Partially.
I do like their style and how they're made. And I played a fair amount of them in my earlier life.
But I noticed that I can't deal with them anymore, nowadays.
It seems like new short-lived games have spoiled me. I grow impatient playing games that I loved years ago.
And also I sometimes get lost really really badly. I don't exactly have bad orientation skills, but from time to time I just completely lose my way.
I run around for 20 minutes, trying to find my way out of a dungeon without actually finding the exit -_-
And in those old games one way usually looks exactly like the other ways.
Yeah I do find them to get annoying now. I've been playing Legend of the Dragoon and I spent like half an hour running around in the prison level, not apparently realizing that it was a circle with three areas, and I am now remembering how annoying it is to hear DOUBLE SLASH! after every attack.
But anyway, I want one that's updated, but holds to the same kind of principles. Like Oblivion was fun, but the story sucked after like ten minutes and it didn't take that long for the world to get boring just because it's the same thing everywhere you go. But then again, the gameplay typically got really old in those games after a bit but the story always kicked so you kept playing anyway because you wanted to know what happens.
It's not as much the "old-school RPGs" I miss, but mostly old-school games in general. There's been a large change in paradigm for games as a whole. It's not too easy to notice it as a whole, but I think I can say fantasy plays a smaller role than it used to. That, and instant gratification has become more important.
Compare older games like Heroes of might & magic 2 or 3 to their equivalents of 5 and 6 right now. I don't want to throw around the terms 'good' or 'bad', but because of the forced bad graphics in HOMM 2 and 3, players were forced to do a lot of imagening themselves. Ironically, though graphics have become better, the immersiveness in most games has gone down. HOMM 5 and 6 are still incredibly immersive, though probably not to the extend HOMM 2 and 3 were in their day.
As for different examples, take shooters - back in the days of Doom and Quake it was all about running around, and shooters were, even though they had subjects like fascism (wolfenstein), mostly comically. Shooters these days; think Gears of War, Battlefield, Call of Duty. Not only are all of them incredibly politically correct, they also all have a great emphasis on being gory and serious and as realistic as possible. Goofy shooters similar to how we had them back then simply no longer exist?
And even aside from that - MMORPGs have been on the rise, as have achievements in... virtually anything. Which brings me back to my original two points - instant gratification. Players want to kill as many enemies as they can in as little time, and they want to be rewarded for it right away. Back in the old days, there were plenty of games where it took you three times as long to kill any given enemy.
As for fantasy - because of the lesser graphics and slower gameplay as a whole, gamers had to do a lot more with their fantasy. They themselves had a more active part in 'shaping' the world around them. Also ironically enough, this is what games these days advertise with, while there's actually less of it than there ever was.
Todays games have gotten just... incredibly serious as a whole. Gaming is an INDUSTRY, there's a multitude of GENRES and there's constant DEBATE as to which game is the BEST. People have constant DISCUSSIONS on games and stuff need to be REALISTIC, ENGAGING and focused on SUCKING THE PLAYER IN. There's terms flying around in this business (and heck, even the word 'business' is one of those terms here) that simply didn't exist 10-15 years ago. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what changed, but in a way this sometimes saddens me - there are very few games left that really were as engaging as the games back then in terms of "you will get this game and play it for easily a year". Games these days are so incredibly designed around the player that most of them are quick money sinks. EA would obviously be the prime example of this evolution, though in their case it's an obvious degeneration: they release part 2 of a game within a year of releasing part 1, add little new, and part 1's community leaves for part 2 almost instantly.
Though just to note it again; the change isn't per definition something I want to call bad. The improved graphics and change in the community as a whole has also brought us games like Mass Effect, which has a story so engaging that Napoleon would've freaking ran with his tail between his legs. Not to mention games with simply outstanding quality like the earlier mentioned Gears of War. It's just that the area has just been so... business-ized. There is no more "I put on my robe and my wizard hat!", and there is so much more "I want you to spend money on this game!".
I have to agree with mozared on his entire post there lol.
Todays games, they are technically good, but they are always missing something, and as mozared pointed out something that isn't always easy to put your finger on. But yeah, the game industry is changing, I mean.. how many years ago wasn't it that the gaming industry surpassed the music and movie industry combined money wise? Ever since then, what one would call good games have always been hard to find. With the mainstreaming of games, the older more experienced nerds, which dwell on forums like this will always think there is something missing in new games. I for one think there is ALOT of things missing in all newer games.
