Games a waste of time?

steviec

Burnout 3, Smackdown vs. Raw, Warioware, FIFA, Madden. They're a few games I've bough recently that seem to be exactly what you want. In fact GTA is the only game I've bought recently that does have a long story to it. And it's thanks to that that I'd consider it far better than any of the above. But even if you just want to play in short sessions, you can easily do that with GTA. Do one new mission at each sitting. Heck, ignore the missions if you want. Skip all the cutscenes if you hate stories. I don't see what there is to complain about GTA, you seem to be suggesting it'd be a better game if they removed the story and just gave you the three cities at the start and that be that. Surely it's less likely to get boring the way it is? You can still play it in short bursts and you get new experiences every time.

BLITZ_Molloy

GTA is just over familiar at this stage. Time Rockstar North went off and did something else. I quite enjoyed Manhunt for instance despite its flaws. Set out to do one thing well and didn't outstay its welcome.

I've already played 2 Burnout games, 2 smackdown games, 4 Madden games and 2 Fifa games. Hell, I was playing Madden in 1991. Thanks for the suggestion anyway. I'm probably just too picky.

yawnstretch

Pity you didnt try Burnout 3 - its a leap up from Burnout 2 (havent played 1) and if you have broadband its unbelievable. Do a game ten-day returns on it - trust me its brilliant.

I often feel the same way about games - but when u find a gem of a game youre sorted for a couple of weeks at least.

steviec

BLITZ_Molloy wrote:

GTA is just over familiar at this stage. Time Rockstar North went off and did something else. I quite enjoyed Manhunt for instance despite its flaws. Set out to do one thing well and didn't outstay its welcome.

I've already played 2 Burnout games, 2 smackdown games, 4 Madden games and 2 Fifa games. Hell, I was playing Madden in 1991. Thanks for the suggestion anyway. I'm probably just too picky.

Buy a Gamecube. Get F-Zero, Super Monkeyball, Warioware, Mario Kart, Mario Party, to name but a few.
Oh Beyond Good & Evil and the Broken Sword games are good, relatively short games if your looking for something more condensed but with a story. They'd still just about go over the 10 hour mark though.

Joseph

Tusky wrote:

Emm I disagree with everything you said. The longer a game is the better , once the content is good.

Here Here !

Who cares . I disagree TOTALLY!!!

Big Ears

BLITZ_Molloy wrote:

GTA is just over familiar at this stage. Time Rockstar North went off and did something else. I quite enjoyed Manhunt for instance despite its flaws. Set out to do one thing well and didn't outstay its welcome.

I've already played 2 Burnout games, 2 smackdown games, 4 Madden games and 2 Fifa games. Hell, I was playing Madden in 1991. Thanks for the suggestion anyway. I'm probably just too picky.

Try Pro Evoulution 4 , it takes minutes to learn how to play(properly , if you know what I mean) , but it takes more than a lifetime to master .

ObeyGiant

I've read every post on this thread and I'm still not 100% sure what you're complaining about - that the current generation of games feel like they have an "obligation" to be long, because they need some way to justify their price? That games should take their cues from movies or music and produce something short and entertaining that you could theoretically return to again and again?

I think this has got a lot to do with the shift from the arcade-based gaming to story and simulation-based gaming. Or at least, the technical ability to provide a compelling story within a videogame. And in this, it's horses for courses, I'm afraid. Personally, I'm not willing to invest a whole lot of time in a game unless there's a lot to draw me back to it. If a game doesn't have me hooked after the first hour or so, chances are it'll last a week and then be forgotten. I like it when a game can suck me in and hold my attention for weeks, but at the same time, I like to be able to just pick up and bash away without having to remember where exactly I saved my game the last time I played it.

GTA is perfect for this. The story is there if you want to play it, and there's always other things to do as well. Invent your own game as you go along. And the recent GTAs have refined this even more, rewarding you for playing the story mode by giving you new abilities. Other games have also made a point of providing something for both the arcade-lovers and the story-lovers camps. Fable, for example, had a main quest that could be completed in roughly 10 hours. But it also had numerous side-quests that could bump this up for the people who weren't interested in just finishing the game and enjoyed getting completely immersed in that world.

I think one of the points you're making is that people are so quick to judge a game's quality on its longevity. I've also lamented the fact that so many of my friends are reluctant to buy a copy of Ico. I tell them it's "Possibly the greatest 8 hours of videogaming you'll ever have" and they focus on the "8 hours" part of that sentence instead of the "greatest" part.

monument

I kind of know what you're saying, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and now Locomotion, are the type of game I use just like an album - Locomotion is just new, but I've being playing TTDLX for years.

I'd leave it, and then go back after a few weeks or months - I was even playing it when I first found out about Locomotion… the football manager games, although not my cup of tea, is apparently along the same lines for some people… and if you want there really no such thing as completing the game, so I cant see any problem with saving.

As for story telling games, or any FPS, RPG, adventure game etc, it’s no different then reading books – you’re going to have to accept you need a bookmark and you’re not going to read every book there is.

In saying that, there are some bits in some games which are there just to fill gaps which can nearly rune a game.

BLITZ_Molloy

You don't need to sell Amusement Vision games to me steviec. I worship at the temple that is Nagoshi. Daytona USA was genius. Played it every lunch break for a year.

