Gah!! Why do they always screw it up?

[liveinabin]

I've been in great disillusionment about modern gaming lately.

There doesn't seem to be anything woth playing anymore.

A few days ago, hope dawned, I was searching for something 2 player co-operative that my wife and I could play and lo, up popped Baldurs Gate, Dark Alliance. I know it's an oldie but I'm a new PS2 owner and hadn't played it before:)

Beautiful looking game, great co-op hack and slash action, nice D+D touches - for the last 2 nights we've had the best time, looking forward to getting home from work just to nail some more zombies:)

However, we've just got a few levels in - to the 2nd level Thieves Guild and this lovely action RPG suddenly takes a dive and becomes.. Crash Bandicoot! Platform jumping and traps, all of which kill instantly - never mind all that armor and hit points you've been saving up.

Damn it! I HATE it when games change genre in the middle. If I liked platform games, I reckon I would have bought one.

So, don't know if we're going to bother carrying on with it. Shame, I'm really looking for an excuse NOT to sell all my systems and get out of gaming altogether. Disillusioned once again - and I've just optimistically pre-ordered Rebel Strike - might cancel that :(

 

Sorry to be on a downer, but gaming is just not doing it for me any more - and I kind of miss it

[NE146]

If you're like me, the disillusionment is probably temporary.. whether it lasts a week, 2 weeks, or a couple of years. I think you'll get back into vids eventually

 

I find when in that predicament I go to what this board is all about and that's the classics Be it arcade, 2600, 5200 or any other console. I think with thousands of games at our disposal these days, eventually I can find SOMETHING that clicks on whatever particular mood I'm in on any given month.

 

I tried playing a bunch of current games just the other day. I tried Futurama, Pirates of the Caribbean, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Dragon Ball Z Budokai. The only one that kept my interest was Panzer Dragoon, but I saved my game at the 3rd level.. and yknow what I ended up playing the rest of the night,..... was Zookeeper

 

But I still check out the moderns.. matter o' fact I'm hunting around right now for a F-Zero for the Gamecube.. and Rogue Leader III is next as well. But the one I'm REALLY waiting for.. is Mario Kart double dash (or whatever it's called) woohoo!

[Krytol]

My wife and I got into 2600 Demons to Diamonds recently. Fun two player game!

 

For what it's worth, I still think Halo is damn fun.

[Starscream]

Maybe you are just picking the wrong games. I very seldom have trouble finding a modern game to play and completly enjoy. Me and Foxy always play some co-op games and it's a blast. If all you have for modern consoles is the PS2, maybe you should consider a GC and an Xbox. While the PS2 has the most games, the other 2 have some great stuff you can't get anywhere else.

[Jetboot Jack]

Carry on playing BG -- its a great game, sure there are some twitch/skill mechanics in there, but overall a really fun game, it gets better the more you invest in it -- I loved it...

 

I'm afraid I don't subscribe to the "games ain't what they used to be" stuff -- of course I don't -- I make games everyday and whilst I still like a quick bash on Pitfall on the 2600, the games I work on now are superior in everyway as entertainment experiences...

 

Its all personal taste, not that games are changing out of all recognition. Console games still represent a very wide cross section of interests and play styles, from GBA game and watch classics to tru RPG's like Morrowind on the Xbox.

 

sTeVE

[Clock]

Same thing happened to me earlier this year. I had all 3 consoles, but sold the PS2 ans Gamecube as I didn't need all of them and felt the Xbox the best of the 3 (although I think all 3 are great). But around February I just got bored of the one hobby I've loved since being a child (thats over 20 years of gaming!).

 

There was drastic action to be done, so I hit eBay and bought an Atari 7800 and a huge number of carts and got back to basics. I now mostly play the Xbox and am very happy with it.

 

This is quite bad though, because I have a huge amount of systems and software up in my attic, I was just too lazy to go up there and unwrap one. But now I've bought a mint 6 switch woody and a load of games and wrapped them up and put them in the attic now.

 

All I got to play now is the 7800, a Lynx and the Xbox (with Live). And I'm a very happy gamer now.

[liveinabin]

Hmm.. good points all. I'll keep going on Baldurs Gate. It's probably just the way the game changed mid-flight that bugged me. I hate that. It's like, a couple of years ago, loads of games had a bit of Metal Gear Solid in them somewhere.

