Gaming Confessions & Blasphemy

I never got past the tutorial in The Witcher 2
I played the first one and enjoyed it (didn't finish it though), so I picked up the sequel during a steam sale. Fired up the game, walked through some camp talking to people, and then shortly afterwards the game dropped me into combat with absolutely no information on how the combat mechanics actually worked. After dying repeatedly I said f*ck this and haven't touched the game since.

Blind_Evil wrote:

1. When motivated, Japanese developers will beat the pants off the rest of the world's designers, in any genre.

That reminds me of something I forgot.

Warsaw Pact developers are the greatest hope for gaming. These developers, often far from the overbearing control of meddling publishers, are the biggest bastion of creativity and innovation in gaming today. The industry has become far too risk-adverse, and is unwilling to give new ideas a try. There is also no room for middle-tier development in the West, either you have a AAA title that can be made into a franchise or you might as well not bother. You see both these concepts embraced by Warsaw Pact developers, and I can only hope that it catches on.

After thinking about it for a bit I realized the only Zelda games I've beaten are the ones that Nintendo didn't make. And it was on an emulator to boot. (No, not the CD-i games.) They were a pretty fine pair of games, too.

Edit: After thinking about it for a bit more, I remembered I probably finished The Minish Cap as well. It wasn't very memorable.

I never finished Dragon's Age Origins.

I never finished Morrowind.

I never finished Skyrim.

I never finished most games I have purchased.

I did finish Shivers I & II and those are probably the best games I have ever played (and Shivers II has one of the best soundtracks ever produced for a game, although Skyrim is amazing for music).

In review, I am a gaming loser.

I didn't play Ocarina of Time and I have no plans to do so.

The only true FPS for me is competitive league Counterstrike.

I have never played Half Life or Portal, and the hype makes me wary about ever playing them.

I enjoy Japanese style fan-service without embarrassment; so long as it stays subordinate to the main attraction. So, DoA, yes; DoA Beach Volleyball, no.

I disliked AA and AC both for not having proper brawler gameplay. I have both and have logged in significant hours in an attempt to like them. Can't get over it.

I think WPRGs could use more Japanese aesthetic sensibility and game design panache.

I prefer androgynous male hero body types, or female body types in my avatars. I would not mind greater inclusion of girlyboys and loli body-types in mainstream gaming tropes.

I monogame a little too much. 675 hours in Borderlands 2 so far. XCOM is in the wings, too.

1. This is my first post. True (i think)
Been hanging around for a while, loved reading some of the threads, but I've only listened to a couple of the C.C. Podcasts (liked 'em)

2. Chrono Trigger is the best game ever made and if you disagree then you are a sexually deviant racist maybe. Also true
Best soundtrack ever, bar none, this is a non-debatable fact. Characters you actually care about in a JRPG storyline. Large gamespace with awesome time travel mechanic (that interweaves with the story beautifully). VERY well done character progression system in terms of new items and abilities. 40+ hours (or more) of JRPG love in it's heyday. I am still amazed today at how much content they were able to slam into a 16-bit cartridge.

3. I really wanted to love the Gears of War series but was unable due to the fact of it sucking.
Ok, that may be a bit harsh. They don't all "suck" and none are BAD games, I just couldn't get into them the way I wanted to. The main reason, i think, is the Resident Evil-ish tank control scheme. That and the over-the-shoulder 3rd person camera just seemed to give everyone slow, stunted movement. Now I know all the character models have legs bigger than tree trunks but damnit there's nasty aliens coming to eat you! RUN YOU PIECE OF SH*T WHY WONT YOU MOVE FASTER AND WHY DOESNT MY A.I. PARTNER SHOOT ANYTHING SAOIHDNuOBIUFBQEW*&#!@%^@#!*&. Sorry.

4. I think a lot of multi-platform games play better @ 30fps on consoles than they do @ 60fps on PC.
I dunno it may just be me. Now I don't have a super gaming-rig PC, and I do play most games on either 360 or PS3. But whenever i go to buddies that are hardcore PC gamers and play something I've played a lot of on consoles, I just think they are less "janky" feeling (for lack of a better term) when I go back and play them on consoles again.