I think the main reason is the consoles always being the place where games are designed for. I mean, you don't see any new game comming out being made especially to be played on a computer, except mmos that is, and that is without doubt a subject to change aswell, looking at games like dust514 etc. Console games will always have alot of limitations that PC games do not have, let's take just the editing community in SC2, the guild community in MMOs or the realism in games such as ARMA. Very few games are designed for us, and we just have to make due with what we can get :) saddening really, I think we all know a game or two that we really want to show a nephew or another friend, but they will just be completely bummed out having adapted to the console gaming world.
- That being said I think alot of people are starting to get very sad about state of the games released overall, everything is PR and everything is money. Just look at games like the new dukenukem, brink, rift etc the list is long. However I'm getting offtopic in this offtopic thread :D
Yes I do miss the older games, and yes I do get annoyed by how slow they can be at times, but it doesn't kill the game for me atleast. I would suggest heading over to:
http://rpgmaker.net/games/?engine=8&status=&rating=&sort=rating
and take a look. There is tons of old RPG styled games, designed with programs such as RPGmaker, verge and many other programs designed for making it good for people to make those old style rpg and games, that one used to love, but also being able to give them their .... special spice to make the old form RPGs into a newer form, where you don't have to run around in endless dungeon and listen to... overtexted plots. But a newer version RPG games, made TRUELY by gamers for gamers. It is deff worth a look, there is some pretty shitty games and there is some pretty epic ones aswell, it has brought several good hours infront of my PC and rekindled a bit of that oldschool style that one thinks is outdated.
But yeah, I miss alot of the good old games, lol quake3, unrealtournament and counterstrike. All of the beats all the shooters released the last 6 years.. COMBINED!
I did mean to say Chrono Trigger (I was smoking and thinking about Playstation). Although I liked Chrono Cross (just not as near as epic as da Trigger. And there was way too many characters in that game, no way anyone actually used all of them...)
Anyway, the primary reason I ask is I've been playing around a little but with pre-rendering (from games like Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, etc), and was thinking about a new RPG combat system, that's kind of a combination of turn-based and real time, where you are put into a similar combat arena (where there's like three or four characters on each side), and set up your character (choose spells to have active, if you fight or stand guard, etc), and then instead of just attacking you go into a timed round of like ten seconds or so, and the combat itself is in real time.
I've been working on one using a QTE system for a little bit, not as advanced of a combat system as the game is pretty much supposed to be like some PSX RPG's were (with the combat system where you go through the quick time event to get a high combo), only with way better graphics (since I'm using pre-rendered backgrounds I can have like 75,000 poly characters and it's gonna be awesome! And I'll STILL be under a million on screen and only have like fifty draw calls) ; anyway I wanted to be sure I'm not the only one who routinely disregards newer games to play their Super Nintendo (which I recently broke...).
I love Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Torment etc, but I just can't stand playing them now :/ The graphics, the clunky controls, incompatibility with newer systems, it's just too much. Dungeons & Dragons may be great for pen and paper, but making a computer game based on it was stupid.
I think someone new to computer RPGs is not going to like those older RPG games, no matter what. Example why that is: I keep hearing that Ocarina of Time is the best game ever, so I try it on an emulator and... I can't stand it. It's a fucking platformer where you jump around to get powerups and hearts, It's got the sounds and graphics (not talking about their age or ugliness here) of a kiddy platformer. Deleted it promptly. It might have been fun in 1998 when you were a kid, but it isn't now (then again, Fallout and BG came out in 98, so why would you want to play zelda anyway).
On a more general note, I really don't like it when every game with some stats is called an RPG. Diablo is a hack & slash, the "RPG" SC2 maps are also hack & slash. RPGs need a proper storyline, plot decisions made by the player, a character to play, etc. That disqualifies most "RPG" games made in Japan, since they're just: fight, fight, fight, press continue to scroll text, cutscene, fight, press continue. Hello Final Fantasy, I hate you.
