System Shock 2 is my #2 game of all time (only beaten by the original Half-Life) so when Bioshock came out, I was really psyched that I'd get to return to that FPS/RPG style of gameplay. I thought they did a lot of things great in Bioshock (the art style, the graphics, the story, the physics and mechanics of the gameplay), it's always the things that didn't make sense to me that stick in my mind first whenever anyone brings it up. Vending machines that sell ammunition? (That never made much sense to me in SS2 either.) Psychic abilities that summon......bees? They're little things, but it's always stuff like this that breaks the immersion for me. Anyone else like that?

1. Basing any game on an hours play is stupid.



So, what, I'm going to play every game out there for 6 hours? What if it only gets good in hour 12? Maybe I should put a few years into every religion too, just to make sure? Of course not. There's plenty of games I like, and I can't think of any of them that weren't fun in hour 1. If you're regularly putting more than an hour into a game you don't like, I think you're crazy. Most games put their best foot forward.

2. You talk about how you loved GW1s story, yet you ignored the story in GW2 which said wait for the NPC



Sorry, when I said I liked the campaign in the first one I didn't mean the story per se - it was generic tripe. But playing through that narrative (skipping whatever dialog might have popped up) worked really well and was pretty fun. You could explore it at your leisure, by yourself, and (as before) it made a nice tutorial for the game.

The GW1 system was powerful, but impossible to balance.



It was fine. And other game designers somehow manage to balance games with more real skills and far, far, far, far (far) more variety and power to those skills (again, thinking of DotA here, where characters actually do different, powerful things). I think they could have made it work again.

All this information was in the manuel linked right from the launcher.



Somehow I manage to play every other game I've bought in the last 10 years without ever consulting Manuel (I assume he's Spanish?) - including purposefully crazy games like Dark Souls. Oh, and Guild Wars I. Seriously, though, do you really read the manuals for games?

Anyways, it's a credit to their ingenuity that they found a place to hide this from me.

Of course, they also almost killed me in the tutorial because I couldn't figure out how to do a basic attack. Turns out I was holding something that I accidentally picked up while trying to talk to the quest person (who looked just like the 900 dudes wandering around the tutorial zone) and holding something apparently disables auto-attacks. When I checked the "hints" to see why I wasn't attacking, it helpfully told me about the "downed status".

You dont grind equipment and levels


Again, you're forgetting that I actually did play the game. I pulled Zombies out the ground and killed them until a meter filled up telling me I'd killed 10 (or 20 or whatever). Then I poisoned some bugs or crap. Those things happened. Or was I playing a different game? Maybe you're playing a different game? Are you going to tell me that killing 10 zombies is not generic RPG grind (ie. exactly what I don't want, and exactly what you're saying you don't do)?

Maybe the first hour of the game is completely opposite to the rest of the experience. Maybe at minute 61 they pull back the curtain and say "Hey, that's the last of the stupid filler crap in the game". Maybe there's a code in the manual that you can enter to play something entirely different that doesn't suck balls.

I'll never know, as I spent minute 61 uninstalling.

>> ^jmzero:

As for jmzero... I dont think hes even played it.

Well, uh, you're wrong. I've played about an hour, which was a half hour more than I needed to see this wasn't the game for me. I played the first game really quite a lot.
There are many things you can say about GW2, both good and bad, but "slightly different flavor of WoW" isnt one of them.

I don't think YOU'VE played it. Ha! See how annoying that is?
Anyways, it's a hell of a lot more like WoW than Guild Wars 1, though I suppose MMO connoisseurs probably see all sorts of distinguishing characteristics. I played through the storyline of Guild Wars 1 and only played with other people once or twice (using the AI mercenary things as required). In Guild Wars, I didn't even get to fight the "boss" thing at the end of the tutorial - someone killed it before I got close. That's not the same kind of game.
And they've futzed with the multi-player (which to me was the actual game). I can't just pick the skills I want. I can't just jump into a reasonably balanced (and levelled) PvP character (or, if I can, they didn't present that option very well). In the first game, I made a PvP monk with a bunch of heals, and was doing multiplayer (and having fun) immediately - like, within 10 minutes of installing the game. I have no idea how far off the horizon that is in Guild Wars II, but even when it comes I'm quite sure I don't want to play it. It plays completely different - far more action-RPG focus instead of the old focus on skill-selection and tactics. If I want an action-y game, I'll play a game style that supports that - like DotA.
Guild Wars 1 was a really appealing game for me. Guild Wars II is nothing of the sort - and to me it goes in the same trash-heap as every other "kill 10 rats", "grind equipment and levels" MMO that came before it.
Oh, but yeah, I didn't realize that it's set in the same painfully, painfully generic fantasy universe (I really didn't). Thanks for straightening me out on that.