5. Japanese game development studios trying to be more like Western devs is a horrible idea.
Yup. I guess they see the companies in the US selling 50million units of the same re-hashed FPS or Sports game every year and try to emulate for the sake of profits. Is this blasphemy? Im not sure, i think some would disagree.

6. Game reviews from publications, online or print, should not have a numbered score.
Seriously, the score is irrelevant. Me personally, I don't care if it got a 4 out of 5 stars, a 6.753, or a 75%. I'm much more interested in why the reviewer scored it that way. With the advent of Metacritic somehow becoming meaningful, the quality, integrity, and validity of the video game press has suffered. And Metacritic scores are tied to whether or not some people that MAKE the games get PAID for it, WHAT!? are you kidding me? Bonuses or not, don't they realize that it's the Internet and will always be biased/skewed one way or the other. This is a bigger issue than I will get into here, but it should be 1 of 3: Buy It - Rent It - Skip It

Thanks!
[edit- typos]

Most of the time I don't know whether I enjoy the games I am playing, or pretending that I do

There are brief moments, like when you win a Battlefield match by a single ticket. But was most of that match fun? Or just hair-pulling stress as you watch the ticket count drop? I don't know.

Not sure if that really goes against anything, but that's all I got.

I think the "Parody" of Saints Row is incredibly thin, and the game's no-holds-barred fun gets tired pretty quickly. The game just doesn't hold a lot of replay value for me.

Never played Dwarf Fortress, never wanted to. Yes, the graphics were a major turn-off.

I think Minecraft is a wonderful example of indie gaming finding a niche that I will never, ever, ever play.

I just don't get MMORPGs. I just can't countenance paying X$ a month for what looks like boring, number-crunching combat and grinding, in almost total absence of any narrative hook.

JRPGs and I have completely grown apart. Like, it's a split due to irreconcilable differences. I intensely dislike roughly 75% of the genre's conventions (this is also probably tied to my lack of interest in Anime).

A RTS game with a life bar for units has largely lost me from the word go. I blame my growth into more Grognard-y games for this.

I can't, and have given up playing games that require any kind of fast-twitch reactions. CoD? Fighting games? I'll occasionally try one, but I just can't keep up with other people's reactions, or remember more than 2-3 move combinations. I'm okay with that, though.

I am, and have been for about two years now, roughly six to eight months behind the curve on gaming.

The Vita is the best console ever made.
It's a walking PS3. Not a kind of PS3, it is one! I never thought I would ever love a portable console so much.

I never played a JRPG until April of this year. I have played about 10 since.
Everything about JRPG's turned me off at one time, now I think it's my favorite genre. The art style is probably my favorite part. It's so refreshing to see color in this world of brown and grey.

PC gaming is too expensive no matter what Steam may say.
I bought a $1300 dollar gaming laptop two years ago. The graphics card died. It's not removable from the motherboard, $900 to fix. 1300+900=2200, or 7 PS3s.

Bethesda does not deserve all the praise they receive.
Name something other than TES that they make? See next...

The only good thing about The Elder Scrolls Series are the worlds. Almost everything else about the series is dreadful, especially the combat.

The current Xbox dashboard is the worst place to be, on earth.
Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for still charging for Live with all the ad revenue the new dashboard makes.

Mature doesn't mean blood, sex, and violence.

Halo is mediocre at best.

I hate COD and the people that buy it every year. I hate that I can't get over this.

Edit: I found time to elaborate, where needed.

Farscry wrote:

I like almost everything.

And thus I think most of you people are weird.

I'm with you there! I can overlook a lot of flaws in a game if the core is strong, and I can generally find a strong core in most games. To the point I get grumpy at people being down on games I like, which is often, since I like everything. I'm trying to get over that though!

Although in a stunning contradiction, I'll admit I don't see the appeal of Zelda games. I got Ocarina of Time on my 3DS and got terribly bored before I finished it. It's feels like an open world game with all the interesting stuff stripped out and replaced with terrible old school adventure game puzzles.

