DocSeuss

I haven't played Brotherhood :/ After having played AC2, how could you not have played Brotherhood? Moneys, time. I'll pick it up eventually. I don't mind being "behind" the release (I played AC2 for the first time like in July). Wow. I thought I was late. I picked it up in July of 2010. Brotherhood is the step above AC2 that AC2 was from AC. They fixed combat, for one. To get slightly back on topic, I can't remember if I mentioned how System Shock 2 did XP--you got them as a quest reward as a currency that would allow you to improve your various skills. They were like a better version of Bioshock's ADAM, 'cause there was never any "WILL YOU MURDER THIS GIRL FOR XP?" morality shit.

I haven't played Brotherhood :/ After having played AC2, how could you not have played Brotherhood?

How did you feel about Brotherhood's? I've always felt something's lacking, like a sort of asset management or something. Like... it'd be neat if I was buying these businesses to fund my little assassin empire, and skill points could be spent on things like the Assassins' stealth, damage, or special skills (so, like, you could create a seduction expert or a poison expert with the XP they get from missions) and use the money to equip the Assassins with various levels of equipment.

So you did! I remember that.

Is anyone really saying that, though? I mean, I would suggest that games are more likely to get sales because grinding and numbers acts on our hunter-gatherer impulses, but I'd never suggest that that's the only way they can be rewarding, or even that they are superior. That's how you deal with it. Unfortunately, human psychology doesn't normally do that. It's quite odd. Basically, if you give us numbers and flashy things, you'll addict us. Every time we see numbers popping off of an enemy as we do damage to them, it makes an element of our brains go ziiiing! Dunno why exactly this is, but it is how human brains tend to work. Loot is really basically the same thing. I prefer games where you're essentially rewarded with new game content, usually in the terms of locations. What I mean by that is, like... you get a quest to an area you haven't visited before. That quest essentially unlocks that area. Cool, now I get to do more exploration. That's one reason why games like STALKER are so valuable to me.