With any luck, it'll get back to mindless minion bashing fairly soon

 

Odd though, I get this 'I'll sell all my games consoles' impulse a lot more often lately. I know it's not anything to do with old games being 'better' than new ones. It's more that they're exactly the same that bothers me. Beneath the flashy graphics of new titles are the same games I've played and grown bored of on machines as far back as the 2600.

Doesn't help that I suck at gaming too:) I've made a mental note never to buy another Shigeru Miyamoto game ever again - they just make me angry:D

[+kisrael]

For me, it's a time thing. It seems most non-multiplayer party games take a pretty solid time commitment to plow through these days, and I know I'll just feel guilt for putting off work on my 2600 homebrew...

I mean, unlike some classic game enthusiasts, that's not a cry out for old school pick-up-and-play-and-compete-for-high-score only gameplay, I think I like the new paradigm of worlds to explore and new things to see, I just don't have the time for it that often.

 

Doesn't help that I suck at gaming too:)  I've made a mental note never to buy another Shigeru Miyamoto game ever again - they just make me angry:D

 

Angry how? 'Cause you find 'em difficult, or are you have philisophical differences with the old master?

 

I'm a bit less of a worshipper at the throne of Miyamoto these days. I think GTA:VC really raised the bar in a way Nintendo's adventures haven't met. Not so much the violence and mayhem (though I do take some pleasure in that) but the idea of a world so rich and varied that it's a blast just to tool around in. With everything from Nintendo lately, it's all too obvious that the game's world exists just to sponsor one particular adventure.

 

On the other hand, for multiplayer madness, Nintendo is still about the only game in town.

[liveinabin]

Yeah - angry because I find them too difficult. It's wierd - I have selective skill absence at particular types of games. I just walked through Rogue Leader, no problems, and that's supposed to be hard, right? Stick me in a third person 3D platform/adventure game and I fall to pieces.

I've come to the opinion lately that games (especially modern games) don't need to be hard. We played old games to drum up high scores so we needed a certain level of difficulty. Modern games are an entirely different affair. GTA Vice City is a good example - it's such an interesting and varied world to be in and would still be, even if the 'game' challenge was taken out.

With these big, sprawling world type games, I'm more in it for the 'being there' than for the test of skill.

I love the first few stages of nearly every major modern game I've played but then lose interest for precisely this reason. I'm a wimp, I know, but I'd rather see more cool graphics and characters than the Game Over screen again and again:) Yeah, it shortens the 'life-span' of the game, but this way, I'd at least get to see it all for my £40

[+kisrael]

Yeah - angry because I find them too difficult.

I'm closer to your side on this, but I do know people who are angry because they're too easy, they can get through the new Zelda, barely dying once...

 

It's wierd - I have selective skill absence at particular types of games.  I just walked through Rogue Leader, no problems, and that's supposed to be hard, right?  Stick me in a third person 3D platform/adventure game and I fall to pieces.

 

Yeah, I've heard some people say Rogue Leader was too tough for their blood, but I found the challenge quite reasonable. It wasn't quite a walk in the park for me--especially that frickin' guard the Millennium Falcon as it skims the Death Star--but over all decent. Though going for medals to unlock stuff was sometimes painful.

 

I've come to the opinion lately that games (especially modern games) don't need to be hard.  We played old games to drum up high scores so we needed a certain level of difficulty.  Modern games are an entirely different affair.  GTA Vice City is a good example - it's such an interesting and varied world to be in and would still be, even if the 'game' challenge was taken out.

 

Could be. On the other hand, I thought overlaying a good adventure w/ missions on top of a very flexible world was brilliant; I'm not sure I'd be as interested in a Maxis-esque SimHomocidalManiac.

[liveinabin]

Got through the tricky bit in Baldurs Gate and am happy to report that both my wife and I have just enjoyed a good 5 hours of beating the living crap out of anything that wasn't us:)

[JB]

Got through the tricky bit in Baldurs Gate and am happy to report that both my wife and I have just enjoyed a good 5 hours of beating the living crap out of anything that wasn't us:)

Mindless violence...

Gotta love it.

[hex65000]

I think the trick is that the difficulty should have some balance or at least have a 'possible' setting where you stand a half decent chance at success.

