Problem with Fallout 3 in my opinion was that the Bethestha did not hire the original developers (Obsidian Entertainment nowadays) to do the writing job for the game. Bethestha always had good engines and lacked in the scripting and getting it part! Fallout 3 while better out of the box than their last games still lacks, and it is hard to fill the shoes of the original fallouts due to the clouds and curtains of time!
Well it is very similar, except for leaving out the beaten to death Star Wars setting. You still have a story which is quite good if you give the game time, you still have the good / evil angles, and way more interesting characters. The problem probably some people might have is that the first intro mission is heavy fight intensive and plays shooter like, which later changes in both aspects towards a more storyish and rpgish mode!
Since Fallout now is in the hands of Bethestha I rather doubt it! The biggest mistake was that Bethestha wanted a clean cut, new setting, none of the old developers were hired, although they applied when Bethestha set the job postings into the internet. In the end, it ended up as the usual Bethestha game, excellent engine, and mediocre story and execution which now is left again to the community to fix up. The biggest problem I had with the game, I did not even mind the story and liked the setting, is that Bethestha didnÂt even remotely got it what made Fallout great, by leaving out the humor almost entirely they left the biggest element of Fallout out!
Do yourself a favor and get Mass Effect, it basically is Kotor with modern technology and without that annoying star wars setting, I nowadays hate due to overusage by LucasArts!
Btw. Kotor2 was done by the core Fallout guys who have formed Obsidian Entertainment, do have a serious watch on their games, they have 1-2 games in the line which look highly interesting!
Well the game is rather nonlinear in the sense that the levels are sort of parallel with some opening once the first round of levels is done. Problem is that the level design in the way it applies to the game mechanics, not the looks is very repetetive. Constanly the same obstacles and enemies with slightly different looks, almost no puzzles which makes it worthwhile to check out the next level. It goes on like checking out where to head next, then pressing the right button within a 2-3 seconds timeframe at the right time and at the end fighting the boss which you usually already have seen 5 times, then another okami sequence than going everything back collecting the lights! Every level is the same in this regard!
I personally think if you ever went out to beat the game, you wont feel too much compelled by replaying again, although your game path might be different. This is not an rpg where your choice of character or how you behave alters huge parts of the game!
Actually for me it was less the art style, which I actually liked, one of the reasons why I hated it was the boss fights. Not that they were not gorgeous, they were. Not that they were not challenging again, they were. But the issue was that you had to fight over and over again the same boss! And that mostly without any change in strategy. I am not sure how many times I already have fought the concubine, but after the fourth or fifth time I simply stopped playing the game. There were other reasons, but if you want to play PoP because of interesting bosses, then donÂt!
Well I agree here, I personally think they fucked up the game mechanics of the new PoP and hence ruined the game by dumbing it down entirely. The not dying really was a non issue for me although psychologically it took out some of the challenge. The bigger issues were the timeframes for the correct trigger of the buttons which were way too long, and the removal of all the puzzeling which made the latest tomb raiders outstanding and which made sands of time so great. Somehow UbiSoft is missing more and more what made PoP so great! The 2d pops were all about timing and some puzzeling and a good story, sands of time which jordan mechner also was involved was the perfect combo of good puzzels challenging jump combos and a very well applied limited soft reset. After that it went downhill with a relatively good pop in between. But the current one in my opinion is thr worst pop since sands of time and that says a lot with the heavy metal - gods of war wannabe which was the direct sequel to sands of time!
It probably bombed because the game simply is not good and had to compete against a huge load of very good games. This year as far as excellent game releases were amazing. PoP got one thing right the graphics, but not even raving reviews could save it, the game is a stinker! And word of mouth probably got out pretty quick. (See my long comment below why) Funny thing is not adding DRM probably helped them even saleswise. I would not have bought it without DRM before I really knew if it was a stinker or not (PoP always is a hit and miss thing qualitywise)
At least the lego star wars games had puzzle, but basically you are right one of the reasons why I stopped playing them after a while (the other being worn out on star wars, I simply cannot see it anymore)
Actually I bought my wii mostly for games like Zelda , Okami, Lost Winds etc.... I even love the prince of persia on the wii, I personally think this version has the best gameplay mechanics!
