Extra Punctuation: Not All Sequels Suck

[JediMB]

I think the DS sequels managed to make Castlevania: SOTN's formula even better. Well, and Aria of Sorrow on GBA. Added a new abilities system over sub-weapons for AoS and DoS, made a 2 member mage/warrior split for PoR while escaping the usual castle setting thanks to the portraits, and OoE split the line between "classic" and "Metroid"vania.

Minus the generic anime art style for character art in Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin being a huge downside.

This:

Personally I'm of the opinion that Order of Ecclesia is the best Castlevania since Symphony of the Night, and possibly even better. As much as I've enjoyed most of the other GBA/DS games, SOTN just felt better constructed.

 

[The Droog]

Better to rule in 16-bit than serve in 32, right?

This is kind of the approach that Sega took with the Saturn except it was cruelly ignored by the masses. Whilst everyone was queueing up to enter the PlayStation's 3D nightclub, the beggar king Saturn and I drank and danced in the 2D alleyway round the back whilst people gave us funny looks and tried to ignore us.

Things haven't really changed for me. Good to see a lot of Saturn games getting their due recognition these days and sorry for derailing the thread!

 

[Ankhwatcher]

I think Yahtzee got Star Treck and Red Dwarf mashed up at the end there.

 

[boradis]

Narrative continuity is the bane of video games.

In fact I think stories in video games are almost irrelevant. I'm loving the hell out of MvC3 and there's no story there because they didn't need one. If the player wants to make up a story about why Dante, Spider-Man and Albert Wesker have to team up to fight She-Hulk, Shuma-Gorath and Tron Bonne then good luck to them.

But I think it's much more of a game (as well as an awesome virtual box of action figures) than "Portal 2," which I think was an interactive novella routinely interrupted by puzzles.

Don't get me wrong, I loved P2. But what I loved was the story and, gimmicks aside, I don't think the gameplay itself evolved. They reskinned the un-stationary scaffolds as excursion tubes, faith plates and light bridges, made the acid pools into bottomless pits, and added goop to let you move faster, jump higher, or shoot portals in new locations. But playing was still a matter of shooting the right portals at the right surfaces in the right order at the right time. Except in those instances where the game held your hand, of course.

To be fair, MvC3's characters don't have much personality beyond what the player may remember from their original games. There's nothing more to them besides hitboxes and combos. But that's fine because it's a game, not a book.

So there's no reason for gameplay-centric games like that, or Mario, or Gran Turismo, or Rock Band to not go through an endless number of versions. Because they are GAMES first, and I think we can do with more of those and leave the storytelling to the storytellers.

Additionally, if a game is really fun and enjoyable and the gameplay has room to grow *that alone* should be the guiding principle in deciding whether or not to make a sequel. The story should take a back seat if it's even considered at all. Should they stop the Mario series when his "character arc" has finished? Hell no. He's a rotund Italian plumber who kills dinosaurs by hitting them with his butt. He doesn't have a character arc.

Should they stop setting games in Silent Hill? Aside from the fact that the Western developers wouldn't know a scary story if it snuck up on them in a dark alley, no. It's just a foggy ghost town. Give your protagonist-du-game a reason to be lost in a foggy ghost town, call it "Silent Hill," and scare the crap out of the player. Mission accomplished. Don't worry about the legacy or the backstory of the other games or any of that crap. It's supernatural. Horrible things happen there because horrible things happen there, period.

A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has a narrative arc and it will have a message about the human condition. The same cannot be said of golf. If you can garnish a round of golf with a drama about why Player A must defeat Player B and make it entertaining, fine. But it's not necessary and must not get in the way of the *game*.

 

[Moeez]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it first time around but Assassins Creed 2 was much much better than its predecessor, and yet you still had Desmond, Lucy and Vidic.

That doesn't apply, because the majority of the games are spent in the virtual world of the Animus. You only spend time in the real world for about 15% of the game. Plus, most people would agree that the cast of Desmond, Lucy, and Vidic, no one cares as much compared to Ezio and the world of Rome.

