E3 Killjoy 2010

[wererogue]

Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I enjoyed the RPS coverage of XCOM much more - they really went all-out on a balanced view:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/16/xgood/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/16/xbad/

That pretty much sums up my view, with the coda that I find the actual premise of the game interesting even if it doesn't do "justice" to an already squandered franchise.

There does seem to be a general jerking of knees in this article which is way below the normal Shamus Young standard of nit-picking. It's more of a "if all of my worst fears, some of which are already disproven, prove true, then these games will be bad."

Some of us have been gamers longer than many of today's developers. We can smell failures a mile away.

Conversely, a massive market has been gamers since shortly after the wii (which we collectively predicted would be a niche toy) was released.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Wow, that didn't mention either of the two things I got excited about at all (Vanquish and the next handheld SRW being on the 3DS).

 

[Leviathan_]

Maybe it's just me, but has there EVER been a good star wars video game?

Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Knight series.

+ Star Wars battle front 1 & 2 and Star Wars empire at war.

Oh and also Shamus, I'd suggest you go check out ToR website. There is loads of ingame footage there.

 

[naruhodo]

Epic first post! Love that picture!

Haha, thanks for that and the welcome.

I can't take credit for this gif, but I thought it fit this discussion quite nicely.

xD

 

[Freshman]

They are making a new X-Com? I loved that game, and TFTD (suck it lobster men), but apocalypse kinda sucked (frankly though, i havent played that since i was a little chidler, and now i can't find a good dos emulator for it and it runs too fast. looking back at it though, I bet it was pretty awesome) [reads rest of article] and its going to suck. great.

I just thought of something, why don't they ever take old games and overhaul them with new gen graphics and maybe some other cool stuff ( I don't mean remake mario with different levels and shit, I mean give me the exact same game but looking way prettier. maybe add some side quests.) I would totally buy X-com again. and deus Ex. and starcraft. and other stuff

 

[Thick]

Ok...TOR, lets talk about just that.

Ignoring the fact that constant mocking in my youth has drained all interest I have in the Star Wars property, I think there is one massive hurdle for this game to jump right out of the gate: the Star Wars property itself.

Ignore the fact that people who are into it can be really REALLY into it and that hyper drives the expectations for treatments of it straight into a galaxy far far away. The real problem is that the most appealing thing from the movies that started all this (i.e. 4-6) whether you picked up on it or not, is that the characters and stories were chock full of archetypes put together in such a way that pretty much guaranteed greatness because that's how archetypes work. A similar combination has never been created with anything bearing the Star Wars label. What success enjoyed by those later uses of the Star Wars property was helped moderately to greatly by the death-star-exploding power of nostalgia from enjoyment that the originals so endeared to people. The same can be argued with this game; proven by asking yourself if you would be as excited about it by just the game design (and answering honestly, of course). The fact that the MMORPG is almost antithetical to the proper assembly of archetypes does not bode well for TOR.

And it's the identical dialogue tree interface from Mass Effect. Hoo-bleeding-ray, says I.