I just want to take a minute to quote this comment from RPS:
Jim Sterling really ought to be stood down from his job at Destructoid – he’s totally hateful and mysoginistic, as a recent public Twitter spat between him and Auntie Pixelante’s partner has proved. I won’t be reading Destructoid until they eject the idiotic, infantile shithead from their payroll.
That's what I think, too. I stopped reading Destructoid altogether because that professional troll annoyed me so much. That's the reason I haven't written any "Jimbecility" posts tracking his insane foulmouthing for months.
Speaking of losing readers by the hundreds, did you know you can keep reading Kotaku without the annoying new layout if you type "UK" or "CA" in front of the url? Just try it:
http://uk.kotaku.com/
http://ca.kotaku.com/
Luckily we don't have to worry about anything like that because we don't have any readers.
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta violence. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta violence. Mostrar todas las entradas
martes, 22 de febrero de 2011
sábado, 20 de noviembre de 2010
The Call of Duty school of writing
Call of Duty: Black Ops was released last week. Many streets here in Frankfurt are filled with ads showing a guy with two guns, one of them called Sally. I'm not going to play it yet because I don't have too much money right now and the UK release is a bit overpriced, so I'll have to wait until it's cheaper. But I realized that I never played Treyarch's 2006 game Call of Duty III because then I was only a PC gamer and this was a console exclusive. So now it's a good time for me to catch up...
A few days ago, Jeffrey Yohalem (an Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood writer) said in a Spanish interview that "the game mechanics are always more important than the script". Then, amazingly, he mentioned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as the main influence for his work. But as Ben Croshaw cleverly observed, PoP: TSoT is one of the best games ever made and is miles beyond its sequels even when the second and the third game have substantially better combat and overall gameplay. Why is that? Because TSoT has an amazing script.
So I've been playing for a couple of days the infamous Call of Duty III, who earned Treyarch the unfair reputation for doing the "bad" Call of Duty games. It has -*sigh*- decent mechanics, but no script whatsoever. Just "go there and shoot the bad guys" all the time, with the odd vehicle section here and there for a change of pace.
I guess after making this game somebody realized that they needed scripts for the Call of Duty games to make them less boring. So, starting with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, it looks like they decided that they had to blow our minds. I mean, literally. So then it was like this (total SPOILERS follow):
CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE:
"At the beginning of the game, you go in a car with the bad guys, they take you to a main villain and he shoots you in the head."
"So, how can we top that?"
"Then you go in a helicopter with the good guys, you run away from the same main villain, and then he... er, he throws an atomic bomb on you."
"That's so f***ing cool! After this, nobody will want to play a Medal of Honor game ever again..."
WORLD AT WAR:
"So, you've seen Call of Duty 4... Any ideas?"
"Nazi zombies?"
MODERN WARFARE 2:
"They really loved the atomic bomb bit. Now, give me something really shocking."
"You go and... shoot civilians with the bad guys, but then they shoot you in the head.""That's so clever. And so original! So, how can we top that?"
"Er... Well, the good guy is... a main villain... and he shoots you... and then he pours gasoline on you..."
"You are a f***ing genius! We have GOTY material in our hands!"
BLACK OPS:
"So we have to top Modern Warfare or we are dead... Ideas?"
"Well, you go and shoot Fidel Castro in the head."
(Silence.)
"Only that... it wasn't him."
"That's... genius! Amazing! Modern Warfare, you are so screwed after this! So, how can we top that?"
"Well, after that, you... shoot... Kennedy."
(Silence.)
"Only that... well, you don't really shoot him. But they make you think that you shot him."
"Polish those Oscars! I mean, maybe there are no video game Oscars, but we're all going to be rich!"
So, here's the Call of Duty school of writing. Here's a good lesson for game designers all around the globe.
viernes, 27 de agosto de 2010
'Please pay us as much as you can!'
One of the latest, most disturbing trends is to lock away some functions of the game if you buy an used copy. Publishers are getting bolder every day, so now a THQ employee has even said that buying second hand games is "cheating". They want people to pay $60 for every game.
Well, they still don't understand that some people will never pay $60 for a game. I know I never do: I wait until they they hit the bargain bin and cost 15 € (about $20) before buying anything. Anyway, for many people the basic economics for the current way of making second-hand games available is this: a kid pays $60 for a game, finds out that he doesn't like the game for whatever reason, sells it back, and then he buys another one. Do you see a pattern? If he can't sell the game, the chain is broken. A game sale disappears. Furthermore, he'll never buy the game in the first place because he knows that if he doesn't like the game for some reason, he'll be screwed. In the "best case scenario" for the games industry, he'll wait until the game costs $20-25 like I do.