 

[Technicolor]

And you know what, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is definitely better than its predecessors. The Castlevania series existed for the longest time in that Mario/Zelda position of churning out essentially the same game with somewhat improved graphics every time someone figured out how to crowbar more pixels onto a cartridge, but Symphony of the Night led the way by eschewing the traditional level-based structure in favour of open-ended exploration platforming. Although future instalments sort of missed the point by ripping off Symphony of the Night instead. To all those people who say that every Mario is the beta for the Mario that comes after it, I would point out Symphony of the Night and ask if it isn't better to spread out into new ideas than concentrate eternally on spinning the same straw into gold.

I'm sorry, this last bit at the end of this paragraph confuses me to hell and back. Didn't Yahtzee make at least two EP articles on how every Mario game ISN'T the same? (which is hypocritical since he continues to say every Zelda game is the same which is wrong) Now he's changing his mind all of a sudden? Also I wouldn't say that about the original pre-SotN Castlevanias. Castlevania IV had the whole omni-directional whip mechanic which made getting past a lot of normally tricky areas more manageable which baffles me as to why Konami hasn't made that a permanent mechanic in future installments. (Haven't played any recent Castlevania games lately so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that)

I agree the Suplex Lord here in regards SoTN elitism and overall quality. I don't understand how you can even compare it to previous Castlevania, it doesn't play in any similar. It was an experiment that did succeed in regards in taking elements of Metroid gameplay, and adding some RPG elements. The development team did a lot of work making sure the gameplay wasn't sloppy and still engaging even when you had no idea where to go.

That is until the second half of the game where they literally copy paste the entire castle, they give absolutely more no story or cutscenes, little to no more powers to look for, and provide you weapons right off the bat that completly break the game. Its just sloppy, and it seems that were just arbitrarily lengthening the game. This wouldn't be the first time Konami did this sort of thing, Castlevania II did the same thing.

Egoraptor here demonstrates the importance of level design in both Linear & Non-linear design

The last portion of the video really sums up my feeling with SoTN. Its really fun to play through and waste hours to explore, but It never really reached any sort of satisfying climax in either story or gameplay, nor did it test the player. By the end the game just hands you victory, and you just feel empty afterwards

 

[draythefingerless]

Tools available for everyone to use would be nice, but dont expect that to create a pletora of geniuses. Itll just create more shit, and once in a while, a gem will come out of it. There is a reason I dont make music, but i enjoy listening to it. I suck at making music, but i love hearing it, when its well made. People are too confortable these days. Its like hard work is BAD for you. NO! hard work will only give you benefits. why should it be easier? accessible, yes, i agree with accessible, and were almost at that point, but why easy? make it so everyone can spend time and effort in learning and making a game, but dont make it easy for them to do it without having compulsion and determination.

In my PERSONAL and private view, i dont like seeing people do stuff because they can. That is sth i like about games. you wanna make one, you work hard for it, you make sure you do it well. Thats why flash and UDK have spawned shit after shit instead of works of art. too easy, no need for effort, no need to work.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

Tools available for everyone to use would be nice, but dont expect that to create a pletora of geniuses. Itll just create more shit, and once in a while, a gem will come out of it. There is a reason I dont make music, but i enjoy listening to it. I suck at making music, but i love hearing it, when its well made. People are too confortable these days. Its like hard work is BAD for you. NO! hard work will only give you benefits. why should it be easier? accessible, yes, i agree with accessible, and were almost at that point, but why easy? make it so everyone can spend time and effort in learning and making a game, but dont make it easy for them to do it without having compulsion and determination.

In my PERSONAL and private view, i dont like seeing people do stuff because they can. That is sth i like about games. you wanna make one, you work hard for it, you make sure you do it well. Thats why flash and UDK have spawned shit after shit instead of works of art. too easy, no need for effort, no need to work.