 

For example:

 

I spent almost 12 hrs straight playing 'The Ring: terror's realm' for Dreamcast. It's a survival-horror type of game. I died many times. I missed out on a couple of objects, but I never got to the point where I went, "you're kidding! this cannot be done." It's the reason I can't stand the resident evil series. There needs to be more beatdown on monsters, and things like knives and pistols seem to be very good at annoying these things more than anything else. Grrrr

 

I've decided, If I'm faced with a bunch of slow moving zombie types the best thing to get would be a shotgun. Followed up by either a chainsaw or a nice aluminum slugger. Even zombies slow down when they have broken legs.

 

I think all my time playing deathmatch is showing... If you off all the enemies, all you have to do is get where youre going.

 

Hex.

[ "Aaaaaaaagh! Yourself... Uh-oh..." --Serious Sam ]

[AtariDude]

I used to love playing Quake2 in co-operative mode. It was so much fun to be working as part of a team towards a common goal. I just got Wolfenstein : Enemy territory and I am looking forward to experiencing some of the thrills of co-op play like Quake2.

[+kisrael]

I used to love playing Quake2 in co-operative mode. It was so much fun to be working as part of a team towards a common goal. I just got Wolfenstein : Enemy territory and I am looking forward to experiencing some of the thrills of co-op play like Quake2.

Time Splitters 2 has a particularly pleasant FPS co-op adventure mode.

(and 3 levels of difficulty to boot...though easy isn't a total cakewalk, and hard is TOUGH)

[raindog]

For a while there, I was actually feeling the opposite of liveinabin. I was very dismissive of all the current games (how many first person shooters and variants thereof do we need, anyway?) until we were in TRU and my partner picked up a controller and started walking around a level of Super Mario Sunshine.

 

Eventually we bought a Gamecube and for a while it was like 1981 again in terms of my enthusiasm for games. He doesn't play much, he just enjoys watching because the modeling and camera angles and whatnot in SMS are so right-on.

 

But everything comes crashing down, and for me that happened when I started playing some of the other half-dozen games I got for the GC. One of them was a demo disk with the first level of that egg-rolling game that hasn't come out yet, "Sonic DX Director's Cut", "Viewtiful Joe", "Soul Calibur II" and "Splinter Cell". I didn't even try the Splinter Cell because nothing seems like it could be less enjoyable to me than creeping around in the dark trying to assassinate people (and actually it's a little disturbing to me that so many people actually go for that stuff) but I did try the other four.

 

That egg rolling thing was probably the least annoying because at least its concept was semi-fresh. Roll eggs around over fruits till they get big enough, and hatch them to (sometimes) get little animal friends who follow you around for some purpose I didn't get. You can also use the eggs to crush enemies and as a weird sort of transportation device (these rings that catapult you and the egg to a different platform) and you have goals to achieve (freeing a rooster from an enchanted egg; retrieving some kind of talisman from a high-up platform.) But the graphics weren't nearly as well-done as Mario Sunshine (camera angles more angular, textures and shading less smooth, animation less fluid, etc.) and there were some gaps in it (like you leave an area and come back and everything's reset to the way it was the first time). Not a bad way to waste half an hour, but I don't think I'd even rent this one.

 

Sonic DX looked so much like Mario Sunshine that it got me thinking the Mario guys were consciously emulating the Sonic series with Sunshine. Thing is, maybe because it's a port from the Dreamcast but it has the same problems as the egg thing: comparatively crummy textures, not entirely smooth characters and animation, etc, and on top of that, a terribly frustrating camera that only wants to point in the direction the game wants you to run, frequently getting obscured by objects in the process. Also, since the environments look so much like Mario, it's easy to compare the overall look, and where Mario would actually partially obscure objects in the distance with heat haze, in Sonic they're just sort of there. I had a lot of hope for this one because I loved the Sonic 2D series, but.... yuck.

 

Viewtiful Joe appeared to be a side scrolling platformer only with 3D rendered graphics in an old school comic book style, but it turned out to be largely an incomprehensible fighter that happened to have platforms in it. I mashed buttons a lot and managed to kill a couple enemies, but it just wasn't fun. Next.