! Ten posts to reply to. Let's go! ------ Of course. There are certainly dumb, simplistic FPSes out there. I was talking about the genre whole, and arguing against the point of view that was wonderfully illustrated by Saturnine Tenshi's completely idiotic statement (that I'll be quoting in a second). The idea that "this has a simple mechanic and no learning curve, thus, it is stupid," is utterly foolish and completely full of shit. There are a great many games made these days, not just FPSes. I assume that you're suggesting here that the ratio of great to bad games may be the same, but there's a larger number of FPSes, which means that there are larger numbers of FPSes and RPGs, correct? That certainly makes sense, at least, if you're under the misapprehension that there are more FPSes released than most other genres, which isn't necessarily true. I think I said this earlier, but more Final Fantasy games have been released since FFXIII than there have been modern military FPSes. I'll have to finish going over my numbers, but there may actually be more Final Fantasy games this generation than there are AAA FPSes. They're certainly not as common as you seem to think--just advertised more frequently. If the ideas become stale, then why have all three Halo games released this generation (which are all different; it's just more subtle) dominated the sales charts? Why is Call of Duty making more money than Avatar within a month of each new title's release? I would argue that they aren't stale. The length of game has absolutely nothing to do with staleness and everything to do with the fact that RPG levels are much, much easier to create than FPS levels, because elements like navigating the 3D environment and scripted events and enemy AI are all significantly less complex. Go find a single level in Dragon Age Origins, for instance, that's anywhere near as intricately designed as a level in Bulletstorm. That kind of content generation takes time (and FPSes don't have grind; they have multiplayer, and the multiplayer component of an FPS can easily eat up more time than an RPG ever could). RPGs don't need that level of design effort. Well, that's certainly one way to do it, but the point of the game was that you could do it a myriad of ways. My personal preference is to take out Elites with a needler in Halo 3/Reach, while in Combat Evolved my weapon of choice was a shotgun or AR to the face and a bashing for good measure. That's not a learning curve, that's a difficulty curve. In both RPGs and FPSes, there's a difficulty curve. In the RPG, it's numerically defined: a level 25 guy is clearly stronger than a level 15 guy. The FPS removes this abstraction and just offers increasingly strong enemies throughout the game. Halo, for instance, gave you increased ranks of Covenant through much of the game, then delivered the Flood, resulting in a sudden increase in difficulty and change in playstyle, and when you got back to fighting the covenant, you were fighting guys with black armor--the toughest Covenant forces in the game. On top of that, as you progressed through the game, the enemies were less likely to use weapons like the plasma pistol and more likely to use weapons like the fuel rod gun. It's there in FPSes, and it's disingenous of you to claim that FPSes haven't got that curve. If you'd actually read the link in the original post, you'd have noticed that I covered this. You're basically saying that "they're not seen as smart because they're really easy to learn." Yeah. I dealt with that already. I wish people would read. ----- As someone who got into gaming through the RPGs and someone who has actually designed a few functioning RPGs, some of which are still around, I resent that remark. It's frustrating to me that you start off saying "at first..." and proceed to talk about me in this thread, rather than in the blog post that set this whole thing off, so maybe you should shut up, read that first and come back in with fresh eyes. Or don't, because I'm going to be tweaking it to make some stuff more clear to people. That stuff is this: if you go around looking at previews for various games, you'll discover a rather frequent complaint about FPSes: they're common, stupid, generic, and unoriginal games. This complaint is often attached to a remark about how RPGs or Action Adventure games are not, or it's said by people who often champion RPGs elsewhere. I am interested in addressing that complaint. I'm not here to say "boo, everything you like sucks, FPSes are the best." I'm simply stating that calling FPSes puerile, stupid things is as intelligent as shitting in your pants and eating them. See, you're looking at this backwards. ...no. They aren't. Go read the blog post and get back to me. Just because they're easy to learn doesn't mean in any way that they're dumb or simplistic. They're requiring a different intelligence of your brain. Seriously, don't enter a discussion without bothering to read what started the discussion. I don't want to condemn genres. I merely want to suggest that FPSes are not as dumb as people seem to think they are. I don't give a shit whether you don't enjoy FPSes or not--the entire point of the discussion was to say "hey, listen, if you don't like it, that's okay, but you've got absolutely no ground to argue that it's stupid." Let me make this clear: I was out to say "people who are insulting FPSes, please stop, because they're not as dumb as you seem to think. Nowhere in there was I intending to insult other genres. I pick on RPGs the most because they're often held up against FPSes as more intelligent, when they're really not. Both genres are on roughly the same grounding. ----- The Department of Punology has decreed that you will be punished. Yes. ----- Can you name any game that truly requires much intellect? Because strategy games aside, I certainly can't. I seriously have no idea how I'm going to beat this level of RUSE. I think I just ragequit it. Actually, as I think about it, here are a few games that taxed me: Human Revolution did, seeing as how it used gesticulation and facial expressions for conversation. That discussion system was awesome. STALKER did, because it made me plan for survival. It remains, to this day, the only game where I honestly had to think about my inventory because of the limitations imposed on me by the game. SWAT 4 required a lot of tactical planning to ace the missions. You know what? All of those games, the ones that I truly found intellectually stimulating, are FPSes. Other games, like RPGs (and I don't say this to hate on RPGs; I love them to death. It's just that most people claim that RPGs are the most cerebral games out there, and as a former designer, I have to say that this is bullshit.), honestly don't require that much from me unless they're real-time with a lot of characters, like Dragon Age or something. Generally, though, most games do not really require that much intelligence. ----- ...other than the "shot its load" bit, which, judging by the wide variety of FPSes I've played over the past couple of years, isn't true, I can totally respect that you don't enjoy the genre. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing. I don't really like pixel hunting games, but I don't go around calling the genre fucking stupid. Again, that's my point. The blog post was addressed to the people who insult games for no good reason, nothing more, nothing less. ----- Mass Effect is a TPS and Space Marine is a cross between action and TPS... a first person shooter is where you're looking through the camera. It's like in literature: first person is "I do" and third person is "he does." But simple mechanics (I wrote a whole section on how simple is not simplistic, ffs. Did no one read the actual blog post?) are... well, the FPS is a lot more like chess. You're using spatial intelligence to play FPSes, rather than logical/mathematical that you do in other games. That's a pretty good summary of it. My blog post (damn, it's becoming a recurring theme in this post) was basically saying "look, here's the data, actual psychology, etc etc, that shows that FPSes aren't stupid, so please stop insulting them, because you don't have a leg to stand on." ----- I read that as shitting bricks. I wish that was true, but Bioware actually doesn't. They know their sycophants and write for them. For instance, when Dragon Age 2 sold like crap (like... Dead Island sold better than Dragon Age 2; a new IP from an unknown developer with a shit ton of bugs was more appealing to people than a Bioware