bpumpkin and Skyreus as well? Geez, so many people!

You're right... partially. You know there will always be something to complain about. Always.

All I gotta say is... games were more enjoyable prior to the advent of the internet.

Yeah, definitely. I have to consciously stop myself from being so cynical and negative, sometimes. Then again, maybe that's just adulthood.

I agree that it was better before the advent of the net, but also before the advent of the idea that only a certain type of game is great or "AAA".

Actually, it was better before Sega's Genesis branding turned it into the whole "cool vs. uncool" thing. At least in my circle of peers that was (and still is) always the argument. Most of them won't sit down and play something quirky or akin to a Rune Factory or even a Mario game because its "too colorful." I wish I were joking, but it's true. Only a few of my friends that game will actually sit and enjoy a Pokemon game (because they're long-time fans like myself) or a Disgaea game or something along those lines. Most others get a passing look.

I'm not saying that the likes of a Lost Planet or a Devil May Cry or Metal Gear Solid aren't great games... but it annoys me when those are the only games that come up in personal conversation. It's why I do talk more about games on the net; aside from fighting games, I feel like I'm always in the minority about games and what's fun. Because I can enjoy both, but most folks can only enjoy the gritty "adult" stuff.

[/rant]

Sorry for that, it's been bothering me the last coule weeks because of some comments friends made bout gaming that really annoyed me.

Anyhow, I take gaming a little less serious these days because I have so much other stuff to do (I really only game heavily on weekends now despite all my unwanted freetime). By most folk standards, I'm now a "casual gamer" because most of the stuff aside from Pokemon and NIS SRPGs, I play a lot of "arcadey" games, stuff like SHMUPs or fighting games I can jump into for a little while, get about an hour in, then jump off of. Wii Sports, honestly, I consider part of that ideal setup for me, in example. (thread forthcoming on that subject, lol)

The only thing that flat-out angers me about what Nintendo is doing right now is their online philosophy. It baffles me. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with my Wii and DS. Just started replaying Twilight Princess. :)

Yeah Nintendo's online is a bit wonky. It seems kind of weird to me that this late into the generation something like Wii Sports Resort has NO online.

And Dynablade I think you are dead on with how only certain types of games are considered "AAA" contenders. Mind you, I think Nintendo's own Mario still gets counted by most people... begrudgingly. Did this happen in the past as much? I remember when Mortal Kombat came around a lot changed, but still, most everyone I knew was still playing a lot of games with color back in those days.

Bpumpkin: I totally agree in regards to online. That and storage space are the two key areas where I have no idea what the **** they were thinking. The SD card alleviates the memory issue for the most part (but can't get rid of the memory cap sadly), but the online system is assinine to be sure.

I think Ninty needed to have a standard system in place across all their 1st party games at least, so that each one wouldn't require a specific code all its own. I was fine with the Wii System code, even... but to have to have a system code AND a code for each game? No thanks.


Zero: For a long time, I think Mario was synonymous with AAA gaming... but somewhere in the timeline he got moved to "cutesy, non-AAA title". Probably with Sunshine, which wasn't a bad game at all (I loved it, it still rated like a AAA and DEFINITELY played like one), but often gets regarded as one, and IIRC got railed a lot for being so colorful.

Mortal Kombat was more of a catalyst, alongside Sega's rampant Nintendo-bashing marketing and branding of things that were "cool" at the time.

It didn't really hit its peak until well into the PS2 generation. But a lot of that talk has always been around. That's why I was really, really annoyed with the "kiddy" argument last gen, because it pretty much labeled everything I loved as a gamer (Kirby games, mascot games in general, puzzle games, not FF7-styled RPGs) as "kiddy" and - no lie - I often found the games I mentioned the laughing stock of the conversation. I still can't get anyone outside of the few friends I met here in Arizona to play Wario Ware on the GCN.

But because of the way Wario Ware Smooth Moves is presented (focusing on the motion controls), that same quirkyness comes out brilliantly and I've had a bunch of those same friends requesting me to bring it to parties and get-togethers.

I dunno', there's other stuff that plays into it too. I'm rambling now.

For a long time, I think Mario was synonymous with AAA gaming... but somewhere in the timeline he got moved to "cutesy, non-AAA title"

Well, though I think there are still a large group of people who will never see a game like Galaxy as having the same impact as some "epic" like Mass Effect or whatever, it still pulls a large degree of respect. But I think that is only because it is like... clearly amazing. Like Nintendo pretty much had to make a GOTG Mario just to get the respect your average M-rated "AAA epic" on another console gets. Even so, Galaxy is pretty much the only Wii game that tends to get real respect... Twilight Princess, Prime 3, and Brawl get ignored a bit more. Which I think comes back to what I just mentioned, they're awesome, but not GOTG awesome, and that is the standard people hold Nintendo to in order to put their "non-epic" games on the same level as the "epic" games.

Brawl gets criminally underrated, and hated. I knew once it launched, once my own hyped had died down, that in most fans eyes it would never be anything near Melee. It was ill-fated from the start and I wish I'd seen that coming sooner. But then again, aside from the local friends I play and the folks I play regularly over on IGN, the Smash community is full of pricks I really don't want to deal with anyway.