 

Soul Calibur II was HILARIOUS. It was a straight ahead fighter in the Street Fighter II mold (in the same sense that any vertical shooter is more or less in the Xevious mold) and I picked a character named Cassandra. I held the joystick right and just kept hitting buttons at random, and that was enough to kill (uh, sorry, "KO") 3 people while George howled with laughter at the ridiculously overwrought brutality. "You vicious bitch," he said as my sword went through this big guy's body and came out the other side about 20 times in a row while he still remained standing. The instant replays were very entertaining. Ultimately, though, our enjoyment of the game came only from the fact that (a) it's so far from the sort of thing either of us would want to play and (b) I got as far into it as I did without knowing a single thing about the controls, just hitting buttons randomly.

 

Finally, I put in Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets, which is what I'm still playing. I'm continuing to play only because it's Harry Potter and I want to see how much of the story they work into the game (and I do have to admit I want to get to the quidditch part.) Everything is far more detailed than any of the other games, even Mario Sunshine, but the level of interactivity is vastly curtailed (you can basically only do anything with the incidental objects if you're standing next to one of them and the view of the button layout changes to indicate you can do something) and the detail comes at the cost of 10-15 second load times whenever you walk through a door or go from one area to another. The game itself is very much a standard "explore 3D environment to find things" and you even have the Sonic-esque conceit of "get hit by an enemy, lose your jellybean collection and try to pick some up before they disappear". Shockingly, it's possible in certain areas to get too many objects onscreen at once and cause the Cube to slow down for a second... shades of the original NES. And the camera is beyond useless; sometimes (as in this room where you're supposed to sneak between aisles to get around the shopkeeper and hit a button on the wall) it seems actually malicious. Overall, while it's pretty to look at and it is Harry Potter it's not a very well done game.

 

So, my initial exuberance over finding that modern games can be as good as Mario Sunshine is tempered by the fact that..... well, most aren't. I still have the limited edition Zelda Ocarina of Time, Super Monkey Ball, and Crazy Taxi to try out, we're looking for a good baseball simulator to try out (might have to wait till spring when the new ones come out or stick to rentals, judging by our trips to stores that sell GC games... it's all about the helmets and hoops now) and I do have the GB player which I'm looking forward to trying out, but I still have 90% of Mario Sunshine to complete and I'm thinking I'm going to take my time at it.... because who knows when the next time is that I'm going to find anything nearly as well-designed, nice to look at and fun to play.

 

Hmm, maybe I should take this text and start doing GC reviews for the FPS-o-phobic on my blog....

[liquid_sky]

He doesn't play much, he just enjoys watching because the modeling and camera angles and whatnot in SMS are so right-on.

 

Sounds like me sometimes, i will just sit and watch the demos in games and be totally flabbergasted.. let him know its fine to get addicted to watching the demos.. (lets you get more gametime too )

[liveinabin]

Update: My wife and I got bored of BG:Dark Alliance halfway through (no variety - just press X to hit, R1 to heal - repeat to fade) so I've stuck the PS2 on ebay (it had it coming) as well as all my games (kept ICO for when PS2's are $20:) ) and have gone back to the Saturn.

Am currently IN LOVE with Panzer Dragoon Saga - I can't believe I didn't play it through when I originally got it. It's WONDERFUL! When finished (which is rare for me, I get bored before the end usually) I'm getting an Xbox to play the more arcadey 'Panzer Dragoon Orta'.

 

Raindog's story is interesting. I guess all you have to do to stop the boredom of 'the same old games' is just take a break - and when you come back, there are a whole load of great games waiting for you. Glad to hear you're loving the Gamecube. Rogue Leader and Animal Crossing really got me back into 'modern gaming' a couple of years back.

[cryptik76]

I didn't even try the Splinter Cell because nothing seems like it could be less enjoyable to me than creeping around in the dark trying to assassinate people (and actually it's a little disturbing to me that so many people actually go for that stuff)...

 

Um, maybe if you had actually played the demo you might realize that it is possible (and usually suggested, and occasionally forced) for the player to get through much of the game without killing at all.

 

I hope that, if you do decide to review GC games, that you limit those reviews to your blog, because that way nobody has to read them. Lord knows we don't need more closed-minded reviewers to dismiss games based on playing a few minutes of the demo, and who forms opinions about the fans of a certain game based on what you think the game might be, without even checking the game out for yourself.

[+kisrael]

Um' date=' maybe if you had actually played the demo you might realize that it is possible (and usually suggested, and occasionally forced) for the player to get through much of the game without killing at all.