Actually it is less the time you spend on a game, I played lost winds and enjoyed every minute of the about 5 hours. I hated so far 4 of the 5 hours I played into the recent installment of POP. Well sands of time while graphically more on the low end side simply was an interesting, fun game which made me feel my time and money was spent worthwhile. While with the recent PoP i had the feeling of having graphical impressive boredom in front of me.Now I paid almost four times as much on PoP than I did on Lost Winds, so go figure how much I care about the time i spent!
Actually I stopped playing after 5 hours, reason, the game was so repetetive and puzzle less that I personally could not cope with it anymore without being bored to hell.... Personally graphicswise it is so far the best PoP but from a gameplay and overall perspective up until now the worst one (well I have not played prince of persia 3d yet which so far is considered the worst one)
Same engine, and unfortunately similar flaws, the game is repetitive as hell, and to the worse part most of the hard puzzles are gone and replaced by a game logic which just needs to have the right button pressed within a 2-3 seconds window. The entire game reminds me more of an easy version of Dragons Lair than a real prince of Persia. The funny thing is they got so many things right storywise and graphicswise that it really hurts that they fucked up the entire thing with the gameplay and the synchro speakers! Not sure if Jordan Mechner still was involved with it, but I rather doubt it!
Actually the smart reset was done by the last installments also. They reverted to the words, thats not like it happened. But you died, now it just resets by dragging you back to the last platform or resetting the boss battle. Actually that is the aspect of the game which does not annoy me at all while I still prefer dying and then getting the reset by the voice of a speaker! The new POP has so many other flaws that having the reset mechanic is the least of them!
avoid the new prince of persia entirely. Well lets not be too harsh I bought the game for several reasons, I loved the recent three installments of the series and I loved the fact it had no DRM. The good point about this game is that the graphics are amazing, but that is the only good point.
Well not dying is an issue which I personally do not despise because you cannot die but at the same time you do, by being transported back to the last platform or by resetting the boss to the start point.
This is a no issue on the positive or negative side, but that is the last positive I have to say about this overrated boredom.
The reason why I call it despite the load of work which obviously went into the game is following. The game is more or less the easy version of dragons lair, the entire game mechanics are without thinking just pressing the correct button at the correct time. Gone are the days of having to think your way through the surrounding, gone are the days when it was hard to trigger the right button at the same time. Think of it as a jump and run which forgives everything within a timing of 3-4 seconds and which has almost all the puzzles removed which made the series great!
Add to that the voice acting which seems to be straight out of the Zelda cartoons, gone are the days of having a rather depressive british speaker, and it is replaced with an actor who sounds exactly like the one who seems to have spoken the dreadful zelda cartoons (excuuuse meee princess)
Ok now to the second bad part, the boss battles, dont get it wrong they are boss battles, but the designers tried hard to make the game more like a gods of war and again failed. The reason this time, you constantly have to fight the same bosses again and again, they almost do not change their strategies, so you have to fight for instance the dreaded concubine 5 times at the end of each section, while the first fight is fascinating you want to throw your mouse back into the moonitor the fifth time. No change in pace no change how to fight her, the same lousy in fight jokes nothing new.
Now to the level design, while excellent graphically it bored me seriously to death, they basically used the same 10 different types of background obstacles ad nauseum.
Well the two good points i am not sure if they can hold up against the myriads of bad points the game has to offer. That it still got mid 80 ratings while the far superior Tomb Raider Underworld got 10% less does not really speak for the reviewers nowadays. I personally think while Tomb Raider Underworld has probably the better game mechanics and is a master of environmental puzzles it has some small graphical glitches PoP does not have but it is an excellent game which should be rated way higher than the new PoP.
Overall the new PoP probably is the Asassins Creed of the Prince of Persia while graphically highly impressive, the game behind it is highly boring and repetitive... Second try Ubisoft second faile with the same engine! Same high ratings of reviewers who probably seem not to get it, that a good game needs more than impressive graphics!
Please UbiSoft do us a favor, hire the old voice actors again and do a decent (non idiot user) remake of Sands of Time with the new engine! Or get Jordan Mechner back on board, he seems to know how to do a decent Prince of Persia! You obviously have the talent in programming and some good ideas but you need some serious overhaul in the game design departement!
