AgamemnonV2

There should totally be a video game developer/producer board or something so each company can get its own thread. Or is there already a Valve thread somewhere where we could continue?

I don't understand what you mean by this. I'm curious how Half-Life 2, Episode 1 & 2, TF2, Portal, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, and Portal 2 somehow don't qualify as "serious" games. My bad, I meant 2004 (meaning Half-Life 2 was the last serious game). As for the rest: http://agdom.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/a-definitive-look-at-valve/

I want to change my vote for Luke being my favorite writer. "Sensationalist writing" is when you write two or three paragraphs and say something like, "company x sucks." Luke wrote up a featurette, explained everything that happened, and finished off with the damn truth. This was a marketing ploy--nothing less, nothing more. And Valve didn't even have the courtesy to even attempt to mask what a money grab it was. And what did they tie it to? A $50 four-hour game. Valve hasn't made a serious game since 2003, and frankly I'm a little tired of everyone hailing them as the baby Jesus of the industry for recycling old resources and slapping a new price tag on it.

Removing game boundaries is not a "bug fix." It is cheating, however.

Bioshock was scary...until you realised there weren't really any consequences for dying. Are there ever really consequences for dying? I mean this isn't playing Final Fantasy VII for 10 straight hours only to lose concentration and get wiped out just before you got to a save point... That reminds me of the fun Challenge runs we used to do on the GameFAQs board for the game, like No Saves, No Materia, etc. It's interesting just how easy that game actually is when you manage to beat it with LV1 Limit Breaks Only.

Silent Hill. The creepy little flesh children with butcher knives still gives me the creeps.

Quite simply I'm talking about getting rid of invisible walls not something that adds or changes the content of the game. Stuff like that I find to be fair game as it's barely above a bug fix. The same can be said for the community patches New Vegas has. It involves editing game files, i.e. something you wouldn't be able to do on the console version and something Obsidian didn't do themselves. It is not a legitimate argument against the state of the game vanilla-wise. I could just as easily set the New Vegas entrance fast travel discovered when you first start the game as easily as I could remove the invisible walls.

Oh, so you played the console version, no wonder you didn't like it. I don't own a console, so that would be a no. And if you're about to use mods as an excuse to fixing New Vegas then I'm going to mention the Unique Landscapes mod for Oblivion. But that's the RPS writer not a Bethesda spokesperson so I'm not sure if he's inferred that from the original quote I posted or if he has hands on time or some other factual confirmation. Yeah, what he means is that the attributes affect your stats (like they have in previous games). Multiple attributes affected different stats (Endurance increased health and stamina while Intelligence increased your Magicka, etc.). My thought is they'll reduce it to Strength to affect stamina and health, Intelligence for magicka, and then Charisma for chat dialogue crap. That or they'll tie chat dialogue to Intelligence and then probably use Endurance or Agility to affect your stamina.

Slaughtered via Deathclaws. Also I got what was meant by "flat" but I guess eveyone else didn't. Basically what is being said is that yes there are hills and mountains and shit but they barely get in your way. The terrain isn't as extreme as Morrowinds. Why exactly is this a bad thing? I can understand some geographical features but to railroad the entire game seems just annoying and frustrating (which is what came of my experience with New Vegas). If I want to go scale a mountain then, gorramit, I'm going to, especially if I have the skills to do so. New Vegas is literally marred with not only geographical dead ends, but invisible walls that restrict you from exploring (I was able to scale the mountains near Khan territory until I stumbled upon one). I realize this just fine. What exactly were you expecting from a part of the game world that features relatively low elevation terrain? Would you be happy if the Imperial City was built on top of Mt. Everest and the only way to get to it you'd have to take a winding mountain passageway that'd take you ten minutes to scale or a half hour just to get around to the other side? The Jerall Mountains is your "mountainous feature" that you're looking for. Good luck moving ten feet to the left. Let me know how that works out. I already know considering I've tried to scale the mountains numerous times from multiple entry points. http://www.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/images/slides3-H-lakeplain.jpg That's geographically flat. http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/large/cb15f02534c89812c88620bfa71439dba9ce1011.jpg Now, as intelligently as possible, explain to me how that is flat.

