valleyshrew said:
I love openworld city games with a modicum of life to them. It's something that most fail at, prototype and infamous feel sterile and empty. They're more like linear games that happen to have open maps and the comic book gameplay isn't very engaging or memorable. Burnout paradise and midnight club LA's settings have a lot more life to them and they're just racing games. Fallout 3/NV, GTAIV, RDR, Yakuza 3/4 - they're the really brilliant ones this generation. I can suffer through mediocre ones a lot easier than I can stomach linear games. I completed wheelman, mercenaries 2, just cause 2, far cry 2, guerrila red faction and many others and I just really enjoy the design of driving around and getting to know the city. City games feel a lot more immersive, there are no invisible walls or blocked paths and the corridor design is so fake and I have no respect for the work developers put into level design in linear games. It feels wasted to design an area that you walk straight through and never see again.
Wheelman is the most under-rated, it's a lot more carefully crafted location than the others and deserved more praise. I suppose it feels so much better because it's based on a real city and doesn't look like it was made in a simplified map editor where you cut and paste buildings and features like just cause 2 does. I don't like it when the maps are huge and empty, I like it to be concentrated society and to be memorable enough that I recognise where I am on the map. Fallout 3/NV have a lot of society, but the lack of vehicles really lets them down and it's not as fun to explore the world.
I really think reviews treat these games unfairly. GTA has set the standard too high and other games can't come close. Yakuza gets low ratings simply because it has a small map, but you can't expect them to do anything better with 1/20th of the budget that GTAIV had. I would very rarely give a linear game more than 8/10. It's so much easier to make a linear game (as the FFXIII developers realised). Reviewers need to punish them more. If you translated a 90% linear game directly in quality to an openworld game, it'd probably get 70%.
Has anyone else noticed this? RPGs also get unfairly rated. There's a lot more room for flaws in a deep game, so they get punished for it. Meanwhile games like shadow of the colossus, ico, braid, portal, okami, mario, etc. that don't bother with more than a comic strip worth of narrative or characters get called perfect and flawless because of it. It's teaching developers to not be ambitious and that it's better to not try rather than risk failure. Dialogue, characters and quality writing is really hard, so let's just have 3 characters total, no dialogue, and a meaningless mysterious ambiguous plot that people will lap up as if it's artistic and meaningful.
wow - i don't think i could've found someone with a more exact opposite list of games i like. and i really just want to curbstomp you for your tone. as you pointed out quality writing is really hard - in fact i find myself disappointed so often i have to play games that don't take themselves seriously, like DMC3 (oh god the laughs i had), or games that are able to convey narrative through something other than dialogue, like half the games you disliked. it's not about ambition - it's about using what you have - being ambitious just as often means messing things up because you think beyond what your budget allows.
it's so rare that i find likable characters, that "less is more" almost always applies to me - which is PARTLY why Wall-e will always have very special place in my heart. often people try to convey too much through only one medium - most often it's voice - and not enough personality comes through animation, posture, gesture and the like. in ICO it even comes through gameplay and the lack of explanation - you're a kid with horns which you don't know why - you find a girl who is in trouble which you don't know why - but you feel the urge to defend her, like your character does. you are able to fill in the blanks yourself which should always have a greater effect, since YOUR answers, are always the prefered ones. that is to say, if you have actual imagination. oh, and the gameplay: you're just a kid, and your attacks reflect that, your running, your jumping, and how you just pull the girl along.
more importantly, it gives the game a special feel - a charm - and i don't feel that any city filled with PUPPETS whom you have no relation to or interest in can replace that. are you so detached from human the concept of human connection that you aren't able to feel a difference between your emotion toward, say, your mother and a stranger on the street?
and wow -have you even played okami? there's a shit ton of people, and actual characters in that game - if you've played the game, then you'd know that the visual style is, ironically enough, the least appealing part. it's an adventure game up there with zelda, and in my opinion actually better.
red dead redemption - full of shit people with shit reasons for their shit actions - if the choice is between people i can't stand, and someone who is simply quiet - then the choice is obvious. same with GTA 4. you can just hear the protagonist doesn't want to get involved because he knows the people are idiots and they won't be convinced that they are just that. fallout 3/NV has a shit ton to do in a huge world, too bad the appeal doesn't extend further with only a fraction being fun. it's visual style fits it perfectly considering it's grey and bland.
and reviewers shouldn't penalize linear games! what the hell is wrong with you?! linear games means a controlled experience, so they can pace it just right - giving you both excitement and breathers so you can get ready for more excitement. it is by no means easier - because if you make it linear, you know you have to make the quality all the better to compensate.
if anything, it's easier to make an open world sandbox game, because then that hook, that appeal, is already there. and all you have to do is throw the toys into the sandbox.
sorry - i knew this would happen when i clicked here. but at least i'm fully vented now.