I have never owned any gaming console
My hippy parents weren't into technology, we didnt have electricity when i was small for a while (kerosene powered fridge!), when i was small my parents only allowed me to watch ABC (australian version of the BBC) and we didnt have a tv from about 6 to 16 years old. My first pc was a university assignments only second hand XT286? Didnt get into pc gaming until my early 20s (civ 2).

I fail to see the enjoyment in 1st person shooters
This might be like previous posts, if you dont play 1st person growing up it is a bit difficult to get into the whole I am just the two hands i see before me deal, it took Portal to show me the joy in 1st person. Twitchy shooters like CoD....forget it.

I play skyrim in 3rd person too.

I usually play one or two game for months and months, then move on.
Right now i have 620 hours in skyrim and 500hrs in civ5, Im interested in games like Dishonored...but the fact that's its so (relatively) short turn me off, I need a big big game to get lost in. This could be geekyness meets stingyness

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I hate COD and the people that buy it every year.

Right back at ya.

Psychonauts was and is a terrible game.

It's Banjo-Kazooie with a coat of Tim-Burton-colored paint slapped on top. And Banjo-Kazooie sucked. And everyone who pisses and moans about how the game never got a fair shake and was overlooked obviously doesn't remember just exactly how much advertisement it got when it was new. Maybe the gaming public didn't embrace it because it was a bad game and not because they're uncultured barbarians, hmmm?

hbi2k wrote:

Psychonauts was and is a terrible game.

It's Banjo-Kazooie with a coat of Tim-Burton-colored paint slapped on top. And Banjo-Kazooie sucked. And everyone who pisses and moans about how the game never got a fair shake and was overlooked obviously doesn't remember just exactly how much advertisement it got when it was new. Maybe the gaming public didn't embrace it because it was a bad game and not because they're uncultured barbarians, hmmm?

However Banjo-Kazooie nuts and bolts is one of the more underrated games of this gen.

I can't conceive why anybody would want to buy a game with a single player component that needs a constant Internet connection. I have limited time so if I spend money on a game I want to be able to play it when and where I decide to play it. Judging by sales figures I'm in a minority.

strangederby wrote:

I can't conceive why anybody would want to buy a game with a single player component that needs a constant Internet connection. I have limited time so if I spend money on a game I want to be able to play it when and where I decide to play it. Judging by sales figures I'm in a minority.

I think that's just people with a relatively stable connection not seeing it as a problem, and it's all fine and good until it is a problem (see Murphy's law). I don't really have a problem with this, so long as people know what they're getting into. It's the people who essentially don't read the system requirements, assuming it was well documented and noticed before buying, and then turn around astonished when their online-only game doesn't work offline, and get annoyed at the crowd of "I told you so"s.

There's shades of grey (cough NSFW), and not every company or gamer does things the same way, but yes, especially with singleplayer, singleplayer mode or singleplayer oriented games being online only sucks the big one, and shouldn't be portrayed as a great thing. There's still plenty of examples of 'offline' games, but there's a growing army of games going online only where they don't need to, and combined with things like EA shutting down servers needed for older, but not actually that old games, it serves as a point against buying a game when I'm making buying decisions.

I'm with Datyedyeguy about the appeal of the Mass Effect series (I've discussed my issues elsewhere so won't ride my hobby-horse around this room too).

And I'm with Grubber788 about Skyrim's combat. Weirdly floaty and insubstantial... particularly after playing Demons/Dark Souls. I have to use First Person view to be sure that I'm actually hitting anyone. Also, at Level 25 - and having completed the Companions' and Mages' quests, I'm not finding it particularly challenging if I take an NPC with me.

I'm also with everyone who called out Batman: AA as mindless button-mashing nonsense.

My own confessions and blasphemies?

I think Achievements and/or Trophies are stupid. Doing exactly what the game expects you to do in the normal course of play is not reason enough to award a notional prize.

