[Rant] What's Wrong with Video Games These Days?

Originally Posted by VitaminZinc

I'd like to have more games that are graphically appealing while still having an intriguing story. Maybe hire better writing teams. Then again, if a game's fun, the writing sometimes doesn't matter... like, MGS4. More than half of that shit made no sense to me, but it was still a hella fun game to go through. Sure, it'd be nice to have a great, coherent story, but I guess sometimes you have to give up one for the other.

The argument of "if the game is fun the story doesn't have to be fucking genius" might hold water better if you didn't for some reason use a series known for being considered interactive movies more than games as your benchmark for good gameplay.

Like, for instance, Saint's Row 2? The story is completely retarded. You start out escaping from an Alcatraz-like prison after being blown up in a boat explosion and emerging from a coma. On a helicopter. And that is probably one of the least retarded stuntss you pull in the game. The actual gameplay is fun, and the wink-wink nudge-nudge attitude the game has towards its own campiness just makes you not care anymore about how impossible what you're doing is. You just want to see what ridiculous lengths it'll go to next.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Infernal Monkey

Oh yeah, don't forget the embarrassing 'hardcore' vs. 'casual' meme! Man, I remember the hardcore term being used for people that sunk unhealthy amounts of time into something until they could break da law. Now you just have to play Call of Duty online every now and then. Casual gamers? Man, fuck them for wanting to play video games. Tetris isn't a video game!

As much as I hate that division, I really think that's just a creation of nerds who hate the idea that someone older than them plays games.

My mom has been playing Call of Duty: World at War over the past couple of weeks, and my dad's been playing Wind Waker. My mom's getting ready to pick up a 360. In recent years my mom's also played all three of the new Metroid games, and in years past she beat Super Metroid in... 1 hour 45 minutes, somewhere around there, with 99% items. Depending on who you ask, my parents, who work 50-hour+ weeks and play video games sparingly, are hardcore gamers simply based on their game choices.

That's a fucking horrible definition. Can't we PLEASE just get back to using hardcore gamer for those people who have 10,000 XP in Halo again? It fits them so much better.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

But then how will we know who are the gamers that we should look down our noses at and be condescending?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

:words:

You bring up a person who wasted their life for a con and then somehow extrapolate that into that kind of person being the average gamer. You say that that kind of gamer doesn't care about what's in front of them. You're right, a real average gamer wouldn't care, hence the sales of shovelware being ridiculous. The kind of gamer YOU are asserting is average cares TOO MUCH about what is in front of them. A gamer that can seriously play one game for years on end while playing nothing else is so god damn particular about what game they want to play that they're willing to not buy anything else.

And therein lies the problem. They have to cater to both audiences at once. They cater to the moron gamers by giving them the same game but upgraded, keeping them buying new games, hence why there are so many sequels. This also fulfills the average gamer's needs, because they don't really care and just want to play the latest and "greatest" games.

I think you need to draw a distinction between "average gamer that posts on the Internet" and "average gamer".

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Yes, yes, yes. All fine and good. But you miss the point of what is actually wrong with video games, OP.

And that is obvious: Only one of them is narrated by Stephen Fry.



And that's not nearly enough.

Deni, you're close but not quite there. There is a three-pronged approach to making video games good again.

At least one but preferrably all three of the following:

Patrick Stewart
Samuel L Jackson
Christian Byrd

should be in every video game ever.

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I was speaking idiomatically.