First words of my last post... Fine, here's how I determine an RPG:
Storyline - It's integral to the game, you cannot progress properly if you don't know and understand what's going on. You can't skip all the boring talking and just move mindlessly on following the shiny arrows (like in Diablo, Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell). Knowing the plot in an RPG is like knowing when to defend/counter in AssCreed.
Plot decisions - They have to be meaningful and affect the game and/or the character in some way, and there has to be a lot of them :P (otherwise SC2 would qualify for this)
Playing the character - the roleplaying part. Hard to describe and subjective, but basically you have to "feel" you're the character. I felt it when playing the Gray Warden or Revan, didn't feel it when playing Mario or Gordon Freeman. They felt like drones/vessels you control, they didn't speak, act or show any kind of life.
4th directive - you must have a boss fight that consists of only talking. Yeah! Planescape Torment FTW!
There are some gray areas, like Icewind Dale. It doesn't fit my conditions (it's Diablo in Baldur's Gate's skin), but I still consider it an RPG game.
My concept doesn't fit your category really (which is a bit different than typical, I think). Although I do agree that many games labelled as RPG are in reality more akin to action/adventure games, but it's a very fine line between the two.
First words of my last post... Fine, here's how I determine an RPG:
Storyline - It's integral to the game, you cannot progress properly if you don't know and understand what's going on. You can't skip all the boring talking and just move mindlessly on following the shiny arrows (like in Diablo, Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell). Knowing the plot in an RPG is like knowing when to defend/counter in AssCreed.
To be fair, while I'd hardly call the story of AC 'integral' to the game, there are definitely some points in all games where you need to listen to a cutscene in order to know what exactly you're supposed to be doing.
Todays games have gotten just... incredibly serious as a whole. Gaming is an INDUSTRY, there's a multitude of GENRES and there's constant DEBATE as to which game is the BEST. People have constant DISCUSSIONS on games and stuff need to be REALISTIC, ENGAGING and focused on SUCKING THE PLAYER IN.
<</quote
More like focused on sucking. its not just video games... its tv too... if your like me... which i doubt you are... you will believe that people are making this world rot. and those people need to leave. sorry if im going all light yagami on you. But i hate what's happening to video games and american TV... the old cartoons and anime are mostly taken off air... and replaced with comedy crap. i could probably come up with better stuff in my toilet if i wasn't so god damn lazy. there is virtually nothing watchable for me now. except one channel. but it shall remain nameless for now. I do actually have some plans to do away with this crap unfortunately they are very slow in the making :( and i doubt it will work very well. everyone has to do their part heh. aka stop watching crap and stop buying into crap. btw i will respect your certian view point. so respect mine. (and no i don't like death note just using it as a means to an end)
I'm not surprised to see a reply like that, tbh. I'm too realistic to be so pessimistic though. The world changes literally every ten years, and the stuff you are saying now will be repeated by some guy ten years in the future, when he's thinking back of Stacraft 2 and how that game was so much cooler than everything that is being released then. I don't think the change is all bad.
On the other hand, what we've seen with games over the past 20 year is a quick movement from an interesting 'subculture' into a mainstream business, and that movement is rarely ever fun. It's a bit of a double-edged blade, too; stuff that isnt popular tends to be more fun, but you'll find less interest and people playing it. Stuff that has become popular has plenty of people to go around, but is often generally of a lower quality. In the end, it's not a case of "back in my day!!!", but rather how we cope with it as we remember the good days and jump from ship to ship, trying to find untouched, new experiences.
To be fair, while I'd hardly call the story of AC 'integral' to the game, there are definitely some points in all games where you need to listen to a cutscene in order to know what exactly you're supposed to be doing.
Those are just instructions, and I'm pretty sure that, most of the time, you could skip them and just follow the shiny quest markers.
Example of following the plot from The Witcher 1 (no spoilers): there is a detective mission where you have to perform an autopsy. You can prepare for it and execute it in various ways (talking to people, buying and reading a book on medicine). When you make your decision, the game does not tell you if you're right or wrong, it just goes on. if you've done it properly, you'll have an advantage over the bad guy, you can even fake that you've screwed up the autopsy and then you'll be able to fool the bad guy. If you failed it, well, it's the other way around :P
Generally, Witcher games are packed with these "if you don't pay attention, you'll suffer" events (oh, Little Sisters quest...)