1. Basing any game on an hours play is stupid.
2. You talk about how you loved GW1s story, yet you ignored the story in GW2 which said wait for the NPC.... this was there so you didnt miss out on killing the boss.... perhaps you should pay attention next time.
3. In GW1 most people picked the same 3 or so skills for weapons every time, AN simply locked the skills in place to make sure people who didnt understand wouldnt be caught out with a build which was useless. All the other skills can be picked by the player, tho again with more limitations. The GW1 system was powerful, but impossible to balance. The new system is able to be managed by AN, but it sactually more indepth than it seems, tho it is simpler.
4. You can jump into pvp right away actually. Just make a charater (such as a guardian) and goto the pvp lobby. Done, lvl 80 with access to all items, skills and access to the jump in, and tournament play. Again, if you'd bothered to play the game you would have known this. All this information was in the manuel linked right from the launcher.
5. You dont grind equipment and levels. You'll get both by doing whatever you want, be it spvp, wvw, story content or jump roaming around.

Its not perfect, but dear lord play it first to find out for yourself.

As for jmzero... I dont think hes even played it.



Well, uh, you're wrong. I've played about an hour, which was a half hour more than I needed to see this wasn't the game for me. I played the first game really quite a lot.

There are many things you can say about GW2, both good and bad, but "slightly different flavor of WoW" isnt one of them.



I don't think YOU'VE played it. Ha! See how annoying that is?

Anyways, it's a hell of a lot more like WoW than Guild Wars 1, though I suppose MMO connoisseurs probably see all sorts of distinguishing characteristics. I played through the storyline of Guild Wars 1 and only played with other people once or twice (using the AI mercenary things as required). In Guild Wars, I didn't even get to fight the "boss" thing at the end of the tutorial - someone killed it before I got close. That's not the same kind of game.

And they've futzed with the multi-player (which to me was the actual game). I can't just pick the skills I want. I can't just jump into a reasonably balanced (and levelled) PvP character (or, if I can, they didn't present that option very well). In the first game, I made a PvP monk with a bunch of heals, and was doing multiplayer (and having fun) immediately - like, within 10 minutes of installing the game. I have no idea how far off the horizon that is in Guild Wars II, but even when it comes I'm quite sure I don't want to play it. It plays completely different - far more action-RPG focus instead of the old focus on skill-selection and tactics. If I want an action-y game, I'll play a game style that supports that - like DotA.

Guild Wars 1 was a really appealing game for me. Guild Wars II is nothing of the sort - and to me it goes in the same trash-heap as every other "kill 10 rats", "grind equipment and levels" MMO that came before it.

Oh, but yeah, I didn't realize that it's set in the same painfully, painfully generic fantasy universe (I really didn't). Thanks for straightening me out on that.

http://youtu.be/-bvJMmCCS-8

Above link- no rap music/editing - also shows why they need to drive against traffic sometimes. Just so people understand, it is vital to;

1) Always move faster than the current traffic
2) Always avoid stopping for more than a minute
3) Do not allow other cars to follow closely.

Most people in Iraq know to keep their distance from NATO vehicles on the move.

Bumping the vehicles is a necessity - the horn is worthless in this traffic as you can tell from the link I posted in this comment.

Warning shots are also sometimes necessary if someone follows too closely.

Of course there are dickhead soldiers out there doing dickhead things (I think I saw a vid of solders running over some poor taxi for no reason), but these guys are just trying to get from point A to point B without having an RPG coming through the window.

This is exactly how ship combat in the old FASA Star Trek RPG worked. It was AWESOME and this is AWESOME and I want to be in Starfleet.

I used to be addicted to MMOs, then I started treating life as one massive RPG. I'm glad I traded a virtual life for the real deal.

This short film takes it to a whole new level of scary though!

http://www.dorkly.com/comic/41589/rpg-lady-armor from
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3004035&cid=40764389

>> ^Lendl:

Music is from Mass Effect 3. I now have to play it again...


