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Games People Shouldn't Play
MBCook writes: "I've been a video game player for years, and I must say that the average game seems to be getting worse. Exihbit 1: Games People Shouldn't Play, an article on MSNBC. This article shows what the author thinks are the worst games on the current crop of systems. You've got to agree with calling a game bad if "...the only way to get in [the minigames] is by buying hats... How do you buy the hats? Why, by picking up garbage." If that doesn't make you want to play a game, what would? I agree with the author when he says: '... who knows what kind of disease your children might get from overexposure to these games.'"
You SAY they are bad games, but what are their start to crate scores?
has been standard on the console for way too many years even as far back as the Atari 2600. Games were rushed out to take advantage of movie tie-ins on a pretty regular basis. Think of the E.T cartridge for 2600. I've heard about a small landfill being created with the leftover copies of this game. That's why we read game reviews.
your = it belongs to you. you're = a contraction of you and are. Got it now?
We just had a HUGE year
We've got 3 systems out right now
No really good games....
Smells like 1983-1984
Do you remember the NES game Cowboy Neal and the search for the Missing Karma? I got to level 45 before I realized I wasn't affecting the game through the controller.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I've played one or two of those games, and I can attest to their awfulness. Still, nothing holds a candle to Skydive! for the PC. I (Capital I)couldn't make a game worse than Skydive! if I tried! Some games are just born to be bad.
...(rejected by CmdrTaco) ...(accepted by timothy) or whatever it looks like because I haven't had a submission accepted yet. Oh well, I'll keep trying!
P.S. This is the second time that this has happened, but I submitted this too! This gives me an idea for Slashdot. When our submissions are accepted or rejected, we don't know which editor accepted or rejected them. Maybe we could be told that on our homepages (or somewhere else). It would be like this:
And now, for a sig that's a complete copout.
And a couple of gems that have literally stolen months of my life...
S.t.e.v.e.
You can tell when a game is good or bad, and 95% of the time, it's about how much the developers love what they do.
Take a look at Morrowind, the upcoming game from Bethseda. I've spent a week with it, and while it's still beta and crashes, you can see that they give a damn if people like what they're doing. It's not about how much money you spend - the game Starships Unlimited and Serious Sam were made on a low budget - but they were both fun, entertaining games that succeeding in spite of their backgrounds. (Let's face it - who would have thought a no-name Crotian programming house would have made one of the best games of 2001, and 2002 with Serious Sam 2?)
Then look at Final Fantasy X. Basically, it's a movie that sometimes you walk from point A to point B to watch the next movie. And it tells - the designers just didn't have that same love, that same pride in what they did (except in making great movie scenes and giving a reason to make sure Lulu won so you could check her out when she bent over.)
It's true with fucking everything. If somebody doesn't care about what they make and what they do, then neither will anybody else. It doesn't always work (Battlecruiser 3000 - lots of love there, but not universally loved), but it's true with your work, your spouse, your children - and the games you play.
Of course, that's my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
If we wanted complex story development or AI, we would use a computer.
If we wanted real tactical or strategic challenges, we would use a computer.
But we don't. We own consoles because:
We own consoles because the games are easy and fun to play. Any development shop that misses these points is bound for the garbage heap of business history. The article hits this right on the head. Anyone who claims this is about any one console missed the point.
Ethnic Cleansing, made by Resistance Records (owned by the National Alliance neo-nazi group) using the Genesis3D open-source rendering software. In the game, you control a white KKK member who runs around beating up on other races. And you thought people were upset about violence in video games after Columbine...
On the other hand, on this topic someone asked "why is beating up on other races bad, but beating up cops and prostitutes (in Grand Theft Auto 3) OK?"
It's a damn fun game. The key, as in real life, IS NOT TO DRIVE YOUR BOAT UP ONTO THE ISLANDS! I mean, c'mon...
Seriously, one of the most fun moments I've had with that game is trying to outrun torpedoes and turbo-boosting over a reef, sending my boat into the air while the torps hit the reef and blew up behind me. Smooth sailing from there. It may be Microsoft, but MS's games department tends to hit fairly often...
Wow. Picking up garbage. That is lame. Next let's make a game called "Day at the Beach" where in the time between flashing people and selling crack to preschoolers you pick up hypodermic needles and dead fish.
What would have been better is to make a game where you find say a gun and just start capping everyone in line in front of you. Call it 'Universal Studios Rampage.' As a person who used to wait in lines, it would be quite therapeutic. Such missions could include going 'Back to the Future' to destroy Kevin Costner before he makes Waterworld. (Or the Postman, or that crappy movie about Bottles, or pretty much anything after Field of Dreams.)
The MSNBC article is about crappy games, and how they exist. There are crappy games. There have always been, and there will always be crappy games. Now that you can't develop them without a significant investment and a large team, there are fewer 'Bible Adventures' and 'Wally Bear and the No! Gang's, and no 'Tooth Protectors' at all, but there are crappy games of an entirely different sort.
Anyone who feels that games have gotten 'worse', without qualifying that statement in some way, is full of it, or is simply blocking out the part of their brain which held (or maybe has never heard of) the Wall Street Kid, Amagon, King of Kings, M*A*S*H, Vigiliante 8 parts 2 and 3, Mega Man 4, 5, and 6, Pac Man on the Atari -- the list goes on and on.
No one's saying that Monster Party and Burgertime and Utopia shouldn't get props. But there were over 600 carts released for the NES -- how many of them are you really pining after here?
I'm so sick of this discussion. Have you played Super Mario Brothers lately? It's one of the best platformers ever, no doubt, but it's over in 30 minutes. Games are different now than they were ten or fifteen years ago, and you can dislike what has changed about them, but 'better' or 'worse'? Those are awfully broad brushes. For every Blood Wake, there's a Halo, for every Mortal Kombat Advance, there's an Advance Wars, and for every Mall Tycoon, there's an Unreal Tournament. It's the way of the world. Some things are crap. And this is not a new condition, even in the gaming industry.
Now quit your whining and let me get back to my Sim Golf.
god is just pretend.
I have many fond memories of the golden age of video games from the late 70's into the early 80's. The graphics were lacking, the sound was no where near what it is now, and the premiss of most games was simple. For all that those old games lacked, they had one thing that almost all of the games today don't have....a soul. Back then gameplay was the main focus for game developers. Too many of the new games go all out for the "eye-candy" factor and gameplay seems to be a distant concern. This goes for the arcade coin-op games as well as the home games. That's not to say that there weren't some serious turds floating in the video game swimming pool back then. Anything with a movie tie-in was almost certainly a waste of time, and I'm sure that some of us old-timers, now in our 30's, remember how much of a big dissapointment the 2600 version of Pac-Man was.
I have a hard time using shooter games on a console. It's so much harder to control. Nothing beats PC's for shooters.
Consoles however are great for racing, party and fighting games.
I think innovation and revolution is highly overrated in games. I waited anxiously for Black & White for over a year, because it was going to be hugely revolutionary with its massive world and gesture-based controls and so forth. I played it for one day and took it back to the store, because while it was Innovative and Revolutionary, I didn't find it to be much fun.
Grand Theft Auto III, on the other hand, is the most fun I've ever had with a video game. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but I couldn't care less. It's a lot of fun, and that's what I play games for.
Ultimately, there's only so much revolution you're ever going to see in video games. You're always going to be using the mouse and / or keyboard or controller to control a guy / spaceship / car / abstract cursor to blow things up / build civilizations / complete goals. That's just the way the medium is, I think.