Agree with Mozared... games don't feel like a group of nerds making something awesome, they feel like a business. That magic is, more or less, gone.
When I look back, I notice funniest games were always... well, nothing like what we have today. Metal Slug, I still play it again and again. I don't get bored. Same for Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, I fucking love it. Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons, any generation 1/2 Pokémon. Old good graphic adventures. The very first Unreal. Heroes III. Age of Empires 2. Commandos 2: Men of Courage, hell, I loved it! Doom 3, SW: Battlefront 2, Prey, FEAR, my favorite FPS: Painkiller. Golden Sun 1 & 2. The first Mario/Wario worlds. Metroid Fusion. And I could go on and on, but it's gonna make me cry :').
Warcraft III was my favorite for, what, 5 years? now I go back and I can't stand the limited controls, but in its base, in its core controls and gameplay, I find it better than SC2. Give W3 decent control groups and a better UI and I would return to it full-time again. And whatever, I still have fun with it. Most maps are still great to play, and those deficiencies only affect a minor group of maps, and well, you just need to play a bit to tune in with the controls and forget the easy ways of SC2.
I hate that "reward the player all the time" shit, too. Rewards should have tiers of difficulty, and not just "farm, farm, farm" and "repeat the same easy stuff for profit". In the games I love, the reward is playing them itself, with their music, the story progression, every single enemy I kill, and how awesome it is and how much fun I have. Don't get me wrong, I love achievements, but I'd rather give them for progress rather than for stupid and/or farming actions. When achievements are over the game itself, you're doing something wrong, because people will play achievements, not the game.
I should really try new stuff like ME and Witcher, but prizes and general disappointment with the industry make it hard for me to change my attitude into "let's try this!". In the end, something tells me I'll find more of the same again and again. In general, I think the gaming society is getting "dumbified" just like TV watchers. Oh, a hard game... meh, I go back to farming crap on my MMO or playing some new version of a FPS which only changed 2 lines of code compared to the previous title, and it changed them to remove the editor.
Nowadays, aside from SC2 and D3, I don't have any "buy on release" franchise. Maybe Traveller's Tales LEGO games, but I usually wait for the price to lower or special offers. And since most "everyone likes it!" games never lower price, I never get to try them. I'm lazy to pirate the when I can get other good games for less than 20€ or keep playing what I have.
When I look back, I notice funniest games were always... well, nothing like what we have today. Metal Slug, I still play it again and again. I don't get bored. Same for Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, I fucking love it. Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons, any generation 1/2 Pokémon. Old good graphic adventures. The very first Unreal. Heroes III. Age of Empires 2. Commandos 2: Men of Courage, hell, I loved it! Doom 3, SW: Battlefront 2, Prey, FEAR, my favorite FPS: Painkiller. Golden Sun 1 & 2. The first Mario/Wario worlds. Metroid Fusion. And I could go on and on, but it's gonna make me cry :').
...
I should really try new stuff like ME and Witcher
To be fair, it's not all bad. Some games have actually been improved and are just plain good. You mention generation 1/2 Pokémon; while it's true that the franchise is being sucked dry, generations 3, 4 and 5 *did* all actually had some new and interesting themes to the game, ranging from finding hidden items to dual and triple battles. Pokémon Black & White are pretty good games, I'd recommend really just checking them out, even if just for nostalgia's sake from generation 1/2.
Tying into that; try Mass Effect. I have only met two types of people in this world: people who think Mass Effect is an unambiguously good game, and people who haven't tried it. The game receives constant praise and I can imagine people shrugging that off as a "yeah, but they praise nearly every game lately, and space RPGs simply aren't my style", but the praise really is deserved.
Get this: I've never liked any kind of game that takes place in space (with the exception of Starcraft), and didn't think Mass Effect 2 would be worth my time. A pall of mine replayed it over the course of a week and talked to me about it. In the end I decided just to give it a try, for the hell of it. I completed the game in one week and stopped doing virtually everything else I was doing in my spare time. I haven't played ME1, so I can't comment on that, but ME2 at least, simply is that good. It's godlike. Everything you'll ever like about a game is in there. This isn't a game that someone 'recommends' to you, this is some kind of deity that any self-respecting gamer should have played at some point in his life. I pretty much consider Mass Effect 2 equal to those books and films that everyone always says you have to check out once in your life, like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Star Wars. You simply cannot dislike this game.