game) and got a lot of negative reviews, Bioware called it a 4chan raid and totally defended it. Having spent most of the day on 4chan that day (not really sure why...), I can say I don't remember seeing one. People just honestly hated the game. Some insider thing I was reading the other day said that basically, the guys running Bioware feel entitled because of all the praise they've got. They expect better sales than they have previously gotten, which is why Mass Effect 2 was targeted at the Call of Duty crowd (and failed miserably in those terms, because the Call of Duty crowd is kind of a multiplayer crowd; it still sold well). Plus, they hire writers like Jennifer Hepler who don't even care about playing games. Brent Knowles, the lead designer of Dragon Age Origins who quit because of Dragon Age 2, said that Bioware began hiring people who didn't care about games a long time ago (did you know they're the guys who invented Project $10 for EA? Bioware Social Network is a large part of the reason we have Origin as it is now. Basically, it's because of them that the amazing, Mirror's Edge-making EA of 2010 is now the money grubbing bastards that they are. Bioware ruined EA, as hard as that is to believe), and heavily implied in an email to me that because of what Bioware became, he wouldn't be making games again. Ever. Bioware's honestly just writing to an ever-shrinking group of people who will praise them no matter what they do, and it's starting to bite them in the ass. I would like to read this article! Also, if they set out to tell a silly space opera story, then why do they take the series so seriously, and talk about how it's got this great legacy from movies like Aliens (wat.)? I think they honestly believe that it's good. So do a lot of other people. The industry at large takes this derivative, unoriginal games using the exact same character archetypes as previous Bioware games that pulls scenes from things like Star Trek 2009, and says "wow. Game of the Year, guys. This was superb. It had amazing writing! Blah Blah Blah!" Nothing about the game says "I'm a silly space opera story!" the way a film like Pirates of the Caribbean says "I'm a silly pirate movie!" It's taken seriously by everyone in gaming... and makes a good argument for why people say games aren't art. It's too trite. That's what's so fascinating to me: I forgot to purchase the conversation aug and managed to "beat" a conversation purely by reading the guy's actions. That was really cool. I've never actually felt invested in a conversation before. I never had to work for a result like that in a game. When I look at my blog posts, I don't see an absence of tact anywhere. I do realize here that I've been less tactful, and that's in part due to an infuriating week (weeklong headache that keeps trying to go migraine on me, sleeping funny and messing up my back so it hurts to move my arms, not having any food in the house to eat, being told that I won't be getting a birthday present I want because it has a picture of a snake on it, being told I am going to my mom's favorite restaraunt for breakfast on my birthday, even though that restaraunt isn't a place I can eat many foods at due to food allergies which I was recently diagnosed with, no ice cream because I have to avoid milk until November...) and to a bunch of people utterly failing to read the source material and seemingly basing their entire arguments on the thread title. What's the point of writing a dissertation on why FPSes are disarmingly simple and why people should do them the courtesy of not being insulting when nobody wants to read it? So that's frustrating too. You, I like. You actually had relevant things to say. ----- Huh. I hadn't noticed that. I replayed a conversation about five times once to get the result I wanted, and I could have sworn it was different than when I'd beaten it previously, but I thought that was just me. Yeah, I think that's one of the things that makes Human Revolution a step up in games design. It really is one of the best RPGs I've ever played because it removes a few more layers of abstraction between game and gamer. It lets me be Adam Jensen that much more. ----- No it isn't. You may think it's saturated, because they're heavily marketed, but until 2008, we really didn't have that many FPSes. In fact, as I've said previously, if I remember the numbers right, there have been more Final Fantasy games released since FFXIII than there have been modern military FPSes of the grey and brown variety. There are certainly people who complain "ugh, not another WWII shooter." There are also people who complain "ugh, not another RPG with androgenous girlymen." Just because you've heard the complaint doesn't exactly mean it's true. There have been, this generation, EIGHT brown and grey regenerating health modern military FPSes. Eight. That's it. That's an average of less than two a year every year since 2005. That's really not that much in terms of the dozens of action or sports games that come out every year. No, it would not. Here's why: You're looking at a small subset of people... gamers. Within certain subsets of people, you'll find a lot of things that are totally loved. I mean, within a subset of Justin Bieber fandom, there are a lot of people who really like 'Baby.' You've got to look at a bigger picture than that, which is culture at large. Most game reviewers and critics aren't... really reviewers or critics. They don't have the necessary background to really write about good narrative and whatnot, because generally they're just bloggers or journalists. Very few of them have a background in film or literature that would equip them to discuss why a story is good, much less characterization or anything. Kieron Gillen is one of the few people who actually has the background required to criticize game writing. Look at Alan Wake: a metric shit ton of people criticized the writing, comparing it to Silent Hill 2. They failed to realize that the game wasn't even in the same genre (it's not survival horror in any way, shape, or form) and, worse yet, failed to realize that the game was written to be sort of this gestalt portrait of the psychological thriller genre, the way Max Payne was for crime noir storytelling. For them, "oh, he narrates and the dialog is a bit weird and it's dark and there are monsters, so I guess this is survival horror" was their thought process. That shows a heavy immaturity in the way game storytelling is received. Also, people tend to like a thing more if they participate in it. On the whole, game writing is pretty bad. It's definitely well below other mediums. People who have been gaming for a long, long time would tell you that the proposal scene in Metal Gear Solid 4 was absolutely amazing. To someone who isn't a hardcore gamer, but instead has been involved in other mediums for quite some time, the scene looked like absolute shit, and it was. It only had meaning to the player who had participated in it. Outside of that experience, it holds little merit. On the flip side, I could show someone a sequence from, say, Leon/The Professional and most people would call it good storytelling. This sort of brings us back to that original statement. Most gamers will say that certain games have storytelling. Most people, particularly those who were more involved with older, more mature mediums are more likely to say "um, that's derivative, those characters are two dimensional, that plot has little structure or pacing, that scene was cliche," and so on and so forth. By participating in a game, especially if you're not very big into all the other storytelling mediums (and as a guy with a big background in literature and film and a former job as a comic/film critic, I am a bit more qualified to comment than some guy who just likes to play games; I realize this sounds arrogant, but I've got qualifications that most people simply do not possess), you're more likely to be blinded to the failings of those games. One part of the reason that game narrative doesn't really have many people qualified to discuss it is because academic discourse on game narrative doesn't actually exist. It's only just being birthed, while, in contrast, one can get a degree in literary or film criticism. I'm actually one of the people helping that birth--at my school, the department head has given me the okay to begin work on a course proposal for next semester (or perhaps the one after that; not sure about the deadlines yet; I've heard last week and mid-October) on a games narrative course.