Do me a favor. Go straight to New Vegas once you start the game. The most direct route. Without mods or messing around with the console, etc. Let me know how your exploration goes. It's like a recurring theme around here to completely ignore what I was talking about. Just when exactly is the last time you've played Oblivion? The majority of the game world is not flat, but it is certainly free. People often mistake this because they spend their first part of the game in The Wold (which IS actually flat, i.e. designed after prairie plains) while the rest of it is hilly or even mountainous. In fact, Bethesda tried its best to create multiple themes and areas within Oblivion. I really don't know how anyone can call a game that probably had the most beautiful scenery until Crysis came around "flat." http://www.oblivion-power.de/files/oblivionpower/downloads/cyrodiil-terrain.jpg Please, explain to me how in the world that is "flat." http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/pgtte_v3_map_skyrim.jpg That's part of the official Tamriel map from Bethesda. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20734 That's a fan mod that's lore-heavy. Other than High Rock, Skyrim is notoriously known for being mountainous. Actually Morrowind is just as open. The complaints are centered around that Oblivion has a compass that points you in your quest direction. Morrowind did not have this. In fact, this was such a complained about feature in Morrowind that it was the reason that there is a quest compass in Oblivion. More than a few times I got lost in Morrowind because the quest directions literally said, "Go left, go right, walk two miles down the road, pass the fluffy bunny, and then hop on one leg three times and you will be at your destination." Some quests don't even give you a direction at all! People generally felt that the quest direction compass "shrunk" the world of Oblivion. More stuff about skills and levelling up here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/18/skyrim-skills/ Yeah, I read that but they don't mention which three attributes made the cut (note: magicka, health, and stamina are not attributes).

Creation Kit. Full name "Garden of Eden Creation Kit" aka GECK is the mod tool used by Fallout 3 n New Vegas. Now I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure you can't use modtools for one engine on a completely different engine (You wouldn't use CryEditor to make levels for UT3). Which does strongly suggest that they have being telling half truths and Skyrim is running on Gamebryo, just their own heavily modified in-house version*. (or maybe Gamebryo has always been able to do this and Bethseda finally got good at it) Kinda like Quake n GoldSrc I guess. Also I'm not keen on the mountains. It says the world size is same as Oblivion, but the mountains mean there's more. To a degree yeah it means more surface area but mountains are huge and generally unclimeable. Also says how you have to walk around them which suddenly suggests the game isn't too open, but could be like New Vegas where it kinda forces you to walk around in a somewhat linear path for the start. *tbh I swear they've mentioned this before. But most folks seem to be all on this idea that it's a new engine and not gamebryo still. The GECK was just the TES Construction Set with a new name. Just about everything was exactly the same (except for navmeshing). I have no doubt Skyrim is working off of Gamebyro still. It's what they know best. As for the mountain things, yeah. Sounds exactly like New Vegas, which pissed me off. The best part about Oblivion was getting so sidetracked that you began to enjoy exploring in different directions just to see what you would find. Now it looks like they plan on not only having a little compass ticker that shows you the way, but all the roads will lead you conveniently to each part of the main quest. You know, that was actually the biggest complaint I kept hearing about Oblivion, about how in comparison to Morrowind (which had plenty of impassable areas and forced you to go around them and take "paths" sometimes), it was far too open ended and provided no interesting landscapes. After playing the hell out of Oblivion I agree with that. Making everything more or less flat enough to be able to draw a straight line from one spot to the other may sound like more "freedom" superficially, but after playing on that kind of world you quickly realize you're sacrificing freedom for visual and geographical variety. I say keep the mountains and rock walls and other impassable areas. They allow for far better gameworlds anyway. I love games that are very open like that. I found the world of Oblivion to be quite beautiful--instead of focusing on a particular quest, it became an aspect of the game to explore and find yourselves in situations that became adventures in themselves. Mount&Blade and Medieval II: Total War are some of my favorite games because the majority of the game is about the adventure you undertake and not some arbitrary NPC who has limited voice work and lines. If I can put in 90 hours in one playthrough in Mount&Blade and not even be close to "beating" the game then I would say that is a very enjoyable experience. I know some people like their games to finish, have definitive endings, etc. but I am becoming a big fan of games that run more on persistent world feelings. Which is probably why I disliked Fallout 3: New Vegas so much.

