I wouldn't rule out the possibility of photorealistic / realistic-behaving games as he describes and which actually work, but I don't know how many current genres / game styles would really "feel right" if presented that way. I don't think I'd want to play an especially violent game that looked fully real, while cartoony or otherwise clearly non-real I'm totally down with. Sports might be interesting, but doesn't really seem a necessary improvement. Survival horror would seem to be a good fit - a fully realistic-feeling presentation of something like Silent Hill or Amnesia has a certain sick appeal. Perhaps particularly in VR. Ideally in The Void.

Fallout 1 & 2 were the motherfucking shit. The original Deus Ex paled in comparison and Human Revolution was no where as awesome as the original, both very good (the original being much more ground-breaking obviously) but no where as awesome as the original Fallouts or Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment. The Black Isle writers were impeccable. It's sad that we do not have counter-cultural pop artists in the game industry making ground-breaking games anymore, and for Deus Ex games - we no longer have Looking Glass Studios type shit since they no longer exist and the company that took inspiration from them - the Marin Bioshock team decided to go a direction that was less "survival horror" with Bioshock: Infinite. But, that said, I will gladly play Fallout 4 and I will love every second of it regardless.

A2, T1 and T2 are all the same too. It could be argued they are ALL chase/survival horror movies. I think we know what scares Cameron.

Also, check out Alien Isolation. Looks so amazing. Finally a survival horror Alien game actually set in the Alien 1 era

http://videosift.com/video/Alien-Isolation

>> ^shagen454:

They say the people they are sending up are going to stay there for their whole lives? That sounds like a fucking survival horror disaster reality television series waiting to happen. I mean I would probably sacrifice myself to do it and hate myself for the rest of my life for it, or go for a suicide walk in the caves to meet the local specimens deep inside there... but it's messed up I tell you, it's meSSED! It reminds me of a book I read a long time ago... Red Planet?


Well as long as they don't start a religion I think it sounds like a cool way to retire. Peaceful, you're earth-famous, hopefully provided with an internet connection (slightly laggy), you can go play space-golf etc etc.

They say the people they are sending up are going to stay there for their whole lives? That sounds like a fucking survival horror disaster reality television series waiting to happen. I mean I would probably sacrifice myself to do it and hate myself for the rest of my life for it, or go for a suicide walk in the caves to meet the local specimens deep inside there... but it's messed up I tell you, it's meSSED! It reminds me of a book I read a long time ago... Red Planet?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'yahtzee, ramblomatic, Silent Hill, survival, horror' to 'yahtzee, ramblomatic, Silent Hill, survival, horror, oleaginous' - edited by calvados

>> ^Asmo:

I think Yahzee isn't technically a reviewer of games, he's oped'ing about games with humour.

I think that's right. Even if he was a reviewer, I already know that for the most part he hates games I like, and likes games I couldn't care less about (Hi there Driver: San Francisco!).

>> ^Asmo:
Winning a fight with a few % health left against all odds is far more satisfying than hunkering down behind a wall, regen'ing, popping out to shoot, regen'ing etc.

I guess this is why I'm not a big shooter fan. Narrowly winning a fight usually makes me think I've made a mistake, suck generally, or just need to turn the difficulty down a notch.

Most times these days you're only really in danger in boss battles, and usually there's some trick to the encounter you need to figure out, and once figured out it's not that hard to execute it.

>> ^Asmo:
Dead Island doesn't have regenerating health or a cover system, which really do help ramp up the 'survival horror' factor.


I bet ammo's hard to find too? Yeah, for a survival horror game, it seems like keeping you feeling desperate and overmatched is the name of the game. Regenning health has no place in a game like that.

At least one of the reviews of Resistance 3 said that it plays a lot more like a survival horror game than the previous ones did. Now if that's what they were going for, that seems like a good reason to do away with the regenerating health, but if they just did it to amp up the difficulty it seems like they could've done something different.

Also, it belatedly occurs to me that Resistance always had health packs. You had 4 little bubbles on your health bar. If you partially drained the bubble, not taking damage for a few seconds would make the bubble refill, but if you completely emptied it, it stayed lost. Health packs would refill empty bubbles. I wonder if they're still using the same system, or if there's no more regeneration.

Based on the story reasons for why your health regenerated in the first 2 games, the new protagonist should have regenerating health too...

>> ^NetRunner:

I'm starting to feel like Yahtzee is a bad reviewer of games. I haven't played Resistance 3 yet, but all I got from this was that he loves it because its mechanics are old-fashioned.
Maybe all of us gamers are starting to get a bit long in the tooth, but I've not become particularly nostalgic for "the good old days" of gaming. I mean, do most gamers spend a lot of time wishing old game mechanics would come back from the dead? I've played enough remakes of "classic" games I loved to realize that most of them don't hold up in comparison to modern games. Gaming has largely moved on.
I for one love the addition of cover and regenerating health to shooters, and don't really like the idea of going back to health pickups and strafing in and out of cover.
Oh, and maybe I just don't play a lot of shooters, but are any of the top-tier series really still all/mostly brown? The only ones I know of are Gears and Resistance...in their first iteration only. From hearing Yahtzee, you'd think this was some mistake developers are still making, but I can't recall the last game I played that didn't make use of a healthy portion of the color wheel.


I think Yahzee isn't technically a reviewer of games, he's oped'ing about games with humour. His reviews aren't particularly objective but they never claim to be.

