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"Oh yes."
Saturday, May 30, 2009
"ave completed this task. Hope my contribution helps. You guys are aw"
Thursday, May 28, 2009
"make a very good point but I think that games haven't yet turned the corner yet of creating interactivity and challenge without making you die or get frustrated. For examples of games that have at least some element of what I mean by this, look to Prince of Persia, Grim Fandango or Fable 2. You can't die in any of them, but they're still very much video games and definitely challenging and interactive enough not to be considered giving you a handicap like other games of our era.
I feel like if you do have a game where the player will die a lot then you should figure out a way for dying to be within canon, like the way PoP did. Every outcome of the game should be part of the experience in my opinion, not just the ones where your character is lucky enough not to fall down a bottomless pit.
Other games don't need to deal with death at all, like Grim Fandango (I haven't beaten it so I'm just referring to the beginning parts). This game is definitely challenging, putting together devious puzzles for the user to figure out, but nothing comes in and breaks the experience and erases a whole piece of your history like dying. The fact that everyone is already dead doesn't count :P
Fable 2 deals with themes that would have dying as a consequence in any other game, but allows your story to persist by giving you permanent scars for falling in battle. This is a real consequence for 'dying' in games instead of the temporary death screen followed by a complete reset of your bad decisions.
Other games like Crackdown and Bioshock let you die but then you are respawned and if you were taking on a boss there is still a dent in their defenses.
Overall, there are a lot of clever ways to get around traditional death in games without merely being Dragon's Lair (which probably involves death the most, but I know what you meant) and the sooner developers think about how to work with that effectively, the b"
Sunday, May 17, 2009
"l, first I don't believe that games that involve challenge should be done away with completely. I am just saying that they can coexist with what I think will be the general direction games should be going in. I think that games where they throw in things to make it 'harder' just because they can are being unreasonable, acting as if gamers aren't smart enough to appreciate what the game had worked so hard to create. For example, almost everyone who saw the Star Destroyer trailer where Starkiller merely rips the craft out of the sky thought it was awesome. When it showed up in-game however, it was an annoying mess where you were constantly hounded by TIE Fighters, obviously there to pad out the length. Sometimes you just want to feel like a Jedi, and the game should be trying to help you do that.
You also point out that a horror game would not be scary without difficulty, but that is not necessarily true. The difficulty in a horror game should have nothing to do with it, because if you strip away all interactivity from a horror game you are left with a horror movie, which has proven that it can be quite scary. Was Condemned: Criminal Origins difficult just because you had lead pipes and guns with a few bullets in them? No, these tools just gave the illusion of helplessness, which definitely added to the experience. What really created the tension though, was the atmosphere created through the art and sound design.
Also, you point out that game plots are generally bad, but that's because the developers aren't giving the plots a chance. They really think of a good plot as something of an added bonus, much as early films did, but there aren't many artistic visionaries helming games as their own projects. When you see The Departed, you know it is a Martin Scorsese picture, but play Dead Space and who would you credit that to? Only a few leads like Tim Schafer, Kojima and Suda51 can really be credited with making their own projects, and they all tell stories with games in their own ways. What we need is an industry where the creative force driving the game is at the front and center working on the gameplay and story as one entity.
I had actually written a second part to this blog which I will be posting shortly for clarification on this su"
Friday, May 15, 2009
"s is going to be Metal Gear Solid 4 + Oxide, the Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Solid 4 with more features. Twitter user @GameFork, who is a Microsoft employee has leaked this secret along with a few other games to be revealed at E3.
Sorry I can't link you to him on Twitter because I'm under a firewall at the m"
Thursday, May 14, 2009
