Frame of reference, it is a fact of human life. God of War like DMC and NG is a superior game which means within the genre it sits at the top, even though other top level games do certain things better than God of War. As for God of War setting a new standard for Brawlers I would have to disagree since most of the top level games play so differently from each other.AC10 said:
On the Ball: Like God of War, But ?
- Thread starter Jordan Deam
- Start date
Well for one thing the story is better (Kamiya cannot write a scenario for his life.) as it makes more sense overall, the level design is better (This is part of the reason that the camera works as well as it does.), it doesn't have as much of the annoying problem of screwing up your motions because the camera view changed as in most iterations of DMC. NG is even less intelligible story wise than DMC although the camera and combat engine is better than well every other top tier game in the genre out right now. God of War seems to get how to put in puzzles at the right time to avoid being overly annoying.
Edit: No worries.
Edit: No worries.
I want to play "Gears of War meets Railroad Tycoon". Want want want. I can already imagine it.
In the dark and distant future, there's one and only one measure to dominate the field of battle: trains. Build your own rail network, fill your trainyards with mighty battle engines, protect junctions and shipments, take enemy strongholds. Manage the economics of your company, then jump right in the intense cover-to-cover firefights. Use machine gun, chainsaw, and railbuilder - to protect what's yours and take over what isn't.
Rails of War. Coming to your PCs July 2015.
In the dark and distant future, there's one and only one measure to dominate the field of battle: trains. Build your own rail network, fill your trainyards with mighty battle engines, protect junctions and shipments, take enemy strongholds. Manage the economics of your company, then jump right in the intense cover-to-cover firefights. Use machine gun, chainsaw, and railbuilder - to protect what's yours and take over what isn't.
Rails of War. Coming to your PCs July 2015.
Something that wasn't really mentioned was just the sheer power trip GoW has. Like hurling yourself across a chasm and plowing through a stone pillar with your shoulder half way across and combat rolling to your feet on the other side just has a certain epic feel to it, though I hate using the word epic. GoW just has a crazy pro feel to it.
Yes! You have my pre-order. I can already see the cut scenes with our grim, stalwart hero, "I will get these 30 cars of un-dyed textiles from Atlanta to Philly before the dividend is due or die trying!"Kollega said:
But with GoW, part of it is you have an all-around good game that is very well marketed to the demographic you're writing your reviews for. So writers feel confident using the analogy with little explanation. Same with GTA or COD, it's well known enough that you don't have to have ever played to have an idea of what the game is like.
Hm. I can see what you're getting at, but this article felt a little like a gush for GoW. A hack-and-slash/brawler which was also good was Spartan: Total Warrior. So damn underrated. That game was awesome.
Holy shit, that's the best idea of all time! Maybe not the economics, and give it a story akin to Metro 2033... maybe. Or do both. WAGH SO AWESOMEKollega said:
It's a little ironic reading all of "GOW IS SO GREAT" news after the praise heaped on Bayonetta's stylish, smooth, and powerful-feeling combat, but I've never really been jazzed about the whole action brawler genre either. Still, this article seems to have forgotten that other genres have had their "Like _______ but" too. Every FPS wanted to be Doom, every platformer wanted to be Mario, every RPG wanted to be Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy, and now that the brawler genre is growing, everyone wants to emulate the most successful entry in that catagory. And like other games have shown us, when you try and emulate the "best" you're always going to fall short unless your game can bring something special, new, and FUN to the table. It's going to take a long time before any game overtakes GoW3 in that respects as the series has always nailed the "fun" aspect with reckless who-cares-we're-killing-stuff combat.
SavingPrincess said:
Maybe the world is sucking Yahtzee's hat in this because he's sort of right?
DMC and GoW are different. You make it look like GoW is a DMC clone. Sure, they both are(to use Yahtzee's term, but it's true) spectacle fighters. In both games you kill oponents in the most gruesome/exp. efficient way.
Why people give GoW praise is because of it's realism. This sounds odd, but hear me out.
In DMC, you're Dante, who has a brother, Virgil, and a mortal enemy, they fight, they make up, kill the mortal enemy, find out the mortal enemy has a more evil boss, go kill him, then you're another guy, Nero, who apparently has a beef with Dante, they fight, he gets kidnapped, then there's ANOTHER evil demon/god/thingy who has to die, then the three stooges Dante, Virgil and Chick go on another adventure to kill a businessman(?) who is evil,...
WAARGH, who the hell still gets this?
In GoW you're Kratos, and Kratos alone, the whole series long. He has one (okay, group of) enemy: the gods. Well, maybe 2 enemies, the gods and himself.
In the game you find that you were used. You use other people to get to your goals, namely some friendly gods. There are Titans, who want the same as you, kill some gods, there are gods who want you and the titans dead. You have a troubled past about a murdered family, you want revenge. Your enemies are: Ares (whom you've been out to kill before the game), Zeus (The leader of your main group of enemies) and in GoW 3, probably a succesor to that(a Titan or a God, probably whichever betrays you worst. The other will be a level boss).
In short, you're human. A very strong god-ish human, but you're a human with real troubles.