Well, to answer the title of your post, yes, I'm interested in following this.

I'd call 'em unlocks. A different style certainly, but unlocks nontheless.

Alright. That's a fair point. Wait what? Generally, the first complaint made about FPSes is that they are not original. The next remark is "unlike RPGs, which are original." I personally find this a bit odd, as none of the fantasy RPGs I've played seemed the least bit original. Dragon Age Origins, as much as I love it, borrows the "orcs are invading" plot from Tolkien while hamfistedly using the politics (and even certain names/roles!) from A Song of Ice and Fire. The Witcher's Act IV is based on Cthulhu and Arthurian Legend, and the overall franchise is basically Sapkowski taking the piss on fairy tales and Tolkien. Risen's probably the most original fantasy RPG I've played in a while, and even it was brazen enough to make the bad guys a thin imitation of the Spanish Inquisition, which is something I wasn't expecting. But there are other RPGs, right? Right. Fallout was pretty original as a Wild West tale juxatposed with a 50s "everything's fine" aesthetic and a post-apocalyptic world. Mass Effect put you in command of your own space ship (other games have put you in space before), and in terms of games, this is surprisingly unique. I can't think of any other RPGs that have put me in space. Good on them. But... as stories go, it's a pretty generic "ancient evil wakes up and tries to kill us." The first game had some good effort put into its worldbuilding, with things like the genophage and the different race politics and nuanced characters, but Mass Effect 2 threw that out the window and tried to emulate the Dirty Dozen (they literally called it that on Bioware's forums). Unoriginality again. :\ Alpha Protocol was another idea that hadn't been done as an RPG, but was pretty generic. Yes, it had some weird and wacky characters, but ultimately, it was a game where terrorists stole a weapon and you have to get it back. None of these games really get called on the carpet for being unoriginal. Any FPS that comes out these days, on the other hand, will get cries of "generic!" and "unoriginal!" in spades. They have ever since the advent of Halo and the FPS's mainstream popularity. Even before then, you had people talking about how FPSes didn't have great stories compared to Adventure gaming. I mean, look at XCOM. There is literally no other FPS like it on the market, nor has there ever been, in terms of aesthetic and gameplay design, although there are some similarities to two or three games in terms of squad command abilities (and even that is reliant on time units rather than cooldowns, from what I can see). People are screaming about how generic it is, though. Meanwhile the bland Mass Effect 2 comes out and, despite ripping a plot from The Dirty Dozen and having some shot-for-shot space combat scenes from Star Trek 11, it's called incredibly original and everyone says it has great writing. There is a genre bias out there that says FPSes are always generic and RPGs are not. Literally the only FPSes that come to mind as not having been considered generic were Bioshock and Half-Life 2, though I can think of plenty of others that were definitely not generic. ...are you... from the past? XD It's been ten years, man, since Halo came out and shooters went mainstream. I don't agree that it had not been. Even Doom, the grandfather of the FPS, was judged for not being very original or intelligent when it was first released. Again, I think FPSes are under harsher criticism than RPGs in this regard. Neat suggestion, but I fundamentally disagree. I TOTALLY agree with this, however. Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne, and Alan Wake are all unoriginal games, at least in terms of story and aesthetics, but they are all absolutely phenomenal games (well, Alan Wake has bad facial animation and not enough enemy types and is too short, and Red Dead Redemption was too hamfisted in telling its story, as far as Westerns go, and got all preachy, so they weren't perfect). Likewise, I don't think a game like STALKER or System Shock 2 has ever existed before, and they're two of the best games ever made. It's like... linearity. Some people say "if it's linear, then it's bad," even though tons of great games have been linear. They're simply overzealous about in-game freedom. Likewise, people are like "If it's original, it's good," and that's not always the case. A good game is reliant on good writing (if it's a game with a story, of course) and good gameplay. It's how both of those things work together that defines a good game, not whether an idea hasn't been done before. Ocean's 11, the new one, is a great movie, even if its story has been told before, for instance, and The Empire Strikes Back is great even if it's not original. Meanwhile, some original stories (nothing's leaping to mind at the moment, even though I feel like it should) totally suck.

