iapetus said:
Wow. I disagree with almost everything he says.
Unfair to just comment and leave it at that, so:
1. Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then.
I largely agree with this one, though I also think there's room for pattern-based attacks. Doom III isn't a tense military sim with realistic opponents. It's a shoot-'em-up in 3D. The original author's missing the point here.
Where the enemy's supposed to have advanced AI, though, it needs to be better. Duh.
Where's the enemy Solid Snake who sneaks up on you with the silence of a ninja's church fart?
, perhaps?
Two, as developers have lamented, the guts of the new consoles are geared to make the gaming equivalent of dumb blondes. It has to do with the fact that both the XBox 360 and the PS3's Cell CPU use "in-order" processing, which, to greatly simplify, means they've intentionally crippled the ability to make clever A.I. and dynamic, unpredictable, wide-open games in favor of beautiful water reflections and explosion debris that flies through the air prettily.
To greatly
oversimplify, in fact. There are plenty of approaches to AI that don't rely on scripted routines that are hit by in-order processing. And I don't believe that even the limited scripting-based AI that tends to get used these days is going to be in any way reduced from what we have now. "We won't be able to do more of the same, but faster," cries the author, in an article where he spends most of the rest of his time bitching about the fact that games are just... doing more of the same, but faster. Woo!
2. Give us a genre of game we've never seen before. Something that's not an FPS or an RPG or Madden NFL or...
Okay, suggest one. And I don't mean just come up with a goddamn stupid setting, I want to hear about the gameplay and why it's fun, and why it isn't just a variation on an existing genre, and why it's actually a practical idea with current-day technology.
Not so easy, is it?
There
are games that break with existing genre convention - that do something new, and do it well. There have been every generation. And they've been limited in number every generation, because for each idea that works well there are a hundred total abortions.
I
loathe the idea of innovation solely for the sake of innovation, and I always have done. I'd rather play a mediocre 2D platformer than a godawful pre-op transsexual simulator. It's great that despite the wailing and moaning of the people whose favourite game is bitching about the game industry innovative games still get made. And lo, some of them (like Katamari Damacy) are great. But the level of innovation involved will
never make me excuse the shittiness of your game.
3. Don't bullshit me about your graphics
Don't be such a stupid bastard, then. You
know what the games look like, don't expect them to suddenly become photorealistic. Apply some critical thinking here.
Yes, it's the fault of anyone who falls for it. But that doesn't mean you're subject to it if you don't fall for it - it's pretty much trivial to find screenshots online for any released game.
I blame the developers formerly known as Square for this.
So would you care to explain why I should be lectured on what gamers want by someone who didn't start gaming until the PSX? That's the only conclusion I can draw from someone blaming Square for something that's been around since day one. Anyone else remember the 8-bit game boxes with the beautiful screenshots and the small print reading "Screenshots may be from a completely different version of the game - yours will be shitty two-colour graphics with hideous colour clash"?
4. Nipples?
Speaking of adult games, where are they?
Speaking of making the same retarded assumption that the maturity of games should be about the levels of sex and violence... And way to go with the consistent thinking, given that you complain about
too much nippleage when you're crying over female character design.
I'd love to see more games with adult themes and intelligent writing. Couldn't give a toss (ba-dum-tish!) about T&A and fountains of blood.
5. And on the opposite side of the nipple coin...
I tend to be more sympathetic to his views here. Not so much on the grounds that it's degrading to women (they can fight their own damn corner) but in that it's degrading to men as well. Some of us do
not have the brains and hormones of a socially dysfunctional fourteen-year-old, games developers. And when you design characters based on the assumption that you do, we often feel the need to beat you to death with a pre-owned copy of Sudeki.
6. All of the new consoles will have hard drives. Use them.
Limited saves were invented for consoles that didn't have the memory to let you "quicksave" (where you can save at any time, any where, with one keystroke like on a PC). To keep that physical limitation and pretend it's a gameplay element is like Superman 64 claiming its programmers' inability to render any background scenery was "Kryptonite Fog."
Yes. Hooray for the fine tradition of PC games allowing you to save, shoot an enemy, save, shoot an enemy, save, shoot an enemy, save, get shot a bit, load, shoot an enemy, save...