Yeap.. those were awesome. Its a damn shame that they're pretty rare these days.
Say, ever played Legend of Legaia, Breath of Fire 3, Suikoden 2 and Thousand Arms? They are some of my personal favorites, put aside FF7 of course since its one of the more famous ones. I enjoyed most of them because they had a nice easy to follow story, yet some degree of tactics was required to get the battles done right.
Like Legend of the Dragoon and Chrono Cross, where it took like fifty hours to get through and they actually got hard?
Partially.
I do like their style and how they're made. And I played a fair amount of them in my earlier life.
But I noticed that I can't deal with them anymore, nowadays.
It seems like new short-lived games have spoiled me. I grow impatient playing games that I loved years ago.
And also I sometimes get lost really really badly. I don't exactly have bad orientation skills, but from time to time I just completely lose my way.
I run around for 20 minutes, trying to find my way out of a dungeon without actually finding the exit -_-
And in those old games one way usually looks exactly like the other ways.
Yeah I do find them to get annoying now. I've been playing Legend of the Dragoon and I spent like half an hour running around in the prison level, not apparently realizing that it was a circle with three areas, and I am now remembering how annoying it is to hear DOUBLE SLASH! after every attack.
But anyway, I want one that's updated, but holds to the same kind of principles. Like Oblivion was fun, but the story sucked after like ten minutes and it didn't take that long for the world to get boring just because it's the same thing everywhere you go. But then again, the gameplay typically got really old in those games after a bit but the story always kicked so you kept playing anyway because you wanted to know what happens.
Chrono Cross? Is that the sequel to Chrono Trigger? I remember hearing it wasn't as good.
It's not as much the "old-school RPGs" I miss, but mostly old-school games in general. There's been a large change in paradigm for games as a whole. It's not too easy to notice it as a whole, but I think I can say fantasy plays a smaller role than it used to. That, and instant gratification has become more important.
Compare older games like Heroes of might & magic 2 or 3 to their equivalents of 5 and 6 right now. I don't want to throw around the terms 'good' or 'bad', but because of the forced bad graphics in HOMM 2 and 3, players were forced to do a lot of imagening themselves. Ironically, though graphics have become better, the immersiveness in most games has gone down. HOMM 5 and 6 are still incredibly immersive, though probably not to the extend HOMM 2 and 3 were in their day.
As for different examples, take shooters - back in the days of Doom and Quake it was all about running around, and shooters were, even though they had subjects like fascism (wolfenstein), mostly comically. Shooters these days; think Gears of War, Battlefield, Call of Duty. Not only are all of them incredibly politically correct, they also all have a great emphasis on being gory and serious and as realistic as possible. Goofy shooters similar to how we had them back then simply no longer exist?
And even aside from that - MMORPGs have been on the rise, as have achievements in... virtually anything. Which brings me back to my original two points - instant gratification. Players want to kill as many enemies as they can in as little time, and they want to be rewarded for it right away. Back in the old days, there were plenty of games where it took you three times as long to kill any given enemy.
As for fantasy - because of the lesser graphics and slower gameplay as a whole, gamers had to do a lot more with their fantasy. They themselves had a more active part in 'shaping' the world around them. Also ironically enough, this is what games these days advertise with, while there's actually less of it than there ever was.
Todays games have gotten just... incredibly serious as a whole. Gaming is an INDUSTRY, there's a multitude of GENRES and there's constant DEBATE as to which game is the BEST. People have constant DISCUSSIONS on games and stuff need to be REALISTIC, ENGAGING and focused on SUCKING THE PLAYER IN. There's terms flying around in this business (and heck, even the word 'business' is one of those terms here) that simply didn't exist 10-15 years ago. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what changed, but in a way this sometimes saddens me - there are very few games left that really were as engaging as the games back then in terms of "you will get this game and play it for easily a year". Games these days are so incredibly designed around the player that most of them are quick money sinks. EA would obviously be the prime example of this evolution, though in their case it's an obvious degeneration: they release part 2 of a game within a year of releasing part 1, add little new, and part 1's community leaves for part 2 almost instantly.
