The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey
We are here to condemn Grand Theft Auto IV, and other equally great games, not out of hatred, but out of love. For it does no good to point out the flaws in bad games as bad games by definition cannot be saved.
No, we aim to save gaming from the abyss by pointing out the sins of games like the Elder Scrolls and Half Life series, games made by creators who actually care. It is in that spirit that we proclaim the commandments that they have broken, so that they may be redeemed.
Who are we? Just a bunch of gamers who got really, really bored. What are the consequences for breaking these commands? Well ... we might start reading books or something.
Therefore, we declare ...
#7.
Thou shalt let us play your game with real-life friends.
Violators:
Grand Theft Auto IV, MotorStorm, Shadowrun, etc.
Quick, tell us what the following games all have in common. We'll give you a hint, one thing is that they were all among the top 10 most popular games of 2007:
Wii Sports
Wii Play
Guitar Hero III
Super Mario Galaxy
Madden NFL 08
Guitar Hero II
Mario Party 8
But what else? If you answered, "None of them contain male frontal nudity" then, well, you haven't gotten the 122nd star in Mario Galaxy. If you said that these games all have multiplayer that's intended to be played with friends in the same room, you're right.
Likewise, what's at the top of sales in 2008? Smash Bros. Brawl.
The advantage that consoles have over, say, PCs, is that you can play from your comfy sofa. The reason the sofa is considered the pinnacle of furniture technology is because there's room for other people on it.
Yet, here's Grand Theft Auto IV, boasting about its robust multiplayer, and if you think "multiplayer" means inviting the gang over to play, get drunk, laugh and high-five each other until the break of dawn, too bad. You can't do that. Want to play with friends, they must be kept at arm's length, faceless at the other end of a broadband connection. Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer is a world without hugs.
They'll say that GTA IV's vast open world makes split-screen impossible. OK, what about MotorStorm? It's a goddamned racing game, and they won't let you play a real-life friend on a split screen. A racing game.
Sorry, you know damned well that technical limitations aren't the reason everyone is dropping split screen. Every previous generation had it, in times with much less powerful systems and few widescreen TVs.
This system had 4 MB of RAM.
You're dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).
And these are the same people who're baffled about how the Nintendo Wii was able to depants the whole industry with its cheap, underpowered little machine. Hey, maybe it's because they're the one company that still seems to realize humans need interaction with other humans. Real interaction, not trash talking over a headset behind fake names.
By the way, some of you are scratching your heads about having the obviously single-player Mario Galaxy up there on the list. Well, it turns out Nintendo included an option so that at any moment, a friend can pick up the second controller and, with the pointer, help the first player collect items and shoot at enemies. It's a small thing, but it means a guy can get his girlfriend in on the action and cut off her complaints that his gaming is taking away from his time with her.
Above: women
So when she comes over, do you think he's going to put on his GTA IV headset, or pop in Mario Galaxy? Here's a hint: The second choice gets him closer to touching boob.
loading screens were solved with Jak and Daxter
ReplyRegarding #3, and there being more than enough WWII shooters out there ("Where are the WWI games?"): The difference between WWII and WWI is that WWII had people that could be clearly defined as "evil" (Nazis, Fascist Italians, etc.). WWI had no such "good" or "bad" guys, just four years of bloodshed that didn't really solve anything. I agree, though, that it's time for them to try something new like Korea or Gulf One. Or go backwards to the American Civil War or something.
ReplyHell, there was a Revolutionary War SRPG for SNES and Genesis called Liberty or Death. One of the only good edutainment games ever, too.
Well placed save points can make the difference between a great game and frustrating game. But well placed does not equate to constant saves. Once I clear an area, I don't want to have to do it again if I die in the next area, but if I die with even just one guy left to kill in that next area I do expect to have to kill everyone in that area again. But I definitely agree that Unskipable cutscenes suck. And having to rewatch them even worse. I can somewhat understand making the unskipable, as long as they save right afterwards. But then there's always replays, I'm no more interested in rewatching most cutscenes in future playthroughs than I am having to sit through them multiple times in my first playthough.
ReplyIt's best when it's unskippable the first time, but you can press a button or combination of buttons to skip it the next time, like if you die after it, so you aren't forced to watch it again.
No, it should be skippable period. Some of us are speedrunners.
I feel gratitude towards this article for mentioning that it is perfectly normal for a 360 to routinely make noises louder than a helicopter landing in the front yard. I actually didn't realize this, and thought the constant grinding and whirring indicated my console was preparing itself for imminent red-ringed death.
ReplyAll the other game systems I've used run silently, or near to it. Then I bought a 360 only last year, and ended up having to place it on a desk across the room from the TV so that the console's noise wouldn't drown out the game being played. I just... assumed something was wrong. I'd heard horror stories of 360s being prone to hardware deaths, so much so that the warranty had to be extended to three years to stop Xbox owners from a horrible bloody revolt. I figured I just had the s**t luck to have bought one of the defective machines.
My poor brand-new 360, after several months of horrible noises coming from within, finally died of red-ring, which pretty much confirmed my suspicion that it had been fucked from the beginning. I sent it in for (free!) repairs and it came back, alive once again, but still producing sound a fighter jet would envy.
This was perhaps a month ago. Ever since I've been holding my breath every time I turn it on, assuming it's going to die a second horrible death any day now. Good to know that apparently it's perfectly normal for the console to be so loud I can't use it to watch Netflix at night for fear of waking somebody up.
Why the f**k doesn't anyone consider this a problem? I don't get it. It's pretty much the only issue preventing me from rejecting the Dark Side of Sony and coming into the light. My PS3 runs silently. Damnit.
i actually kind of dug killing stuff with a crowbar in half life 2...
