General gaming discussion

Looking at the Wikipedia page for the series, I've played all the mainline (non-mobile) games but I don't have strong memories of the stories or gameplay.

Driver 1: I read years later that the tutorial in the underground carpark was challenging and some players couldn't progress, but I don't remember it being an issue when I played it originally. Overall a cool game with gritty 3D driving before GTA made the jump.

Driver 2: You could get out of the car! Came out a week before the PS2 launched and got lost in the excitement. I must have played it using backward compatibility (once I'd put down SSX).

Driv3r: More like Driver 3/10 lol. Controversy over the Eurogamer score, and Tommy Vercetti with armbands (because you couldn't swim in GTA) are my main memories.

Parallel Lines: Sealings by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Lost interest in the game and didn't finish it.

San Francisco: Can't get out of the car again, but you can quantum leap instead. Binged for a week, got all but the online achievements, never played again.

Try Inside. It's brilliant and short. Perfect.

I also got that Kloona remastered collection thingy recently (Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series). It's nice to get back to video games that don't pretend to be real life simulators. Thanks to a @Retr0gamer suggestion a while back. It's not up to Mario class platforming, but I'm currently on the first game in the package. I believe the 2nd game is better.

When I play a video game like this I immediately accept it for what it is and I'm not getting distracted by thoughts of "that facial expression was a bit off" or "where does he store all the stuff that he picks up, he must have 100 guns on him at this stage", or "when will this ever end", or analysis paralysis over what weapon etc to use.

+100 for the pure, simple video game experience.

I did manage to beat the tutorial parking garage thing in Driver. My main memory of the game was the absolute chaos in the final mission. You're driving a limo, possibly with the President in it, and the game becomes more like Destruction Derby than anything else. Got pinned up against walls every time with cars just constantly belting into the pile. It was mayhem.

Driver 2 was fun, I really enjoyed the map and location of it at the time. Plus you could get out on foot and swap cars, which was mindblowing at the time. Don't think I played any of the others after that.

I remember my young, dumb brain thinking a 3D driving game like that would never work because you wouldn't be able to see when you're meant to turn in a city (obviously the likes of racing games you're on a set track). That GTA 1&2 had it right with the top down view, but a 3D game like that would be impossible to navigate.

Y'know... like the actual 3D world we live in...

This is probably why I'll never get into them, combat aside so. Story is an important part for me. It's the reason to play the game, especially ones penned as a single player experience. A good story can get me through bad gameplay, and rarely does it go the other way. And if I have to YouTube something to understand the story, then imo it's not telling a good story. Probably why I prefer the games I do. I can see now why you really don't like the standard AAA stuff, because a lot of them are story focused with padding. Whether that story is something a person likes or not is subjective. I would have given up on HFW before now if I didn't want to know how it ends. One of the main reason for stopping Elden Ring is I didn't feel like there was a reason to keep going because it was so... lacking in traditional gaming story telling.

Each to their own and all that.

I honestly wouldnt be counting any open world game as a great story driven game, the fact you can ignore the story and plod on and nobody queries why your gone for the last month or so collecting sticks to get a better weapon removes immersion. Its almost why games like Elden Ring etc almost have a better story as its all about the world itself and the goings on in the world not what character does day to day.

Hogwarts was a prime example of this , Effectively a student but part time murderer and nobody asks why your a mental case.

For me a story driven game has to just be go here do this and why, effectively chapters, silent hill 2, bioshock, last of us are all perfect examples.

Horizon, spiderman, any assassins creed, ragnarok are all examples of wayyyyy too much padding to build any semblence of an immersive narrative regardless of fancy cameras.

TLDR " if i can feck off for majority of the game and nobody cares then its a poor story

I've often found when the story isn't there, or not up to much, my brain starts filling in the gaps.

Sometimes big AAA games have too much going on. Sometimes less is more.

X-Com 2 is a good example. Where you start to get attached to characters you created, despite there being no story points involving them, no cut scenes etc. to illicit this connection.

It's just my brain filling in the blanks and building something very enjoyable. 😂

I would say Spiderman suffers from say you could in effect if you want go days without helping fightcrime which is happening all the time as you collect backpacks and nobody questions it or wonders why spiderman is on a jollyer. The only way you rectify this is make a non open world spiderman, which would be fairly rubbish as swinging is great craic.

Often in games some storyline or area is stuck until your a certain level which forces you to do the dogs work instead of just continuing with the story from start to finish.

TV shows that pick up slightly after what's happened in the previous episode brings continuity to the viewer, now if an ep of the sopranos showed Tony taking someone out, next week shows him chopping wood building a hut and upgrading his guns then the following week shows the aftermath of the murder that would be problematic and called out as such. But its why we love games as well as TV shows

Just as an FYI I don't really mind open world but they are not the story epics they claim to be, I hold Silent hill 2 up as the shining light to story driven games, I would like more games in that ilk.

I don't really think game stories can be judged on the same metric as TV, films or books though. The main aim of stories, particularly in AAA open-world games, is to give you a reason to go to the next area. You do a mission, find an item, ability, information or whatever that allows you to go to the next area. Rinse and repeat. The flow of the story and narrative should always follow the flow of the gameplay design. The story follows the progression in terms of difficulty, enemies, abilities etc. Some open world games (BOTW, Elden Ring) are about the exploration and doing things off your own back. Others like Ghost of Tsushima & Horizon are about the story sheparding you further through the game as you progress, and allowing you to do some side stuff/exploring in between.

There can definitely be an overabundance of unneccessary lore and world-building. A big issue I had with Horizon Zero Dawn was going through some of the areas where you're just plagued by holograms of characters over-explaining everything, but to the point where you'd just have to stand and listen and wait for them to finish. 2 rooms later, their hologram would pop up again. Then again, I remember playing the first Destiny game, thinking how beautiful the world they created seemed, and being annoyed that the entire story and lore seemed to be locked behind lore cards which could only be read online or through an app.

It's a harder thing to balance than in TV/movies, because with games you have to balance the active & passive sides of the game. It's why I said I always see story as an additive. TV/movies the story has to be first and foremost. Games, it can add and enhance, but aside from purely narrative-driven games (such as the Telltale games), it should always be lower on the list.

I often start off trying to read letters, listen to audiologs etc, but far too often there are just so many of them saying the same thing is slightly different ways, and they're not even important anyway... Most of the time I just pick them up to remove the icon/symbol for them.

I started the new Horizon DLC last night, and there's a part where you have to figure out a doorcode by listening to recordings and reading different bits of text to find certain numbers. About half the things, at the end Aloy or the other character would just go "Well, there was no part of the code in that one, let's move on to the next...."

WELL WHY THE F*CK DID YOU FORCE ME TO LISTEN TO IT THEN? I get that it's a way to give information and background on the villain and why he's a bad guy, but it was completely overdone and unnecessary, and killed the flow of gameplay.

Then again, when you consider the storytelling in Souls games, it's almost all told through item descriptions etc, half the time I never read or there are so many item descriptions that are interconnected in small ways that I can't really retain enough of the information to piece it all together. Hence VaatiVidya...