I'm not saying this story isn't confusing. Off course I cut down both stories, killing all nuance and bluntly destroying all storytelling, but I don't need that for this point:
GoW is coherent. It's a series of events with people who recur and keep on helping you and messing with you, then help you, only for you to discover they had their own interest in you.
DMC are a bunch of stories tied together with a (rather confusing IMHO) timeline of games. People come people go, some stay for a long time, but there is no 1 single bad guy. You are always the bad ass motha in control.
Sure, that's Asian storytelling, but for the other 3/4 of people on this globe it's very confusing.
GoW is more American/European in story: take something people know, and let's make it different. And that works. Kratos has no annoying sidekick/loveinterest, no (playable) family and has been tugged all over the map to be used by people over and over again.
Because of that single difference, the story, GoW is more of a staple than DMC.
Which is not to say DMC is bad, not a staple or to step on anyones toes. I just mean to say that accessibility is just as important as gameplay to create a posterchild.
As for this post:
As Funk put it: GoW did it better.AC10 said:
About not being the first to do something: pretty much everything has been done. If you take something you liked and do your own thing with it, it's not bad.
Similarities are not evil. When similarities become annoying, the stamp gets pulled out.
For instance: Darksiders. The second the Voidwalker was introduced, I hated the game. There's the hommage, but there's also copying.
As for GoW v. Rygar and the whole "Nobody played Rygar boohoo" thingy, I played Rygar, and I liked it, it was all right. I played "The legendary Adventure" for PS2(the one you're pointing to, since the arcade isn't anything "Like GoW, but"), and I liked it. The camera just didn't help when dealing with large amounts of enemies. The whole weapon-on-a-chain made the monster killing a lot of fun, since you could hold some distance and still do good damage.
The story was kind of stupid. When Rygar is about to be executed, Titans show up. Titans mess stuff up, you end up saving the people who sentenced you to death. I see a plothole.
Another thing they have in common is Mythology based characters. I'm not even going to start here. Rygar wasn't the first either.
Imagine, a world where wrongs can be made right: Rybar with good camera and better story: it'dd GoW.
Onimusha, DMC, the important thing is that it wasn't GoW that did it first.Eric the Orange said:
That said, I loved 1 and 2, but GoW3 isn't selling me on a PS3. Same shit, just prettier. Holy fuck...its been...DEAR GOD. GoW1 is old as hell!
eh, I'm reminded of a strip in ctrl-alt-del where Dante (from the viewpoint in the Dante's Inferno game) visits the 4th circle of Hell - Greed. And there he meets a gluttonous monster called EA, eating "Divine Comedy" .. can anyone help me with a link please? =P
That's my opinion on Dante's inferno, at least based on what I've heard about it from anywhere on the web.
That's my opinion on Dante's inferno, at least based on what I've heard about it from anywhere on the web.
Eh, I'm not a fan of the brawler genre, and I've heard of GoW, but I haven't heard of Rygar. I had to wiki it and even then I'm not sure I found the right link.. I suppose it can be a matter of advertising?AC10 said:
I see some misconceptions in these comments and being the dick that I am, I am going to try and correct them.
Most notably is the argument that God of War (or any other title that carry the "like xxxxx but" mark) did not do all the things first and other games did it before. This is a null argument as the "like xxxxx but" marker is not based on originality. As all the things in gaming originality has value but it is not the end all and catch all measuring stick. To take an excellent example of this I present Blizzard. Blizzard does not make original games. They take other peoples ideas and polish them to a mirror shine (they don't always succeed but they do most of the time). Starcraft and Warcraft were not the first rts's but they epitomised the best the genre had to offer at the time. Since then better games has come out but they still stand tall in the minds of gamers (that can remember those times). Diablo was not the first of its kind either but again the mix of visceral action, treasure and leveling made the title stand out. The story wasn't bad either (not good but not bad either) and the mood was unsurpassed. And the there is WoW. No on can deny that World of Warcraft at this time is the game most people think of when they hear MMO. It is so well established that some gamers accused Warhammer Online of copying WoW in its design. GoW did the same. Game mechanics, story, mood, storytelling, voice directing, level design and design in general came together and created what was ultimately a game that was greater than its parts. And that is the key: "greater than its parts".
Which brings me to another argument: But this or that game does this thing better.
Well I have kinda given the punchline here, but I will cover it anyhow. Yes DMC is the best at the "fling enemies into the air and do stuff to them" style of combat. I personally like to shoot enemies with the grenade launcher even though it does not give that many points. However the rest of the game doesn't live up to the combat. It is a long sequence of set pieces fights, it never really shakes up the flow of the gameplay to do something else for a moment, the story is hard to follow or even understand, the voice acting is bad, the characters are two dimensional, the mood is kinda the same all the way through and the enemies - well ok the enemies are actually pretty great at least in the start (the string-puppets and the garden tool ghost). And there you have it. DMC does one thing better and one thing just as well and the rest is just not up to snuff. So let me reiterate: "the sum is greater then the parts."