Everyone looks at Brawl (as you can tell it's one of my favorites) and thinks of it only in regards to what it doesn't have or doesn't do right (VERY few things).

Which is what tends to happen to all of Nintendo's titles nowadays. Looking at reviews for other games from a variety of sites, it feels like most games are graded on what they have and what they do right. But in the case of many of Ninty's games - whether by reflex or not - the reviewer seems to set out to nitpick things that are wrong just to say they did.

You're absolutely right about Galaxy - it is the only one that tends to get any respect. Twilight immediately gets the "GCN game" card pulled on it, and MP3 even gets the "not the best in the series" card pulled on it constantly. Not saying they aren't valid reasons against the games (IMO Prime 3 isn't the best of its series), but often they're used to take the games right out of AAA status.

What baffles me the most about it though, is this new attitude that everything Ninty releases has to be this "AAA" million-dollar product or it's no-go. Punch Out!!, Wario Land, ExciteBots... the first complaints against these games I often see are that they're low-budget or not worth $50. But then I look at my play time for my games, and Punch Out!! has to be like, right under Rune Factory (another game that got ignored, though obviously low budget and not made by Nintendo) and Brawl.

I don't get it. Why is it that game budget matters so damn much this gen? Why is it that a game can't be great just because it is?

...sorry, another rant. Was playing Punch Out and had that rattling in my head yesterday.

They find reason to trash it simply because that's what they do. Galaxy escaped this because "Mario Galaxy was my GOTY" is the new "I used to be a huge Nintendo fan but -"

Haha, that's very true. Nearly every game list for Wii lists Galaxy by default. MP3 and Twilight are sometimes listed, it varies.

I don't mind online nearly as much as localization. Online I can understand, they're new to this, but localization problems have no excuse. And it hurts badly their image too.

I agree with localization as well, and it definitely hurts their image. They seemed to be getting better with it last gen (Earthbound aside) but they've reverted back this gen. And if they weren't going to bring Fatal Frame IV over here I would have preferred they never even touched it.

Galaxy escaped this because "Mario Galaxy was my GOTY" is the new "I used to be a huge Nintendo fan but -".

Damn you pretty much nailed it there. I never thought of it that way. Like they need that one title to prove they can still appreciate Nintendo when Nintendo does things right, and therefore are unbiased and have a "right" to be negative about everything else. It'd be kind of tough to justify hanging out on a Wii forum and bitching all the time if you didn't have at least one Wii game that you stood behind (though some still try anyway...)

Still, I feel like, even when they don't come out and say it, most of these people still put Galaxy below the killer games on the other consoles. Because you know, GRAPHICS + GAMEPLAY > GAMEPLAY. As if the totality of video games can be summed up in that simple equation. You can't argue with obvious math, can you?!

I love how all of the 'hardcore' gamers only cite Mario, Metroid, and Zelda (before saying how they're just getting tired of those franchises) and conveniently ignore titles like Fire Emblem, Excitebots, Wario Land: Shake It, Geometry Wars: Galaxies (I already got this for $5 on my 360!!), etc., as if they didn't even exist. Because, really, as far as they're concerned, they might as well not.

I was having a discussion with someone in some thread, where he called Mario Galaxy a 'relic', because of its lack of reliance on story. How can a game be relic for focusing on GAMEplay? That's like people calling Ratchet and Clank a better platformer than Mario Sunshine, when the PLATFORMING is obviously inferior. AAAAAHH!!

Well, this ties into the "big budget" debate. They may not admit it, but they consider hardcore to be big budget, story-driven games.

Except for XBLA games, which they go nuts over.

Yeah, some guy on the WiiGB I won't name claimed proudly he wasn't into big blockbusters like The Dark Knight, professed his love for smalled indie films, yet has a huge hard-on for big-budget games. I don't think he realizes the dichotomy either.

Haha, Simbabbad's comparison really makes so much sense. It's sad how true that is.

I mean, Super Mario Galaxy is an awesome game, but it's annoying to hear people insist that's the only spectacular Wii game.

The whole budget argument is why game's can never be viewed as art... and is quite ironic considering those same people who argue for budgets would argue that games are art -_-;; (in the mean time there's my own argument on that end but it's going to go on a completely separate tangent all together so I'll avoid the "art" subject).

But I have felt that Nintendo has really gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to attention. I mean games like Dead Rising, Lost Planet and Mirror's Edge becomes the media and gamer's darling upon announcement while games like Little King's Story and Punch-Out!! (I mean god damn Punch-Out that isn't even an original IP!?!?!) has to fight for every single nick of attention.

The content argument is also quite an ironic thing to think about considering those same people probably loved Metal Gear Solid (less than 10 hours... many of those hours spent on codec convos and cut-scenes), Dead Space and/or Devil May Cry in the past.

---
a.k.a. Skyreus

RE: blockbuster games

I'm VERY curious to see what exactly was changed for Uncharted 2. It is scoring much, much higher than the first overall, yet I have read a handful of reviews and none seem to really pinpoint much of anything that has advanced over the last game, gameplaywise. Most of the hype seems to come from it, supposedly, being the perfect movie-like experience.