Modern games are either too long or too short. Skyrim has 300 hours of content, I understand. What is the point? More 'Goldilocks' campaigns please!

Portable remakes of PS1 or PS2 classics are a lazy money-grabbing exercise (which is saying something in an industry that is about as lazy and money-grabbing as it is possible to get). The joy of playing old games quickly fades when the faults are laid bare in glorious, oft unplayable HD. Let the memories remain fresh, but let the games themselves die.

I've started buy cheap middle-aged games and I'm proud of it. Bioshock, NFS: Shift 2, Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines have all joined my collection this month.

I've started buy cheap, middle-aged games, but I doubt I'll every play them. The games I mentioned in the last paragraph have Assassin's Creed, Batman: AA, and Dead Space ahead of them in my pile.

I've got one...

stryk187 wrote:

2. Chrono Trigger is the best game ever made and if you disagree then you are a sexually deviant racist maybe. Also true
Best soundtrack ever, bar none, this is a non-debatable fact. Characters you actually care about in a JRPG storyline. Large gamespace with awesome time travel mechanic (that interweaves with the story beautifully). VERY well done character progression system in terms of new items and abilities. 40+ hours (or more) of JRPG love in it's heyday. I am still amazed today at how much content they were able to slam into a 16-bit cartridge.

...Chronotrigger is an "overrated" (hate that word) nostalgia-tinted game that is not BAD per se, but shat upon by FF6 and other contemporaries. Music is still pretty good, but most Uematsu scores put it to shame. Not the type of person described.

I like CT better than FF6.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I like CT better than FF6.

Oh, c'mon. THIS is supposed to be a blasphemous, controversial gaming "confession" now? Might as well "confess" that you like having incredible mind-blowing tantric sex with smoking hot blondes slightly more than smoking hot redheads.

hbi2k wrote:

Might as well "confess" that you like having incredible mind-blowing tantric sex with smoking hot blondes slightly more than smoking hot redheads.

HERESY!

hbi2k wrote:

Oh, c'mon. THIS is supposed to be a blasphemous, controversial gaming "confession" now?

Yeah, I've got to agree with this, preference isn't controversial. I suppose you could spin that into one...

No, not everyone must play that game.
I think it's being open minded to check everything out, poke your nose into a thread, watch a few minutes of youtube footage. It's generally a good idea to make a bit of effort to try and expand your horizons, but it's okay not to like something and move on to play what you like. Everyone loves a comfortable bubble, and for a leisure activity/hobby I think it's fine to exist within that bubble. Part of this is recognising what you like and factoring that into future purchases. I'll never play a sports game, never get into a fighting game, etc, and I'm fine with that.

edit: progressing from Elysium's front page Respect article:
It depresses me how much game development has turned into the science of occupying the maximum amount of player time for the minimum amount of input, and how few gamers really care about it.
Occupying time is part of making a game, but it irks me when it seems (to me) to be so much at the forefront of games design.

hbi2k wrote:
Mr GT Chris wrote:

I like CT better than FF6.

Oh, c'mon. THIS is supposed to be a blasphemous, controversial gaming "confession" now? Might as well "confess" that you like having incredible mind-blowing tantric sex with smoking hot blondes slightly more than smoking hot redheads.

Apparently to the guy above it is :).

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I've got one...

...Chronotrigger is an "overrated" (hate that word) nostalgia-tinted game that is not BAD per se, but shat upon by FF6 and other contemporaries. Music is still pretty good, but most Uematsu scores put it to shame. Not the type of person described. :P

I haven't finished Skyrim - and I probably won't bother, either. I just kind of don't care anymore. And though I haven't actually played the DLC with the build your own house/adopt a kid stuff, I have no desire to play based on the very little I've heard. If I want to build a house, I'll play with my LEGO.

I haven't finished Dragon Age either - but I might. We'll see. I do actually like the game.

I have never played FF, Zelda, or an FPS. I've seen them played by other people, but never played myself. I have no real interest in changing that.

I still love Animal Crossing and Dragon Quest games on my DSi. Which probably puts the lack of FPS games in my life into some perspective.