Amen to that unfortunately having money as state religion is not only appliable to the USA almost the entire world nowadays is that way. Well there are still enough people who are not that way but, the money worshippers are definitely the ones constantly promoted in the media...
Well for me this shit in the cinemas was enough to cut down my movie going expirience from once a week down to once a year within a year. It was almost enough to sit through 20 minutes of commercials, but this thing basically was the last drop of water which hit the bucket before it became overflooded!
Well piracy is worse than stealing, imagine some guys jumping on the ship killing the crew or dropping it overboard and then taking the entire shipload away....
Oh well the problem is the definition of piracy is applied wrongly here!
Along with Fallout II, and simcity, this was the last game that I really enjoyed. The funny thing is that one of the things mentioned in the article is one of the reasons that I stopped playing video games.
They simply got too hard. I seemed to me that the developers kept trying to impress reviewers and hard core players with new, near impossible, challenges. Somewhere along the way they lost a lot of players. About the only company that I will pay for games from is spiderweb software http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ , the graphics are terrible; but, the games are playable and relaxing.
The games have gotten too hard. Before you make comments about being a whiner; remember, what I am is a lost costumer.
Actually the trend has reversed the last years, I have the feeling a lot of games have become easier, down to the point that a game like the recent prince of persia just is an occasional hit on a button from time to time. I think while games have become too hard a few years ago, currently some have become too easy. Fortunately most of the games get the balance more or less right nowadays and have difficulty settings to please everyone!
Not really, the macs are built like tanks, I opened my mini once, and I have yet to see a better overall housing design that in that thing, thermal tunnles were along the correct semiconductors and externalized the entire internal design was pure genious and probably would survive a drop of a few meters. Also my macbook air is similar. Compare that to the average acer and you basically can see, you get what you pay for!
Problem with consoles from a company point of view is, once a console is open it is way more open than any pc ever could be!
My personal opinion is that for a platform to survive and become popular you need a good mix of both, you need a decent amount of piracy to spread the word but you also need some kind of protection so that enough people buy the games. Ones this equilibrium is broken things become problematic.
Funny thing is there are many factors why the PS3 does not really take off and one of them simply is, expensive games and absolutely no piracy. The other thing is Mac gaming is dead due to rampant piracy of games on the Mac and the PC is sort of a last afterthought after the consoles have been served. Which is a pity because the PC currently beside the mac are the really only open platforms where single persons and small groups can develop for without the costs involved the consoles have! (Which probably is the main reason the indie scene is still as strong as it is on the PC)
Also the PSP is basically dead due to the easiness to open it, and once it is open it really is an awesome machine but also wide open for piracy!
Well to speak fairly the last monkey island game was utter garbage, it was sort of the last attempt of the few ones left at lucasarts to survive in the EA mentality which had taken over once they hired the guy from EA as COO who then refocused everything towards mediocre star wars games. Most of the good people had left LucasArts back then already and the few ones left could not save the game anymore! It was a mediocre ending to a good series. But seriously, adventure games nowadays have the problem that all of them are rated against the monkey islands and other lucasarts classics but with the view of nostalgia. Against this kind of refocused view no game can match. I can recommend to replay the old monkey islands again to refresh your opinion about it. The newer adventure games are just as good, but the nostalgia curtain really has to be washed away! (Btw. one game even had the in game joke, where one cried, i cannot hear about monkey island anymore:-) )
Funny thing is you wont even need the processor remotely anything mid range nowadays does the job, and the graphics card also just must be mid range.
Lets have a look at the consoles, the consoles currently have processors at the level of a P4, and graphics cards remotely similar to the high end nvidia cards from 2 years ago (G70 NVidia with faster cache in the case of the ps3)
There is absolutely no reason since nowadays the games are targetted towards consoles and ported to PC to invest even a cent into such a high end rig.
If you need computing better invest in a SLI solution, but that is mostly academic use since most games do not even use remotely what is needed for physics to justify a second card. The processor nowadays is mostly only needed on a decent but not fast level (anything modern will do) So why buy such a rig?