Oh good, redundancy is just oh-so fun. You know, like pointing out what I pointed out. Okay? Then why did you raaage about making the distinction between the two? Oh, this is rich. So you're just flipping out on the principle of knowing you can flip out? And here I thought it was just some wild fanboyism approach. Good to know your whole aim to this was to be the biggest asshole you could possibly be. You nitpick to such a degree that your belief that a sim must be "realistic" is sure-enough to fire back legitimately with your poorly-executed classifications to distinct one from another. Nope, sorry. They're both space sims, regardless how more "realistic" one is to the other (or isn't). Uh, yeah, they do in real-world applications. X3 is not a real world application, it's a video game. You want your actual real-life space sim? Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Space_Simulator Everything else is imitation of facts or manipulation thereof. I love how your whole rage is based around your own misinterpretations of "quality" and "art," like me saying Spore is "cartoony" meant I was talking about its art direction. I'll give you a hint, Cochise; that was never my direction. Just like you I didn't state the obvious because I thought it WAS obvious. And then you run off on tangents no one is even talking about when the entire discussion point dealt with the "realism" to Spore. Yeah, you are. As soon as you enter the Creature Stage you are working within the "Space Stage" game world. All that happens from that point on is you keep zooming out until the game instances the solar system and then creates the second instance of the galaxy. Yes, they do. And way to go at ignoring ecology simulation. I'm the troll? This is cute coming from someone who apparently got two of his buddies to downvote with you (three people is not "everyone" by the way) and then you go out and call me a "fucking moron." Did you skim over ad hominem when you Googled "logical fallacies?" And then you talk about strawmen when you yourself went off on tangents of points I never made. What I did was assume what your mindset was (which was correct for the most point: the defintion of "space sim") and then you missed three opportunities to clarify what you were saying but instead took those opportunities to insult me. I'd be happy if you were done with this considering how dense your skull is. I already clarified what the unanimous definition of what a space sim is. When you want to come to terms with that is your problem, not mine.

The reason I like folks who have Raptr sigs is cos it makes seeing what games they play so easy: http://raptr.com/TheMightyEthan/games?platform=PS3 Starcraft is a Strategy game. Civilization is a Strategy game. However within that SC is a RTS n Civ is a TBS. Yeah they're both racing games, but within that one is a kart racer n one is a racing sim. Spore is a god game. You guide a civilization from the primordial ooze to building a galactic empire. Also what EVE you playing with hairpin turns? Takes dozens of kilometres to swing around in even the smallest ship. It's like I have to repeat myself three or four times or something.