Why shouldn't it be easier? Making interesting and balanced gameplay, neat looking graphics and animations, atmospheric music, competent voice acting, interesting story and good dialogue. There is enough artistic work left to justify simplifying the technical side of the game development. But if I follow your logics correctly: game devs are to be bound by law into using their own made tools. Goodbye Unreal Engine! Goodbye Photoshop! Goodbye 3DSMax! Goodbye Pro Tools! Maybe even goodbye C++!

Why not go a step further and make them program games directly through bits by magnetizing clusters on a hard drive? Probably wouldn't make a good game, but man, they'd sure work their asses off!

 

[draythefingerless]

Tools available for everyone to use would be nice, but dont expect that to create a pletora of geniuses. Itll just create more shit, and once in a while, a gem will come out of it. There is a reason I dont make music, but i enjoy listening to it. I suck at making music, but i love hearing it, when its well made. People are too confortable these days. Its like hard work is BAD for you. NO! hard work will only give you benefits. why should it be easier? accessible, yes, i agree with accessible, and were almost at that point, but why easy? make it so everyone can spend time and effort in learning and making a game, but dont make it easy for them to do it without having compulsion and determination.

In my PERSONAL and private view, i dont like seeing people do stuff because they can. That is sth i like about games. you wanna make one, you work hard for it, you make sure you do it well. Thats why flash and UDK have spawned shit after shit instead of works of art. too easy, no need for effort, no need to work.

Why shouldn't it be easier? Making interesting and balanced gameplay, neat looking graphics and animations, atmospheric music, competent voice acting, interesting story and good dialogue. There is enough artistic work left to justify simplifying the technical side of the game development. But if I follow your logics correctly: game devs are to be bound by law into using their own made tools. Goodbye Unreal Engine! Goodbye Photoshop! Goodbye 3DSMax! Goodbye Pro Tools! Maybe even goodbye C++!

Why not go a step further and make them program games directly through bits by magnetizing clusters on a hard drive? Probably wouldn't make a good game, but man, they'd sure work their asses off!

the problem with flash and UDK isnt its accessibility, and in retrospect, i shouldnt bash UDK that much, since it does take some work to get into it. its that they make it a fucking cake walk. like i said, i think making it available to everyone to make games is good, but effort brings forth quality. that is undeniable. case in point, LBP levels. 95%, crap, 5%, good job. accessibility with challenge, thats what we should be asking. give them UDK and Flash and Unity, but make them need the determination to see it finished. the hand held camera allowed for everyone to film stuff, and that just created youtube, 95% crap, 5% good stuff. i want people to be able to make something, without the added arrogancy that they are brilliant for doing so. i want them to say, oh i should try and make a game, but i want them to give up half way if it was just a lil fantasy they had. creatively accessible, so that anyone can pick it up and spend some time learning th groundings, but creatively challenging, where they need added effort to see it thru, and to see it thru with quality.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

the problem with flash and UDK isnt its accessibility, and in retrospect, i shouldnt bash UDK that much, since it does take some work to get into it. its that they make it a fucking cake walk. like i said, i think making it available to everyone to make games is good, but effort brings forth quality. that is undeniable. case in point, LBP levels. 95%, crap, 5%, good job. accessibility with challenge, thats what we should be asking. give them UDK and Flash and Unity, but make them need the determination to see it finished. the hand held camera allowed for everyone to film stuff, and that just created youtube, 95% crap, 5% good stuff. i want people to be able to make something, without the added arrogancy that they are brilliant for doing so. i want them to say, oh i should try and make a game, but i want them to give up half way if it was just a lil fantasy they had. creatively accessible, so that anyone can pick it up and spend some time learning th groundings, but creatively challenging, where they need added effort to see it thru, and to see it thru with quality.

So, I will ask you yet again. How is simplifying the technical side going to harm the gaming industry? You cannot simplify the artistic process. What is the problem then?

Game development is foremost an art form. But in its current state it's also a heavy technical field. Like Yahtzee said, that's exactly what's holding most artists back into trying out this relatively new medium. By now most games are created by programmers in the first place, and artists second. Why not eliminate that dependency on tech folks altogether, if it's art we're talking about?