Well, it depends. In Japanese games and some Western games, it's more likely that you play the game in a... (people are going to interpret this the wrong way) board game sort of way. You're less likely to actually be immersed within the game. This is part of the reason that you don't see Japan developing games like Deus Ex or Fallout 3. There's a mindset prevalent in Japanese game design that is more akin to the mindset present in older Western design (adventure games, RTS, etc), this idea of, like... playing the game like a game, rather than using the game to be in another world. I'm less likely to feel I'm playing a role in Civilization IV and Sim City, more likely in Homeworld 2 and World in Conflict, even more likely in Red Dead Redemption or Gears of War, and, at its peak, I'm totally immersed in the living, breathing world of an immersive sim. That's where I'm totally playing the role, because it's the closest to being inside the experience that gaming can provide. Obviously this is different for some people; they can somehow bypass the weird "well, if I'm this guy, how am I seeing my body and how is he not a marionette?" aspect of third person games, like most RPGs and still be immersed in it and really feel attached to the role. Others can do it with turn-based games. Generally, though, using elements of human interaction, especially eye contact (in a Bioware game, people look at the main character like a really bad movie; in Deus Ex, people look at you), allows you to immerse yourself into a role. Where was I going with that? Iunno. Anyways, then there's the idea of really playing roles. I think you're confusing the core concept of playing a role with... like... playing a role. The RPG is about inhabiting that guy, which is why games like The Witcher are so divisive. Some people can get into the role and others say "he doesn't look like I want him to look," and back out of it. The ideal RPG is one that allows us to inhabit the role of a character. An actor in a movie is acting out a predefined script. A roleplayer is a player who is free to act as they see fit within a given fictional scenario. You could say that improv actors are roleplayers, in a way. What that means is that Dead Space 2 is not an RPG while The Witcher 2 is. The RPG is, at its core, all about the choices you have to define your character. Any game that doesn't do this is not really an RPG, and is really just game with a stat system. Honestly, I'd say most JRPGs, like Earthbound, are adventure games with stat systems, rather than RPGs. Unfortunately, that will get my head bit off because JRPG fans have lived with that term for so long and built up the word RPG into a sort of holy grail thing that cannot be touched. If you call their genre by another name, to them it seems to feel like an insult--like you're saying they're less than the RPG, or not worth, rather than just different. Also, I am Heihachi, and you must die. Wow, that's a reall good point and I hadn't thought about it like that before. At first I was going to disagree, but you're right, it really does go through logical linear progression, even if you have some freedom within that linearity. But... I'm not sure. I'm playing Conker right now, and I can go back to the arena where the bull is if I want, for instance, so by definition, it's nonlinear, but unlike most nonlinear games, once I've beaten it, there's really nothing for me any more. What do you think about games like Red Dead Redemption? They open up more areas to you but are fundamentaly non-linear in terms of world design. Two things: first, why do you call that an illusion of freedom? How is it not freedom? Second: Couldn't we agree that we are not talking about literal linearity? GTAIV lets you traverse its world however you see fit, even if its story or character progression is linear. I would suggest that linear and non-linear games are defined not by their story or by their character progression or whatever, but by maps. A linear game drives you forward through a map. You go from map A to map B to map C to map D. Half-Life 2 may let you wander around the maps some, as will Bioshock, but ultimately, they're linear games. Meanwhile, games like Saint's Row 2 say "here is the map! Go wherever!" and the story sends you around the map, rather than from map A to map B to map C to map D. It's not a totally literal definition of linearity, but once choice is factored into the mix, you've kind of lost any sort of linearity, and all games are reliant on choices, so we can't go with an entirely literal definition. And, I would suggest, affecting the world around you. If you capture a certain character in The Witcher 2, a much different scenario plays out than if you don't. Yup. Ideally, we should have both. Even better, we should have both in the same game! ----- You're welcome to your opinion, of course, but there are, in fact, rules for good writing, and when followed, they allow great stories to be told. Gears of War is not a great story; it's pretty bland, though it tries hard. Gears of War 2 is a good story, but not a great one. It is, however, vastly than Mass Effect 2, which is godawful, even if you did like how some of the characters were written (and for that matter, I liked how some of the characters were written! Characters alone do not a story make!), and I'll write about it at some point. While I'm sure this is true to a degree (especially in multiplayer games), I'd suggest that some game designers do this because they honestly do want to add more to the gaming experience. As GunFlame points out, it's more conducive to a non-linear experience in terms of character progression (Red Dead Redemption essentially offers XP in terms of money which you can then use to buy better guns and equipment, which, given their drastic differences and the way the player users them to interact with the world, are effectively skills in-game) than shaping the levels and level progression in a way that the character Also regarding multiplayer games: people just will not buy multiplayer combat games without unlocks these days.