I have a casual and bad relationship with WoW - I don't LOVE the game or think it's amazeballs, and I know it's largely FedEx quests and time wasters for the sake of wasting time/levelling, but I just can't quit.

detroit20 wrote:

My own confessions and blasphemies?

I think Achievements and/or Trophies are stupid. Doing exactly what the game expects you to do in the normal course of play is not reason enough to award a notional prize.

Some achievements require stratergery. There's a bunch in TF2 that I know I would never get unless I actually went out and tried to get them. But yes, the ones that reward you for starting the freakin' game for the first time are bogus (yes, Universe Sandbox, I'm looking at you!)

stryk187 wrote:

2. Chrono Trigger

Best soundtrack ever, bar none, this is a non-debatable fact.

Hey look everyone...someone hasn't played No One Lives Forever. :p

1. I was a Sega Soldier in the Console Wars and I picked the wrong side
I'm not talking about their eventual decline, I just think I had more fun borrowing friends' Super Nintendos more than playing my own Sega. If only I could go back.

2. I don't have strong opinions about games I don't like.
I may not "get it" or I may just not care for gameplay or story. But my avoidance of games is more an absence of liking as opposed to an abundance of dislike or hatred. I like LoL but won't touch HoN. But that doesn't mean I get angry when others play or even compare the game I play negatively. Even in series I love like Final Fantasy. I didn't like XIII-2. There is no "What have you done to my series?!" Just "Well, that could have been better." I guess I just like liking things. Or dislike disliking things.

Aaron D. wrote:
stryk187 wrote:

2. Chrono Trigger

Best soundtrack ever, bar none, this is a non-debatable fact.

Hey look everyone...someone hasn't played No One Lives Forever. :p

Nor Brutal Legend.

Warriorpoet897 wrote:

I've got one...

stryk187 wrote:

2. Chrono Trigger is the best game ever made and if you disagree then you are a sexually deviant racist maybe. Also true
Best soundtrack ever, bar none, this is a non-debatable fact. Characters you actually care about in a JRPG storyline. Large gamespace with awesome time travel mechanic (that interweaves with the story beautifully). VERY well done character progression system in terms of new items and abilities. 40+ hours (or more) of JRPG love in it's heyday. I am still amazed today at how much content they were able to slam into a 16-bit cartridge.

...Chronotrigger is an "overrated" (hate that word) nostalgia-tinted game that is not BAD per se, but shat upon by FF6 and other contemporaries. Music is still pretty good, but most Uematsu scores put it to shame. Not the type of person described. :P

stryk187 = wrong
Warriorpoet897 = right(er)

Rating Chronotrigger (or any other SNES game, for that matter) as being better than Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) is an offense punishable by a 1000 RROD's.

It's battle system was a snooze fest. The story, while potentially good, just wasn't engaging. Sure, it has it's moments, but as a game I played on the SNES and DS, both left me wondering why I was playing it. I apparently beat the SNES version, but can't remember it - that's how "great" it was. I bought the DS version, having my vision blurred by the so-called trusted gaming media, only to trade it away shortly thereafter - just not fun.

If there's one thing I hated about the SNES era, it was games done in the style of Illusion of Gaia and/or Chrono Trigger. Why they ever gained popularity? I'll never know.

Oh, I have a couple more.

I still believe the campaign for the original Modern Warfare was an important step in video game narrative.

It was still mostly a Michael Bay action set piece, but the important thing about video games is how they involve the player and what a difference that action makes. From playing the politician in the beginning who has to watch the city fall into chaos before he is executed, right up to saving some fellow soldiers from a helicopter crash in one of the more difficult, adrenaline fueled set-pieces right before a nuke blows up and makes it all for nothing, and you experience this soldier's final moments (and also surprises everyone by killing off the American soldier and having the Brits save the day). The final moments of the game, where you are on your back and have to headshot the guy in slow motion, are also elevated by the high adrenaline of the level leading up to that point (being chased by a helicopter), getting in a crash, watching a main character get shot in the head right next to you...and then finishing up the post-credits with a quick, time sensitive level where you gotta blow through and then slow-mo headshot another terrorist, giving not only a nice quick little "here's some extra fun" present, but a sort of full-circle "your character has grown from this experience" as well.