Now lets move on. Why do some games get the - shall we call it mark - while others do not? It is a matter of polish and again the greater whole. Let us take Gears of War. The cover-to-cover type of gaming was pioneered by this game. It was well implemented, nicely polished and it was used throughout both the first game and the sequel with interesting tweaks in different set piece fights (the worms in GoW2 come to mind). However Gears of War is not a cover-game. It is a third-person shooter game. As such it had to have other parts to make it work and in all honesty it did them pretty well (I must admit I never really enjoyed the game without having a buddy sitting next to me but when he was there it was great fun). It actually did it so well that it got the mark for a time but it lost it fairly quickly. The reason was the even though the cover mechanic was cool and well done, and even if the rest of the game was good enough it turned out that other games could do it just as well. Wanted showed that there was much more interesting things to do with cover based combat. It was just too bad that after they showed they could do it they fucked it up again (which ultimately made this game blow badly). Later we saw call of Juarez Bound in Blood come with an even greater presentation of the mechanic (you didn't use a button to go into cover and you could poke out slowly from cover). And of course there was Uncharted. What basically happened was that Gears of War got crowded out as it did not have the incredible polish that God of War has. God of War has only recently been challenged on it and those challenges have in my opinion led directly to this discussion. As it stands now God of War reigns supreme in the brawler genre still but a spoiler has shown that even a godking can bleed.
So to summarize: It is not about being original or doing one thing really well. It is about making a complete experience that is greater then the sum of its parts.
Most notably is the argument that God of War (or any other title that carry the "like xxxxx but" mark) did not do all the things first and other games did it before. This is a null argument as the "like xxxxx but" marker is not based on originality. As all the things in gaming originality has value but it is not the end all and catch all measuring stick. To take an excellent example of this I present Blizzard. Blizzard does not make original games. They take other peoples ideas and polish them to a mirror shine (they don't always succeed but they do most of the time). Starcraft and Warcraft were not the first rts's but they epitomised the best the genre had to offer at the time. Since then better games has come out but they still stand tall in the minds of gamers (that can remember those times). Diablo was not the first of its kind either but again the mix of visceral action, treasure and leveling made the title stand out. The story wasn't bad either (not good but not bad either) and the mood was unsurpassed. And the there is WoW. No on can deny that World of Warcraft at this time is the game most people think of when they hear MMO. It is so well established that some gamers accused Warhammer Online of copying WoW in its design. GoW did the same. Game mechanics, story, mood, storytelling, voice directing, level design and design in general came together and created what was ultimately a game that was greater than its parts. And that is the key: "greater than its parts".
Which brings me to another argument: But this or that game does this thing better.
Well I have kinda given the punchline here, but I will cover it anyhow. Yes DMC is the best at the "fling enemies into the air and do stuff to them" style of combat. I personally like to shoot enemies with the grenade launcher even though it does not give that many points. However the rest of the game doesn't live up to the combat. It is a long sequence of set pieces fights, it never really shakes up the flow of the gameplay to do something else for a moment, the story is hard to follow or even understand, the voice acting is bad, the characters are two dimensional, the mood is kinda the same all the way through and the enemies - well ok the enemies are actually pretty great at least in the start (the string-puppets and the garden tool ghost). And there you have it. DMC does one thing better and one thing just as well and the rest is just not up to snuff. So let me reiterate: "the sum is greater then the parts."
Now lets move on. Why do some games get the - shall we call it mark - while others do not? It is a matter of polish and again the greater whole. Let us take Gears of War. The cover-to-cover type of gaming was pioneered by this game. It was well implemented, nicely polished and it was used throughout both the first game and the sequel with interesting tweaks in different set piece fights (the worms in GoW2 come to mind). However Gears of War is not a cover-game. It is a third-person shooter game. As such it had to have other parts to make it work and in all honesty it did them pretty well (I must admit I never really enjoyed the game without having a buddy sitting next to me but when he was there it was great fun). It actually did it so well that it got the mark for a time but it lost it fairly quickly. The reason was the even though the cover mechanic was cool and well done, and even if the rest of the game was good enough it turned out that other games could do it just as well. Wanted showed that there was much more interesting things to do with cover based combat. It was just too bad that after they showed they could do it they fucked it up again (which ultimately made this game blow badly). Later we saw call of Juarez Bound in Blood come with an even greater presentation of the mechanic (you didn't use a button to go into cover and you could poke out slowly from cover). And of course there was Uncharted. What basically happened was that Gears of War got crowded out as it did not have the incredible polish that God of War has. God of War has only recently been challenged on it and those challenges have in my opinion led directly to this discussion. As it stands now God of War reigns supreme in the brawler genre still but a spoiler has shown that even a godking can bleed.
So to summarize: It is not about being original or doing one thing really well. It is about making a complete experience that is greater then the sum of its parts.
I just watched that video and boy are you right. It seems to me that GOW has paid handsome sums of money for all the gaming media attention it has gotten over the years. Lets call it for what it is, a game where you run around and beat up monsters. Whats original about that? Sure the game is fun, but so are lots of games.AC10 said:
So you're saying God of War is, "Like Rygar, but better?" Actually I guess if they "took it" then it should just be, "Rygar, but better." Which does sound like a description for Rygar II if it's a sequel that improves on the original.John Funk said:
I guess if you two are agreeing then there's no argument? >.>