Though just to note it again; the change isn't per definition something I want to call bad. The improved graphics and change in the community as a whole has also brought us games like Mass Effect, which has a story so engaging that Napoleon would've freaking ran with his tail between his legs. Not to mention games with simply outstanding quality like the earlier mentioned Gears of War. It's just that the area has just been so... business-ized. There is no more "I put on my robe and my wizard hat!", and there is so much more "I want you to spend money on this game!".
I have to agree with mozared on his entire post there lol.
Todays games, they are technically good, but they are always missing something, and as mozared pointed out something that isn't always easy to put your finger on. But yeah, the game industry is changing, I mean.. how many years ago wasn't it that the gaming industry surpassed the music and movie industry combined money wise? Ever since then, what one would call good games have always been hard to find. With the mainstreaming of games, the older more experienced nerds, which dwell on forums like this will always think there is something missing in new games. I for one think there is ALOT of things missing in all newer games.
I think the main reason is the consoles always being the place where games are designed for. I mean, you don't see any new game comming out being made especially to be played on a computer, except mmos that is, and that is without doubt a subject to change aswell, looking at games like dust514 etc. Console games will always have alot of limitations that PC games do not have, let's take just the editing community in SC2, the guild community in MMOs or the realism in games such as ARMA. Very few games are designed for us, and we just have to make due with what we can get :) saddening really, I think we all know a game or two that we really want to show a nephew or another friend, but they will just be completely bummed out having adapted to the console gaming world.
- That being said I think alot of people are starting to get very sad about state of the games released overall, everything is PR and everything is money. Just look at games like the new dukenukem, brink, rift etc the list is long. However I'm getting offtopic in this offtopic thread :D
Yes I do miss the older games, and yes I do get annoyed by how slow they can be at times, but it doesn't kill the game for me atleast. I would suggest heading over to: http://rpgmaker.net/games/?engine=8&status=&rating=&sort=rating and take a look. There is tons of old RPG styled games, designed with programs such as RPGmaker, verge and many other programs designed for making it good for people to make those old style rpg and games, that one used to love, but also being able to give them their .... special spice to make the old form RPGs into a newer form, where you don't have to run around in endless dungeon and listen to... overtexted plots. But a newer version RPG games, made TRUELY by gamers for gamers. It is deff worth a look, there is some pretty shitty games and there is some pretty epic ones aswell, it has brought several good hours infront of my PC and rekindled a bit of that oldschool style that one thinks is outdated.
But yeah, I miss alot of the good old games, lol quake3, unrealtournament and counterstrike. All of the beats all the shooters released the last 6 years.. COMBINED!
I have missed games like Baldur's Gate 1 / 2. Thank god Dragon age series came out! =)
My favourite game from childhood is Ultima 5... Oh... so much good memories. This game is actually good even nowadays!
I did mean to say Chrono Trigger (I was smoking and thinking about Playstation). Although I liked Chrono Cross (just not as near as epic as da Trigger. And there was way too many characters in that game, no way anyone actually used all of them...)
Anyway, the primary reason I ask is I've been playing around a little but with pre-rendering (from games like Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, etc), and was thinking about a new RPG combat system, that's kind of a combination of turn-based and real time, where you are put into a similar combat arena (where there's like three or four characters on each side), and set up your character (choose spells to have active, if you fight or stand guard, etc), and then instead of just attacking you go into a timed round of like ten seconds or so, and the combat itself is in real time.
I've been working on one using a QTE system for a little bit, not as advanced of a combat system as the game is pretty much supposed to be like some PSX RPG's were (with the combat system where you go through the quick time event to get a high combo), only with way better graphics (since I'm using pre-rendered backgrounds I can have like 75,000 poly characters and it's gonna be awesome! And I'll STILL be under a million on screen and only have like fifty draw calls) ; anyway I wanted to be sure I'm not the only one who routinely disregards newer games to play their Super Nintendo (which I recently broke...).
I love Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Torment etc, but I just can't stand playing them now :/ The graphics, the clunky controls, incompatibility with newer systems, it's just too much. Dungeons & Dragons may be great for pen and paper, but making a computer game based on it was stupid.
