Hey, guys! I know lots of you would love to go to E3, and the good news is more than just VGVN ( http://n4g.com/user/blogpos... ) are giving away passes!
Perfect World Entertainment have built a community page for one of the two new games they'll be showing at E3 this year - Rusty Hearts. To enter, like the Rusty Hearts FB page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/... .
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Showing posts with label aetion games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aetion games. Show all posts
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Betas: never join them, never will
With the close of the Uncharted 3 beta last week, Sony released some impressive statistics on the participants over at the Playstation Blog ( http://blog.us.playstation....
Over 362 collective years of playtime logged by some 1.53 million unique players. For an Uncharted fan like myself all this is good news- even though I didn't personally participate in the beta. In-fact, even though I consider myself a hardcore gamer, I've never participated in a beta, and I never will.
It's not that I don't think the beta process is worthwhile. Actually I think for modern games its essential. How many online games have we played over the years that require patch after patch to bring it up to speed on launch? Too many for my count. Black Ops on PS3 was a shining example of a game that could have used an open beta- it was and still is a hot mess for PSN users.
But I personally have no place for betas- or demos- for that matter in my life. You see, to me, the best time I have with a game is those 2 or so hours after I first get it, and I'm being wowed by the new experience in front of me. There's no way I want those first magic moments with my hotly anticipated game being spoiled months before its release where I see a warts and all beta version full of bugs for me to find.
Betas and demos rob me of the surprise in gaming. Nowadays gaming coverage is so saturated that you basically know how to play and beat a game before it comes out. No surprises, no moments of revelation, its all out there on the table as part of the hype machine. Hell I've even taken to avoiding previews of games I'm really looking forward to, and not reading reviews (just scores) until after I've bought and played a substantial amount of a game.
So while I urge all you beta lovers and sneak-peekers to keep doing what your doing for the good of gaming, I for one will sit out, and enjoy the finished product you people helped create.
Over 362 collective years of playtime logged by some 1.53 million unique players. For an Uncharted fan like myself all this is good news- even though I didn't personally participate in the beta. In-fact, even though I consider myself a hardcore gamer, I've never participated in a beta, and I never will.
It's not that I don't think the beta process is worthwhile. Actually I think for modern games its essential. How many online games have we played over the years that require patch after patch to bring it up to speed on launch? Too many for my count. Black Ops on PS3 was a shining example of a game that could have used an open beta- it was and still is a hot mess for PSN users.
But I personally have no place for betas- or demos- for that matter in my life. You see, to me, the best time I have with a game is those 2 or so hours after I first get it, and I'm being wowed by the new experience in front of me. There's no way I want those first magic moments with my hotly anticipated game being spoiled months before its release where I see a warts and all beta version full of bugs for me to find.
Betas and demos rob me of the surprise in gaming. Nowadays gaming coverage is so saturated that you basically know how to play and beat a game before it comes out. No surprises, no moments of revelation, its all out there on the table as part of the hype machine. Hell I've even taken to avoiding previews of games I'm really looking forward to, and not reading reviews (just scores) until after I've bought and played a substantial amount of a game.
So while I urge all you beta lovers and sneak-peekers to keep doing what your doing for the good of gaming, I for one will sit out, and enjoy the finished product you people helped create.
PC Gaming and why I'm confused.
You know lately if you've been paying attention to the news here, a lot of PC gaming stuff has been popping up. Now I'm not talking about actual PC games (though admittedly the issues do involve PC versions of games) but the quality of PC versions, their relation to consoles, and the attitudes of PC gamers.
Take the new Battlefield game coming out. For some reason there is this huge uproar about the quality of the PC version vs. the Console version. Console owners are whining about how the PC version is so much better, Dice telling everyone to shove it, PC gamers loving it and walking around like their... well you know.
And today I noticed a FarCry 3 story stating that the PC version is going to be superior to the console version. This is just one of the many types of stories that are floating around. All stories designed to stroke the ego of PC gamers, with console gamers being pissed off for some fairly ridiculous reasons.
FACT: PC games will always have superior visual and sound quality to console games. There is really only one reason you would need to support this, and that's that PC gaming has the advantage of having ever evolving hardware. It can constantly use state of the art technology right now, whereas consoles are closed off in a hardware sense and only evolve after the end of a console's life. You wouldn't expect an old vinyl record player to be able to output lossless audio like the kind you'd get out of a .wav file would you? So you can't expect consoles to output the kind of quality a PC with the latest tech can output. So in that regard, I can see the point devs like Dice have.