Is it so hard to understand why this "preventing used games sales" will only bring harm to everyone? Also, it doesn't make any sense and goes against what we've been doing for centuries. Just imagine that you go and buy an used car from some guy. You sign the contract, the seller hands you the keys for the car... and then he says, "oh, there's one more thing. The "extra storage function" is only available for first-time buyers. That means that you should go to your nearest Ford dealership and pay them $3,000 to get the trunk key."
Can you see yourself in that situation? And can you imagine doing anything else than punching the seller's face straight away?
Well, they still don't understand that some people will never pay $60 for a game. I know I never do: I wait until they they hit the bargain bin and cost 15 € (about $20) before buying anything. Anyway, for many people the basic economics for the current way of making second-hand games available is this: a kid pays $60 for a game, finds out that he doesn't like the game for whatever reason, sells it back, and then he buys another one. Do you see a pattern? If he can't sell the game, the chain is broken. A game sale disappears. Furthermore, he'll never buy the game in the first place because he knows that if he doesn't like the game for some reason, he'll be screwed. In the "best case scenario" for the games industry, he'll wait until the game costs $20-25 like I do.
Is it so hard to understand why this "preventing used games sales" will only bring harm to everyone? Also, it doesn't make any sense and goes against what we've been doing for centuries. Just imagine that you go and buy an used car from some guy. You sign the contract, the seller hands you the keys for the car... and then he says, "oh, there's one more thing. The "extra storage function" is only available for first-time buyers. That means that you should go to your nearest Ford dealership and pay them $3,000 to get the trunk key."
Can you see yourself in that situation? And can you imagine doing anything else than punching the seller's face straight away?
martes, 16 de febrero de 2010
We said it was going to suck
UPDATE: 1Up.com, GameRevolution, Gamespy and the no-nonsense guys at GiantBomb agree: this game blows chunks. And all the fans scream "Noooo! You are lying! You are wrong! Aliens vs Predator is awesome!"
Grow up, kids. Listen to the voice of reason.
sábado, 7 de noviembre de 2009
The Age of RPGing
Hi SuperViv!
Yes, I also played the LSL games before I was mature enough to "understand" them. Anyway, most of the innuendo and double-entendres were butchered in the Spanish translations, so anyway...
Well, I have a huge problem. As you may well know, I'm a modest man living in a modest apartment... of one room. I can't just "send" the kid to sleep, because if he sleeps, I must sleep. Also, my current setup to play console games demands me to darken the room and project a HUGE image in my wall. So if I play, everybody in the room "plays" with me. I can't just turn the screen away so I'm the only one who can see it.
Also, I don't believe that playing action games turns your kids into criminals, but it's also true that it's not a good idea to show God of War and X-Men Origins: Wolverine levels of violence to small children (I'm not linking any videos, so just imagine a bunch of people getting torn apart in many imaginative ways). I was really scared by violence when I was a kid. Now I don't really pay much attention to it, so I can play those games and find it just mildly amusing. "Nice, another decapitation." So OK, I'll let my son play Manhunt when he's 14 years old if he wants to, but not now.
Uwe Boll is a nice guy. And he's made a few decent movies. But in others, he shows no compassion or humanity to his characters. That's probably his main flaw as a filmmaker: he doesn't care about what happens to the characters, so the viewers aren't supposed to care, either, and they lose interest. But some of his movies look great, anyway. Paco Fox is probably right when he says that Boll is much better as a producer than as a director.
I bought the tinbox edition PC version of Far Cry 2 last year, but then I sold it to somebody else when I learned about its f***ed-up DRM ("5 machine activation limit"), and then I bought it again for PS3 with a promotional code to get some extra missions because I really wanted to play it, and then I sold it again when I learned about the glitch that destroyed your save games in a bad moment, and then I bought it a third time when the collector edition got really cheap... The thing is, I'haven't played it yet, but the consensus about this one seems to be that it's really engaging at first, but then you realize how superficial it is. It tries hard to be RPG-ish, but then it's just a regular FPS in disguise.