Or is it? Because I can totally prove the former are shit and the latter are not. Already started work on the posts a while ago. I do not feel like I should need to explain why this is bullshit. You can't prove that dragon age and mass effect are shit, because that's subjective opinion. Believe it or not, there are rules for good storytelling. There are things that make for good stories and bad. There's a reason that Twilight is not considered by human culture to be a good book, and a reason that The Count of Monte Cristo is. Good and bad, within the context of culture, is objective, but fuzzily defined, because culture evolves over time. For instance, The Count of Monte Cristo was considered bad at one point because Dumas was of mixed heritage, and people were racist. Now, like/dislike? That's a different matter. What you like or dislike is entirely subjective and would be impossible for me to prove in any way, shape, or form. I will not endeavor to prove that you like or dislike something, as it's ubsurd. What's good or bad, is, however, fair game. ----- I wouldn't say cold, hard science, but it is something I am quite confident in. Why bother to say a thing at all if you want to say it without conviction? How does that make any sense at all? Look, some people are going to find FPS games boring. Absolutely. I have no problem with that whatever. If you're not into FPSes, you're not into them. I did say earlier that I wasn't arguing that you should enjoy them, only that the people who are insulting them for being stupid are wrong and should stop doing that. I am not out to prove what you ought to like, and I did say this, so you are remiss in your duty for reading comprehension. By all means, enjoy what you enjoy, and don't enjoy what you don't, but don't you dare criticize something wrongly. That, Connorrrr, is, and always has been, my approach to the matter. Hm... I didn't communicate this well. They're two separate articles. Basically, on one hand, you have people saying "bah, shooters, particularly Call of Duty, are dumb." I can prove that they're not and that they've got some good writing. I also intend to criticize the Modern Warfare games for their shortcomings and explain why the series isn't as effective as it could be. Did you know that some people think that multiple narratives is a sign of stupidity? It's absurd. They couldn't keep up with the shifts, so they were whining and saying it's stupid. Classic whiner behavior; can't understand something, insult it. People were doing this to Inception last year. On the other hand, we have Bioware. I fully intend to write an article on why Dragon Age 2 is a Bad RPG, because, you see, I have some experience designing RPGs, as well as some experience in terms of general gameplay design, particularly in relation to action RPGs. There are reasons it's a Good RPG too, and I'll be covering them as well. Likewise, there's Mass Effect. I've got a few interesting articles planned out for that one, one of which explores the idea that Bioware actually stole (if they'd been inspired by, they would have cited it, but no, they cited, of all things, Aliens) the story from other sources (and, for that matter, I could actually do this for a lot of Bioware games). Another Mass Effect article deals with the various problems the game has, and things that, had they been in other games, most game reviewers would have pointed out (bad arena design, a lack of a good plot, etc). I'd also toyed with the idea of restructuring the entire Mass Effect plot to make it work better, just for fun. I love Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, and was deeply disappointed by the genuinely bad games that Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 turned out to be. I'm sorry that you don't like my opinions, but surely you'll agree that I do have the right to voice them, just as you have the right to counter my complaints, no? Look, don't you like it when you convince someone to like a game? Just yesterday, I convinced a friend to try out Deus Ex: Human Revolution. He's really enjoying it. Earlier, I convinced friends to try STALKER, and they loved it. That makes me feel really good. Wouldn't you relish the opportunity to let me say "this is why I don't like X?" and then to counter my claims and convince me I'm wrong? I know I would. Oh, god no, just Bioware. This comes after talking with Brent Knowles on why he left (like, I literally emailed him and asked about it and we talked about originality in games, why Bioware couldn't ever have made a game like Planescape: Torment and why the aliens in Mass Effect are nearly all humanoid in skeletal structure and so forth) and playing Dragon Age 2. I'm going to be popping Xenosaga into my PS3 fairly soon, actually, and until Deus Ex: Human Revolution came along, The Witcher 2 was my Game of the Year. Both of those are RPGs, are they not? ----- Right. One of the claims I made was that the FPS had supplanted other genres in terms of popularity. Another was that it could be said to have driven certain genres extinct. The very vocal party seems to be long-time hardcore gamers, who, as the industry explodes, are increasingly the vocal minority. Right. The Most Popular Game for a while was Halo, so it was called dumb, stupid, blah blah blah, everyone seemed to hate it. Now that it's Call of Duty, Call of Duty gets that hate. Generally, this hate comes from various frustrations, like the ones I just mentioned. One I didn't mention was the... "I can't do it so it's stupid" mentality that so many people seem to have. I know people who just aren't capable of playing FPSes, so instead of admitting it, they say things like "hey, what's there to like? It's just running around and clicking on things." Sometimes, it's not even an issue of incapability. I had a friend who had played mostly Japanese games (and Japanese developers have a different mindset on how players should interact with games), and he told me that his first foray into shooting was confusing. He didn't understand why there was no auto-lock-on, for instance. He would have discarded it because he didn't understand how to play. This seems to be more of an issue with long-time gamers as opposed to people like me; it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks and all that stuff. Generally... I dunno. The friends I have who are into Japanese games/consoles aren't as versatile as those who started elsewhere. This isn't a dig at them... just a pattern I've noticed. I have a friend who tells me that Bulletstorm is the Worst Game Ever Made and I can count on one hand the number of PC games he likes. I'm confused by one bit of your statement. Like... I get that people say RPGs are super original, even if that could be said of plenty of genres (did you know that more Final Fantasy games have been released since the release of Final Fantasy XIII than brown and grey modern military shooters? It's a fact.). Personally, I look at Bethesda and CD Projekt and Larian and especially Bioware and I can't say I'm seeing much originality out there, and I would know, 'cause I'm a sucker for any sort of original-sounding story and universe. I've got literally dozens of original story ideas filling up my notebooks waiting for the day I can start developing games. Woah, got sidetracked. Anyways, are you saying that people say RPGs are super original and everything and FPSes aren't, even though most RPGs really are little more than reskins of the same mechanics? Or are you saying that RPGs are original and FPSes aren't and that FPSes tend to be reskins? It's definitely one of the reasons I mentioned. I don't have an issue with someone saying that they don't like something. I mean, yes, this is me. If someone says "I don't like STALKER," then I'll feel compelled to ask why and then try to convince them it's good, particularly if they don't like it for a silly reason (if someone says "it's super buggy," then yeah, that's a good reason not to dislike it. If they say "it didn't train me," then, well, that's a silly reason.). What I had an issue with was the suggestion that FPSes are inherently stupid. My entire article was that many FPSes aren't just good, they're better than other highly-praised games. FPSes can be superb. Some of my worst gaming experiences have also been FPSes. I was convinced earlier to do a part 4 and talk about story. When I do, I'll probably write that bit right away. I totally agree with this. A genre, in and of itself, is not inherently good or bad. I mean, look at LucasArts adventure games--they were, by all accounts, absolutely amazing! Then look at Gabriel Knight. Utterly terrible, according to Old Man Murray. If life were up to me, all linear FPSes would emulate and iterate on Halo, and all nonlinear FPSes would borrow from games like System Shock 2, STALKER, and Deus Ex/Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I wish all FPSes were inherently good, but they aren't, and that's terrible.

