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What is your ideal environment or setting for a game? [roundtable]
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Not for every game, but for the majority of the ones you play. I am on a hiatus from overwrought, humorless games that take themselves too seriously. That isn't the type of environment that I want to inhabit for 12 hours. Unfortunately, it seems to be becoming the norm. I also don't see the point of realistic environments. After all, I can just go outside and shoot people whenever I want. I guess my ideal is a bright, colorful, cheerful, stylized, relatively pastoral 'alien' environment, with a healthy dose of charm and a tongue-in-cheek 'story' (or no story at all). Consistency is a lot less important to me than variety. And I love when developers move beyond polygons and standard rendering techniques, as in Okami and Valkyria Chronicles. Games that come close to my ideal? Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Fusion, Wind Waker, Animal Crossing, Wario Ware, Yoshi's Story, F-Zero GX... that's all I've got, for now, although I'm sure there are more. I meant to make this a more holistic discussion, but now it seems mostly visual. Whatever. URL to share (right click and copy)
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02/04/10, 17:53 Edited: 02/04/10, 18:01
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Depends on my mood.
Sometimes I'm up for a relaxing romp through a colorful fantasy-land (Super Mario Galaxy, Critter Crunch, etc.).
Other times I want to traverse real-world environments and engage in relatable stories with "real" humans (Uncharted 2, Assassin's Creed 2, etc.).
I can see where one would feel the burn from overexposure to gritty, war-epic shooters like GTA IV and Modern Warfare 2, but painting with broad strokes and suggesting the "realistic" = brown/gray shooter doesn't show the whole picture, imo. Though it's not the majority, there are lots of quality realistic games out there that don't involve shooting someone in the face. You just have to dig around a bit. On a related note, I can't wait to get my hands on Heavy Rain. **drool**
In the final analysis, I couldn't imagine going without one or the other, even though I go through phases where I do prefer one more. |
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Did you enjoy Lost Planet? New Forms said:I can see where one would feel the burn from overexposure to gritty, war-epic shooters like GTA IV and Modern Warfare 2, but painting with broad strokes and suggesting the "realistic" = brown/gray shooter doesn't show the whole picture, imo. Though it's not the majority, there are lots of quality realistic games out there that don't involve shooting someone in the face. You just have to dig around a bit. On a related note, I can't wait to get my hands on Heavy Rain. **drool**
In the final analysis, I couldn't imagine going without one or the other, even though I go through phases where I do prefer one more. That's the thing. Heavy Rain looks absolutely boring to me, on both a visual and gameplay level. It seems like it could've just been an interactive, branching DVD with real actors. I don't really see the point of digitizing it, and, as I wouldn't watch a humorless suspense movie, I don't want to play a humorless suspense moviegame. I'm not saying that I'm representative of anyone else, though. That's just my view. I really could give up 'realistic' games forever. I'd be totally happy if every game took me to a radically different unrealistic place. |
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A game world, to me needs to be completely engaging. It needs to make me forget I am playing a video game but taking part in the adventure. Metroid Prime (all of them), Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, Tales of Symphonia (both), Final Fantasy 8, and Paper Mario games are excellent at making me feel apart of the world. The mechanics of a game need to make sense to me, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Crystal Bearers is a perfect example of that. When I play a game I want to interect in the environment eventhough it does not cause story responses or major gameplay changes.
Games can be made or broken by their game world. Both Assassins creeds are broken to me, sorry. Halo? Broke. Darksiders? Broke. Those worlds are just not engaging to me, I need more meat in my games. Fable is a good start but it falls short with bugs and gameplay hitches. Maybe if they made a polished fable game that ran at 60fps then i would be immersed in the experience, but as of right now fable is a joke in that department. |
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I never played Lost Planet, but I think the environment looks great. It reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing for some reason.
On Heavy Rain, I'm invested in the grounded nature of the game. It seems to throw away the cliche video game protagonists and their "One vs The World" Rambo game mechanics in favor of a more genuine, realistic and dare I say, completely mundane landscape. I can see where many would consider gameplay sequences such as a father brushing his teeth, playing with his child, or helping his wife cook dinner mind-numbing, but to me it feels like completely unexplored territory in the game world.
It's kind of like The Sims I guess, but the difference is that instead of being a simulator, it looks to be trying to evoke genuine emotion through the vehicle of human drama...the every-day kind, not the Rambo kind. This is a novel concept in a hobby that leans to heavily on either Stress or Fear as the sole emotive force behind gameplay scenarios. Heavy Rain attempts (according to the developers) to explore a full range of emotions in the narrative.
Whether they succeed or fail is anyone's guess, but I applaud their attempt to shake things up a bit.
Either way, I'm sure it will be a love it/hate it experience anyway. |
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