What games don't you "understand"?

[Zacharine]

Prototype. Maybe I could play for more than five minutes without quitting in frustration, I'd understand it better.

No apologies needed. When I said that 'perhaps you have forgotten' I didn't mean it sarcastically or anything like that. FSM knows I've forgotten more than my share of things.

How does ONE weapon type automatically make it an FPS? It's be more accurate to call it an RPG with a very light FPS element.

Well there is also crossbows and ranged magic. In fact, melee-combat is around 1/3 of the methods to deal damage. But many FPSs also have melee weapons. Rename the lightning spell for a ray-gun and fireball for a rocket launcher and suddenly you begin to see my point.

Most quests involve going to place A and killing everything/a boss monster. Or protecting someone while they travel to place A. Or getting to place A before time runs out. Almost every single quest involves kiling something. And what are 99% of FPSs about? Killing stuff.

I think myself justified when I call it an FPS with heavy RPG elements.

Come to think of it, Deus Ex was more of an RPG than Fable. At least in that game you could finish the main plot without killing anyone and you had multiple choices for the paths you could take. While somewhat linear, it wasn't railroad linear.

And Deus Ex is defined as Action RPG. Is calling Fable, since it has less RPG features, an "FPS with heavy RPG elements" that unexpected or unreasonable?

 

[Lukeje]

Is calling Fable, since it has less RPG features, an "FPS with heavy RPG elements" that unexpected or unreasonable?

Yes, because it's in third person...

 

[Zacharine]

Is calling Fable, since it has less RPG features, an "FPS with heavy RPG elements" that unexpected or unreasonable?

Yes, because it's in third person...

But it can be played in first-person just as well. And I did. So, FPS. But if you want to begin nitpicking, okay. Let's call it a T/FPS with heavy RPG elements.

 

[Sandwich Man]

Is calling Fable, since it has less RPG features, an "FPS with heavy RPG elements" that unexpected or unreasonable?

Yes, yes it is. The magic isn't aimed through a first person view. The only part of the game that has a first person view are the bows and crossbows. Calling it an FPS is a fallacy because the majority of the game has a third person camera.

 

[Zacharine]

Is calling Fable, since it has less RPG features, an "FPS with heavy RPG elements" that unexpected or unreasonable?

Yes, yes it is. The magic isn't aimed through a first person view. The only part of the game that has a first person view are the bows and crossbows. Calling it an FPS is a fallacy because the majority of the game has a third person camera.

Fine then, I concede the point. It is mainly third person, but since I used bows for every single battle, I got used to the first person view. So I'll call it TPS with heavy RPG elements.

But I notice how you evade my other points. So you agree that it is mainly a shooter and not an RPG?

 

[hermes]

Grand Theft Auto. Never have I been so baffled at a single franchise's popularity.

The way I see it, everyone is paying $50-60 just to drive around killing random civilians.

This... But, to be fair, few sandbox games have been fun to me.

 

[Sandwich Man]

But I notice how you evade my other points. So you agree that it is mainly a shooter and not an RPG?

I 'evaded' your other points because I didn't want to clog up the thread by quoting your entire post with each reply.

And no, I do not agree. With that sort of vague criteria, you can apply this to every western RPG. The focus is not just on shooting things specifically. The fact that you decided to shoot things does not mean that shooting things is all the game consists of.

Besides, only two spells (lightening and fireball) were strictly 'shooting spells'. Most of them were area attacks and buffs.

 

[Resident XIII]

Braid.

And you had to buy it aswell.

I second that! Don't get me wrong, it was a good game of sorts. But the ending gave no real closure for me. Maybe I'm too dense for it or just not on the same wavelength as others. But when it finished. I just thought. "I don't understand, what?"

 

[Woodsey]

The Halo games.

The first revolutionised nothing, and they're in no way original yet they all get near perfect scores with the main reason being that 'Halo Y' is "more of the same" that was in 'Halo X'.

My mind literally explodes when I read those sentences.

 

[SilentStranger]

There's always gonna be "purists" who will INSIST that the first entry in a series are the best and will hunt you down and murder you if you suggest that they arent, I'm looking at you Fallout 1 and 2 fanboys.

Seriously, I DO NOT GET what people see in the first two games, the gameplay is friggin TERRIBLE, whoever created the original action point system should be flogged. I love the story and graphics and level design and everything else, but the actual gameplay SUCKS. So yeah, call me crazy, but I consider Fallout 3 a huge step forward. To the point where it's actually, you know, fun to play

I can agree with the thing about Diablo one as well. It IS a good game, I guess, but it sure as hell isnt better than Diablo 2.