But where I'm having an issue is, who the hell cares? I'm about to make a radical generalization that is not at all true about every member of the group I'm generalizing, it's merely discussing an observation. Why does anyone care about stroking the ego of the PC crowd? They have to be the most entitled, elitist bunch of gamers most of us have ever come across and it's ALWAYS about the GRAPHICS with them. Why is it that so many articles lately have to make PC gamers feel better about the quality of their version of any game? As a PC gamer, you should know that even a shoddy port will look better on your gaming rig than on any console, yet for some reason this massive sense of entitlement raises up as if PC gamers are "owed" something and you have devs practically bottle feeding them and giving in to the temper tantrums.
I suppose the fact that, by comparison in a marketing sense, PC gaming is small next to consoles. Most of gaming devs develop for consoles, consoles have a hell of a lot more variety and options of games that will never appear on PC, devs fear piracy on PC more than they do on consoles, etc... So maybe PC only devs, and devs looking to move into that realm will do anything they can to keep what fanbase they have for their games. Of course, once you give an inch, people tend to take a mile, and that's where the sense of entitlement comes in.
Every article here that so much as hints at PC in even the smallest way is bombarded by PC fanboys down playing consoles and posting comment after comment about their rig and how it only cost them $200 more than a launch PS3 to have "teh bestest grfx evar" and how "PC's are a gen ahead of consoles." Seriously, if you have to keep saying it then I guess there must be something wrong with the games you're not playing on that PC, or you're trying to convince people that PC gaming is bigger than it is.
We get it, PC's are superior in hardware to consoles. Always have been, always will be. Anyone who doesn't get this fact has probably been living in a cave somewhere with their eyes shut, and their ears blocked. But if you're really into gaming, then you know 2 things. First, gaming isn't about the graphics. Graphics are the most superficial aspect of gaming. Take the sh*ttiest game in the world and give it the most photorealistic graphics possible, and you're left with a very polished, very "pretty" turd.
Second, console gaming is far larger than PC gaming and is where the real money is. Quite frankly, people will ALWAYS choose a convenience first. A console is built for everyone to have the exact same experience at a cheaper price than a PC, with years of never having to buy an upgrade to make your games only look better but not actually BE any better. It is for this reason devs make more games for consoles, and why the industry focuses on consoles to a much greater degree than PC's.
I'm sure this blog will be torn apart by innumerable PC fanboys once again talking about their rig, why if you do the calculations PC gaming is cheaper, throw in some reference to Steam, and accuse people of being to lazy to spend $600 to build their own "better than consoles" gaming PC. I don't really care. I'm just sick of the ego stroking PC gamers seem to need to have and the devs who bend over backwards to give it to them just because they can't be satisfied with already having the superior hardware.
I believe there is a word for someone who is clearly superior yet has to have everyone continuously acknowledge it and have everyone appease him/her for it. I don't know what it is right now, but if anyone does feel free to post
Take the new Battlefield game coming out. For some reason there is this huge uproar about the quality of the PC version vs. the Console version. Console owners are whining about how the PC version is so much better, Dice telling everyone to shove it, PC gamers loving it and walking around like their... well you know.
And today I noticed a FarCry 3 story stating that the PC version is going to be superior to the console version. This is just one of the many types of stories that are floating around. All stories designed to stroke the ego of PC gamers, with console gamers being pissed off for some fairly ridiculous reasons.
FACT: PC games will always have superior visual and sound quality to console games. There is really only one reason you would need to support this, and that's that PC gaming has the advantage of having ever evolving hardware. It can constantly use state of the art technology right now, whereas consoles are closed off in a hardware sense and only evolve after the end of a console's life. You wouldn't expect an old vinyl record player to be able to output lossless audio like the kind you'd get out of a .wav file would you? So you can't expect consoles to output the kind of quality a PC with the latest tech can output. So in that regard, I can see the point devs like Dice have.
But where I'm having an issue is, who the hell cares? I'm about to make a radical generalization that is not at all true about every member of the group I'm generalizing, it's merely discussing an observation. Why does anyone care about stroking the ego of the PC crowd? They have to be the most entitled, elitist bunch of gamers most of us have ever come across and it's ALWAYS about the GRAPHICS with them. Why is it that so many articles lately have to make PC gamers feel better about the quality of their version of any game? As a PC gamer, you should know that even a shoddy port will look better on your gaming rig than on any console, yet for some reason this massive sense of entitlement raises up as if PC gamers are "owed" something and you have devs practically bottle feeding them and giving in to the temper tantrums.
I suppose the fact that, by comparison in a marketing sense, PC gaming is small next to consoles. Most of gaming devs develop for consoles, consoles have a hell of a lot more variety and options of games that will never appear on PC, devs fear piracy on PC more than they do on consoles, etc... So maybe PC only devs, and devs looking to move into that realm will do anything they can to keep what fanbase they have for their games. Of course, once you give an inch, people tend to take a mile, and that's where the sense of entitlement comes in.
