Role-Playing Games

[cj_iwakura]

Yahtzee is somewhat incorrect here. There are JRPGs where the player determines the nature of his character and the events of the world. They're few and far between, but they do exist.

Look up Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. The player's actions and decisions determine how the world comes into being. No, it's not Bloodlines, but it's a rare step in that direction.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Yahtzee's hatred of JRPGs is getting a bit much. It's OK to mention that he hates JRPGs or treat it as a running gag, because that's his opinion and part of his 'caustic critic' schtick, but his insistance on labelling EVERY game that professes to be an RPG from across the ocean as 'stupid gay rubbish' is getting to be shallow, cheap and nasty. OK, you don't enjoy JRPGs, we get it. You don't have to abuse every game which falls under that umbrella term (which is an alarmingly wide variety of games including real-time action and turn-based strategy) with criticisms that, honestly, make you look a bit dim. Going on about "emo girly-men with spiky hair" in particular is echoing the shallowest and most poorly-researched complaints made by anti-fanboys who've never actually played a JRPG in their life. Frankly, it's not funny and he really should stop.

 

[13lackfriday]

Hmm, renaming the genres could be hard. The only one I can think of would be to replace RPGs and JRPGs.

Avatar Development Game (ADG or Avment Game) - Takes the place of Role-Playing Games. Describes how you develop your avatar by choosing your actions.

Tactical Cinematic Game (TCG or CineTac) - Takes the place of JRPGs. Describes a game in which main story progression comes from cinematics and combat is more tactical such as selecting and combining combat moves with other characters.

Meh, those ideas kinda suck, but it's worth a try.

Meh, your terms are well-bolded, eloquently explained, and even come with ready-made colloquialisms.

I'll take 'em.

Henceforth, the aforementioned terms shall be entered into the lexicon of the Oxford English Dictionary: 2010 Gamer's Edition.

 

[ShinningDesertEagle]

Genres have always been a bit iffy. In literature you have Fantasy and Sci-Fi which are by nature required to tag along another genre into its fold. Then there is 'Horror', which is a mood, and 'Western' which is a setting. What is up with that? On the other hand, 'Mystery' is pretty cut and dry so some video-game genres actually do make sense such as 'First Person Shooter'; but even this example relies solely on a game-interface standpoint. Genres are a mixed bag of vague labels.

Otherwise; Yahtzeeh makes a few good points while calling everything he does not like 'shit' in a very boring fashion as opposed to a comical or interesting one. Come on, Yahtzeeh, at least give me some unintentional humor? Oh right; I am not actually paying to read these articles so my criticism on the quality of his content is now moot. Because, as we all know, criticisms only matter on things you have to pay for as opposed to, say, posts in one's comments section or e-mail responses. There we go. =D

 

[MazzaTheFirst]

Jrpgs are brilliant, Yahtzee is plain wrong about them

Or, you know, he just has a different opinion about them.

 

[CrysisMcGee]

Yes, the terms seem to keep getting combined with something else. Effort into the "Lets attract more people" Kind of thing.

The only problem I've really had with this was Bioshock. To me, it's a shooter with upgrades. Just like Wolfenstein.

 

[RandV80]

My theory for how those Japanese games became "RPG's" is a history/tradtion thing. What were the first RPG's to come out on Nintendo anyways, Dragon Quest? Final Fantasy? who knows how well the Japanese knew D&D back then, but these games could hardly qualify as a strict D&D adventure, which are the original RPG's. So my guess is the game got dubbed an "RPG" somewhere in translation. How would you classify the original Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy game to a North American audience? Well hey, it's sort of a medieval setting with swords and sorcery like that Dungeons & Dragons thing, so lets call it a Role Playing Game! Even though there may not exactly be any 'Role Playing', it was the closest thing to fit the bill at the time.

If you're looking at it from today, the reason JRPG's are called RPG's when it's so unclear exactly what an "RPG" should mean is simply because that's what they've always been called on the consoles. Just like how the old North American PC RPG's, which were actually a lot closer to D&D, took a different development path but still called themselves RPG's. It was easy enough to make the distinction untl the Xbox came out and starting bringing this Western PC RPG's to the living room, a domain that used to soley belong to the JRPG.

 

[wildpeaks]

Your arrogant attitude came across particularly sour today. -_-

I must have overlooked that part of the article, where was it ?

 

[Fuhjem]

Hmm, renaming the genres could be hard. The only one I can think of would be to replace RPGs and JRPGs.

Avatar Development Game (ADG or Avment Game) - Takes the place of Role-Playing Games. Describes how you develop your avatar by choosing your actions.

Tactical Cinematic Game (TCG or CineTac) - Takes the place of JRPGs. Describes a game in which main story progression comes from cinematics and combat is more tactical such as selecting and combining combat moves with other characters.