 

[monostable]

Ay god, a lot of people take what yahtzee says waaaaaaay to seriously...

 

[Ninonybox_v1legacy]

Let's see if I can think of any....

Half-Life 2 (1 I can get)
Red Faction 2/Guerilla (again, 1 I can get)
Far Cry "series"
Crysis (whooooaaa, talk about stinking turd getting praise!)
The sims games!
Unreal series (not the "tournament" ones, those are fine)
The entirety of the rubbish that is known as the Halo series/spinoffs.
Mass Erect... uh, Effect
Assassin's Creed (Biggest. Disappointment. Ever.)
the Total War series (except Shogun. Just can't see why it sells when Dawn of War was so much better at the time.)
Starcraft series!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything Warcraft related past Warcraft 2
Everything GTA related past GTA 2
the Metal Gear Solids (I suspect they are only likeable if you're a huge Playstation fanboy)
Deep Space (did their graphics dept. win an award for "number of brown tones used"?)
Haze (but then again, noone liked it.)
TimeShift (but then again, noone liked it.)

I got more, but I'll just draw the line there.

Games I don't understand why aren't passed as worldwide religion somehow:

-Morrowind
-Syberia 1&2
-Grim Fandango

And hey, CoD4 isn't revolutionary, as some here apparently expected it to be, but it damn well raised the bar by a mile compared to it's competition. Just compare it to Halo 2. Jeeeez. Miles better story and pacing in the singleplayer, and what was probably the most addictive FPS multiplayer to date! (note: when on Hardcore.)

do you like anything?.......picky picky picky

 

[Thaius]

Resident Evil 4 (and by extension, 5). I was awed by the atmosphere and production values, but the controls were awful! The inability to side-strafe and move while shooting was fatal in a zombie game.

 

[Zacharine]

But I notice how you evade my other points. So you agree that it is mainly a shooter and not an RPG?

I 'evaded' your other points because I didn't want to clog up the thread by quoting your entire post with each reply.

And no, I do not agree. With that sort of vague criteria, you can apply this to every western RPG. The focus is not just on shooting things specifically. The fact that you decided to shoot things does not mean that shooting things is all the game consists of.

Besides, only two spells (lightening and fireball) were strictly 'shooting spells'. Most of them were area attacks and buffs.

The I shall let this be my last post about this particular side-topic. My last post was highly abreviated as I thought it enough to get my point accross, but oh well...

Area attacks? Gees, ever heard of 'Hand Grenades?', 'Flame-throwers' and 'fragmentation missiles'? Not area attacks, no sirree.

Just because I decide to shoot things? Because I decide to shoot things?

Fable, quest one: Kill Queen Bee. Quest orchard farm: Kill bandits/kill guards who attack bandits. Further quests: go to bandit camp and battle the boss. Protect merchants by killing the monsters attacking them. Kill the balverine. Complete the arena fights. Rescue the archeologist by killing the minions within a time-limit. Escape from the Fortress Of Doom by in the end killing the Kraken-wannabe (impossible to get out without killing it). Kill enough undead to power-up a portal. Need I go on? Every main quest that does not involve simply running to a place involves killing to one degree or another. Even most side-quests are about killing something, with the occasional 'change your hair-do' in between.

Fable main storyline is all about killing stuff, sometimes using the corpses or their items as keys. Sure, I decide to shoot them, but I could have used the melee option if I felt like it.

let's see, halo has power-swords. Most army FPSs have a knife. The infamous crowbar deserves a mention - all valid melee options. But most people decide not to use them, for some reason or another. Mainly because they suck against firearms, but Fable, being a fantasy game, doesn not suffer form that.

Then again, Counter strike tends to have people knifing others. How about TF2?

What was Doom about? Kill stuff and find keys. Melee and ranged weapons. Wolfenstein? Kill stuff while running through levels. Halo? Kill stuff until you can walk to a switch or until you have satisfied the bloodlust the game seems to have and activates a key-script. Call Of Duty 4? Kill stuff with a group in order to move forwards, repeat until the game activates a plot-script.

All of them also had story, so did Fable. Fable has various methods of killing enemies from range, in melee or en mass - so do FPSs. Killing enemies is an integral part of the core game - check that as well. Most of the time the current problem has only one possible solution, usually involves killing or destruction. Well, guess what? Check.