Every article here that so much as hints at PC in even the smallest way is bombarded by PC fanboys down playing consoles and posting comment after comment about their rig and how it only cost them $200 more than a launch PS3 to have "teh bestest grfx evar" and how "PC's are a gen ahead of consoles." Seriously, if you have to keep saying it then I guess there must be something wrong with the games you're not playing on that PC, or you're trying to convince people that PC gaming is bigger than it is.
We get it, PC's are superior in hardware to consoles. Always have been, always will be. Anyone who doesn't get this fact has probably been living in a cave somewhere with their eyes shut, and their ears blocked. But if you're really into gaming, then you know 2 things. First, gaming isn't about the graphics. Graphics are the most superficial aspect of gaming. Take the sh*ttiest game in the world and give it the most photorealistic graphics possible, and you're left with a very polished, very "pretty" turd.
Second, console gaming is far larger than PC gaming and is where the real money is. Quite frankly, people will ALWAYS choose a convenience first. A console is built for everyone to have the exact same experience at a cheaper price than a PC, with years of never having to buy an upgrade to make your games only look better but not actually BE any better. It is for this reason devs make more games for consoles, and why the industry focuses on consoles to a much greater degree than PC's.
I'm sure this blog will be torn apart by innumerable PC fanboys once again talking about their rig, why if you do the calculations PC gaming is cheaper, throw in some reference to Steam, and accuse people of being to lazy to spend $600 to build their own "better than consoles" gaming PC. I don't really care. I'm just sick of the ego stroking PC gamers seem to need to have and the devs who bend over backwards to give it to them just because they can't be satisfied with already having the superior hardware.
I believe there is a word for someone who is clearly superior yet has to have everyone continuously acknowledge it and have everyone appease him/her for it. I don't know what it is right now, but if anyone does feel free to post
What defines a 'good' or a 'bad' game?
This blog post is for open minds only. Not people who are too full of themselves to consider other people's opinions. Now, inevitably this will focus on certain games and it may annoy people, so be prepared as I give you my undiluted take on certain games and why they were or were not successful as a game. This is totally opinion, in case you hadn't got that, already. And also, it could get pretty long, so if you want the short version of my point, skip to the end.
Case study 1: Haze
Now... First off, does anyone remember this game? How much potential it had? How hyped it was? This game was released back in the era of pessimism when the PS3 had very little to show in terms of exclusives. So it was a game that they figured would sell systems (before release). Now the general consensus is that the game sucked (as far as I know of on the internet).
It received a fairly average score of 55 on metacritic, so it indeed did not live up to the hype that surrounded the game. Now, as a whole, I didn't really think the game was that bad. It was really short. It had bad script writing.... and the multiplayer.... well, yeah. But I still enjoyed the game. It wasn't perfect, but I think there were a lot of things they could've done to make it better. Now, I'm going to propose this: imagine this game was released as a 360 title at launch (when it was most popular). Would the game have gotten the same amount of hype? No. My point is that hype can do really bad things in terms of a person's perception of games. A mildly entertaining game that has been hyped to hell is going to be described as "awful". The moral of the story is don't get too excited about games, because if your expectations are high, the game can only do so much to live up to those. Now, I really enjoyed the game but that was before I read what people were saying on the internet. They kept putting it down until eventually I started to see their point. I'm not suggesting that these people ruined the game for me, but they did sort of soil my memory of it to some degree. And your memory represents what games go down in history as very good games. You'll forget the average games. You'll remember the great games.
Wow, whole paragraph talking about haze. Took me longer to write that than it did to finish the game. (drum: bum bum cha!) Thank you, I'm here all day!
Case study 2: Mass Effect 1 and 2/ Dragon age: Origins and 2
Now, I'm gonna tread very carefully here, but were these games hyped up at all? I don't recall hearing much noise about them pre-release but after they came out, it was like a bleeping orchestra. Everyone and their gran was on the internet raving about these games. Now, how does that set us up for the sequels? They both have a gargantuan reputation to live up to. Millions of gamer's hopes are resting on what these games promised and if they'll deliver and improve on it.
Did they? Well, it's debatable. On one side, they were both very enjoyable sequels, but on the other hand, they were quite different from the originals in terms of the RPG elements that some say have been "dumbed down" for the masses. This was more so in dragon age very recently. People are overreacting because it isn't "the same" as what they were expecting. Now I realise, I'm going on a bit so there it is, whatever. Point made.
Case study 3: Grand theft auto 4
Majority of the opinions for this game is that it was good. I for one was actually disappointed. For the same reasons people were disappointed about the other games I've mentioned. The hype around this game was unparalleled in the long months before it's release. Especially with the delays etc. I think on a scale from 1 to blowing my freaking head off excited: my head was unhinged way before the game was released. It really didn't live up to the standard set by san andreas.
First off, the world wasn't nearly as big.
Secondly, the character customisation was not as good. No hair, no gym, no healthiness. No fun
The last thing that annoyed me was: No planes. You know the things with the wings that fly? None of them.