 

I hope that, if you do decide to review GC games, that you limit those reviews to your blog, because that way nobody has to read them. Lord knows we don't need more closed-minded reviewers to dismiss games based on playing a few minutes of the demo, and who forms opinions about the fans of a certain game based on what you think the game might be, without even checking the game out for yourself.[/quote']

I concur that really negative reviews based on a few minutes of demo are annoying.

 

On the other hand, man do I hate "stealth" gameplay mechanics, and how they're "creeping" (heh heh) into a lot of non-stealth games. I haven't played too too many games featuring it, but it never feels like trying to be stealthy in "real" life...

[cryptik76]

On the other hand' date=' man do I hate "stealth" gameplay mechanics, and how they're "creeping" (heh heh) into a lot of non-stealth games. I haven't played too too many games featuring it, but it never feels like trying to be stealthy in "real" life...[/quote']

 

The only games I've played where I felt the stealth element was really any good were the Thief games and Splinter Cell (and, to a lesser extent, No One Lives Forever 2 and Operation Flashpoint). Most of the time I think developers just tack it on. Unfortunately, it's becoming another way of padding otherwise short games, and it usually kills the pacing.

[raindog]

Hey, I make no apologies. I knew after about 30 seconds that I was going to like Mario Sunshine and that I wasn't going to like Viewtiful Joe. Each of the Sega demos took me about an hour to decide not to bother with them, and at any rate, the point of my post was that Mario Sunshine spoiled me for less polished games in the same genre, not that I found any particular game in a genre I don't like to begin with to be a poor example of that genre.

 

I knew after playing Rainbow Six for three hours that I'd never touch another Tom Clancy game again. I don't like hyper-realistic military games whether or not guns are involved, but every review of Splinter Cell I've seen depicts it as an assassin game, including every last clip I've seen. Go ahead, find me a promotional clip of Splinter Cell that doesn't involve a bullet entering someone's body. I dare you. There was a 2-3 minute long movie showing Splinter Cell's gameplay on the CD, and there were about 6 kills during that time. Six photorealistic one-shot-one-kill murders by the hand of the guy who'd be representing me on the screen, in no way cartoony or symbolic or hilariously overblown, just straight-up tactical removals from this world of random anonymous enemy guys. "Jesus christ," I said, and went on to the next thing.

 

You could say you can play Bump'n'Jump without ever bumping (and you'd be right, and in fact you can get a bonus!) but hello, the name of the game is Bump'n'Jump. "Splinter Cell" doesn't describe a guy who sneaks around helping people clean up after the nasty terrorists or other enemy of the week, it's about a guy who does nasty things that the government can disavow later. Things that I do not want to do in any kind of photorealistic simulation.

 

Not my cup of tea and, indeed, it disturbs me if it's yours. No apologies for that, but thanks for the heads up.

[liveinabin]

I stand by Raindog on this one. You know pretty quickly if a game is not for you and that Splinter Cell demo is pretty representative of the final product. Some people like it and some people won't and there's no reason to get nasty about it.

 

But you must admit, there ARE a disproportionate amount of 'military' games around at the moment. While it is indeed possible to get through most of Splinter Cell without killing anyone, it does make it abundantly easy - I mean, if they didn't want you to snipe people or use them as human shields, they wouldn't have made it possible in-game, would they?

A few shoot-em-ups here and there are pretty harmless, but if your main hobby is wasting virtual people, isn't that cause to be asking a few questions about your moral stance?

[+kisrael]

A few shoot-em-ups here and there are pretty harmless' date=' but if your main hobby is wasting virtual people, isn't that cause to be asking a few questions about your moral stance?[/quote']

 

Not until they come anywhere near passing the Turing test. :-)

 

I mean, I think the glee people have in slaughtering tons of innocent pedestrians in GTA3+VC is a lot worse than a game about sneaking around an enemly military, killing when you can't figure out how to

sneak by. But I don't really have a problem with the former either,

in moderation.

[JB]

A few shoot-em-ups here and there are pretty harmless' date=' but if your main hobby is wasting virtual people, isn't that cause to be asking a few questions about your moral stance?[/quote']After having a soldier in Metal Gear Solid walk around a crate following my footprints for 20 minutes without figuring out someone's there, I consider it issuing a Darwin Award.