Where are the game variations, dammit!

[Lord Thag]

A lengthy bout of VCS playing last night made me think of something. What the hell happened to game variations, anyway? Hardly any new-gen games have anything like that, other than sound/video/audio tweaks and the occasional easy/medium/hard select switch. Sure, you have the occasional cheat, but those are usually exploits that ruin or break the game. There are a few games with lots of modes, but not many.

 

Atari games gave gazillions of different modes. How hard would it be to add a few new options to a newer, next gen game? Some FPS games like Halo (or whatever) have a lot of options for multiplayer, but that's about it. Really now, how hard can it be? Imagine how much more fun your standard generic third person shooter would be if you could start it over with different weapon sets, or select different enemies, or get new powers or what have you. I might actually, you know, PLAY them if they did.

 

Come to think of it, those nice little variations are one of the reasons my Atari is warmer than my Xbox

 

Lazy game companies! Bring back the game variations!

 

Who's with me on this one?

[elviticus]

I'm with you that it's cool to have the game variations on the Atari carts, but..... I don't think it would make the newer games much more fun, because a lot of them (in my opinion) aren't very much fun and are needlessly complicated as it is. I don't think various ways of playing would really help them!

[shadow460]

Played any Goldeneye recently?

[Lord Thag]

Played any Goldeneye recently?

 

Yes, exactly. Like Halo, that game had gads of options. Notice a trend? Both are games that are considered legends. There are a few others out there, but by in large 90% of modern games don't have many options. A high percentage of the ones that do are best sellers.

[godzillajoe]

There are options, you just have to hold left and right triggers, and hit Start+a+b at the same time then do left-left-eft-right+left trigger, left+right trigger, a+b,a, b, b, b, b+x, b, b, b, a+y, x, y, y, y, y and start.

 

No problem!

[G.Whiz]

There are options, you just have to hold left and right triggers, and hit Start+a+b at the same time then do left-left-eft-right+left trigger, left+right trigger, a+b,a, b, b, b, b+x, b, b, b, a+y, x, y, y, y, y and start.

 

No problem!

 

I think you missed the second "x"...

 

~G

[dwh]

The homebrew game Warring Worms got the many variations theme right.But, basically, I would agree, more variations, damn it!

[Philflound]

I don't play new games anymore. If I do, it's always a fantasy game for the computer since that is my genre and I have so many games to play, I don't have time for the ones I own. These take hours upon hours to complete. Some of the fantasy games have optional characters to choose, that are only 1 player and you only have your character, not party. I forgot which game it was, but there was a thief, fighter, and mage. Each had similar quests, but depending on which class you chose, you actually got some different quests just for that class.

 

I do agree that game variations could be good, but like someone said, the games are too complex now. It isn't about a 2 minute kill or be killed like Combat or Air Sea Battle. They were very basic, so changing subtle things like movable missile, invisible, or multiple airplanes would be much easier since the background always remained the same. Didn't the original Doom have many different levels you could play? I guess that would be sort of variations depending on which environment you would choose.

 

Since I don't have a gamecube, x-box, ps2, or any other newer system, I can't say how those games are. I think many games today are geared towards single player. Just my opinion.

 

Phil

[Room 34]

I initially lamented the disappearance of game variations in modern games, too, until I realized that the only reason game variations existed in the first place was because the old games didn't have the capacity to have menus where you could select various options. Think about the Atari games with lots of game variations, that invariably had a "Game Select Matrix" or something like that in the manual. Space Invaders is an ideal example. There were various parameters you could adjust, but since they couldn't give you a menu to say "Moving Shields ON/OFF, Invisible Invaders ON/OFF, 2-Player Cooperative ON/OFF," etc., they had to just have a sequential list of all of the possible combinations of those features.

 

Most modern games have an "Options" screen where you can select various parameters like this. Those are your game variations. It's just in a way that's a million times more intuitive and doesn't require memorizing that game variation #34 is your favorite, and then having to cycle through them all only to -- CRAP! -- skip right past 34 to 35, so you either flip the power switch or wait for it to cycle through the remaining 30 variations and then start over. (I'm thinking Asteroids here.)

[supercat]

What the hell happened to game variations, anyway?

 

The ability to control many different parameters is very useful in multi-player competitive games. People don't generally compare scores from different plays; rather, they look at who won and lost. If I play once with Bob in the tank-pong variation and then with Steve in the Jet-Fighter variation, the fact that the score in one game was 10-6 and in the other 9-14 doesn't really mean anything. Who won, and the rough nature of the margin of victory, are all tha matter.

 

In single-player games, however, the goal is to get the highest score in multiple plays. Throwing in dozens of game variations tends to muddy the waters. If I get a score of 53,295 on game #6 while my friend Joe gets a score of 47,940 on game #7, who's the better player? Also, if a cartridge has 57 variations, which is the "real" one? How many people play Asteroids with no diagonal rocks, or Berzerk with no Evil Otto?

 

In the early days of video games, there often wasn't much in the way of level progression. Space Invaders never gets any harder after the first few levels; many other games are like that as well. Putting in multiple variations allowed people to adjust the difficulty to their taste.

 

Newer games take a different approach: as the player moves through different levels, the game gets harder. If a game allows experienced players to reach higher levels easily (with warp-zones, Milipede-style score-continues, or even by just letting a user select a level) the different levels can provide for variation.

 

BTW, another approach I've seen which I rather like is to allow users to select various options to make the game easier or more difficult, but then to vary the scoring in some fashion. For example, the original Tetris allowed the player to show or hide the shape of the next piece that would come down; pieces that were hidden before they started down the screen awarded more points than those that were shown in advance. Obviously, playing with the pieces visible is "easier", but it's not necessarily clear whether it's enough easier to offset the reduced scoring. For some players it may be; for others, not.

[supercat]

I initially lamented the disappearance of game variations in modern games, too, until I realized that the only reason game variations existed in the first place was because the old games didn't have the capacity to have menus where you could select various options.

 

That's the reason for use of "game numbers", but IMHO a much bigger factor is the emerging dominance of solo play or score-based play, rather than direct competitive play.

[Lord Thag]

I disagree. Solo play is enhanced by adding lots of options. Take something like, say, Oblivion. There are TONS of things for you to do, change, tweak and mess with. All of this adds up to a lot of different ways to tackle the game multiple times, which is WHY the game is so popular.

 

I think more games need options like this. Sure, they don't have to do it the same way. I am sick to death of all these ten hour long games that have zero replayability (Doom 3 is a good case in point). You play them, beat them, and never touch them again because the whole game is exactly the same barring a little more or less damage via the difficulty setting. I'm tired of paying $50 for games that don't give me much entertainment (which is why I primarily play classic stuff anymore). Variation and randomness is what makes for a replayable game, yet so few new titles use either. Add some variety and randomness to the mix and you add hours or days of play-time.

 

Call it whatever you want, but I want options in my games if I'm gonna be paying $60 for a game! Not all new games lack variety, but most do.