But now we have lots of true RPGs coming. Dragon Age: Origins has just been released. I was naive enough to buy the "Deluxe Edition" release on Steam, but now I feel really ripped-off, because all those "exclusive pre-order items" that were promised are NOT in the game. I mean, you can't just download them from Steam. I paid $15 extra to have the right to register in EA's site and in Rockstar Social Cl... I mean, Bioware Social Network and redeem my pre-order CD-key there to gain access to those items. Does it sound unnecessarily complicated? It's because that's exactly what it is. I demanded a refund, but of course Steam doesn't issue refunds.
Also, Mass Effect 2 will be released on January. But I'm still not done with the first one! And now that I'm becoming a father, it will be much worse. The RPG genre is the worst enemy of "casualness". I guess very soon I won't even be a casual core gamer. I may become just "casual", and maybe not even much of a gamer. That would be pretty sad. But sometimes you have to choose: your games or your family. I'll try to choose... both. If it's possible.
By the way, I think it's just fair to warn you right now that at any moment after next week I may stop writing on this blog for a few weeks, as I won't have an internet connection when I go to Spain to join my wife. Oh, well. We don't have many readers yet anyway, so it's not really much of a problem.
Have a nice rest of the weekend!
- Danda
Yes, I also played the LSL games before I was mature enough to "understand" them. Anyway, most of the innuendo and double-entendres were butchered in the Spanish translations, so anyway...
Well, I have a huge problem. As you may well know, I'm a modest man living in a modest apartment... of one room. I can't just "send" the kid to sleep, because if he sleeps, I must sleep. Also, my current setup to play console games demands me to darken the room and project a HUGE image in my wall. So if I play, everybody in the room "plays" with me. I can't just turn the screen away so I'm the only one who can see it.
Also, I don't believe that playing action games turns your kids into criminals, but it's also true that it's not a good idea to show God of War and X-Men Origins: Wolverine levels of violence to small children (I'm not linking any videos, so just imagine a bunch of people getting torn apart in many imaginative ways). I was really scared by violence when I was a kid. Now I don't really pay much attention to it, so I can play those games and find it just mildly amusing. "Nice, another decapitation." So OK, I'll let my son play Manhunt when he's 14 years old if he wants to, but not now.
Uwe Boll is a nice guy. And he's made a few decent movies. But in others, he shows no compassion or humanity to his characters. That's probably his main flaw as a filmmaker: he doesn't care about what happens to the characters, so the viewers aren't supposed to care, either, and they lose interest. But some of his movies look great, anyway. Paco Fox is probably right when he says that Boll is much better as a producer than as a director.
I bought the tinbox edition PC version of Far Cry 2 last year, but then I sold it to somebody else when I learned about its f***ed-up DRM ("5 machine activation limit"), and then I bought it again for PS3 with a promotional code to get some extra missions because I really wanted to play it, and then I sold it again when I learned about the glitch that destroyed your save games in a bad moment, and then I bought it a third time when the collector edition got really cheap... The thing is, I'haven't played it yet, but the consensus about this one seems to be that it's really engaging at first, but then you realize how superficial it is. It tries hard to be RPG-ish, but then it's just a regular FPS in disguise.
But now we have lots of true RPGs coming. Dragon Age: Origins has just been released. I was naive enough to buy the "Deluxe Edition" release on Steam, but now I feel really ripped-off, because all those "exclusive pre-order items" that were promised are NOT in the game. I mean, you can't just download them from Steam. I paid $15 extra to have the right to register in EA's site and in Rockstar Social Cl... I mean, Bioware Social Network and redeem my pre-order CD-key there to gain access to those items. Does it sound unnecessarily complicated? It's because that's exactly what it is. I demanded a refund, but of course Steam doesn't issue refunds.
Also, Mass Effect 2 will be released on January. But I'm still not done with the first one! And now that I'm becoming a father, it will be much worse. The RPG genre is the worst enemy of "casualness". I guess very soon I won't even be a casual core gamer. I may become just "casual", and maybe not even much of a gamer. That would be pretty sad. But sometimes you have to choose: your games or your family. I'll try to choose... both. If it's possible.
By the way, I think it's just fair to warn you right now that at any moment after next week I may stop writing on this blog for a few weeks, as I won't have an internet connection when I go to Spain to join my wife. Oh, well. We don't have many readers yet anyway, so it's not really much of a problem.
Have a nice rest of the weekend!
- Danda
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