That they do. -- Or is it? Because I can totally prove the former are shit and the latter are not. Already started work on the posts a while ago. Is there any game you truly need a lot of intelligence to beat? Adventure games are mostly just about trying shit until it works. RPGs, last I checked, didn't make me think at all. It's a different way of thinking about things, but it's still all thinking. Gaming generally isn't a terribly intellectual pursuit any more than reading or watching films is, other than the fact that you act. That poor players tend to take reactionary strategies while playing shooters does not reflect on the genre, merely the player. FPSes take up all of my attention. RPGs, for the most part, I generally play while listening to TV shows or something. They're very much my cooldown relaxant games. -- I'm not sure how you consider it a 'he said, she said,' sort of thing. Many FPSes, when they come out, get complaints of "not another shooter," and "shooters are so dumb." It's gotten to the point where even games writers on sites like Kotaku or RPS or whatever spout it, as if it's all accepted fact, which is utterly silly. I merely explored why that was. I certainly don't think it was about going after other games that people put on pedestals. I have other posts for that sort of thing. Certainly. There are a lot of choices available to the player at any given time in the game, even if it is quite linear and has a limited set of distinct weapons. That doesn't make it a stupid game, but people love to insist that it is. From experience: it does work in MP strategy. The fact that it's real-time in no way mitigates the fact that it requires intelligence. It merely requires that you think faster. My argument, again, was that it's a different sort of intelligence at play, Hot Heart. Of course RUSE, which I played for several hours yesterday, requires a layer of depth that shooters don't have. STALKER (what is it with me and games with acronym names?) requires a wholly different sort of intelligence to play, where you must think about things like time of day, bullet drop, how much supplies you can carry, what sort of environment you're going to be traversing, whether or not you'll have a place to take cover from blowouts, and so forth. There was this one bit in Call of Pripyat where I found myself inside of a snork hill (like an ant hill, but full of snorks and anomalies) because a blowout was imminent and I wasn't able to make it anywhere in time. I was also overloaded and chugging energy drinks to race across the terrain, and I thought I was going to die. I had been running to the nearest shelter when I... sort of fell in. Not smart. I became a better player after that. It's a different sort of intelligence, but by no means is it a lesser sort of intelligence. In an RPG, things like route aren't super important, and in most RPGs, you only really need to use your weapon with the biggest stats and/or your magic. Sometimes, in particularly complex RPGs, you'll have to think about things like how your fire elemental damage sword won't do damage to that ifrit or whatever... but none of this is really touched on in shooters. In shooters, of much greater importance is thinking about route and environment: "how do I navigate this cliff space while avoiding shots from those guys while maintaining health and eliminating all resistance and completing my goal?" On top of that, it's about thinking about enemy types. Generally, an RPG enemy, in a turn-based game, is just a set of numbers with a series of attack types. There's really no intelligence required to play Earthbound at all, for instance. Attack the enemy and manage your health/pp. You'll be fine. In an FPS, well... look at Halo. You've got Elites with their recharging shields. They're on par with you in terms of stats, if I remember that Bungie AI GDC talk thingy properly; the only difference is that they have a limited amount of tactics and you are, well, human. You've got your intelligence to rely on. They haven't. Then you've got guys who can fly, snipers, guys with more traditional shields, guys who go berserk when you take out their armor, suicidal explosive guys... there are a TON of different and varied combat encounters that you must change up your tactics for, all in real-time. When facing the Flood, you need to kit yourself out differently than when you face Covenant. In Dragon Age: Origins, I just gave myself the best gear and proceeded to wade through lots of enemies; however, in DAO, I was also managing four characters in real-time and had to manage their health, mana, and the enemies around each one, which created a much different experience. Obviously, none of this really applies to an action RPG (Witcher 2) or an RPG shooter (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which also has the greatest conversation minigame in the history of gaming and I could go on at length about why it's so great), which is a whole nother ballgame of, in my mind, much more fun gametypes. My point is: different types of intelligence is required to play these games. All those people who like to say FPSes are dumb because they operate on a relatively easy to learn mechanic... aren't really thinking clearly. RPGs are not some sort of uberintelligencerequiring supergame. Honestly, when it comes to games that challenge me intellectually, the only ones that have truly done that are RTSes, but that's another discussion for another time. It does make sense. As someone who used to design stat systems for online RPGs all the time (one game I tore apart and rebuilt from the ground up is still around, six years later, without any major changes and despite the fact that I left it ages ago, so I like to think I'm pretty good at designing stable systems), I totally understand just how much skill and thought goes into designing RPG balance. It's a much more... tangible thing than it is in a shooter. Generally, gamers aren't looking at a shotgun and thinking about its weapon spread and rof and dps and reload speed and magazine size and so forth, even though those skills are all very much present. It's less tangible, so they tend to think it isn't there. The intelligence behind the design isn't really the intelligence required of the player, though. In retrospect, I should have given the series a different name, but I was sort of intending it as a way to talk about a hypothetical perfect game, and I never really got around to doing that, so it seems to imply I think shooters are the best. They're certainly my favorite, but not the best. The best is this thing I'll have to write about later. I may add a final line into the post commenting on that.

...and my point was that that take is entirely stupid.

That video isn't actually serious, is it?

Read this. I wrote it, therefore, it must be true. Also, the less-important first parts can be located here and there. Basically, I got tired of people saying FPSes were dumb, because they aren't, so I set about proving that fact. I've found FPSes to generally be some of the smartest, most engaging games I've ever played. They're also the closest to what I feel a game should be in that they are the most effective at placing a player within a world. Anyways, um, yeah, please read it and tell me what you think.

