Gaming Confessions & Blasphemy

kazooka wrote:

The game also make the world of Mass Effect feel a lot more constricted and less open. It felt less like you were exploring a brave new frontier and more like you were, well, crawling through a series of video game levels. As much as people apparently hated the Mako in ME1, it went a long way towards making the galaxy feel big and expansive. The ME2 galaxy felt limited to a few tiny population centers dotted in inaccessible wastelands.

They removed all sense of exploration in the sequels. Making the game a generic third-person shooter with a sci-fi setting was probably better for their bottom line, so I can't blame them for the decision, but it made the games much less interesting for me.

I finished all 3 games because I love the universe that they created, but I honestly can't remember a single mission/task from the second or third games. There were some fantastic moments in those games, of course, but that's all I remember. On the other hand, I can still remember a ton about Noveria in ME1. There were at least 3 different ways to get the garage pass and get out of the port; there were at least 2 different ways to get into the room with Benezia. I can't think of anything similar in the latter two games (and again, that might just be because they weren't memorable to me at all). All I think of when thinking of those games is a repeating pattern of straight path -> fight -> straight path -> talk -> straight path -> fight -> objective.

So there's my blasphemy - Mass Effect 1 was the only memorable game in the series.

billt721 wrote:
kazooka wrote:

The game also make the world of Mass Effect feel a lot more constricted and less open. It felt less like you were exploring a brave new frontier and more like you were, well, crawling through a series of video game levels. As much as people apparently hated the Mako in ME1, it went a long way towards making the galaxy feel big and expansive. The ME2 galaxy felt limited to a few tiny population centers dotted in inaccessible wastelands.

They removed all sense of exploration in the sequels. Making the game a generic third-person shooter with a sci-fi setting was probably better for their bottom line, so I can't blame them for the decision, but it made the games much less interesting for me.

So there's my blasphemy - Mass Effect 1 was the only memorable game in the series.

I agree with you two, the sequels killed the sense of "vastness" (if that even is a word, seems it is, it's not lighting up my spellcheck) that was so present in the first Mass Effect. I loved the Mako. And while I enjoyed ME2, and enjoyed the characters, the side quests definitely seemed like I was doing was running around helping people with their personal problems (wait, that's exactly what I was doing). Say what you want about Kaidan, he had his issues, but he never bothered you with them. (here's another gaming confession: yes, I'm a Kaidan fangirl, and I'm not ashamed of it) Unlike the ME2 characters, it was always, "help me with my sister/father/brother/dead boyfriend/etc". And I won't even mention the huge letdown that was the final boss in ME2, I exploded in giggles on my first playthrough.

Heck, and if it's wrong to say/write this, then I don't want to be right.

kexx wrote:

Oooh, speaking fo Tetris:

NES's theme C is the best. There, I said it.

*internet high five*

billt721 wrote:

So there's my blasphemy - Mass Effect 1 was the only memorable game in the series.

Hooboy. There's another one I've Female Doggoed at length on this site. Ditto, basically. I liked the recruitment missions and loyalty missions, the but the overall plot sucked, and I felt like mechanically it felt on the "dumbed down" side of the "dumbed down" vs "streamlined" line. And it didn't help that Shamus Young's deconstruction of what went wrong, plot wise with ME2.

Unrelated, but another confession of mine is that I prefer to play shooters with a console. Yeah, I know, it's "better" on a PC with mouse and keyboard because it is easier to aim. I agree, but I don't care. Precision aiming only really matters in multiplayer, which I don't enjoy anyway, aim-assist is good enough, and fluidity of movement is better with thumbsticks than WASD. Also, and this is less of a blasphemy I think, despite having inverted the Y-axis in console games for the past few years, I'm deliberately switching to uninverted. Partially because some games (though not many, especially this generation) don't allow you to change, but mostly because my girlfriend plays uninverted and it is a pain to play pass-the-controller co-op if we have to switch controller settings every turn. I've only done it playing Borderlands 2 so far, but it hasn't been all that tough to switch.

Friends don't let friends play with inverted Y-axis. It's that simple. You people should burn in a fiery fire of doom!!!

Although I'm an inverter, it's a muscle memory thing and if I play 'normal' for a while I'll train myself to play well enough, on both pad and mouse.

Also, Mass Effect really is the gift that keeps on giving to forums.

Scratched wrote:

Also, Mass Effect really is the gift that keeps on giving to forums.

Just you wait until the GOTY discussions.

On that note, I reckon 2012 is probably the most disappointing year in gaming.

I refuse to back that statement up with facts.

Grubber788 wrote:

On that note, I reckon 2012 is probably the most disappointing year in gaming.

I refuse to back that statement up with facts.

I agree. Not so much bad, but a lack of any great highlights compared to recent history.

Glad to see some dislike of the later Mass Effect games. I'm stuck in two because I just don't care. The story is completely uninteresting, I have zero motivation to do stuff, whereas I ate up the first game, never touching the brakes.

Related to that, Bioware does not have good writing. They may have good writers, but as a whole the games are tedious to get through. What they need is a merciless editor who cuts off some 50% of the boring text they stuff the games with and puts the rest where it should be - within gameplay. Much of the best stuff of ME1 was hidden in the codex, which is just all kinds of stupid.