Scud Race is even better. Best arcade handling ever. My local used have it. The brakes didn't work, it was filthy and cost a pound a play but I don't care. I'd give anything to have that back.

I adore Monkey Ball. Can beat Easy and Hard. Expert is an utter bitch but very fun all the same. Great mini games.

Didn't get on that well with FZero for some reason. All the car upgrading, unlocking and modes kind of put me off. It's so eye meltingly fast as well. My brain is frazzled after 20 minutes. Really need to try a bit harder at this though.

Love Warioware. Have it on the GBA. Mario Kart didn't float my boat at all. Seemed really rubbish compared to the other two. All the emphasis was on the weapons instead of the racing. Same problem ruined the Wipeout sequels.

Kristok

Have to disagree about red alert, the skill was to win even with the limited selection of units you get in teh story more, the skirmish was fine but you could win too easy.

They ruined wipe out after the second game.

JackKelly

to quote from someone who once said this

no

yawnstretch

If they ruin the next wipeout too Ill have to kill someone - how hard can it be?

At the very least why dont they just dress wipeout1 up in new graphics - it would still be genius.

Yes graphics are important - but when it comes to wipeout the 'feeeeeel' is all-important. Mess it up and DIE :mad: sony or studio liverpool or whoever the hell is working on it now.

BLITZ_Molloy

The track design was the best in the first one. Music as well. Most didn't like the incredibly unforgiving handling but I found there was alot more depth to it than the followups. Trying to coax that monster of a russian craft around the bendy later tracks was so much fun.

yawnstretch

Yeeees the handling of the ships in Wipeout 1 was hard at first but when mind and road became one....

Ahhh those were the days! Subtlety people, subtlety! I did love WO2097 but it was a bit flashy too. I remember thinking when I first saw the pre-rendered sequences at the start of Wipeout how it would come to a time when such graphics would be possible in-game. We have reached that point and beyond - but are we using the technology properly?

As I said, if they even re-released wipeout again the way they did Resident Evil on the GameCube I would be a happy man. There was something about wipeout 1 that was so realistic despite its setting in the future. The colour was right, the music was right, the handling was out of this world.

Remember this!

Fysh

I think this thread has generally been trying to discuss a generalisation which doesn't apply to all games, because what Blitz is complaining about is the rise in prominence of story-based games compared to other games. I'll agree that in general, there seems to be an attitude with game developers that the main way in which to exploit increasing capacity of technology is to bulk up games and make them longer. In some cases that's better, in other cases not so. There are still games being made, and more importantly there is still very much scope for games to be made, that cater for the short term gaming session - this is something I've become painfully aware of since becoming a 40 hour week worker, with limited time available for gaming.

In the case of RPG-type games or open-ended adventures, the focus of exploiting new hardware capacity is obviously to give you more story or scope to do things - it's the equivalent of tarting up the graphics. This doesn't work for all genres though, and I think the problem is that in the last couple of years, MMORPGs have led to sustainable revenue streams, leading companies to shift their focus more towards RPG-type games because that's where the money is. GTA has certainly been a good example of open-ended games that offer you long-term replay value if you enjoy the game style, but it's not the only one. Nintendo's party games are another way around it, and from your initial post sound like exactly what you'd like. (I notice as well that they've re-released a bunch of NES classics for the GBA....who'd've thought they could still make money from the original donkey kong game?)

Personally I like story-driven games, but excessive dependence on story leads to games which you can by design only play through once, with a few variables. Alternative endings and so on can extend this somewhat, but it's still not perfect. Even though they both rank among my top games, I'd have to suggest Eternal Darkness and Silent Hill 2 as examples. F-Zero GX, on the other hand, is a game that lacks any sort of plot but is an utter joy to play if you fancy a quick 10 minute game, or even an extended session of racing.

I do, however, think back to the glorious days of thunder force or Gradius (or even Terra Cresta or Defender) as uncomplicated shooters and somewhat regret that the days of such simple games are, on the whole, gone. It's too hard to reliably make a game that will turn a profit with the costs involved in producing a decent looking 3d game on today's systems (costs running into the millions more often than not), so developers are wary of creating a game that gamers might dismiss as being too simple, gimmicky, or short.

Deadwing

Personally, i hate games that are over in a day. Why? Cause it feels like a rip off! Sure it was excusable back in the 8 bit days when tapes or disks could barely hold enough code for a game longer than an hour or two, but most games made up for that fact by making themselves bastard hard (arkanoid 2, super ghouls n ghosts, xenon 2 etc etc) so it felt like you were playing for alot longer.
I remember back when i got my PS1, and playing RE2 and finishing it after 2 weeks (it was my first next gen game, i know you can finish it in a few hours too, but gimme a break i was a n00b back then!) but feeling pretty satisfied with it, and all the extra scenarios took me weeks more to finish. Then contrast it with something like wild 9 (if you dont remember, google) which i finished in a day or two and thought 'well that was crap, what a rip off'.
Paying 9.99 for an 8bit game you can finish in a day wasnt too bad, but paying E50 for a game you finish in a day is taking the piss.
I love arcade games as much as the next man (got outrun 2 for christmas, and ba da ba da da im lovin it), but if thats all games consisted of, and there were no final fantasises, or GTA's (even tho i do agree the GTA games need a reinvention, not just more of the same) then i dont think id be as hardcore a gamer as i am now.