Dude I was playing it and I thought it was fucking terrible not like the first 2 at all. Then after listening to this I went back and started it again...and I selected "Action" on the startup screen so it made it like fucking Halo. If I wanted Halo I'd play Halo, but I wanted an RPG. Started it again, much better.

Torchlight 2 should be interesting considering it'll be released for 20$ on the first day and also have multiplayer.

One thing that might hurt Diablo 3 in the long run is the inability to mod the game, due to the online nature. Unless of course Blizzard allows users to create a non-sanctioned clone version that can run along side it and not allow people to put their items up for trade, but still have to connect, but they can mod to their hearts content.

Modding really could open this game to a much broader and I would say better world of a gaming experience. But, BUT, we have to wait for the big blue names in the sky to make a decision on that.

Unless of course people make modded off-line versions that work... But, Blizzard would probably put a patch on your computer looking for these mods and ban your account if found knowing them... Oh well...

I have faith someone else will get the hack & slash RPG genre going in a good direction eventually; the Torchlight 2 guys have a good chance as they were the ones that did work on Diablo 2. And, now that they have money from the first Torchlight they can broaden their horizons. We'll see. Diablo 3 is still a decent game, but it feels like they held FAR too much back that will inevitably be in the expansion--which is probably almost done (as Diablo 2's expansion was almost already included with the original game; with the art and other resources ON the game disc!).

To call the battlefield franchise "well made" is a bit of an insult to high quality fps games. BF2 was released CHOCK full of bugs (if you played it, you'll know) and was left unmaintained. Certain game-breaking bugs were left in for months and months at a time despite ruining huge aspects of the game. On top of the bugs that were not fixed, new content was released and promoted - that ALSO contained bugs. Even when bugs were fixed, new bugs were introduced. And many of the fixes involved changes that negatively affected other aspects of play! How can this be called "well made"?

I consider myself an experienced gamer. I enjoy many genres, and have been playing for ~18 years. I don't just play huge titles, but i do play those too. I play indie games, casual games, you name it. The only company that i go out of my way to avoid is EA and that's due to bad experiences with their games. I am not "just a hater", as i did play dragon age and sang its praises once i'd come to accept that it wasn't simply another standard EA title.

Take bioware for example. Before they were 'bought' by EA they made some of the (arguably, but almost universally accepted) best games of their particular genre. Baldur's gate 1 and 2, neverwinter nights.... we're talking sweeping epics that involved in depth and original story lines that carried the game single handedly (i mean, it was only isometric, the story was everything). Then suddenly, EA get involved and bioware produce mass effect - instead of being able to choose from a plethora of moral and immoral dialog options, actions, we get a good/neutral/evil meter and equivalent options. I'm not going to tell anyone mass effect is a bad game; it is up to the public to decide and they have decided it's good. But i insist that, but for the dated graphics, their earlier RPGs were better in every single other way, and what they provide in their modern RPGs falls short on any RPG checklist you care to make when you put it up against Baldur's gate, icewind dale, etc.

I was very excited when dragon age was released, but then immediately disappointed again when dragon age 2 was released - and who can honestly claim that 2 lived up to 1? Can anyone deny that it was shat out at maximum velocity to cash in quickly on the success of the first? It was a completely different game!?

I hope i have managed to not sound like an anti-fanboy cock; i have spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds on game flops by EA which were underhandedly promoted by reviewers that i then learned not to trust. I feel utterly cheated by them but that is why i don't buy their games now, and that's why you'll find more and more people expressing the opinions herein and in the video. So yes, it's very easy to say "lolz u shudnt buy there gamez u foolz", but when there's several teams of people working together to try and trick you into doing something it may take you a few goes before you learn what the shape of the turd looks like. It's underhanded and i would have thought you could understand why people get annoyed by that.

I'm not surprised piracy has increased with the steady decline in VALUE FOR MONEY. I payed £30 for half life 1 and i still play it to this day. I'd gladly pay £100 for it in retrospect. The first installment of a battlefield game costs me £40, and £15 for an extra few maps or guns they add. Valve are still giving me stuff for free, and i cannot thank them enough for putting pride in their work, and for that they will have the kind of brand respect that EA will never get.

@Fletch hit the nail right on the head. I don't think people who disagree are stupid, or wrong, or anything. But if you haven't experienced the old AND the new (that goes for everyone, not just fans of the new or just fans of the old), then you are not in an ideal position to put forward arguments about whether or not games have increased in value for money, or decreased in value for money; i'm glad you enjoy modern games, but i feel disappointed and cheated by them and that's a perfectly valid thing to express, and it is not your place to tell someone they're over reacting or being a baby. If you haven't tried it yourself, you can't know for sure.

