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Comments
fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine
^Neither. Just great game design.
It's invalid because the 3DS also has ports of good games from previous consoles.
Anyhow great game design can't take away flaws at plot and characterization. You going to tell me Gears of War is a high point of the medium?
I meant yours, not his, goofball.
I'd argue so, actually. At the very least, it's incredibly influential.
The gameplay is solid, to begin with. I see no reason for it to not be argued.
Arguments, chum, arguments.
Actually, Gears of War was seen as having great game design as well as being a high point for the video game industry.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how well does Gears of War holds up. I'm well aware of how influent it is, but the fact is that it's still a game drenched in 90s immaturity. Not like that takes any credit from its most resonant aspects, such as ultraviolence fantasy enabler.
To me, fun. And wonky, unreliable controls like what plagues Wii shovelware and everything that's ever been on the Kinect typically make things less fun than they could be IMO. Like, I'd say Smash Bros is a more fun game for casual and hardcore gamers alike, in part because the game actually does what you tell it to (except when you trip and stuff, but really now).
There's really no question when it comes to core game design; as much as we might hate the excesses of Call of Duty or Halo or Gears of War and their clones, each one has extremely good design at its core. This doesn't make them appeal to absolutely everyone, mind, but it's important to keep some level of objectivity about it and give such games credit for their mechanical triumphs. Just off the top of my head, good game design provides the following elements:
We can hate the trinity of shooters all we like, but they nail all three of those elements. Other games that succeed at those principles include Pac-man and Space Invaders, so you can see that there's a consistent pedigree forming here. I'd love to see the emphasis in games shifted away from hypermasculine military fellation as much as the next mildly effeminate leftist punter, but to deny that those games have quality would be entirely dishonest of me. Sure, the subject matter doesn't interest me and the content can be troubling, but neither of those things really make something a worse game.
That said, the "high point of gaming" is something difficult to nail down. I daresay it's subjective to one's preferred genre and sensibilities. For instance, as an RPG fan who is bitter towards the way publishing is done, I think Mount and Blade was a huge triumph as both a game and as an independent production. For me, it's definitely one of the high points in gaming on multiple grounds. Likewise, Dark Souls was an even more polished version of the hybrid RPG FromSoftware initially created, which was already brilliant in its own right. This is the kind of thing that strikes me as a "high point", but those are my tastes, and no single game is diverse enough to represent the entire industry.
That said, 1997 and 1998 were absolutely fantastic fucking years for both Nintendo and PC gaming, establishing a new pedigree in the realm of 3D games. The fact that we got Half-Life and Ocarina of Time in such a close timespan is no mistake, as the new capacities of the medium were being tested and prodded. Perhaps those games are a bit clunky today, but I still consider that era to be a high point in experimentation and creativity.
I have a hard time seeing GoW as all that great because it's just really repetitive. (A problem I don't actually have with CoD or Halo) There's variation the set pieces but generally it goes back to the cover-shoot-o-matic which is ridiculously simple.
The first of those is actually very difficult to get right. "Legitimate" is the important qualifier here, because if a game doesn't have proper balance, many options will become illegitimate because of the existence of a dominant strategy. The principle of agency is also why emergent complexity, emergent gameplay and so on and so forth are important; if the game has a versatile enough core system (while being simple to use), players will be encouraged to generate their own solutions via the mechanics. That's what "emergent X" essentially is -- the capacity for a game to allow players to self-generate strategies for success with great versatility. A dominant strategy is emergent gameplay's silver bullet, so agency comes down to great balance, emergent gameplay or a combination of both.
Consistency is another can of worms entirely, and most games essentially have it, but having it is not the same as doing it well. Half-Life 2's introduction of a proper physics system is a good example of doing it well, because it means the world itself has laws of cause-and-effect which can be manipulated by the player (or adversaries) and contribute to gameplay. Another good example is Fire Emblem, albeit a much simpler form of execution; its rock-paper-scissors nature of combat meets reasonably simple RPG mechanics, placing a simple tactical consideration on top of standard tactical RPG elements, changing the game from what could be a slogfest into a high-power, high-tension experience.
So you're correct in that the use of those elements alone can't define a good game, but the execution of those elements certainly can. The frontrunners of modern shooters are excellent at all of those things -- hell, even CoD is a legitimately difficult game on any difficulty above normal.
I actually love CoD4, but whenever I mention it, it's in the context that it's pretty much the only mainstream FPS anyone wants to release these days.
^^But then your qualifications are 'no true Scotsman'.
I don't think the distinction between "done" and "done well" is "no true Scotsmen". No-one's claiming that those principles aren't present if done poorly, perhaps apart from agency. In that case, poor balance or a lack of emergent gameplay certainly does destroy agency because of a dominant strategy. It's an issue a lot of MMOs have, for instance; there are very definite paths up skill trees and certain gear pieces (and combinations thereof) that are more optimal than others, and therefore other paths and pieces of gear are tactically illegitimised. Thus we find ourselves at a dominant strategy.
I'm not saying that games that have poor consistency or poor challenge don't have those things in the first place, or that they're not "true" versions of those things, but how a game handles those principles is a massively influential factor in how well it will succeed on a mechanical level.
But isn't that true of every facet of a game? Granted there's more leeway for, say, a terrible story but still.
To some extent, that's certainly true. But these factors are what I believe to be the most important to get right; at least to my observation, they're the only factors that are consistent across all good games, from traditional 9th century board games to today's sophisticated video gaming.
The fuck is a punter?
I loved it too.
A customer of a prostitute.
Ugh, speak for yourself. Several parts of Halo were the same two or three rooms over and over.
Not to mention the whole regenerating health thing made them tune every single encounter into something you barely had the mechanical capacity to beat given a moderate amount of luck, and as a result was just throwing yourself at a room over and over until you got the perfect confluence of foreknowledge of the entire room, flawless aim, and dumb luck. Just about every other room was like passing a kidney stone. And then the entire genre followed suit.
Honestly, I think Halo was what ended up turning me off FPS'es.
There's also how Perfect Dark was full of TECHNOLOGY moments,which is one of the best things in videogames for me
This is why I'm confused when people say Dark Souls is difficult.
To be perfectly honest, I think the only FPS I've truly enjoyed was Bioshock.
Have you not played Portal?
Portal really shouldn't be considered an FPS on account of it not actually being about shooting.
Portal 2 is the only FPS I've had real experience with.
Fortunately, people say it is the best FPS of them all
^ You shoot things with a gun. Works for me.
Or you could just call it a puzzle game like every other sane person does.
I've had very, very "riveting" experience with Portal 2.
^^That's an interesting point, because IMO, "puzzle" is the only videogame genre that is actually a well-thought-out category.