Meh, those ideas kinda suck, but it's worth a try.

Meh, your terms are well-bolded, eloquently explained, and even come with ready-made colloquialisms.

I'll take 'em.

Henceforth, the aforementioned terms shall be entered into the lexicon of the Oxford English Dictionary: 2010 Gamer's Edition.

Ha ha, if this keeps up they might actually change it to those terms.

 

[13lackfriday]

Hmm, renaming the genres could be hard. The only one I can think of would be to replace RPGs and JRPGs.

Avatar Development Game (ADG or Avment Game) - Takes the place of Role-Playing Games. Describes how you develop your avatar by choosing your actions.

Tactical Cinematic Game (TCG or CineTac) - Takes the place of JRPGs. Describes a game in which main story progression comes from cinematics and combat is more tactical such as selecting and combining combat moves with other characters.

Meh, those ideas kinda suck, but it's worth a try.

Meh, your terms are well-bolded, eloquently explained, and even come with ready-made colloquialisms.

I'll take 'em.

Henceforth, the aforementioned terms shall be entered into the lexicon of the Oxford English Dictionary: 2010 Gamer's Edition.

Ha ha, if this keeps up they might actually change it to those terms.

Hope so...it'd definitely help clear up some of the confusion over exactly what kind of game you're getting in an ambiguously-titled "RPG."

Endless categorization and subgenres FTW

 

[hyperdrachen]

So this is what happens when an actual article writer trolls. To be fair I've seen bejeweled clones call themselves adventure games, and rpgs. But honestly theres so many sources of game reviews and footage the vagueness of some of these genre titles suffices to give you a idea of what sorta gameplay will be there. I doubt anyone would argue that Halo and Counterstrike are both FPS, but are highly unique games. Do they really both need thier own genre title that neatly wraps up all important elements of what to expect from them, If so how many other games could we use this title for.

This is the same psychology that leads to calling all 3d beat-em ups, God of War Clones, nevermind that God of War didn't launch the genre, nor can it claim responsibility for making the genre successful, granted It is a beatifully executed entry. In other words, let's stop naming genres after games in them. New MMOs are not WoW clones, new FPS are not Halo clones. One can only expect to get so much info about a game from its genre and I think for the most part current names suffice. I like Fuhjem's subgenre names for the RPG though, that way I could call a bad JRPG a CineTacs Error.

 

[Fuhjem]

Hope so...it'd definitely help clear up some of the confusion over exactly what kind of game you're getting in an ambiguously-titled "RPG."

Endless categorization and subgenres FTW

Shooters are here to stay, but just because a game lets you use guns doesn't mean it's a shooter. It has to be one of the main focuses of gameplay. Mass Effect is a shooter, Mirrors Edge is not a shooter. First-Person Shooters would be like Halo, Half-Life, and Modern Warfare 2. Third-Person Shooters would be Gears of War, Mass Effect (yes i am aware that ME is a shooter/ADG hybrid, in fact it is my favorite game of all time), and Uncharted 2.

Heavy Rain is a bit of a mystery for game genres. It's not an action game, a shooter, or much of anything I've heard of before. Heavy Rain would be more tailored to standard movie and book genres. I'd substitute any game genre for this game with Drama or Thriller. A game whose main focus is emotion would be more suitable for these.

Puzzlers have to be the best named genre yet. It's a game in which you solve puzzles. Not that hard. But Portal is a first person game and you solve puzzles too! Which is why Portal is known as a First-Person Puzzler. Puzzlers don't need to be changed at all.

Well, that's the best I can come up with at the moment.

 

[omegawyrm]

""FYI: you can just hold the mousebutton down instead of clickspamming to kill enemies"
- sag_ich_nicht, via email

Yes, this was the gist of quite a lot of the Torchlight feedback. Yes, you can certainly hold the mouse button down to keep attacking an enemy, but my concern was about needless energy loss, and keeping the mouse button depressed is still a far worse solution than just clicking once to keep attacking an enemy until they die. If I start attacking someone, I am not going to change my mind half-way through. Maybe if they turned into kittens after taking a certain amount of damage, or if I wanted to break off the attack to block an attack coming from another angle, but Torchlight isn't that kind of game.

Yes, this is as inconsequential as fuck, but tell that to the people who email me."

Yahtzee, this is stupid. Yes, it is entirely necessary to stop attacking at points in Torchlight. The bosses require constant dodging of their telegraphed attacks. It's pretty often a good strategic decision to stop attacking a tougher enemy to kill the weaker enemies that pile up.