I am in pain. This might not make sense. The mechanics are more visibly involved ("I performed X action and got immediate Y result"), so people tend to think they're "smarter." What I mean is... well, most people seem to think that RPGs are the smartest genre out there. Mass Effect 2, which is a piss-poor third person shooter, was hailed as one of last year's greatest games, as if it was somehow so much smarter than, say, Gears of War. It really isn't. In terms of game design, it screws up all over the place, the writing (in terms of lack of character development, lack of plot, terrible pacing) is pretty sub-par, and the gameplay is... fluid but weak. With RPG skills and a conversation system, however, it's considered the greatest RPG of all time, not only according to people who like hyperbole, but also according to Metacritic. On one hand, I like it. It adds a layer of gameplay that wasn't there previously. If Mass Effect 2 was just a TPS, you'd pick up guns through the various maps as you go along, or maybe have a R6V2 style loadout system. With an RPG, you can add skills to certain things. Fear 3 lets you increase the time you spend in bullet time as a reward for doing various things in-game, which is quite clever, and arguably more effective as a training mechanic than Valve's "give achievements that help the player be better at the game" thing they tried for Left 4 Dead. Personally, for a shooter, I prefer System Shock 2's way of doing things. You upgrade by finding chips throughout the world that enable you to do so, and/or receive them as a reward for completing missions. Another preference is to earn cash to buy things, a la STALKER: Clear Sky/Call of Pripyat. If you do mission X, you get Y rubles, which can be used to purchase health or guns or upgrades or whateer. I think in that way, STALKER's a better RPG than most, because it removes vestigial tabletop gaming elements ("because the DM can't effectively calculate bullet drop or whether an enemy turns invisible and runs away, it must be judged by turn-based dice rolls") while keeping the core ideas of character improvement and choice within a game world. It's got quests and multiple outcomes... honestly, it does everything an RPG ought to without being overtly RPG. Where was I going with this? Hm. People are weak to instant gratification and as a result tend to think it's smarter, which is why so many crappy RPGs seem to get a free pass. They're a part of a genre that gets loved and allow a sort of immediate freedom. And maybe, in some cases, it is smarter (like System Shock 2 and STALKER). However, I don't think it necessarily hurts games we wouldn't consider RPGs, though you do have a good point about Banjo-Kazooie. Ultimately, I think people have implemented it because they want a deeper interaction with the game. Hard Reset lets you choose which guns you want as you progress, rather than depending on which guns the designers have for you. People like being able to pick which skills or items they get rather than progress slowly through the game and get whatever the developer feels they ought to get. Man, I'm hurting bad and probably incoherent. I think I'm going to go lie down.

Oh you wish. >D I'll post there soon enough. I promised myself I'm going to finish this game census first, and dammit, I'm going to do that.

Ahhhhhhhhhh. Presumably you'll mention Cryengine 3 at some point? That's what I'm working with right now. That and terragen. But terragen sucks and I can't figure out how to use it to make maps in Cryengine so bleeeeeeeeeeeh.

Heh, Dean. You know, if you need someone to write some content, I might be arsed to try. I am well aware of Game Maker and it's not really what I'm going for. Oh well. :\ Anywho, AYG Nick, my computer hates me and won't let me reply to you. It's stuck saving the post, it says. Basically, I don't hate on DBZ, I hate on people who steal from DBZ and then worry that I'll steal from them. I live in a state that doesn't even touch a state occupied by game developers, so the number of devs here is small as hell. I'd think the best approach would be to do it like a mod, with a bunch of people through the internet.

Unfortunately, I am at a tiny little community college, the program's fairly new, and the only people in the program I've gotten to talk to... kinda suck. Like, one of them is that sort of nerd who thinks DBZ is the best thing ever and wants to devote his life to making games that are ultimately derivatives of that. Also, he's afraid I'll steal his ideas. Plus, they're mostly console gamers and have very little interest in isometric RPGs.

Let's say people weren't making classic isometric RPGs these days. Let's say the indie scene is too full of boring games and/or 2D platformers, and none of the indie RPGs really stood up to muster. Let's say you wished there were more. Let's say you had the skill to do something about that, or knew the sort of people with the skills required to do so? ...would you build an indie isometric RPG? Would you have any interest in that? Because I'm interested in doing that very thing, but I do not possess the skills required to do everything. There are some aspects I'm totally ready to do--I've got a nice bit of experience designing RPG combat systems, and I think I can write/design quests fairly well, but I haven't learned the important bits, like how to make art assets or program, and won't be for another semester or two. But more importantly, I'm interested in working with people. I need to exert the mental effort required in creation, and I need to work with people to help me do that. If I just do it myself, I'll probably abandon it along the way because I can't focus on much these days. Is anyone interested in resurrecting the isometric RPG?

I like this game almost as much as I wish it would be set on fire and sacrificed like that lady in King Kong. This is not at all how an immersive co-op zombie sim should be made, and it's full of utterly bonkers stupid design decisions, like moving slowly while strafing. At least there's an FOV fix. EDIT: How is that misleading, Hot Heart? Other than the fact that the gameplay is more conducive to HRRGRRRAGEFUCK, the game's entire narrative, art direction, and so forth is all designed with tearjerking war drama in mind.

Sometimes stupidty can be fun, and the word "shit" can be a synonym for "stuff." Stupid stuff is occasionally fun, like watching a video of Electric Six's "Bite Me" while watching the Dead Island trailer. EDIT: @P4 (Pentium not Persona): Want I should reply to your Half-Life 2 objections elsewhere? PC gaming or general gaming, perhaps?

Just started playing Viva Pinata. It's kind of amazing, though trying to get ahold of my birds doesn't always work well, and trying to get anything to make babies seems really hard. I'll click one, go over to the next one, and click it, and they just don't respond.

We might have a problem.