Well-planned save points are fine by me in games where it's appropriate. What I
would like to see more often, though, is the ability to save at any point - but only continue from that point once. There are some games that have done it, and I applaud them for that. HD saves should make it easier to do in more types of game, and I'd like to see it becoming more standard.
7. Loading...
DVD movies don't load between scenes.
Actually, they do in some cases, albeit not for very long.
Largely I agree with the article on this point. The less loading the better. But I'm not going to get my panties in a twist over it. If I have to spend a couple of minutes loading when I sit down to play a game for an hour or so, that's a price I'm willing to pay. It must suck to have such a short attention span that almost any loading becomes a life-changing event.
8. I understand that John Madden was raised by wild boars...
Have you ever actually watched a real game where Madden was in the booth? Yeah, that's pretty much the way he really talks.
Well, quite.
9. Immersion and the invisible hand of God
10. And while we're at it...
Making the same point twice doesn't make it any stronger. And this is one that I violently disagree with.
It's a difference in what people want out of games, I guess. The author of this manifesto wants everything to be ultra-realistic, with spot-on accurate physics, a complete modelled world in case you want to step out of the area the game wants you to be playing in. He probably wants it to be a FPS. I hate him already.
I want my game to be fun. If the gameplay calls for a confined area, then I'm all ready with the willing suspension of disbelief. I'm not going to go whining "But why can't I drop the blocks
outside the box? Why can't I break them into pieces so they fit?" every time I play Tetris. I've never felt the need to jump over the enemies or run off the screen when playing Robotron 2084. Hell, I even felt Pacmania's jump button was kind of morally repugnant.
Just because we
can make every game ultra-realistic doesn't mean we
should. It's like saying every piece of rock music should sound like Yngwie Malmsteen (which is actually my personal idea of hell).
And please, no insistence on all barriers being made ludicrous to provide an excuse for us not being able to get past them. A world full of giant glowing magical barriers and force fields hurts my wsod more than a million utterly impassable wooden doors with pictures of red fish on them.
Well, more than two or three, anyway. And I loathe the stupid Resident Evil (yes, I know RE didn't invent it, thanks...) coded key/door thing as much as the next man.
11. And while we're still at it...
Superimposing shit on the screen.
Screw you. Instant feedback is a good thing, and until there are games that provide feedback that allows you to
feel what it's like to lose 25 of your 36 HP in a single blow, I'll settle for on-screen notification. When we
do have those games, I'll turn on the on-screen notification option, and
you can have the pointy stick in the groin.
There are games that have done this - The Getaway being one of the most obvious examples - and people have bitched about it because, at the end of the day, on-screen presentation of information is one of the easiest ways of getting across information that your character in the game has and you don't.
"Cinematic" camera angles. No, thank you. Understand that we need to see what my character sees.
See. Told you he'd want it to be an FPS. Once more, screw you. Just because you can't stand any other form of entertainment, doesn't mean you have the right to tell the rest of us what we like. I enjoy games where I can spin the camera round Mario. I enjoy them more than FPS games in virtually all cases. And I'm quite capable of playing a game where the player runs into the camera if that's what the gameplay calls for. Sure, in your incredible immersive world we'd be running away from the camera, having to
guess where that dragon's going to breathe his next fireball. Plus 1 for verisimilitude, minus several million for enjoyable gaming.
Shitty voice acting. When it's good it's great, when it's bad it will haunt your nightmares for years.
Voice acting is
way down the list of things that are wrong with most bad games. Sure, I'd rather have good voice acting. But for someone who's whipping out the violins and crying us a river about the cost of modelling generic city backgrounds you're awfully set on spending a lot of money on professional voice actors, aren't you?
As long as it's not fingernails-across-a-blackboard bad (or Tom-in-Shenmue bad, as I like to call it) it'll do. If it's good, then that is, as you say, great.
12. Don't bullshit us on the difficulty
I agree with some of the points here. One by one:
Arbitrary triggers in RPG's
Why RPGs have to be singled out, I don't know. Arbitrary triggers in all sorts of games.
Ammo starvation. I'm looking at you, Resident Evil for the Gamecube. I have a gun. LET ME USE IT. Don't pretend your game is "challenging" because you only give me four bullets to kill eight zombie dogs with.
Look up. No, over there. You see that thing - just to the right of the sun? That's the point, that is.