You'd think the idea with a sequel would be to add features and not take away. Fair enough, they added the phone. And the graphics were much better in IV. But that didn't really compensate for the things that were missing.
The game was a good game, no doubt.
So here is the short version. Not quite the point that I was going for, but I can barely finish a sentence without re-deciding what the sentence is going to mean halfway through.
Hype. Ruins games. How is hype generated? Word of mouth. You are reading this blog post on something called an internet. This is the biggest purveyor of word of mouth in the universe(especially regarding gaming). People here express their thoughts on games in an unrelenting manner. Without realising it, everyone here is being moulded by their fellow internet users to conform to the way they think.
So... thanks for ruining games that I would have otherwise enjoyed.
^^^I of course blame no one for this, because everyone's guilty of overhyping things.
Now that is my opinion of what defines a good game. A good game is one that is enjoyed by the people who play it. No matter how hyped it has been. Now, let's hear your thoughts. What do you think makes a game good or bad? Let me know in the comments below.
Case study 1: Haze
Now... First off, does anyone remember this game? How much potential it had? How hyped it was? This game was released back in the era of pessimism when the PS3 had very little to show in terms of exclusives. So it was a game that they figured would sell systems (before release). Now the general consensus is that the game sucked (as far as I know of on the internet).
It received a fairly average score of 55 on metacritic, so it indeed did not live up to the hype that surrounded the game. Now, as a whole, I didn't really think the game was that bad. It was really short. It had bad script writing.... and the multiplayer.... well, yeah. But I still enjoyed the game. It wasn't perfect, but I think there were a lot of things they could've done to make it better. Now, I'm going to propose this: imagine this game was released as a 360 title at launch (when it was most popular). Would the game have gotten the same amount of hype? No. My point is that hype can do really bad things in terms of a person's perception of games. A mildly entertaining game that has been hyped to hell is going to be described as "awful". The moral of the story is don't get too excited about games, because if your expectations are high, the game can only do so much to live up to those. Now, I really enjoyed the game but that was before I read what people were saying on the internet. They kept putting it down until eventually I started to see their point. I'm not suggesting that these people ruined the game for me, but they did sort of soil my memory of it to some degree. And your memory represents what games go down in history as very good games. You'll forget the average games. You'll remember the great games.
Wow, whole paragraph talking about haze. Took me longer to write that than it did to finish the game. (drum: bum bum cha!) Thank you, I'm here all day!
Case study 2: Mass Effect 1 and 2/ Dragon age: Origins and 2
Now, I'm gonna tread very carefully here, but were these games hyped up at all? I don't recall hearing much noise about them pre-release but after they came out, it was like a bleeping orchestra. Everyone and their gran was on the internet raving about these games. Now, how does that set us up for the sequels? They both have a gargantuan reputation to live up to. Millions of gamer's hopes are resting on what these games promised and if they'll deliver and improve on it.
Did they? Well, it's debatable. On one side, they were both very enjoyable sequels, but on the other hand, they were quite different from the originals in terms of the RPG elements that some say have been "dumbed down" for the masses. This was more so in dragon age very recently. People are overreacting because it isn't "the same" as what they were expecting. Now I realise, I'm going on a bit so there it is, whatever. Point made.
Case study 3: Grand theft auto 4
Majority of the opinions for this game is that it was good. I for one was actually disappointed. For the same reasons people were disappointed about the other games I've mentioned. The hype around this game was unparalleled in the long months before it's release. Especially with the delays etc. I think on a scale from 1 to blowing my freaking head off excited: my head was unhinged way before the game was released. It really didn't live up to the standard set by san andreas.
First off, the world wasn't nearly as big.
Secondly, the character customisation was not as good. No hair, no gym, no healthiness. No fun
The last thing that annoyed me was: No planes. You know the things with the wings that fly? None of them.
You'd think the idea with a sequel would be to add features and not take away. Fair enough, they added the phone. And the graphics were much better in IV. But that didn't really compensate for the things that were missing.
The game was a good game, no doubt.
So here is the short version. Not quite the point that I was going for, but I can barely finish a sentence without re-deciding what the sentence is going to mean halfway through.
Hype. Ruins games. How is hype generated? Word of mouth. You are reading this blog post on something called an internet. This is the biggest purveyor of word of mouth in the universe(especially regarding gaming). People here express their thoughts on games in an unrelenting manner. Without realising it, everyone here is being moulded by their fellow internet users to conform to the way they think.
So... thanks for ruining games that I would have otherwise enjoyed.
^^^I of course blame no one for this, because everyone's guilty of overhyping things.
Now that is my opinion of what defines a good game. A good game is one that is enjoyed by the people who play it. No matter how hyped it has been. Now, let's hear your thoughts. What do you think makes a game good or bad? Let me know in the comments below.
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