And yeah, a lot of us do spend time wishing for old mechanics to come back. Winning a fight with a few % health left against all odds is far more satisfying than hunkering down behind a wall, regen'ing, popping out to shoot, regen'ing etc. Leaning around corners (rather than sticking to the wall and suddenly getting a huge panoramic as far as the camera can scan) is another example. No, we don't generally want verbatim copies of old games to come back, but some of the meatier bits would be nice.

I'd humbly submit that older games don't hold up against modern games because they aren't supposed to. That doesn't mean older game concepts don't hold up. eg. Dead Island doesn't have regenerating health or a cover system, which really do help ramp up the 'survival horror' factor.

Oh and if you liked SS2, you will LOVE the original Deus Ex.

>> ^moodonia:

Thats interesting, not long ago I finished System Shock 2 (impossible? no its not) and enjoyed it so much I was planning to play Deus Ex with a few mods to update the graphics a bit, maybe I shouldnt bother.
>> ^mentality:
Best PC game of all time? You gotta be joking.
I played it when the game came out, and while I agree that it is a good game, it did not provide you with any experience that was truly novel or exceptional.
The story was forgettable - whatever choices you made storywise were inconsequential, with the entire game boiling down to picking one of 3 different endings during the last mission.
The shooter elements were not as fun/polished/balanced as contemporary games like Half-Life. The stealth elements were not as well executed as games like Thief. The RPG elements lacked the depth of other cRPGs like Fallout. The atmosphere and immersion was limited by the technology - the setting of a cyberpunk metropolis just wasn't believable.
And finally, the idea of a shooter-RPG hybrid and different gameplay approaches to the same problem was already done before by System Shock 2, which with its excellent atmosphere and survival horror elements, is a much better game IMO.
And with Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Thief 2, and The Sims all coming out in 2000, I wouldn't even call Deus Ex game of the year material.

Thats interesting, not long ago I finished System Shock 2 (impossible? no its not) and enjoyed it so much I was planning to play Deus Ex with a few mods to update the graphics a bit, maybe I shouldnt bother.

>> ^mentality:

Best PC game of all time? You gotta be joking.
I played it when the game came out, and while I agree that it is a good game, it did not provide you with any experience that was truly novel or exceptional.
The story was forgettable - whatever choices you made storywise were inconsequential, with the entire game boiling down to picking one of 3 different endings during the last mission.
The shooter elements were not as fun/polished/balanced as contemporary games like Half-Life. The stealth elements were not as well executed as games like Thief. The RPG elements lacked the depth of other cRPGs like Fallout. The atmosphere and immersion was limited by the technology - the setting of a cyberpunk metropolis just wasn't believable.
And finally, the idea of a shooter-RPG hybrid and different gameplay approaches to the same problem was already done before by System Shock 2, which with its excellent atmosphere and survival horror elements, is a much better game IMO.
And with Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Thief 2, and The Sims all coming out in 2000, I wouldn't even call Deus Ex game of the year material.

Best PC game of all time? You gotta be joking.

I played it when the game came out, and while I agree that it is a good game, it did not provide you with any experience that was truly novel or exceptional.

The story was forgettable - whatever choices you made storywise were inconsequential, with the entire game boiling down to picking one of 3 different endings during the last mission.

The shooter elements were not as fun/polished/balanced as contemporary games like Half-Life. The stealth elements were not as well executed as games like Thief. The RPG elements lacked the depth of other cRPGs like Fallout. The atmosphere and immersion was limited by the technology - the setting of a cyberpunk metropolis just wasn't believable.

And finally, the idea of a shooter-RPG hybrid and different gameplay approaches to the same problem was already done before by System Shock 2, which with its excellent atmosphere and survival horror elements, is a much better game IMO.

And with Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Thief 2, and The Sims all coming out in 2000, I wouldn't even call Deus Ex game of the year material.

>> ^LordOderus:

The trailer is very well done and very emotional and interesting, which is what you want when advertising a movie. However when you advertise a game, it is usually nice to show a little bit of gameplay footage so I have some idea what the game is like.
Is this a FPS? RPG? Strategy game? 3rd person action/adventure? Point and click adventure? Survival horror in the vein of Resident evil and Silent hill? Give me SOMETHING.
The trailer is certainly well done, but until I see something about the game, I'm not getting all excited.


It's the first trailer for the game. Many games do this, the first you hear of them is some utterly oblique and vague sequence. Latter trailers will eventually reveal gameplay. It's simply standard practice and in this case the marketing has worked perfectly.

The most recent example I can give you is that of Halo: Reach. The first teaser for that was simply a shot of the planet with radio chatter as the soundtrack and no gameplay.

The trailer is very well done and very emotional and interesting, which is what you want when advertising a movie. However when you advertise a game, it is usually nice to show a little bit of gameplay footage so I have some idea what the game is like.

Is this a FPS? RPG? Strategy game? 3rd person action/adventure? Point and click adventure? Survival horror in the vein of Resident evil and Silent hill? Give me SOMETHING.

The trailer is certainly well done, but until I see something about the game, I'm not getting all excited.

>> ^shuac:

After playing this game, I'd love to see a full sandbox game set in a prison. You are a new inmate and your goal is to escape and clear your name. Or somesuch. It would be comparatively easy to make because you'd only need just so many textures and models. Not like Shawshank...more like Escape From Alcatraz only more gritty and dark.
To quote Jerry Seinfeld about prison, "It is a fascinating lifestyle."


Seconded! I always wondered what a first-person survival horror sandbox game might be like - trying to cobble together a way to escape from an old house or castle or something.

(Then Amnesia: The Dark Descent came out, but it's still mostly linear.)