Now, I loved the first game, definitely one of my favorite PS3 games. And it is a good candidate for getting the whole movie-like experience, because unlike say... almost every other big budget game out there, it has characters and a storyline I can get into. (It's more Indiana Jones-ish light-hearted adventure-ing than anything else.) I'm excited for the sequel regardless. But I also get this feeling that despite its massive scores, for someone like me, it's going to be at about the same level as the first. With better cutscenes. And multiplayer/online. But mostly getting the higher scores for the better cutscenes and more movie-like feel.

We'll see. Hopefully there are at least SOME gameplay advancements.

Another thing that I've been thinking lately is how it's almost too easy to make some high quality game with these kind of games. Not to take away from the skill needed to make a high quality game in any genre, there are definitely a lot of subtleties involved in level designs, pacing, etc. you can't just write off. But I more mean that the game isn't really breaking any ground. The first Uncharted was, essentially, Prince of Persia + Gears of War + some Zelda-lite puzzles. And I already suspect I know how they "advanced" it. More breakneck movie-like scenes. Or in other words, more chase scenes with tons of stuff exploding around you. But you know, you get to press buttons during them and such. Which every game seems to do nowadays. It's like for these high-octane action/shooters they already have all the blueprints in their hands, they just need to go out and make the game.

As opposed to something like say... the first Pikmin (almost sad how I have to go back to last generation to find a good example) where they had to create the basic design first and really develop these new gameplay mechanics before even getting to the level designs, etc. Or even Super Mario Galaxy where they created the gravity mechanic and then had to invent all of this stuff to work with it. I forget what his example was and where it was, but Anandxxx recently mentioned something about how it'd be interesting to see some genres that never get a chance to get a big budget production (unfortunately "platformer" has become one of those nowadays.) Not only that, but I'd take it a step further and say it'd be interesting to see some truly genre-bending games get a big budget production. I wonder what it'd be like to see, for instance, a Pikmin or Super Paper Mario or Animal Crossing from Nintendo that got a 3 year huge team Mario/Zelda-like development cycle?

Yeah, DSE is another one of those "you should be glad you're getting it" games, where - oddly enough - you're suddenly not allowed to complain that it's YALG (yet another lightgun game).

The content argument is also quite an ironic thing to think about considering those same people probably loved Metal Gear Solid (less than 10 hours... many of those hours spent on codec convos and cut-scenes), Dead Space and/or Devil May Cry in the past.

This is extremely true. Everyone wants these 40+ hour games, but honestly... to me that seems like too much. Now you can end up playing a game for 40+ hours, but realistically does anything need to be that long, even JRPGs?

I love JRPGs, but we all know they tend to have a LOT of filler in there...

My thing is, I just go by what I feel after I'm done with the game. If it "feels" short by the time I finish then yeah, I think the length needed to be worked out better or more content. But 9 times out of 10 these days, games feel entirely too long, like they could use a few hours less of gameplay.

I don't generally want most genres to be 40 hours outside RPGs and Adventure games, but I DO think 20 hours is almost a must for any game to truly blow me away. Now, that 20 hours can come from one long playthrough, or addictive core gameplay (Wario Ware Twisted is one of my favorite games ever) or awesome multiplayer, or a combo of these, or whatever. But if I get a game, beat it in 10 hours, and have no interest in going back to it... it's difficult for me to really think it is THAT amazing. This is why I find it tough to understand when people go nuts over something like God of War which is a 10-12 hour game and doesn't have much replay value. I still like the series, but I'd never put it up with the best of the best because it seems too little content to me.

Which is another reason why I'm not as excited about Uncharted 2 as many are. I'm not too interested in the multi/online and I'm sure the single will be a one playthrough deal for me, probably about as long as the first, which was 10-12 hours or whatever. I just can't get all OMG GOTF over something like this.

Mind you, I'm not saying I think all games should be 20 hours long. Frankly, I'm already sick of a lot of games by 10. In order to pull off 20 you need to continually introduce new stuff. Most developers simply don't have that in them.

Two reasons I'm bumping this: one, there was something I meant to answer; and two... well, the apathy is returning full force lately it seems, with Iwata's recent statements on what they did wrong with the Wii and letting it "cool", and the hate towards "Epic Mickey." So I'm interested to see thoughts on those.

Mind you, I'm not saying I think all games should be 20 hours long. Frankly, I'm already sick of a lot of games by 10. In order to pull off 20 you need to continually introduce new stuff. Most developers simply don't have that in them.

This is very, very true; most devs do not have this in them.

I will say though, that while I haven't played Uncharterd 2 myself, if I were to actually get a PS3 (doubtful at this point, I can barely support the Wii, DS and 360), I'd definitely get that game. I don't know what it is, if it's that "summer blockbuster" feel it has (and pulls it off well, probably because the dev actually aimed for that), or the gameplay itself which loos like what Tomb Raider has wanted to be... but watching friends playing a large chunk of it, I couldn't help but enjoy just watching it myself and part of me wanted to play through it myself.

Really good game, and very impressive visually to boot.