Slashdot Mirror
Problem with Fallout 3 in my opinion was that the Bethestha did not hire the original developers (Obsidian Entertainment nowadays) to do the writing job for the game. Bethestha always had good engines and lacked in the scripting and getting it part!
Fallout 3 while better out of the box than their last games still lacks, and it is hard to fill the shoes of the original fallouts due to the clouds and curtains of time!
Well it is very similar, except for leaving out the beaten to death Star Wars setting. You still have a story which is quite good if you give the game time, you still have the good / evil angles, and way more interesting characters. The problem probably some people might have is that the first intro mission is heavy fight intensive and plays shooter like, which later changes in both aspects towards a more storyish and rpgish mode!
Since Fallout now is in the hands of Bethestha I rather doubt it! The biggest mistake was that Bethestha wanted a clean cut, new setting, none of the old developers were hired, although they applied when Bethestha set the job postings into the internet.
In the end, it ended up as the usual Bethestha game, excellent engine, and mediocre story and execution which now is left again to the community to fix up.
The biggest problem I had with the game, I did not even mind the story and liked the setting, is that Bethestha didnÂt even remotely got it what made Fallout great, by leaving out the humor almost entirely they left the biggest element of Fallout out!
Do yourself a favor and get Mass Effect, it basically is Kotor with modern technology and without that annoying star wars setting, I nowadays hate due to overusage by LucasArts!
Btw. Kotor2 was done by the core Fallout guys who have formed Obsidian Entertainment, do have a serious watch on their games, they have 1-2 games in the line which look highly interesting!
Well the game is rather nonlinear in the sense that the levels are sort of parallel with some opening once the first round of levels is done.
Problem is that the level design in the way it applies to the game mechanics, not the looks is very repetetive. Constanly the same obstacles and enemies with slightly different looks, almost no puzzles which makes it worthwhile to check out the next level. It goes on like checking out where to head next, then pressing the right button within a 2-3 seconds timeframe at the right time and at the end fighting the boss which you usually already have seen 5 times, then another okami sequence than going everything back collecting the lights!
Every level is the same in this regard!
I personally think if you ever went out to beat the game, you wont feel too much compelled by replaying again, although your game path might be different. This is not an rpg where your choice of character or how you behave alters huge parts of the game!
Actually for me it was less the art style, which I actually liked, one of the reasons why I hated it was the boss fights. Not that they were not gorgeous, they were. Not that they were not challenging again, they were. But the issue was that you had to fight over and over again the same boss! And that mostly without any change in strategy.
I am not sure how many times I already have fought the concubine, but after the fourth or fifth time I simply stopped playing the game.
There were other reasons, but if you want to play PoP because of interesting bosses, then donÂt!
Why? Because he had actually something worthwhile to say?
Well I agree here, I personally think they fucked up the game mechanics of the new PoP and hence ruined the game by dumbing it down entirely. The not dying really was a non issue for me although psychologically it took out some of the challenge. The bigger issues were the timeframes for the correct trigger of the buttons which were way too long, and the removal of all the puzzeling which made the latest tomb raiders outstanding and which made sands of time so great. Somehow UbiSoft is missing more and more what made PoP so great!
The 2d pops were all about timing and some puzzeling and a good story, sands of time which jordan mechner also was involved was the perfect combo of good puzzels challenging jump combos and a very well applied limited soft reset. After that it went downhill with a relatively good pop in between. But the current one in my opinion is thr worst pop since sands of time and that says a lot with the heavy metal - gods of war wannabe which was the direct sequel to sands of time!
It probably bombed because the game simply is not good and had to compete against a huge load of very good games. This year as far as excellent game releases were amazing. PoP got one thing right the graphics, but not even raving reviews could save it, the game is a stinker! And word of mouth probably got out pretty quick.
(See my long comment below why)
Funny thing is not adding DRM probably helped them even saleswise. I would not have bought it without DRM before I really knew if it was a stinker or not (PoP always is a hit and miss thing qualitywise)
At least the lego star wars games had puzzle, but basically you are right one of the reasons why I stopped playing them after a while (the other being worn out on star wars, I simply cannot see it anymore)
Actually I bought my wii mostly for games like Zelda , Okami, Lost Winds etc....
I even love the prince of persia on the wii, I personally think this version has the best gameplay mechanics!