Oh good, you're still being vague. I'm glad we could have a mature chat then. Fine, you want me to elaborate? I wasn't elaborating because you'd have to be a fucking moron not to see the distinction, it's so blindingly obvious (as evidenced by the fact that EVERYONE but you sees it). Diddy Kong Racing is a kart racer, not a simulation racer, and I don't need a source for that just like I don't need a source for the statement "Starcraft is a real-time strategy, not a turn-based strategy." It just is, and if you can't accept it then you're either completely retarded just being difficult (trolling?). Right, and where did I call Diddy Kong Racing a racing sim? Oh, that's right. I didn't. So rage all you want. I think it's cute how you call Diddy Kong Racing a "kart racer" rather than what it actually is, a racing game, because you'd then have to admit it falls in the same genre of GT5 (another racing game). It's like people have this driving need to make themselves feel better that they're not playing "vidja gaems" but "complex ultra-serious adult simulators." GT5, being such an ulta-serious complex racing sim, includes such "fine-tuning and high-fidelity physics" that when you take a turn that should flip your car it just slides across the road, or when a specific crash would render your vehicle immediately inoperable or pop a tire or something, you just keep on moving like nothing is wrong. So while you are making yourself feel better that you're playing a "racing sim" that applies some specifics like actual vehicle weight and classifications, it completely ignores everything about REAL racing (I'll give you a hint--in real-life racing, pros do not "lean" into other cars to make their turns undamaged without slowing down). So your argument is shot to hell. The only REAL sims I know of is Microsoft's slew of stuff (like Flight Simulator). Oh, you mean like the realism in X3 where a planet's gravitational pull comes into play, or how you can land on planets? Or how massive-in-mass ships in Eve can make hairpin turns without so much trouble to never experience a collision or all those lovely sound explosions (I know, they're "pre-rendered" sounds explained in the lore--I so buy that, uh huh)? Or how both some how manage to put a camera behind your ship and then allows you to rotate that camera where ever you'd like? This is all ignoring how X3 and Eve mirror the real life examples of space flight and exploration. Because, you know, we have so many real-world examples to draw from on constructing mega space stations and working FTL travel. I understood. I understood that so well that I pointed that out when you were being Mr. Vague, but then you raged and told me that's not what you were saying. But hey, you're saying it now. So to recap: you rage when I called you out on what you were doing, you rage when I ask you to clarify, and then you're raging because...why exactly? Because you want me to agree with you or something? So all that planet orbiting garbage or gravitational pull to the galactic core or the ecology makeup of a planet...that's just what? Fluff? I'm calling this for what it is: someone who doesn't want to submit to the fact that a kiddy game like Spore is, in fact, classified with other more "serious" games.

It's interesting how I even need to defend this. Space sim, at least to me, details a game centered around the aspect of space in either vehicle flight and combat or exploration for the majority of its game. Spore's Space Stage is all vehicle combat and exploration. 100%. In fact, you don't go out of your spaceship until the expansion pack. Now, is it realistic? Not in the slightest. But neither is Eve, X3, X-Wing vs. TIE-Fighter, or the other "greats." This wouldn't even be a talking point if Spore was a more serious game.

I'm pretty sure it did. Actually it was either Kotaku or RPS that I saw where they mentioned that for archery perks there would be one for zoom, then one for slowing down time when zoomed, and stuff like that lol. What are the three attributes btw? That could be seen as simplification rather than dumbing down if there's a larger number of abilities/perks and shit (which there appears to be at least in comparison to new vegas as you can go to level 50 and still unlock crap) I haven't read which thee attributes it is, but I'm venturing a guess it's going to be Charisma, Intelligence, and Strength--Intelligence for magic builds, strength for melee builds, and then Charisma so you can talk the Big Bad into killing himself. TES has never been about simplification. Even in Oblivion you could drastically create a number of different types of builds because of the variety of skills and attributes. Reading one of their devs calling an archer-acrobat build as "cheap" just leads me to believe that rather than try to create an AI that would attempt to overcome its shortcomings in ranged combat they just took a baseball bat to the situation and then said, "Well, we fixed it."

Where it's still not a space sim. Of course, because it doesn't fit your narrow definition of what a space sim is, correct? Or is that what I'm missing in chat?

I think you're leaping to conclusions about the mountains. Specifically: Ok so there are going to be insurmountable cliffs and what have you that you will have to detour around - you get them in real life too - but there is nothing to suggest the mountains will shepherd you through the world. In fact the above quote implies the opposite. To be honest, even though game developers make all sorts of decisions that upset their fanbase, I don't think Bethesda are stupid enough to inhibit the exploration in TES in anyway when the fact you can pretty much ignore the main quest and do whatever you want is the main attraction of the series. Have you seen a map of Skyrim recently? And not stupid enough to upset their fanbase? Did you miss out on Oblivion? I liked the game but I can't get into a chat about Bethesda with some pre-Oblivion fan coming in and mentioning all the things they did "wrong" in Oblivion. Knocking attributes down to three sounds like the epitome of the hypercritical definition of "dumbing down." Anyway, Bethesda (as is Bioware) is notoriously known for dragging things from their previous games as "base features" into their new games. Noticed how perks are making it in, as is "campfire crafting"? All that's missing is a sixth sense power that "slows down" time, allowing you to "target enemy vitals."