I think someone new to computer RPGs is not going to like those older RPG games, no matter what. Example why that is: I keep hearing that Ocarina of Time is the best game ever, so I try it on an emulator and... I can't stand it. It's a fucking platformer where you jump around to get powerups and hearts, It's got the sounds and graphics (not talking about their age or ugliness here) of a kiddy platformer. Deleted it promptly. It might have been fun in 1998 when you were a kid, but it isn't now (then again, Fallout and BG came out in 98, so why would you want to play zelda anyway).
On a more general note, I really don't like it when every game with some stats is called an RPG. Diablo is a hack & slash, the "RPG" SC2 maps are also hack & slash. RPGs need a proper storyline, plot decisions made by the player, a character to play, etc. That disqualifies most "RPG" games made in Japan, since they're just: fight, fight, fight, press continue to scroll text, cutscene, fight, press continue. Hello Final Fantasy, I hate you.
Those are Eastern RPG's; there's a huge difference between Eastern and Western RPG's. What games DO you qualify as an RPG anyway?
@Varine: Go
First words of my last post... Fine, here's how I determine an RPG:
There are some gray areas, like Icewind Dale. It doesn't fit my conditions (it's Diablo in Baldur's Gate's skin), but I still consider it an RPG game.
Oh sorry, my bad.
My concept doesn't fit your category really (which is a bit different than typical, I think). Although I do agree that many games labelled as RPG are in reality more akin to action/adventure games, but it's a very fine line between the two.
To be fair, while I'd hardly call the story of AC 'integral' to the game, there are definitely some points in all games where you need to listen to a cutscene in order to know what exactly you're supposed to be doing.
In re-reading that I'm confused as to whether or not he's saying knowing the plot in an RPG is relevant or not.
@Mozared
Todays games have gotten just... incredibly serious as a whole. Gaming is an INDUSTRY, there's a multitude of GENRES and there's constant DEBATE as to which game is the BEST. People have constant DISCUSSIONS on games and stuff need to be REALISTIC, ENGAGING and focused on SUCKING THE PLAYER IN. <</quote
More like focused on sucking. its not just video games... its tv too... if your like me... which i doubt you are... you will believe that people are making this world rot. and those people need to leave. sorry if im going all light yagami on you. But i hate what's happening to video games and american TV... the old cartoons and anime are mostly taken off air... and replaced with comedy crap. i could probably come up with better stuff in my toilet if i wasn't so god damn lazy. there is virtually nothing watchable for me now. except one channel. but it shall remain nameless for now. I do actually have some plans to do away with this crap unfortunately they are very slow in the making :( and i doubt it will work very well. everyone has to do their part heh. aka stop watching crap and stop buying into crap. btw i will respect your certian view point. so respect mine. (and no i don't like death note just using it as a means to an end)
@Zomasworn: Go
I'm not surprised to see a reply like that, tbh. I'm too realistic to be so pessimistic though. The world changes literally every ten years, and the stuff you are saying now will be repeated by some guy ten years in the future, when he's thinking back of Stacraft 2 and how that game was so much cooler than everything that is being released then. I don't think the change is all bad.
On the other hand, what we've seen with games over the past 20 year is a quick movement from an interesting 'subculture' into a mainstream business, and that movement is rarely ever fun. It's a bit of a double-edged blade, too; stuff that isnt popular tends to be more fun, but you'll find less interest and people playing it. Stuff that has become popular has plenty of people to go around, but is often generally of a lower quality. In the end, it's not a case of "back in my day!!!", but rather how we cope with it as we remember the good days and jump from ship to ship, trying to find untouched, new experiences.
Those are just instructions, and I'm pretty sure that, most of the time, you could skip them and just follow the shiny quest markers.
Example of following the plot from The Witcher 1 (no spoilers): there is a detective mission where you have to perform an autopsy. You can prepare for it and execute it in various ways (talking to people, buying and reading a book on medicine). When you make your decision, the game does not tell you if you're right or wrong, it just goes on. if you've done it properly, you'll have an advantage over the bad guy, you can even fake that you've screwed up the autopsy and then you'll be able to fool the bad guy. If you failed it, well, it's the other way around :P
Generally, Witcher games are packed with these "if you don't pay attention, you'll suffer" events (oh, Little Sisters quest...)
