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The Hookup on High-Def Gaming
Penny Arcade's semi-frequent column The Hook Up has published a new article, and this time around Stormy talks about the coming high-def revolution in gaming and the acceptance of gaming by the masses. From the article: "I'm definitely troubled about the 'dumbing-down' effect that bringing the casual gamers into our fold may have on the quality of games in the future. Sure, tight pants and big tits appeal to the hardcore elite just the same as the casual gamer, but I'm betting that Half-Life 2 on the Xbox will play a lot different than on its PC predecessor. For example, I really took it as a compliment when Valve simply threw me into the fray when I began the game. The beauty of it was that the storytellers assumed that we've all played a shooter before."
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I despise this writer's elitist slant. Calling people casual gamers, mentioning the "'dumbing-down' effect" and associating himself with the "hardcore elite" reeks of shit. L33t sh1t, too. Just because your inside doesn't mean you're onside, boyo.
The other point made in Stormy's column was that many people have become disenchanted with real-time PC multiplayer gaming because you can gain a huge advantage simply by spending money on nice hardware. Current online console games present a refreshingly level playing field (except for Internet connection-based latency) in terms of inherent hardware-based performance. In the next generation, developers will be encouraged to take full advantage of HD to impress gamers. There will, of course, still be people with standard-definition TVs, as well. Simply owning an HD setup (and maybe surround sound) will give a gamer a tremendous advantage over people still using standard definition TVs, both in terms of field of view (16:9 TVs will offer better than 4:3; to gain the same field of view, a 4:3 viewer has to sacrifice around 1/3 of their vertical resolution, which already sucked) and resolution.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
While the author is worried about console games losing the "level playing field" in terms of hardware, it certainly won't be as bad as in computer games. In computers you have a constant supply of new available upgrades, as long as you have the cash. As for the next generation of consoles, the only upgradable component will be your TV. Once everyone has HD-TVs, that's it, thats the upper limit of upgradability.
Sure, it will be a factor when the consoles are new and only a handful of people have HD-TVs, but these new TVs are the wave of the future, right? Isn't EVERYONE supposed to go out and buy a new one? Within a couple of years, a LOT more people will have HD-TV. You can't expect the hardware vendors to not include HD ability when it is right on the horizon of becoming mainstream. Heck, this could very well push more people to get that HD-TV set, so they can take advantage of new console features.
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The start to half life 2 is actually very novice gamer friendly.
You start out just wandering around. The only thing that's missing to make it very friendly is an in game explanation that W-A-S-D are your movement keys, but presumedly the manual does that (I didn't read the manual). In fact your early game game experience is entirely running around in a 3d space, which is pretty easy even if you have no shooter experience.
(great storyline happens)
You eventually get to a couple jumping puzzles. Here we're got one new gameplay concept - jumping, and it's introduced in a tense setting but where you have all the time you need.
By the time you get into combat you've been playing for half an hour, and I believe it tells you how to "fire" (swing your crobar).
It's a little while before you get a gun.
In short half life 2 is very gamer friendly, starting off with extremely simple gameplay and introducing one new gameplay element at a time. You just don't notice it because the game rocks so much, you don't really think about how the game isn't a frag fest from frame 1.
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I support spreading santorum
When the topic of "dumbing-down for the masses" came up, was I the only one who immediately thought of Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within?
But much as I loathe the XBox and much as I prefer a more cerebral, more demanding gaming experience....
A little excessive there aren't you? Or have you only looked at highlight clips of games available for the XBox?
You are implying that the XBox doesn't currently deliver a more cerebral, more demanding game experience than Halo. That isn't the sum of the system, there are a ton of great games out there.
Halo is to FPS games what Final Fantasy 7 was to RPGs. A accessable, big success that provides the first taste of a gaming genre to the masses. Just because FF7 was on the Playstation didn't mean that all of its RPGs (or all of its games) were poorly written and shallow. The same holds true for the XBox.
If I can learn to love the XBox (raised on Infocom, Atari, Origin, Nintendo, Apogee, iD, and Lucasarts), anyone can. I didn't play it at all until late last year and have been quite impressive with what I've found. More and more my GC gathers dust (except for Resident Evil 4). My desktop hasn't been a game platform since Myst IV.
Plug for an awesome game: Play Psychonauts. Tim Schafer is the best creative genius in gaming today. If you haven't, play Grim Fandango on the PC (or ScummVM...someday?).
I think it's more helpful to think of video games seriously in terms of genres, and take it from there, when speaking about the dumbing down of video games.
It's also helpful to consider that this argument has all been done before, in other media, again and again. Particularly in cinema. To resurrect a very old debate, there are those who said, and those who still argue that Star Wars constituted a dumbing down of sci-fi. Others, and I included, will contend that Star Wars does not "dumb down" serious futurist sci-fi or any genre of hard science-fiction at all, because it was never any of those things to begin with and doesn't aim at their market. Rather, Star Wars takes heroic tropes and conventions of children's literature and elements of every film genre out there, and makes of them a high quality film in a number of those genres. But to say it dumbs down sci-fi is to say it dumbs down something it isn't. To look at a fantasy hero saga in space and say it dumbs down science fiction makes about as much sense as saying that graphic novels 'dumb down' rennaissance principles of portraiture, or that modern electronica 'dumbs down' Baroque notions of musical composition or that 20th century urban architects 'dumb down' the aesthetics of greco-roman sculpture.
And the same thing is true of games and their aesthetics, in general. There have always been largely mindless video game genres, and there will always be largely mindless video game genres. Space Invaders, Pong and Demon Attack really didn't particularly inform my view of the world around me, I have to say. And there have furthermore always been games with simpler gameplay, instead favouring story, or simpler story, instead favouring action, and anywhere in between. What you'll find varies from genre to genre like night and day. What's wrong, therefore, is pointing to (just picking one of an infinite set of examples) Action Adventure genre games of the present and while pointing to them stating that they are dumbing down the D&D Dungeon Crawls of the past. There's no sense in it. Let the genres be. And finally, there will always be bad games, mediocre games, and games which simply say and do nothing of particular consequence for gaming in general. If anything, there are far, far fewer bad games today than once there were simply because budgets are too high to allow as many small titles.
I'm as orthodox a PC gamer as can be, so much so that I find myself immediately frustrated by the mere fact of not being able to easily hack and mod a console game, but I refuse to believe that console games are dumbing down gaming in general simply because when I see a simpler action game, based on an original PC RPG or RTS license, reinterpreted for console with simpler mechanics, I don't critique it as a PC RTS or PC RPG. I critique it as an action game, which has long been moreso the domain of the console than the PC. It doesn't say to me "games are getting dumber." It says to me "nothing new under the sun."
Of course, I remember when people used to be hardcore, before all games had "save anywhere, any time you like", and these fancy 3d graphics. It's always the same, people always think that the time they started doing something with the pinicle, and it's been downhill since then.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I keep hearing how graphics can't be improved all that much and it just makes want to punch people.
Graphics have a LONG, LONG, LONG way to go before we get to photorealistic quality. It's not going to happen in 5 years, or in 10 or in 20. Heck, I'll be surprised if it happens within the next 50 years. So please shut up about it.