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Comments
Yeah, but you exalt them as if they are components of one of the best games ever created, when to me they sound... fucking annoying, honestly.
IMO, full-publisher boycotts are kinda silly. If they're actually doing something bad with that specific game, then by all means don't buy it, but they'll never improve if you're just across the board not buying anything by them.
Fortunately for me, my birthday's soon ^_^
Yes. This. Thank you.
This is the reason why I will never touch Dark Souls.
Hmm... I guess that's a good point. That'd make me feel less guilty for a future purchase of Ace Attorney vs. Professor Layton then. Guess it's with their fighting games that they pull that crap with, and I say that as a fan of the fighting genre.
^ Me too! Let's be "Not Playing Dark Souls" buddies!
I don't see how that's unique to Alex. I mean, everyone who likes anything does that.
You're enjoying something you feel you shouldn't enjoy.
Dark Souls is awesome because it's Castlevania in 3D. If that doesn't sound appealing to you, then... I do not understand you, but so be it. In any case, Alex's overanalysis of the game is somewhat misleading.
I don't see why anyone would think they shouldn't like something that appeals to them...?
I think it's important to remember that there're two different kinds of discussion in regards to quality and appeal. You can enjoy anything provided it appeals to you, but that doesn't mean that it's good, quality-wise. The reverse of that is also true (You can hate or dislike anything, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing simply because it doesn't appeal to you)
If it bothers you that Alex's talking about the things he likes from a quality perspective because the things that the game does do not appeal to you, well...I don't know what to tell you to be perfectly honest. Only that you should really get over the fact that someone likes something you don't and it's gonna use his time and words to talk about it and why he likes it.
Put it this way: Have you seen me talk about the Ultimates and how much it sucks and yet I keep reading and rereading it because the art is pretty and the explosions are nice enough?
The best? Probably not. One of the most interesting? Certainly. I love Dragon's Dogma because it's exactly what the RPG part of the industry needs right now, which is variance and new ways of crafting an experience. In many respects, Dragon's Dogma goes back to the basics and is much stronger for it. Overall, the game lacks polish, the story is very average (about on par with Skyrim), the pawns are repetitious and I don't think the job system was as well implemented as it could of been.
All the same, I'm perfectly happy to sing this game's praises because it does things differently and more interestingly. Its core gameplay isn't quite on the level of Demon's Souls or Monster Hunter, but it's still very good, the music is brilliant, the environments well-crafted and the quests extensive. The whole game is also very deliberate; not much content strikes me as being there for the sake of being there.
It doesn't succeed on every ground, but it does things differently and the overall result is pretty good. And I really want this game to succeed in the long term because that would represent a fiscal reward for doing things differently. Dragon's Dogma could have easily used standard skill tree patterns, used night as an aesthetic element, scrapped the climbing mechanic and a bunch of other stuff. But it didn't, and the game is that much better for it. If the RPG part of the industry takes example from it, then I believe future RPGs will be that much better for it.
In short, the game also exists in a wider context, and I'm willing to give it additional credit for bucking some trends and heading off in its own direction. This is exactly what we need for the genre and the industry to move forward, because otherwise we'll be stuck at "kill X of Y", fast travelling and linear character progression.
Man, I have so many unfinished games. >>
Plenty of RPGs I've never finished (Persona 3 & 4, Skies of Arcadia, Tales of the Abyss, Disgaea) and others as well (God Hand).
I should really set up my PS2 again and go back to finish them before my backlog gets any bigger.
see, i want to say something about this working for some games and not for others and you shouldn't look for x just because other games have y, but i don't know how to phrase my point in a way that i'll get it across.
I think the idea is not that every game should stop doing those, but simply that variety is welcome.
Nope. Or rather, even if I had I don't think it'd matter. Even if you acknowledge that there are flaws (even very significant ones), unless you have some weird kind of "all of the things I like are perfect" complex then it shouldn't be a problem, right?