You don't seem to discern between quality on the technical side, which is, what it just is - technical. And the quality on the artistic side, which undoubtedly requires a lot more creativity than the technical one. By freeing game devs from the technical shackles a whole new frontier of creativity could be presented to them. Even from the most banal pragmatic side of allocating more funds, thus manpower into artistic department.

Gaming would benefit greatly from it, there is no doubt about it.

 

[TheOneandOnly]

What's more, the assertion dismisses the fact that a great many games beloved by millions began their lives as the work of enthusiastic amateurs.

No it doesn't. You seem to think I'm bashing amateurs here, which I'm most certainly not. The problem I have (as do a few others posting here by the looks of it) is with people who want the hard work and the research done for them. If they're happy to think within the confines of the box someone else has made for them, how do you expect any real progress to be made? In addition, people who may otherwise have had the motivation and ability to create something new get dragged off down a different path because it's easier. There are a lot of talented designers making content with the UDK, but they're not contributing to anything truly progressive because they're stuck on the end of Epic's leash.

 

[KilloZapit]

In my experience, the more like "natural English" you make a programing language, the more vague, long winded, and hard to debug or do complex things with it becomes. For example I worked in Applescript a number of years ago. It really is a interesting language and it has a fairly easy to understand syntax based on everyday English phrasing. The problem is to do anything beyond the basics really involves a lot of weird counter-intuitive conventions that don't become apparent at first, so it quickly loses the simplicity and easy understanding.

Really though, programing isn't as hard as you might think. I think the more pressing concern is dealing with the tangled mess of API and driver stuff, and finding a good language that doesn't overwhelm people with strange syntax conventions. Honestly I sort of wish we could go back to the days of good old ASM. I mean sure, higher level languages like C may be slightly easier to use, but at least with ASM you had a fixed set of opcodes, registers, and memory locations, and when you wanted to do something you just did it, without the mucking about with figuring out stuff. Literally everything you need to know about ASM can be on one sheet of paper sometimes. It's just a lot more work.

 

[RockyMotion]

"Create a deep, intuitive toolset designed for non-programmers that can let you create models, textures and game mechanics with dropdowns and a visual mouse-driven interface to as complex a level as the user desires..."

MediaMolecule did it. LBP1's creator was limited when creating stuff besides platforming and button/lever puzzles, but LBP2 has introduced a whole lot of new mechanics that let you go much deeper than that. And yes, you can create awesome interfaces and menus with LBP2. Levels like "Windows: LBP Edition", "Classic Zelda", and many others can prove that. You can create your own textures by photographing stuff and converting it into stickers, make dynamic enemies or NPC's and program their AI's with the sackbots... You can wire some nifty circuits in your machines with the condition-activated sensors and logic gates, make cutscenes and scripted events with sequencers. You can even make the character/vehicle/cursor/whatever you want to be playable and define its gameplay mechanics with custom controls. And all that is easy to use once you get used to the creator.

Go look for some awesome levels under the "MM picks" section. They're effing rad

 

[sushkis2]

HUH? I totlly disagree, that ps1 3d polygons are awful, take Spyro the dragon or Crash bandicoot series, they looked awesome back then and I'm proud to admit, that I still prefer those over (quoting Yahtzee) "Gunmetal grey lotsofbloom" shooters, and I don't give a shit that they're kids games, they're fun and colorful and far better than some of the recent mainstream platformers

 

[draythefingerless]

the problem with flash and UDK isnt its accessibility, and in retrospect, i shouldnt bash UDK that much, since it does take some work to get into it. its that they make it a fucking cake walk. like i said, i think making it available to everyone to make games is good, but effort brings forth quality. that is undeniable. case in point, LBP levels. 95%, crap, 5%, good job. accessibility with challenge, thats what we should be asking. give them UDK and Flash and Unity, but make them need the determination to see it finished. the hand held camera allowed for everyone to film stuff, and that just created youtube, 95% crap, 5% good stuff. i want people to be able to make something, without the added arrogancy that they are brilliant for doing so. i want them to say, oh i should try and make a game, but i want them to give up half way if it was just a lil fantasy they had. creatively accessible, so that anyone can pick it up and spend some time learning th groundings, but creatively challenging, where they need added effort to see it thru, and to see it thru with quality.

