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Top 20 Gaming Lows of 2004
An anonymous reader writes "Gamepro has posted a story about the gaming lows in 2004 -- a fair roundup of all the junk that's happened this past year. Those poor smugglers..."
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The parent poster will probably get modded troll or flamebait, but he's right.
At first I thought that my expectations for it had just been too high, or that my tastes in gaming had begun to change... but now that HL2 is out, I can be sure that neither of these things were true, and Doom 3 was, in fact, just a crappy game. Ravenholm was one of my favorite parts of HL2, and that kind of atmosphere was what I expected throughout Doom 3. It didn't deliver.
HL2's Steam system being on this list while Doom's craptasticness is omitted is unjust.
The entire entry on the N-Gage basically complains about features on the previous model of N-Gage, in other words, it's old news. The only thing it mentions about the new N-gage (which did come out this year) is that it is more "bearable" (a positive note) and that a certain ad campaign isn't running any more. That hardly qualifies as a low for this year in my opinion.
To complicate matters, I happen to think the N-Gage QD is quite a nifty device -- aside from being a cell phone it runs symbian software, has bluetooth (and can act as a remote control to my laptop). Also, it doesn't suffer from the drawbacks mentioned in the article (it isn't side talking, you *can* hot swap games and memory cards easily, etc).
On the gaming side of things, Sega just realeased a MMOG for the N-Gage called Pocket Kingdom which is a great game and a news maker in that it is the first true MMOG for a portable handheld. The campaign for that game has been running pretty strongly so it quite compensates for the ending of the other campaign mentioned in the article. Perhaps the author just didn't notice it since they have shifted more to online advertising than offline ads? Either way, again, the end of an particular ad campaign is hardly qualification for a "Lowest" point of the year.
~Fricka
OffLineTshirts.com
That's not a low. There's no reason for legislation, or for having the ESRB and the retailers act as surrogate parents.
The last time I went to walmart, I bought a video game that was rated M (One of those repacked Midway arcade series things... god knows why it was rated M, the whole screen consists of about 200 pixels.) Anyway, the Wal-Mart cashier carded me. I gave him a funny look and he said he had to make sure I was at least 18. Apparently Wal-Mart has decided that they are going to act as a surrogate parent to video game buyers.
Part of Doom 3's problem was that it had to meet some huge expectations. Doom 1 was *such* a ground breaking game, but Doom 3 failed to deliver the expected 'raising of the bar' in any of the areas that people were looking for: graphics (technically good, but not exactly stunning, considering the horsepower required), gameplay (pretty dull), characters (what characters?), weapons (fairly crap). level design (polished, but too samey and waay too dark).
I know when I'm playing a good FPS; I only get that 'I'm starting to get bored' feeling after the 3rd or 4th day (usually on the second go through). I played Doom 3 through once - I started again on 'hard' and I just lost interest half way through.
The other problem with the perception of Doom 3 is that the two decent FPSs which came before and after (FarCry and HL2) are just *way* better. If you took Doom 3 and sent it back in a time machine to 2002, perhaps it would have been that ground breaking smash-hit that people were expecting.
I'm certainly looking forward to games by Ravensoft et al. based on the Doom 3 engine.
Humm...I find it painfully interesting that the legistlatures of states would try to enforce age restrictions on "M" rated games when fifteen year olds are freely walking into violent PG-13 and R rated movies. As it turns out the Gaming Industry was praised for the standards on how they rate video games, while the MPAA washes back and forth and allows some movies which should be R to be PG-13. At least with the Gaming Industry an M rating will be given with even the hint that it should be M rated, while the movie industry will tweak with a movie to take content out to sqeek it down to PG-13. So in my mind, I would like to see legislatures take on the MPAA and tighten the ratings before they get into games. Movies reach a larger audience than games do. If Government is going to get into legislating morals and games, then they should make it so minors can't get into R rated movies, rent them or buy them. I am tired of different standards being placed on different forms of media than others. The MPAA, RIAA and the Gaming Industry ought to get togther and develop a media neutral content rating system. That way a parent can reliably compare games to movies to music to print to whatever form the diffenet medias take. And if you compare M to the MPAA ratings, it turns out that M comes out to be the equivalent of a PG-13 rating. While Adults Only (AO) is closer to the mid-range R to NC-17.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Hell no! Steam makes it impossible to sell HL2 once you completed it. This alone is a good reason to hate Steam.
And that's not the only reason for me to hate it, but it's the most important.