Diddy kong is a racing game, GT5 is a racing game. Way to create a rift in their genre classifications. Tell you what. You find me five sources that classify Diddy Kong Racing as a "kart racer" and I'll drop the matter. I wish you luck in your Googling adventures. Spore is a god sim for about the first two hours of the game (Cell and Creature stage). It becomes a strategy game for another couple of hours (Tribal and Civilization). The vast majority of time, where thousands of achievements are tied to, is spent in the Space Stage. It's a bit like calling FF8 a card game because there's a card mini game within the game. This is the first time I've heard anyone NOT agree that Spore is all about the Space Stage. What does its expansion center around? Oh, yeah. What exactly is it with you and obfuscating the point as well as you can? Oh good, you're still being vague. I'm glad we could have a mature chat then.

Creation Kit. Full name "Garden of Eden Creation Kit" aka GECK is the mod tool used by Fallout 3 n New Vegas. Now I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure you can't use modtools for one engine on a completely different engine (You wouldn't use CryEditor to make levels for UT3). Which does strongly suggest that they have being telling half truths and Skyrim is running on Gamebryo, just their own heavily modified in-house version*. (or maybe Gamebryo has always been able to do this and Bethseda finally got good at it) Kinda like Quake n GoldSrc I guess. Also I'm not keen on the mountains. It says the world size is same as Oblivion, but the mountains mean there's more. To a degree yeah it means more surface area but mountains are huge and generally unclimeable. Also says how you have to walk around them which suddenly suggests the game isn't too open, but could be like New Vegas where it kinda forces you to walk around in a somewhat linear path for the start. *tbh I swear they've mentioned this before. But most folks seem to be all on this idea that it's a new engine and not gamebryo still. The GECK was just the TES Construction Set with a new name. Just about everything was exactly the same (except for navmeshing). I have no doubt Skyrim is working off of Gamebyro still. It's what they know best. As for the mountain things, yeah. Sounds exactly like New Vegas, which pissed me off. The best part about Oblivion was getting so sidetracked that you began to enjoy exploring in different directions just to see what you would find. Now it looks like they plan on not only having a little compass ticker that shows you the way, but all the roads will lead you conveniently to each part of the main quest.

What exactly did you mean then when you compared a kiddy racing game that applies about zero to physics to a kiddy space sim then? Oh, I'm sure you were making the obvious dissimilarities in art direction, right? Oh, wait. You said you weren't making a statement about the quality. u mad because I pointed out the obvious. I get it. Must be one of those "anime and cartoons aren't the same!" situations once again, because none of us want to admit games of different calibers are actually classified in the same category. But what evs, if using a fifty-cent word like "troll" helps you along in the world then do what you can.

Except in this case Diddy Kong Racing has sold five times as more copies as Gran Turismo 5 and had millions of dollars more spent in marketing. Spore sucks but that game has sold better than any other video game dealing with space (sim, flight, RTS, etc.). I'm not making a statement about the quality/sales of either game (I love both Diddy Kong Racing, and don't much care for GT5), just saying that they're completely different kinds of games. Spore isn't a "space sim" any more than Diddy Kong Racing is a simulation racer, but that doesn't mean either of them is bad (Spore's space stage is bad, but not because it's not a sim) or commercially unsuccessful. So because Spore is cartoony it's not a space sim? That's a new one. Did you also know that the mechanics of X3 don't work on space physics in the slightest as well? By your logic NEITHER is a "space sim" then. What Diddy Kong Racing and Gran Turismo 5 are are racing games, just like X3 and Spore are space sim games (although Spore does touch on other bits in its earlier stages).

"We’re down from 8 attributes and 21 skills to 3 attributes and 18 skills..." Shit. Absolute shit. Three attributes? Couple this with the confirmed axe of Acrobatics and they should just knock it down to one attribute: strength. And then make the skills CUT SHIT UP and BLOW SHIT UP. Ugh. Thankfully the modding community will fix Bethesda's fuck-ups.