Home
CHARLES HEROLD
XBL -NONE-
PSN -NONE-
WII
-NONE-
STEAM -NONE-
CHARLES HEROLD'S SPONSOR
POST BY THIS AUTHOR (0)
COMMENTS BY THIS AUTHOR (7)
"I like this article, but I feel it falls into the same trap as the Destructoid article in insisting on referring to art pieces structured in a game-like way as games. The Passage, whether it is good or bad, is not a game, but is very clearly a piece of art. I would say something requires the player to have some skill to be a game; if all you are doing is wandering around aimlessly, with no ability to win, lose, or effect the outcome by any means except random experimentation, how is that a game?
No one expects little indie art short films to be the same thing as big budget Hollywood movies. Yes, there is a point at which the two meet, in the same way that a game like Ico balances art and gameplay, but most games, movies or anything else can be considered more one than the other, and need to be considered based on what they are, rather than on what they would be if they were something else."
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
"I like this article, but I feel it falls into the same trap as the Destructoid article in insisting on referring to art pieces structured in a game-like way as games. The Passage, whether it is good or bad, is not a game, but is very clearly a piece of art. I would say something requires the player to have some skill to be a game; if all you are doing is wandering around aimlessly, with no ability to win, lose, or effect the outcome by any means except random experimentation, how is that a game?
No one expects little indie art short films to be the same thing as big budget Hollywood movies. Yes, there is a point at which the two meet, in the same way that a game like Ico balances art and gameplay, but most games, movies or anything else can be considered more one than the other, and need to be considered based on what they are, rather than on what they would be if they were something else."
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
"a reviewer, I have always thought the important thing is to make clear what your opinion is based on. If I play a game on easy, or don't make it to the end, I say so if it seems relevant (it's not always relevant; some games, like sports titles, can be evaluated pretty quickly, IMO). I always try and discuss my opinions of similar games and how fond I am of a particular genre, so that readers have a way to evaluate how relevant my opinions are likely to be to them.
Within those parameters, I think a reviewer's responsibility is to give a subjective opinion in a way that is well thought out and entertaining. I don't think the reviewer needs to take into account how much work has gone into a game, because a tremendous amount of work has gone into some truly awful games, nor what the intent was, because I'm trying to tell people how it feels to play a game, and when most players play a game, they have no idea what the developer's intent was (and huge numbers of gamers also play games on easy or don't make it to the end, although the people who complain about critics are generally those who play on nightmare and then brag they beat the game in two h"
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
"give me a"
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
"annot take seriously the comments of someone who describes the Tales of Monkey Island series as "low-rent adventure games that sell solely on nostalgia." I get it, you consider point-and-click adventure games beneath you, but Tales is funny and has clever puzzles, and some of us simply like funny games with clever puzzles. That's not nostalgia, that's a gaming preference.
Your argument that episodic gaming doesn't count if the entire series is in the can also fails to hold water. Most TV series have numerous episodes filmed as the season starts. That's how episodic programming [i]works[/i]. Apparently you have some other idea of episodic gaming that perhaps involves changing the story trajectory based on user feedback or something. Sure, that works great in ARGs, but it's hardly the only acceptable model. You haven't made anything remotely resembling a convincing case; all you've done is set up a straw man and knocked him"
Friday, January 29, 2010
"s article says a lot more about the author's insecurity than it does about video games. He seems to be someone who feels on shaky ground when the "art" word comes out, so he wants to keep it at bay in video games. The thing is, people disagree about the merits of games all the time, art or not. So apparently if someone said to him, "your favorite game is bad because it's too hard and the character design is stupid," he would say, "you don't know what you're talking about," but if someone said "your favorite game is bad because it fails to set it's post modern sensibilities in a context that connects with the player emotionally" he would freak out and run away.
Do what I do, when people tell me a bad movie is a great work of art, I say, it was pretentious and boring. I do the same thing with games. We can define art as we like, I define boring art as bad art in any disci"
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
It's the same thing with games. Would a Mario Brothers game be better with a more interesting story? Probably not. (Arguably most of them would be better if they just cut out the story altogether.) Would Ico or or Half-Life or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or Sanitarium or Final Fantasy X be as transcendent if they had eschewed story? Absolutely not.
I can't help but note that your examples of story games are not among the best story games. I consider the juvenile stories and endless cut scenes of the Metal Gear Solid series to be the very nadir of storytelling. And while I haven't played Heavy Rain, it sounds like the same sort of non-game as Quantic Dreams' previous title Indigo Prophecy. It is as though I said, "lyrics are unimportant in songs, as proven by Stairway to Heaven and Slave 4 U."
Your final statement implies that you can play a game or watch a game, but that is false, as proven in games like Half-Life that seamlessly blend storytelling and gameplay. The fact that most games fail to achieve that doesn't mean we should get rid of stories, it means we need designers who strive towards that goal."