In comparison to other western RPGs... Well, let us consider Deus Ex: Multiple choices, killing is not a necessity. Baldur's gate-series? Lot of quests involve detective work, finding key items and conversations. Combat is present in abundance, yes. But only rarely are they necessary to advance the main plot: They can most of the time be just stealthed through. Multiple choices on how to act; the most infamous one being perhaps Baldur's Gate 2 Underdark portion and the main Drow plot. And Mass Effect? Well, it is kinda shooty. I don't think anyone can gripe about that. But I do classify Mass Effect as a shooter/RPG hybrid.

And when talking of western RPGs, those three often come up.

So, the same criteria that I apply to calling Fable a shooter does not make Baldur's Gate one. Or even Deus Ex.

Are you beginning to see my point now?

EDIT: And the other spells? Time-stop = Bullet-time. Multi-arrow = auto-fire. Heal = medkit. Shield = armor upgrade/portable cover/bubble shield. Divine fury/Infernal wrath= Grenade at your feet with friendly fire off. Force push = stun grenade. Turncoat = confusion grenade/haywire grenade. Assasin rush = sprint.

 

[LockHeart]

I'm really going to go against the grain and say Halo. I mean, I thought the series was good, but I just don't get why people think that it's so amazing, it's just a bit average :/

 

[KedynCrow]

I've always been a little leery of MMORPGs. Now granted, I'm a table-top nerd, so they're always going to leave me cold when it comes to character creation/advancement as well as depth of plot. Similarly, I've got a thing where if I'm going to pretend to be an elf, I'm going to invite a couple buddies over and knock a few back in the process.

Recently I tried to get into DDO. It was free. Don't judge me. However, DDO is not a game that one can solo through and have a good time. Similarly, the people which seemed to populate the server were the most illiterate mongrel idiot children that I have ever yet met online. So I was at an impasse. I couldn't simply adventure alone as a squishy wizard, and I couldn't bear to deal with the people I was supposed to be cooperating with. So I shut down the PC, grabbed the phone, and called some buddies over.

MMORPGs. Go figure.

 

[Jonci]

Eternal Darkness. Many times when I brought up liking a horror/creepy game, Eternal Darkness was suggested to me. After a long time, I came across it in a Gamestop and bought it. It was just crap to me. Sure, the nifty Insanity system did some cool stuff for a Gamecube game, but it hardly seemed scary or creepy. Only once did I freak out from my character falling to pieces, and only because I recently picked up a strange item and didn't know if I did something wrong. The game quickly got predictable and the story was boring. There wasn't any real fear like when I played Fatal Frame.

Diablo I never got into. I haven't seen the appeal of a dungeon crawler without a DM putting an interesting story behind it.

Anything inspired by Peter Molyneax. After all this time, he still hasn't gotten what a good game is. Some people love Black & White and Fable, but the hyped appeal about being god or controlling your destiny falls apart when you are given so many limitations and rules. That man can spin a great idea at the tradeshows, but seems he'd be better suited to using at talent as a Hollywood movie agent.

 

[Dentedgod]

Myst and every single game like it. I just don't get it, they boor me to tears.

Any of the Half Life series. While I didn't think they were bad, I didn't think they were great either. I really thought they were just like every other FPS but slower. Someone above pointed out that it was the first FPS where you were in control of your character while the narrative unfolds and maybe that's why I didn't care, there were plenty of awesome 3rdPS where that happened long before it.

Any of the Halo series. While I thought the story was pretty cool, as someone who has been playing on the PC forever, I really didn't think any of the Halo's brought anything new or ground breaking to the table. My friend likes to point out that none of these things were on any console before Halo but all that does is make me realize why I mainly game on the PC and gives serious credence to the PC gamer elitist.

Mass Effect, not only do I not get why people love this game, I thought it was HORRIBLE. Every single one of my friends told me that it would be right up my alley and I still think that I should be able to punch each and every one of them in the face for it.

WoW - Maybe its because I was seriously into EQ before WoW but WoW just felt like an EQ1 clone to me. I know they've done tons since it came out but I've moved onto newer and better MMOs now.

The Wii. Sure it was fun at first, right up until the novelty wore off and we all realized that we much prefer to sit down and play a game without flailing our arms around.

 

[Dentedgod]

ehhhh.....Don't care for fighting games, everything boils down to who can smash buttons faster.

Actually if you learn the combos in fighting games most button mashers wont be able to land a single hit on you. I think your problem is that you've only been playing fighters with button mashers.