This is the last straw, for a long time now, you have completely forgone the actual criticism of your early reviews and giving good games due credit in favor of pointlessly making fun of good games. You're entirely ignoring the facts in favor of just throwing out the blanket statement that everything sucks.

Yeah, I know that's the appeal of your show, to hear high amounts of hate, constructed as original metaphors and strung together at high speed. But you've gone too far, it's not funny anymore. By now, you have simply become the personification of everything that is bad about the internet. It's like watching if /v/ had an official internet show.

 

[AVATAR_RAGE]

this has acutally crossed my mind before

 

[xyrafhoan]

Jrpgs are brilliant, Yahtzee is plain wrong about them

SOME are brilliant. There's a lot of boring shit that comes out of Japan too. The term of RPG doesn't even really fit for most of these games because you've ceased to play any role other than jogging your character around a map. Final Fantasy is incredibly guilty of this, which is why I don't particularly like FF games that much. Persona 4 had the longest intro I've ever sat though, and I don't even think I got to the first dungeon until at least 5 hours into the game. I can't play through Baten Kaitos without thinking "SHUT THE FUCK UP ______" but that may be a symptom of awful voice acting. JRPGs are not a genre everyone likes, because you have to passively take in a lot of exposition that you may or may not even care about.

Instead, jRPGs should just be labeled Strategic Visual Novel Games, though sometimes they really do exude the aura of "Stupid Gay Shit". After all, you're just watching a story play out rather than having much of an effect on the events or the outcome, and some of the characters make you want to beat your forehead against a plank studded with rusty nails. And it's true that most main characters are effeminate emo whiners. The only series of jRPGs I can possibly think of that has some open-ended character building these days is Shin Megami Tensei and all its iterations (aside from Persona 3 and 4 where your stats are tied to whatever Persona you happen to have equipped), and although their characters resemble the emo whiners at least their mouths are fastened shut until it prompts you to contribute.

 

[klizzag]

Sure was nice when we only had board games and the creators didn't give a shit about being "artists". At least we have fewer genres than todays Metal scene (or "hardcore" scene since they killed the metal aspect of it). Every band has to come up with some new genre for themselves. Unfortunately, most don't realize SHIT is the best title for what they are playing.

 

[13lackfriday]

Hope so...it'd definitely help clear up some of the confusion over exactly what kind of game you're getting in an ambiguously-titled "RPG."

Endless categorization and subgenres FTW

Shooters are here to stay, but just because a game lets you use guns doesn't mean it's a shooter. It has to be one of the main focuses of gameplay. Mass Effect is a shooter, Mirrors Edge is not a shooter. First-Person Shooters would be like Halo, Half-Life, and Modern Warfare 2. Third-Person Shooters would be Gears of War, Mass Effect (yes i am aware that ME is a shooter/ADG hybrid, in fact it is my favorite game of all time), and Uncharted 2.

Heavy Rain is a bit of a mystery for game genres. It's not an action game, a shooter, or much of anything I've heard of before. Heavy Rain would be more tailored to standard movie and book genres. I'd substitute any game genre for this game with Drama or Thriller. A game whose main focus is emotion would be more suitable for these.

Puzzlers have to be the best named genre yet. It's a game in which you solve puzzles. Not that hard. But Portal is a first person game and you solve puzzles too! Which is why Portal is known as a First-Person Puzzler. Puzzlers don't need to be changed at all.

Well, that's the best I can come up with at the moment.

I think the great thing about games is that the new ones that totally revolutionize the industry and are endlessly "borrowed" from endlessly afterwards is that they oftentimes totally defy categorization.

Mirror's Edge had so little emphasis on shooting, it almost discouraged it. I think it was termed quite fittingly a "First-person Platformer," probably the legitimate first of its kind.
FPS and 3PS genre-splitting seems a bit unnecessary given the main difference is something as trivial as the perspective of the player, but cover systems definitely feature a whole lot more prominently in the latter (probably because staring at walls in FPS isn't particularly thrilling)...some reworking of the title there could be warranted.
Heavy Rain seems like a fresh new title, but it'd probably come down snugly as a TCG, seeing as how the majority of the game seems to play out as one big Quicktimed cinematic. You're definitely given chances to make important choices for your character, but they all seem to be to the same end, so the story's fairly linear to that degree.
Personally, I'd say Mass Effect was first and foremost an RPG since 3PS is just the approach it took to combat (and TCG a bit given the character-power-selection screen). The game centers on how you choose to act in given situations, and how this affects your character and your squadmates in the future. That's what gives it its ADG foundation.

 

[IndigoBen]

I completely agree. All games do put you in a role of some sort lol I never thought of it like that before, and even though I like the Final Fantasy games I have played, I heavily agree on your cutscenes comment. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd have bought a DVD. Good one Yahtzee.