If it hadn't passed over your head at such an altitude, you might have noticed that Resident Evil for the Gamecube is NOT A GAME ABOUT SHOOTING EVERY FUCKING THING THAT MOVES. Sorry it's not the game you were looking for, I hope you'll get over it.
Confusing, mapless floor plans.
For me, this is a bad thing, so your point has merit.
For you, providing a map (especially an on-screen one) breaks immersion, so go draw your own goddamn map.
Instant-Failure Stealth Levels
I'm not a fan of stealth levels at all, so I guess I don't like the instant-failure ones either.
Of course, Mister Immersion here would be the first person to complain if a game broke immersion by letting him get away with being seen by guards and not have them step up the patrols, hunt him until he was dead, and lock the door of the secret lab.
Unnecessarily difficult end levels
Fair enough. I don't appreciate a huge spike in the difficulty of the boss either. Don't like the overly easy ones either *cough*Square*cough*.
Largely I agree, but it's a small mind that sees this as an advantage solely for your opponents. Abuse it by staying behind until the final lap, and as the game gives you the advantage, charge past the leader on the final straight, winning the race before the rubber-band AI cottons on to the fact that you're now in the lead.
13. Don't bullshit us on the game's features
What law says I have to start out the game with none of the fun shit promised on the box art? Again, is this not just a cheap way of extending the life of the game?
Absolutely agree with this one. All the game's features should be unlocked from the start, so that there's no learning curve and no incentive to play further in the game. In fact, all the levels should be unlocked and selectable from the start. In fact there should be a neat synopsis of the game on a single sheet of A4 in the packaging so that I don't have to play the game and can get straight on to bitching about it on the interweb.
In fact, screw that. There should be a pre-written rant on the disc that fills in my name and posts it on a message board automatically when I put the disc in the console. Then I can just move straight on to the next game.
14. Seriously, get rid of the crates
Seriously, WTF? WTFF?
If this is even the fourteenth most significant thing you can come up with to complain about in gaming then all must be fine in the industry.
15. Stop the Short-Sighted Business Bullshit
Well duh. Not going to happen, though. I have the patent on stopping bullshit.
16. Don't use the online capability as an excuse to release broken games
Two in a row that I can't bring myself to disagree with. That's a new world record, surely?
17. Don't let other features distract from gaming
So does anyone else get worried when Microsoft and Sony both boast about their machines' ability to rip MP3's and play movies and chat online and do your taxes?
Doesn't every feature that gets added, by necessity, take designer's time and energy away from the features that make for great gaming?
Um. No. Go on, name me one game that has been noticeably worse
solely because of the fact that if I had wanted to, I could have watched a DVD on the console.
There aren't any, are there?
This is one of those arguments that people trot out every now and again, and which doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. First they claim that it hurts games somehow. How the hell does additional non-gaming functionality make things worse for games? Does a SNES suddenly become a
worse console if I duct-tape it to a DVD player? Then they fall back to the good old favourite that the system could have been cheaper, as if the hardware that supports the non-gaming functionality has no gaming purpose. You can't call for the use of DVD capacity and then bitch when the system can play DVDs because it uses a DVD drive.
At the end of the day you're more likely to see
benefits in games from non-gaming functionality, whether that's through advanced online features, customisable sound tracks, more storage space, better quality video where video is used anyway...
18. Don't use online play as an excuse to bleed us dry
Amen.
19. NO MORE JUMPING PUZZLES IN FPS GAMES
We'll try to be calm and avoid the violent hyperbole that spoils so many gaming websites, but are you telling me that Congress can hold hearings about steroids in baseball, but they can't do anything about jumping puzzles in first-person games? YOU CAN'T SEE YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FEET. IT DOESN'T WORK.
You insisted on the ability to jump in all games (see point 9 above).
You insisted on a first-person view (see point 11, subsection '"Cinematic" camera angles' above). Bite me.
20. Horizontal consoles have been a curse for as long as gaming has been around. I'm not playing another game until I get a machine I can stand on its side. My entertainment center only has three inches of free space and flat consoles are the backstabbing Judas in my life.
Get a better storage system. And for all the vertical/horizontal flexibility of the next-gen machines, they aren't very stackable.
Ah well, I suppose I'll live.