The writing may not be the best, the political conflict may mostly be bullsh*t, but for a video game Modern Warfare had a lot of excellent beats that were lost in Activision's push to rush sequels to the market. Sadly, a lot of imitators have missed a lot of the point, including the fact that Infinity Ward's Call of Duty (2 and MW at least) always focused on other countries and not just chest-thumping " 'MURICA IS AWESOME" Michael Bay bullsh*t. Instead what we had is "how can we apply spectacle more impressive than the nuke" without understanding why that nuke made such an impact in the first place.

Bethesda is a developer making the same ten-plus year old game with shinier graphics. But it seems this opinion is not so controversial in this group anymore.

I still think Prey was a fun game. The writing was God awful and a perfect example of how adding "f*ck" a lot doesn't sound more adult, nor does it always emphasize a character's feelings (in fact it really feels forced most of the time). Right after it came out Valve also released a trailer for portal, making its own use of portals pretty poor in comparison. But I liked the weapons, I liked the gravity and spirit puzzles, and I thought the game was basically an excellent throwback to Doom style games with a lot of great set pieces.

I like the original Assassin's Creed more than its sequels.

Hard to really defend this one, but in the end, the throwing knives made traversing rooftops easier than any of the sequels (even after getting the crossbow in Brotherhood or Revelations), I enjoyed all the optional side quests which didn't seem to get irrationally difficult, even if they were repetitive. I also felt AC2 started to force you to play a certain way too much. If you screwed up sneakily assassinating a target in AC1, you could usually still try and kill the guy. AC2 spends so much time in the beginning forcing you into actual combat against most of your targets, most actual sneaky assassinations take place in side quests. The game also started to have a greater tendency to railroad you a lot more.

In the end, I enjoy the first game a lot more simply because the cities and story missions are more fun to explore, and when people say AC2 is a lot better than AC1 I honestly don't get how they can feel that way. At best it feels like they dropped some of what was broken instead of fixing it and then added in a bunch of stuff that was sometimes pointless, sometimes better and sometimes worse.

And now for one that may be very unpopular considering some of the Conference Call discussions...

I think anything making video games into an eSport needs to f*cking die in a God damned fire.

This is probably me just being that sort of an old man hipster that's trying to preserve his hobby and what he escaped into, and most importantly what he escaped from. When I was a kid, I loved games like Final Fantasy and Zelda and Mario and Super Metroid and Mega Man and Earthbound and the list never ends. But all the other kids in my small town that was so full of the jocks are awesome cliche it may as well have been an 80's movie played nothing but Mortal Kombat and sports video games. They carried their same competitive bullsh*t attitude to video games that they had with sports.

And now it feels like it has gotten worse. I'm sitting here talking about how Modern Warfare set the stage to introduce new and improved narrative in video games, but because of these joystick jocks that are all about the bullsh*t masculine posturing and tea bagging and other sh*t they end up elevating the game not for any artistic endeavor, but so they can brag about kill death ratios and other horse crap.

It feels like whenever we get these stupid arguments about how women are treated by gamers, the biggest culprit are eSports and/or the type that are huge into competitive multiplayer, where they don't give a sh*t about campaigns or narrative or actual f*cking art in favor of pretending to be better than other people.

This is the sort of bullsh*t mentality that made organized sports bullsh*t and no fun, and it is pervasive in video games. All this eSports and MLG sh*t doesn't seem to make it any better, either. Even in League of Legends, a game that's supposedly "smarter" than your typical FPS twitch shooter, I hear stories of women being treated like sh*t.

I want anyone dreaming of being an electronic athlete to stop, get off their f*cking couch, go outside and play some real sports. You assholes with your competitive sh*t can have that. I'm okay with that. I've been kicked out of that hobby years ago for not being good enough. Now get the f*ck out of mine before you ruin it more than you already have.