So, I will ask you yet again. How is simplifying the technical side going to harm the gaming industry? You cannot simplify the artistic process. What is the problem then?

Game development is foremost an art form. But in its current state it's also a heavy technical field. Like Yahtzee said, that's exactly what's holding most artists back into trying out this relatively new medium. By now most games are created by programmers in the first place, and artists second. Why not eliminate that dependency on tech folks altogether, if it's art we're talking about?

You don't seem to discern between quality on the technical side, which is, what it just is - technical. And the quality on the artistic side, which undoubtedly requires a lot more creativity than the technical one. By freeing game devs from the technical shackles a whole new frontier of creativity could be presented to them. Even from the most banal pragmatic side of allocating more funds, thus manpower into artistic department.

Gaming would benefit greatly from it, there is no doubt about it.

therelies the problem with not grasping how games are made. you know WHY you see copy pasting ALL over gaming? SPECIALLY casual and social games? because its being made by people who cannot surpass the first level of game developing. they learn the basic, and then just do the basic. most games you see out there had to be INVENTIVE in how you control the machine. people think computers are amazing, when really, they arent. they are stupid limited machines. it is only thru VERY ingenious human minds that we are able to take out potential from them. Literally, right now we are juicing their cognitive abilities to the max. Computers are very limited, and for you to make a game, not a fucking story wich is what many people here LOVE to shout about, how a game is a STORY(i blame RPGs really), you need to be inventive, you need to be able to take the plethora of libraries and paradigms in languages, and make sth out of it.

to put this in perspective, what we are doing with computers nowadays is taking fucking sticks n stones and making a real scale model of the eiffel tower. you cant make a tool right now or the near future that can comprehend anything more than what a stick or a stone is, let alone an eiffel tower. but we CAN and we SHOULD make it accessible for anyone to be able to grasp the tools and use them. what yathzee is asking is for a computer to read what he is thinking and make a game. well, impossible, so lets go into the reality realm here. he wants to make some language and tools that allow for one to, using simple english for example, make a full blown game, AND THEN SELL IT, thats the most important part.

this arouses various problems.

1. computers right now, cant do that. they are too stupid. you would need higher powers, or even if i am allowed to go a lil extreme, quantum boxes for this. neither exist right now or the near future.

2. making a game to be sellable is FAR beyond creative knowledge. you have to be sure you make the game AT LEAST a bit accessible and friendly to use, wich is sth hardcore games, made by professional companies, fail at. making a game isnt writting a book or filming a movie. it is WAY more personal to each individual. you cna make a movie, and the most theyll do is to a screening to a random audience to see a bit of that. games are that, a hundred fold. this requires studies. academic or homebrewed, but it requires study. then you need to understand a bit of marketing. not everyone is gonna have the minecraft miracle, trust me.

if reading ones mind perfectly did exist, it still wouldnt be enough to have a good game experience. many times youll see teams correcting and sharing views because one single person is incapable of grasping evth in a game, in a manner sufficient to make the game enjoyable by others.

 

[draythefingerless]

the problem with flash and UDK isnt its accessibility, and in retrospect, i shouldnt bash UDK that much, since it does take some work to get into it. its that they make it a fucking cake walk. like i said, i think making it available to everyone to make games is good, but effort brings forth quality. that is undeniable. case in point, LBP levels. 95%, crap, 5%, good job. accessibility with challenge, thats what we should be asking. give them UDK and Flash and Unity, but make them need the determination to see it finished. the hand held camera allowed for everyone to film stuff, and that just created youtube, 95% crap, 5% good stuff. i want people to be able to make something, without the added arrogancy that they are brilliant for doing so. i want them to say, oh i should try and make a game, but i want them to give up half way if it was just a lil fantasy they had. creatively accessible, so that anyone can pick it up and spend some time learning th groundings, but creatively challenging, where they need added effort to see it thru, and to see it thru with quality.