Reply#8
Replythou shalt make a stealth based game set in the Soft Apocalypse universe. (i wish)
#7 - thou shalt realise that COD, Gears, Halo and Resistance DO offer local multiplayer, always have, and no-one wants to play it cause its inconvenient.
Reply...well, at least he didn't accuse Capcom of being in a conspiracy to help Microsoft sell more controller again.
Replythou shalt not diss Doom 3!
ReplyWhat game is the last image on page 3 from (the Quick Time Events) ?
ReplyThat's Resident Evil 4 :D
Who wants to play split-screen? Not I McFly.
Reply Hide All See All 4 Replieswell, there are people with friends who would actually enjoy being in the same room playing GTA with each other at the same time
I ascribe more to Yahtzee's preference for playing multiplayer in person: "I don't want to play a game with someone who I cannot reach over and slap if they start being a twat. (not to mention that all online play has a degree of lag)
I love the s**t out of online multiplayer, since I am currently a disabled loser with no friends and no driver's license.
That said, I recall the halcyon days when some of the best memories of my life were made, memories involving sleep-over parties that featured Super Mario Kart tournaments with three or four girlfriends.
Those tournaments were basically where I learned how to swear effectively and creatively, a skill I still make f*****g good use of.
And I favor LAN-based multiplayer on PCs. But that's partly because our Internet service is crap (and there's nothing we can do about except move to the city).
Ah, save points. You could argue that not including them toes the fine line between "difficult" and "asinine", but the bottom line is that most games today are designed to stroke your ego by handing you scripted win after scripted win, titles galore, and some nice heroic music to serenade your turkey shooting. Fine and good if that's your thing, but personally I find having the game handed to me on a platter makes /any/ ending a single-frame text shot like in #1.
ReplyWell, I've been playing alot of Mass Effect 2 & 3 lately, and I'll tell you.
They save ALL THE FREAKING TIME. And it doesn't make them any less difficult, it just makes me more willing to continue playing when I die. Games that don't save often, if I die and am going to have to replay more than 15 minutes of gameplay, I will just quit until tomorrow. Especially on later play throughs.
I think dying is psychologically viewed as "losing" enough that failing is enough punishment in and of itself. I'm perfectly willing to fight the guy that keeps killing me 4 times, I just don't want to have to kill the other 15 guys( that I easily killed the first time) three more times to get there.
"No one has ever liked an escort mission, ever, in the history of gaming. So why do they still exist?"
ReplyPeople did like Ico. But only because it made people care about who we were saving, and she sort of proved useful in very little ways. Like if you got stuck in a puzzle, she would hint where you had to go. And she was the "key" to getting out of the prison, so it was a mutual beneficial pact. In RE4, Leon could have lived without Ashley. In Ico, you wouldn't have been able.
Making the stupid person to escort a key element of the plot doesn't make having to escort someone helpless and stupid any less annoying.
You want the worst escort mission ever, look at X3: Terran Conflict. Freighters made from wet newspaper and flown by gerbils, with you fighting off swarms of enemies roughly every twenty kilometers. At high combat ranks, you're having to hold off BATTLESHIPS, and the freighters are just fast enough that you have to be in at most a corvette to keep up.
Needless to say, nobody in their right mind accepts an escort mission in that game unless the plot requires it (and the one time it does, the mission doesn't act like I described; the enemies spawn ONCE at a scripted location, and you've got an entire battlegroup backing you up).
Oblivion makes you fight rats because you just started the game. Throwing Deadric at you when all you have is a rusty blade wouldn't be fare or much fun.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThey could always let us keep that katana instead of forcing us to use rusty swords.
Yeah, I was kinda surprised to see Oblivion cited as one of those games that deliberately makes you wander around aimlessly lost over vast stretches of land, and then calls it "hours of gameplay!"
Has the person who wrote this ever even played Oblivion? You get a large bright arrow that you can't turn off, constantly pointing you directly to the exact place you need to go next. And if you still can't manage to get there on your own, there's "fast travel" which means you basically open the map screen, click on the place you want to go, and get transported instantly.
It's not possible to "wander around lost" in that game even if you WANT to.
Maybe he got Oblivion confused with Morrowind, which doesn't have quest tracking. You've got to rely on the sometimes very rough directions of the quest-giver to find the place you're looking for.
And rats are basically a running gag at this point. Oblivion even had the decency to hang a lampshade on it.
i love resident evil it is so freaking awesome but having the s****y handgun that does no damage whatsoever and getting killed by the stupid leech things sucks!!!!!!DX
ReplyHonestly, I'm pretty picky about graphics. I played Skyrim and was super impressed with them, so I decided to play Oblivion and I literally popped the game in, saw the character creation screen and said "Nope."
ReplyTo which I offer, Ocarina of Time. Graphically terrible by today's standards? Yes. Still one of the best games ever? Yes.
Butternubs, you deserve many more thumbs up.
Also I hate short games.
ReplyGraphics DO matter,and I don't need to play games with my friends.
ReplyThey're not saying graphics don't matter, they're saying don't revolve your game around graphics. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had a campaign that turned me off near instantly, and yet it had "good graphics".
I have to agree that graphics to matter to an extent (for example, most third party wii games look like absolute ass, and have no excuse for it), and I presume that you say you don't need to play games with your friends because they're all imaginary.
I was playing guitar hero with some mates when my mum came into the living room and got curious. That woman has never played a game beyond educational ones when we were younger, and she shredded the s**t out of the hot for teacher solo (on...easy).
ReplyDeadfrontier should also be included in page 4 and 6 especially load time aspect.tsk
Reply