I think that is what this guy was trying to say in a humourous way, probably didn't do the best job of it ever but it was at least funny. And do remember it was meant to be funny. I think some people in this thread in favour of EA have looked more foolish in their pro-EA arguments than this guy did in his anti-EA exaggerations. Remember it was meant to be funny.

TL:DR - i don't blame you

Your right but back then they were still constricted by programming and memory constraints since the average computer had maybe 128k of ram to work with. I remember programming in Basic when I was like 8yrs old. I remember having to do programs sometimes upwards of 500 lines or more that only ran once and couldn't be saved in anyway. And the finished product was some Pixel Art or maybe a song that played "Mary had a Little Lamb" through a PC Speaker. Granted Basic was a very limited programming language to begin with.

Then there was the gaming crash of 83' that pretty much destroyed those same bedroom coders your speaking of.
It wasn't really till the invention of Shareware which didn't become widely used till the late 80's that things started to get back on track and people had some of the freedoms we are enjoying now with indie games and crowd-funding. Though I see and acknowledge your point about things being cyclical. If games hadn't suffered such a major setback in the early 80's things would have been very different today.


>> ^spoco2:

>> ^Auger8:
A new age has dawned for games. The ideas of the common man can now be expressed to the world in a way that was never possible before. Free of the restrictions of publishers and corporate giants. Free of the expectation to make the next great cookie cutter FPS or RPG. We can now for the first time in history truly make the games that we WANT to make. We can innovate. We can push the boundaries of the old genres. We can create new genres and we can tell the stories that not only change the industry but change the hearts of the players we strive so hard to reach. This is the second Golden Age of Gaming and I for one couldn't be more excited to see it arrive!

Erm, hardly 'for the first time'.
The first games on home computers, back in the mid 80s, were largely one man jobs. A whole collection of bedroom coders made buckets of money back then creating games for computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.
Yeah, it then became taken over by the giant media companies, and yes it's now becoming far more accessible for people to be able to code quality games with tiny teams, and have them reach people via the internet and delivery systems like Steam.
But it's a return to that, not a first time thing, it's all cyclic

>> ^Auger8:

A new age has dawned for games. The ideas of the common man can now be expressed to the world in a way that was never possible before. Free of the restrictions of publishers and corporate giants. Free of the expectation to make the next great cookie cutter FPS or RPG. We can now for the first time in history truly make the games that we WANT to make. We can innovate. We can push the boundaries of the old genres. We can create new genres and we can tell the stories that not only change the industry but change the hearts of the players we strive so hard to reach. This is the second Golden Age of Gaming and I for one couldn't be more excited to see it arrive!


Erm, hardly 'for the first time'.

The first games on home computers, back in the mid 80s, were largely one man jobs. A whole collection of bedroom coders made buckets of money back then creating games for computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Yeah, it then became taken over by the giant media companies, and yes it's now becoming far more accessible for people to be able to code quality games with tiny teams, and have them reach people via the internet and delivery systems like Steam.

But it's a return to that, not a first time thing, it's all cyclic

A new age has dawned for games. The ideas of the common man can now be expressed to the world in a way that was never possible before. Free of the restrictions of publishers and corporate giants. Free of the expectation to make the next great cookie cutter FPS or RPG. We can now for the first time in history truly make the games that we WANT to make. We can innovate. We can push the boundaries of the old genres. We can create new genres and we can tell the stories that not only change the industry but change the hearts of the players we strive so hard to reach. This is the second Golden Age of Gaming and I for one couldn't be more excited to see it arrive!

I got introduced to the early King's Quest games, and later the 7th Guest, but I somehow missed all the Lucas Arts games. And I seem to be the only person who never played Myst.

To be honest, I never really liked adventure games. King's Quest(s) annoyed me. I got more into 7th Guest, but I don't think I finished it. I spent much more time playing Ultima 6; hundreds of hours while almost entirely ignoring the "story". To me, a "world simulator" RPG that tried to let you do essentially anything was much more engrossing than the adventure dynamic of needing to find 1 object to use in a logical (or not so logical) way to move forward (find the key, open the lock; or find the fish, throw to the bear as seen here).

Still, interesting to contemplate the genre even though it wasn't my cup of tea.