Agree with Mozared... games don't feel like a group of nerds making something awesome, they feel like a business. That magic is, more or less, gone.
When I look back, I notice funniest games were always... well, nothing like what we have today. Metal Slug, I still play it again and again. I don't get bored. Same for Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, I fucking love it. Zelda Oracle of Ages/Seasons, any generation 1/2 Pokémon. Old good graphic adventures. The very first Unreal. Heroes III. Age of Empires 2. Commandos 2: Men of Courage, hell, I loved it! Doom 3, SW: Battlefront 2, Prey, FEAR, my favorite FPS: Painkiller. Golden Sun 1 & 2. The first Mario/Wario worlds. Metroid Fusion. And I could go on and on, but it's gonna make me cry :').
Warcraft III was my favorite for, what, 5 years? now I go back and I can't stand the limited controls, but in its base, in its core controls and gameplay, I find it better than SC2. Give W3 decent control groups and a better UI and I would return to it full-time again. And whatever, I still have fun with it. Most maps are still great to play, and those deficiencies only affect a minor group of maps, and well, you just need to play a bit to tune in with the controls and forget the easy ways of SC2.
I hate that "reward the player all the time" shit, too. Rewards should have tiers of difficulty, and not just "farm, farm, farm" and "repeat the same easy stuff for profit". In the games I love, the reward is playing them itself, with their music, the story progression, every single enemy I kill, and how awesome it is and how much fun I have. Don't get me wrong, I love achievements, but I'd rather give them for progress rather than for stupid and/or farming actions. When achievements are over the game itself, you're doing something wrong, because people will play achievements, not the game.
I should really try new stuff like ME and Witcher, but prizes and general disappointment with the industry make it hard for me to change my attitude into "let's try this!". In the end, something tells me I'll find more of the same again and again. In general, I think the gaming society is getting "dumbified" just like TV watchers. Oh, a hard game... meh, I go back to farming crap on my MMO or playing some new version of a FPS which only changed 2 lines of code compared to the previous title, and it changed them to remove the editor.
Nowadays, aside from SC2 and D3, I don't have any "buy on release" franchise. Maybe Traveller's Tales LEGO games, but I usually wait for the price to lower or special offers. And since most "everyone likes it!" games never lower price, I never get to try them. I'm lazy to pirate the when I can get other good games for less than 20€ or keep playing what I have.
To be fair, it's not all bad. Some games have actually been improved and are just plain good. You mention generation 1/2 Pokémon; while it's true that the franchise is being sucked dry, generations 3, 4 and 5 *did* all actually had some new and interesting themes to the game, ranging from finding hidden items to dual and triple battles. Pokémon Black & White are pretty good games, I'd recommend really just checking them out, even if just for nostalgia's sake from generation 1/2.
Tying into that; try Mass Effect. I have only met two types of people in this world: people who think Mass Effect is an unambiguously good game, and people who haven't tried it. The game receives constant praise and I can imagine people shrugging that off as a "yeah, but they praise nearly every game lately, and space RPGs simply aren't my style", but the praise really is deserved.
Get this: I've never liked any kind of game that takes place in space (with the exception of Starcraft), and didn't think Mass Effect 2 would be worth my time. A pall of mine replayed it over the course of a week and talked to me about it. In the end I decided just to give it a try, for the hell of it. I completed the game in one week and stopped doing virtually everything else I was doing in my spare time. I haven't played ME1, so I can't comment on that, but ME2 at least, simply is that good. It's godlike. Everything you'll ever like about a game is in there. This isn't a game that someone 'recommends' to you, this is some kind of deity that any self-respecting gamer should have played at some point in his life. I pretty much consider Mass Effect 2 equal to those books and films that everyone always says you have to check out once in your life, like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Star Wars. You simply cannot dislike this game.
@Varine: Go
Yeap.. those were awesome. Its a damn shame that they're pretty rare these days.
Say, ever played Legend of Legaia, Breath of Fire 3, Suikoden 2 and Thousand Arms? They are some of my personal favorites, put aside FF7 of course since its one of the more famous ones. I enjoyed most of them because they had a nice easy to follow story, yet some degree of tactics was required to get the battles done right.