So, I will ask you yet again. How is simplifying the technical side going to harm the gaming industry? You cannot simplify the artistic process. What is the problem then?

Game development is foremost an art form. But in its current state it's also a heavy technical field. Like Yahtzee said, that's exactly what's holding most artists back into trying out this relatively new medium. By now most games are created by programmers in the first place, and artists second. Why not eliminate that dependency on tech folks altogether, if it's art we're talking about?

You don't seem to discern between quality on the technical side, which is, what it just is - technical. And the quality on the artistic side, which undoubtedly requires a lot more creativity than the technical one. By freeing game devs from the technical shackles a whole new frontier of creativity could be presented to them. Even from the most banal pragmatic side of allocating more funds, thus manpower into artistic department.

Gaming would benefit greatly from it, there is no doubt about it.

TL DR for my previous post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUeRtHu0MdA (i dun fuckin know how to use this sites embedding system)

listen to particularly the part about why they did not accept Sovereigns technological knowledge.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

therelies the problem with not grasping how games are made. you know WHY you see copy pasting ALL over gaming? SPECIALLY casual and social games? because its being made by people who cannot surpass the first level of game developing. they learn the basic, and then just do the basic. most games you see out there had to be INVENTIVE in how you control the machine. people think computers are amazing, when really, they arent. they are stupid limited machines. it is only thru VERY ingenious human minds that we are able to take out potential from them. Literally, right now we are juicing their cognitive abilities to the max. Computers are very limited, and for you to make a game, not a fucking story wich is what many people here LOVE to shout about, how a game is a STORY(i blame RPGs really), you need to be inventive, you need to be able to take the plethora of libraries and paradigms in languages, and make sth out of it.

to put this in perspective, what we are doing with computers nowadays is taking fucking sticks n stones and making a real scale model of the eiffel tower. you cant make a tool right now or the near future that can comprehend anything more than what a stick or a stone is, let alone an eiffel tower. but we CAN and we SHOULD make it accessible for anyone to be able to grasp the tools and use them. what yathzee is asking is for a computer to read what he is thinking and make a game. well, impossible, so lets go into the reality realm here. he wants to make some language and tools that allow for one to, using simple english for example, make a full blown game, AND THEN SELL IT, thats the most important part.

this arouses various problems.

1. computers right now, cant do that. they are too stupid. you would need higher powers, or even if i am allowed to go a lil extreme, quantum boxes for this. neither exist right now or the near future.

2. making a game to be sellable is FAR beyond creative knowledge. you have to be sure you make the game AT LEAST a bit accessible and friendly to use, wich is sth hardcore games, made by professional companies, fail at. making a game isnt writting a book or filming a movie. it is WAY more personal to each individual. you cna make a movie, and the most theyll do is to a screening to a random audience to see a bit of that. games are that, a hundred fold. this requires studies. academic or homebrewed, but it requires study. then you need to understand a bit of marketing. not everyone is gonna have the minecraft miracle, trust me.

if reading ones mind perfectly did exist, it still wouldnt be enough to have a good game experience. many times youll see teams correcting and sharing views because one single person is incapable of grasping evth in a game, in a manner sufficient to make the game enjoyable by others.

You don't always need to grasp how something works to make something beautiful. It's like saying a painter needs to learn chemistry in order to understand how the various types of paints interact with each other. Or a musician needs to learn physics in order to understand how sound waves affect our eardrums.

You once again mix technical ingenuity with artistic ingenuity. Art and science lie in two opposite domains. Science is dictated by reason. Art is governed by human emotions.

Simplifying gaming technicalities by the means of providing us with easier to use tools would be like making a step from chalky cave drawings to the canvas oil paintings.

I don't think that Yahtzee's "brain scanner" would accomplish much though, since thoughts need to be organized into a readable form in the first place. But an easy to use SDK with only a minimum to none at all knowledge of programming/scripting languages required would benefit us all immensely.

Still a "brain scanner" is tempting none the less. But it only begs the question: if we're capable of creating something of this magnitude, what stops us from conceiving an A.I. and thus making us obsolete as a species.