Actually it is less the time you spend on a game, I played lost winds and enjoyed every minute of the about 5 hours. I hated so far 4 of the 5 hours I played into the recent installment of POP.
Well sands of time while graphically more on the low end side simply was an interesting, fun game which made me feel my time and money was spent worthwhile. While with the recent PoP i had the feeling of having graphical impressive boredom in front of me.Now I paid almost four times as much on PoP than I did on Lost Winds, so go figure how much I care about the time i spent!
Actually I stopped playing after 5 hours, reason, the game was so repetetive and puzzle less that I personally could not cope with it anymore without being bored to hell....
Personally graphicswise it is so far the best PoP but from a gameplay and overall perspective up until now the worst one (well I have not played prince of persia 3d yet which so far is considered the worst one)
Same engine, and unfortunately similar flaws, the game is repetitive as hell, and to the worse part most of the hard puzzles are gone and replaced by
a game logic which just needs to have the right button pressed within a 2-3 seconds window. The entire game reminds me more of an easy version of Dragons Lair than a real prince of Persia. The funny thing is they got so many things right storywise and graphicswise that it really hurts that they fucked up the entire thing with the gameplay and the synchro speakers!
Not sure if Jordan Mechner still was involved with it, but I rather doubt it!
Actually the smart reset was done by the last installments also. They reverted to the words, thats not like it happened. But you died, now it just resets by dragging you back to the last platform or resetting the boss battle. Actually that is the aspect of the game which does not annoy me at all while I still prefer dying and then getting the reset by the voice of a speaker!
The new POP has so many other flaws that having the reset mechanic is the least of them!
avoid the new prince of persia entirely. Well lets not be too harsh I bought the game for several reasons, I loved the recent three installments of the series and I loved the fact it had no DRM.
The good point about this game is that the graphics are amazing, but that is the only good point.
Well not dying is an issue which I personally do not despise because you cannot die but at the same time you do, by being transported back to the last platform or by resetting the boss to the start point.
This is a no issue on the positive or negative side, but that is the last positive I have to say about this overrated boredom.
The reason why I call it despite the load of work which obviously went into the game is following.
The game is more or less the easy version of dragons lair, the entire game mechanics are without thinking just pressing the correct button at the correct time. Gone are the days of having to think your way through the surrounding, gone are the days when it was hard to trigger the right button at the same time. Think of it as a jump and run which forgives everything within a timing of 3-4 seconds and which has almost all the puzzles removed which made the series great!
Add to that the voice acting which seems to be straight out of the Zelda cartoons, gone are the days of having a rather depressive british speaker, and it is replaced with an actor who sounds exactly like the one who seems to have spoken the dreadful zelda cartoons (excuuuse meee princess)
Ok now to the second bad part, the boss battles, dont get it wrong they are boss battles, but the designers tried hard to make the game more like a gods of war and again failed. The reason this time, you constantly have to fight the same bosses again and again, they almost do not change their strategies, so you have to fight for instance the dreaded concubine 5 times at the end of each section, while the first fight is fascinating you want to throw your mouse back into the moonitor the fifth time. No change in pace no change how to fight her, the same lousy in fight jokes nothing new.
Now to the level design, while excellent graphically it bored me seriously to death, they basically used the same 10 different types of background obstacles ad nauseum.
Well the two good points i am not sure if they can hold up against the myriads of bad points the game has to offer. That it still got mid 80 ratings while the far superior Tomb Raider Underworld got 10% less does not really speak for the reviewers nowadays. I personally think while Tomb Raider Underworld has probably the better game mechanics and is a master of environmental puzzles it has some small graphical glitches PoP does not have but it is an excellent game which should be rated way higher than the new PoP.
Overall the new PoP probably is the Asassins Creed of the Prince of Persia while graphically highly impressive, the game behind it is highly boring and repetitive...
Second try Ubisoft second faile with the same engine! Same high ratings of reviewers who probably seem not to get it, that a good game needs more than impressive graphics!
Please UbiSoft do us a favor, hire the old voice actors again and do a decent (non idiot user) remake of Sands of Time with the new engine!
Or get Jordan Mechner back on board, he seems to know how to do a decent Prince of Persia!
