be that third faction to sweep in when the others are weakened from a fight, that keeps the aggressor from over-extending, and most of all that keeps faction populations relatively sane with regards to one another. 45%/55% is a big difference, but 28%/28%/43% isn't a huge deal. The two smaller factions are vastly outnumbered against the single large faction, but together THEY are in the majority.
Then again, there really aren't any MMOs where PvP is much more than an afterthought anyway, and numbers don't really matter at all when all you're competing against are NPCs in dungeons.
You know, that is so true. I don't know why gamers defend gamers they like with such an insane deal, as if they had some stakes in them other than playing it. I remember just now when Yahtzee was chewed on for his review of Monster Hunter Tri. You'd think for the way people were attacking him that they were receiving a percentile of the game's sales. If you enjoy the game personally, what else matters?
Oh, and the fact that, for better or worse, the Wii is going downhill doesn't bode well with Kinetic/Move's attempts to steal their thunder. It's one thing to buy something that's easy to play, and another thing to buy something else that's supposed to change the way something you already own and like plays, even if the problems with vertical stacking don't come into play.