Oh? I'll flip that. Games that half ass the story for the gameplay. Which is about 90% of games. And it's a far bigger problem than you'd think. Look at how long a JRPG can be, for example. The medium has the potential to tell a far greater story than any TV show, movie, hell, it can even rival books. And yet people want to ban games and argue that they're worthless as mass media because of... well, I don't even need to finish this sentance. There's just way too many flaws and I think we all know what most of them are.Judgement101 said:
Other examples.
- No death consequence.
Newer games baby players to hell and back. Back in my day, the save point before the last boss was in an RPG was potentially 15 minutes away, sometimes even 30. And you didn't get a "retry" option if you died, it was back to the last save. Why? The goal was to win. With no reason to fear defeat, you just throw yourself at the boss until you win. The shift has gone from "rethinking your strategy" to "Just try again from right here."
It's everywhere. RPGs? Yeah. Shooters? Who here remembers when Doom and Duke Nukem had complete level restarts upon death. Imagine a Halo level without any checkpoints for example. Yeah. New age gamers are babies brats who can't take a taste of old school without baaawing about autosave and the like.
- Quick Time Events
There's just so many reasons to reject this notion. GoW2 was one of the First PS2 games I played, for example. I never did get Circle vs Square down for QTEs since both are similar colors and shapes (as opposed to the vastly different triangle and X) and I wasn't used to the controller. That and even once I did learn it, the window was way too small, and in many games with QTEs, the button is randomized or appears in another corner of the screen!
QTEs alienate the casual to an extent where they can't continue the game, and even hardcore gamers get sick of them. There's no redeeming value, except, as before stated "zomg flashy cutscene WHICH THE PLAYER CAN'T FRIGGING FOCUS ON WHILE THEY'RE WATCHING OUT FOR QTE INPUT PROMPTS!"
- 3 man party (JRPG Exclusive)
Seriously. I grew up wth Final Fantasy 4 (FF2 SNES) where you had a team of 5. You had the tank (Cecil) the melee damage dealer (Kain) the healer (Rosa) the mage nuker (Rydia) and the generally useless tool who could occasionally shine if you spent way too much money on items (Edge) Nice balanced team. Edge's use is debatable so you'd argue you can knock it down to 4. 4 works well in other RPGs. So why the hell is it that when FF7 decided "lol 3 man party" that it suddenly became almost like a genre norm? Not only has it been the FF standard (exception: FF9)and even arguably the standard of most) games bearing Square's name before the SE merger (Such as The Bouncer, which wasn't even an RPG, or Kingdom Hearts) but other series have tried to follow their lead with dismal results.
A few examples include the .hack// games (which I admit I love to death) or White Knight Chronicles. Digital Devil Saga suffers this as well as well (Part of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Aka related to Persona) Hell, even Demon's Souls only allows you to summon 2 phantoms, so max of 3 "good players."
Quite frankly, why? 3 doesn't capture a well balanced party diversity because there's too many roles to fill. In its "streamlining," the norm of a 3 man party simply turns the party into "mash attack to win" clones where everyone has the same attacks, spells, stats, you name it.
Hell, party size in general bugs me. For example, Valhalla Knights 2 had a 6 man party. I can get behind that. I mean, the warrior has a shield and can use Guard, so he can rush in first while the thief comes in from behind and... well... The game was generally regarded as poor and they came out with a remake: VK2 Battle Stance. BATTLE STANCE ADVERTISES THE DROP FROM 6 PARTY MEMBERS TO 4 AS A GOOD THING. WHAT IS THE INDSUTRY COMING TO!?
If too many people is overpowered, add more enemies. Large scale battles are always more fun and epic than small skirmishes. More believable too, considering....