Maybe I just think it's less of a problem since I don't really have much interest in thinking much about media apart from my subjective views of it or something, though.
I was playing Okami today and I was annoyed by it's not holding my hand or at least giving me a general idea of where to go next after I complete my current task. It's official, I'm playing too many JRPGs.
^^^ Fast travel is context-dependant, but I definitely think "kill X of Y" has run its course. Dragon's Dogma has a couple of quests like that in first couple of hours, but I haven't seen the pattern repeated since hitting the main city. This implies to me that the beginning of the game was made during crunch time and they were just happy to get done with it, while the third hour of the game onwards got all the attention. The game is certainly not without flaws. That said, the "kill X of Y" thing should go, because even if the objective of the quest designer is to get the player into combat, there are much more interesting ways to do it.
And I mean, frankly, what's the point of killing X of Y when you'll be doing that as a part of natural game progression anyway? I think the whole point of a quest should be in doing something you wouldn't be doing otherwise. This is a part of the strength of, say, the Dark Brotherhood quests in Oblivion. Combat is almost always incidental to a good quest rather than the driving factor, and I think it's very telling that killing X of Y became a thing in the last generation; it was never a staple of classic JRPGs or WRPGs as far as I can remember.
Essentially, I feel that the quest type represents a lazy backwards step in quest construction, and exists primarily because games take so much in terms of presentation and sheer content to produce. You don't find them in any other genre, either. As silly as Call of Duty can be, there's never a "kill X German soldiers" condition, nor is there anything of the sort in Zelda games, Metroid or what-have-you.
I can accept flaws, yes, but I (normally, anyway) don't like anything where the flaws outnumber (either in quantity or in notoriety) the good qualities it has. I figure most people are like that provided the good qualities are not something that appeals to their own personal tastes, but I might be projecting.
In the case of the Ultimates, the book really doesn't have much going for it, except the aforementioned gorgeous art. The book's dialogue is awful, the plot's abysmall, the characterization goes against almost everything that made the Marvel universe succesful in the name of "realism" which isn't even relevant when you have the fucking God of Thunder in your ranks, and it's not even the kind of realism (read: emotional) that matters anyway and I could go on and on. And I really hate the book. But I also enjoy reading it. I enjoy the crazy spreads, the amazing layouts etc.
I'm not really sure if my definition is even right. As I said at first, "I thought" that the concept was related to the meaning I gave it based on how I've seen people describe their "guilty pleasures". I could be wrong, though.
yeah, see, i know that. that's not what my point is.
see: re: not knowing how to say it.
I don't think it should necessarily go just because it is overused and there are better ways to get people into combat.
It's definitely annoying when it's the main point of a quest (lololol kill 40 Imperials to progress in your class quest), but there are times when it's useful. For example, using TOR again, a bonus quest in Balmorra involves killing something like 60 Imperials- as part of the liberation of the city.
Untrue. It's basically grinding. Though it takes the...interesting step of making grinding the actual goal of the game.
That's what I thought Alex meant, not you, you dorky dork
Well, arguably it's been a component for JRPGs for some time, although I don't recall WRPGs (short of MMOs) ever being big on grinding. That said, even JRPGs gave you a wider objective as context -- prepare for the next big showdown.
you're a dorky dork
I know what Alex meant. My point is something else but words
So you know the thing that bugs me the most about ME3 is James. His face is punchable and his penchant for poorly pronounced stereotypical spanish is really pissing me off.
Hmm, so there was a point in the game where James sees the boss monster and screams 'Holy Hell!" If you ask me places like this would have been a good place to have him start cursing in spanish rather than spilling random well known spanish words.
Also, what did you guys give Shephard for a first name?
I'd probably don't need my gaming backlog to get any bigger though.
It's good. It's not the orgasmic sci-fi experience people have played it up to be but it's worth a go-through.
...does he never leave the x-box?
Which is quite possible on reflection.