You obviously have the talent in programming and some good ideas but you need some serious overhaul in the game design departement!
Amen to that unfortunately having money as state religion is not only appliable to the USA almost the entire world nowadays is that way. Well there are still enough people who are not that way but, the money worshippers are definitely the ones constantly promoted in the media...
Well for me this shit in the cinemas was enough to cut down my movie going expirience from once a week down to once a year within a year. It was almost enough to sit through 20 minutes of commercials, but this thing basically was the last drop of water which hit the bucket before it became overflooded!
Well piracy is worse than stealing, imagine some guys jumping on the ship killing the crew or dropping it overboard and then taking the entire shipload away....
Oh well the problem is the definition of piracy is applied wrongly here!
Along with Fallout II, and simcity, this was the last game that I really enjoyed. The funny thing is that one of the things mentioned in the article is one of the reasons that I stopped playing video games.
They simply got too hard. I seemed to me that the developers kept trying to impress reviewers and hard core players with new, near impossible, challenges. Somewhere along the way they lost a lot of players. About the only company that I will pay for games from is spiderweb software http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ , the graphics are terrible; but, the games are playable and relaxing.
The games have gotten too hard. Before you make comments about being a whiner; remember, what I am is a lost costumer.
Actually the trend has reversed the last years, I have the feeling a lot of games have become easier, down to the point that a game like the recent prince of persia just is an occasional hit on a button from time to time.
I think while games have become too hard a few years ago, currently some have become too easy. Fortunately most of the games get the balance more or less right nowadays and have difficulty settings to please everyone!
Not really, the macs are built like tanks, I opened my mini once, and I have yet to see a better overall housing design that in that thing, thermal tunnles were along the correct semiconductors and externalized the entire internal design was pure genious and probably would survive a drop of a few meters. Also my macbook air is similar. Compare that to the average acer and you basically can see, you get what you pay for!
Problem with consoles from a company point of view is, once a console is open it is way more open than any pc ever could be!
My personal opinion is that for a platform to survive and become popular you need a good mix of both, you need a decent amount of piracy to spread the word but you also need some kind of protection so that enough people buy the games. Ones this equilibrium is broken things become problematic.
Funny thing is there are many factors why the PS3 does not really take off and one of them simply is, expensive games and absolutely no piracy. The other thing is Mac gaming is dead due to rampant piracy of games on the Mac and the PC is sort of a last afterthought after the consoles have been served. Which is a pity because the PC currently beside the mac are the really only open platforms where single persons and small groups can develop for without the costs involved the consoles have!
(Which probably is the main reason the indie scene is still as strong as it is on the PC)
Also the PSP is basically dead due to the easiness to open it, and once it is open it really is an awesome machine but also wide open for piracy!
Well to speak fairly the last monkey island game was utter garbage, it was sort of the last attempt of the few ones left at lucasarts to survive in the EA mentality which had taken over once they hired the guy from EA as COO who then refocused everything towards mediocre star wars games. Most of the good people had left LucasArts back then already and the few ones left could not save the game anymore! It was a mediocre ending to a good series. But seriously, adventure games nowadays have the problem that all of them are rated against the monkey islands and other lucasarts classics but with the view of nostalgia. Against this kind of refocused view no game can match. I can recommend to replay the old monkey islands again to refresh your opinion about it. The newer adventure games are just as good, but the nostalgia curtain really has to be washed away! :-) )
(Btw. one game even had the in game joke, where one cried, i cannot hear about monkey island anymore
Problem starts when 4 out of 5 support calls are clearly from pirated versions of the software.
Funny thing is you wont even need the processor remotely anything mid range nowadays does the job, and the graphics card also just must be mid range.
Lets have a look at the consoles, the consoles currently have processors at the level of a P4, and graphics cards remotely similar to the high end nvidia cards from 2 years ago (G70 NVidia with faster cache in the case of the ps3)
There is absolutely no reason since nowadays the games are targetted towards consoles and ported to PC to invest even a cent into such a high end rig.
If you need computing better invest in a SLI solution, but that is mostly academic use since most games do not even use remotely what is needed for physics to justify a second card.
The processor nowadays is mostly only needed on a decent but not fast level (anything modern will do)
So why buy such a rig?