P.S.: Gameplay is art as well. A more subtle type, but art none the less. There are no rules set in stone for it, only guidelines.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Could I ask you a question? I loved the Dexter TV series, something in the order of S5, S1, S2, S3, S4. Would I like he novels? Are they even worth reading now? I hear they are largely the same, with some minor differences (like Dexter and ... however you spell his Asian co-workers name's relationship getting more time and depth, and Dexter never really likes Debra or the kids).

*deep breath*

It's a tough call. The Dexter novels are almost entirely focussed on Dexter's train of thought and he does go off rather silly in Dearly Devoted Dexter(book 2), but overall it's a fascinating ride through the mind of a sociopath.

The real problem is that there are so many huge differences between the series and the book. Debra is stunning in the novels, but ...strong... in the series, Doakes is a bad-ass in both (and if I say "potato", you'll see the book 3 readers flinch) but the series has inflated the side-characters to main ones. In the novels, the only real character is Dexter, and Batista(no relation) is a slimy sod.

Dexter adores Cody and Astor, and to an extent, Rita; but Cody/Astor turn out to be...

Well, that would be giving it away.

Dexter the series is a Soprano style soap opera, Dexter the novels is more like hitching a ride with the Dark Passenger. It's a LOT darker.

They're different beasts really. Michael C Hall creates a wonderful Dexter, but the rest of the cast is more "viewer-friendly" than they are in the book. That being said, "I own you" is one of my favourite bits of the entire series.

I'd read through Darkly Dreaming and see what you think. There is a HUGE difference between the novel and the series, which I won't give away, but if you like it - go for it.

(Just take Dearly Devoted with a pinch of salt - It's like trying to equate the Dresden Files Books with the TV series - both are great, but they're very different.)

 

[Squarez]

Errm. Before Symphony of the Night, Simon's Quest was actually the first Castlevania game to make the game open-ended instead of level-based. Which as many people have pointed out many times before, did not improve the game.

 

[boradis]

Snip

Would you argue that games that attempt the storytelling crap, and gamers that argue for it, are trying to make playing with electronic toys more acceptable for grown-ups then it currently is? That gaming can't be more then a distraction and shouldn't try to be?

I'm honestly not being pedantic or rude to your views in any way, we don't often get intelligent individuals arguing against the grain, I just wondered what you thought on the matter of evolving gaming =]

It's a fair question, but no I don't think it's to justify gaming for adults. For one thing, the most successful segment of the adult gaming market is narrative-free games like variants on Scrabble. Frankly, I don't think most people over 50 can understand how a game can also be a story in the same way they struggle with the idea that a computer can be a typewriter and a phone. Yes, I am agist.

Also, when I was a kid and my friends and I would play with action figures (ok, 'dolls') we always made up stories to heighten the experience. We understood enough about Captain Kirk and the Hulk to realize they probably wouldn't get along that well. Their personalities are so deeply ingrained in the mind of a fan that it was unavoidable.

I think the reasons for the power struggle between stories and games are twofold. First off is money. A title that fails to greatly advance the gameplay can be saved by a stellar story. Without its epic scope, moments of tense drama and brilliant humor "Portal 2" is a really nice expansion pack aimed at the modding community.

Secondly, the gaming industry desperately wants to be the storytelling industry with all the glitz and glamor that comes with it. And storytelling artists are interested in gaming because it's another income stream. And they always want to be the stars and not take a back seat to gameplay mechanics. And they've got agents unlike, say, a good combo system.

As I said, games can contain stories and I've enjoyed many of them on that basis. But when the story, writing and performances push the gameplay out of the spotlight you don't have a game any more. You've got a somewhat immersive novel which replaces pages or a "next chapter" button with problems to solve.

When done well as in my all-time favorite game "Devil May Cry 3" the cutscenes, while entertaining, exist to support and connect the gameplay sections. The reason I played through it the first time was I wanted to get into the next fight. In "Portal 2" I found the gameplay to be padded and repetitious and only served to delay the funny bits of dialog.