In the same vein, the "morality" systems of most games are stupid. If you can't even halfway write something plausible and interesting for all the options you're giving, why are you even doing it? This is one thing Mass Effects have done correctly - playing as a renegade was actually interesting.

GTAs are horrible to play. How is it even possible that they can get the controls and cameras so wrong, iteration after iteration? And people still love them? The only unreservedly good game in the series has been the original DS version of Chinatown Wars.

jlaakso wrote:

Related to that, Bioware does not have good writing. They may have good writers, but as a whole the games are tedious to get through. What they need is a merciless editor who cuts off some 50% of the boring text they stuff the games with and puts the rest where it should be - within gameplay. Much of the best stuff of ME1 was hidden in the codex, which is just all kinds of stupid.

Kind of linked in with that, I think owing to their history they've got an uneasy relationship with game length, and that they feel they need to pad it out.

Mass Effect specifically is the kind of game where (although there's no chance of it happening) I'd like to see what they could do with a blank slate and restart development of the series from the start, not a remake but with all the lessons they've learned. You could apply that to any game though.

As a massive life-long Nintendo fan, I think Mario 64 is awful. I've never talked to another person who remotely agrees with this (there's always someone who agrees on Halo) so this must be me. Admittedly, I never owned a Nintendo 64 but I did play this game at launch at various places as well as some of the DS remake and I just don't get it. The camera is horrendous to control, it's zoomed in way too close, the levels are confusing, the platforming is made difficult by the camera position and you could regularly get lost. I love Mario games but I still think this is bad.

jlaakso wrote:

Glad to see some dislike of the later Mass Effect games. I'm stuck in two because I just don't care. The story is completely uninteresting, I have zero motivation to do stuff, whereas I ate up the first game, never touching the brakes.

I liked ME1, but ME2 just fell apart. Mysterious cigarette dude, really?? Hit the reset button and gotta get a whole new team together - really? And the finale? Oy ve. The more I learned about the ME universe the more I disliked it (the first game felt like it had a lot of potential that just went nowhere in the second game).

And the solution to "Mako driving sucks" and "our inventory system sucks" shouldn't be "junk it all" - it should be "fix it." As somebody else said earlier, I think ME2 is a better shooter, but that's not why I was into the series to begin with.

I still have ME3 sitting on my desk unopened. Maybe I'll get around to it some day.

Related to that, Bioware does not have good writing. They may have good writers, but as a whole the games are tedious to get through. What they need is a merciless editor who cuts off some 50% of the boring text they stuff the games with and puts the rest where it should be - within gameplay. Much of the best stuff of ME1 was hidden in the codex, which is just all kinds of stupid.

Bioware writing is bad, but they get a lot of credit since so much other video game writing is even worse. It's a sad state of affairs when something like the most generic campy sci-fi or fantasy is the standard bearer for storytelling in "AAA" games. I liked Dragon Age: Origins despite the lame fantasy tropes.

Bioware sometimes gets the details of character interaction right, almost in spite of this. But usually they miss, too.

In the same vein, the "morality" systems of most games are stupid. If you can't even halfway write something plausible and interesting for all the options you're giving, why are you even doing it? This is one thing Mass Effects have done correctly - playing as a renegade was actually interesting.

Binary morality systems are bad. ME's is possibly better written than some but you still end up gaming the system to min/max one morality or the other, and that makes your choices feel more like QTEs than actual decisions. They would be better games if they didn't have good/bad meters to fill up.

Garden Ninja wrote:

Unrelated, but another confession of mine is that I prefer to play shooters with a console. Yeah, I know, it's "better" on a PC with mouse and keyboard because it is easier to aim. I agree, but I don't care. Precision aiming only really matters in multiplayer, which I don't enjoy anyway, aim-assist is good enough, and fluidity of movement is better with thumbsticks than WASD. Also, and this is less of a blasphemy I think, despite having inverted the Y-axis in console games for the past few years, I'm deliberately switching to uninverted. Partially because some games (though not many, especially this generation) don't allow you to change, but mostly because my girlfriend plays uninverted and it is a pain to play pass-the-controller co-op if we have to switch controller settings every turn. I've only done it playing Borderlands 2 so far, but it hasn't been all that tough to switch.

I just don't find the hand placement for Mouse + Keyboard comfortable, I don't find stretching fingers across the keyboard comfortable (maybe if I built muscle memory like I have for QWERTY typing that would be less of a problem), and I agree, sticks are more fluid movement. I've never been able to find a sensitivity for mouse look that I am comfortable with.

And then there was that Assault level in UT2K4 where no matter how high I set the sensitivity I had to keep lifting my mouse, resetting it on one edge of the mousepad, and then swiping. People told me to get a mouse with better DPI or whatever. I say "if the game can't compensate on its own then f*ck that noise".

Oddly enough, I turn Aim Assist off when I have the chance or remember to do so. Some games aim assist is very obvious. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City had THREE different types of aim assist, and when I shut them all off the number of headshots increased greatly.

Scratched wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

On that note, I reckon 2012 is probably the most disappointing year in gaming.

I refuse to back that statement up with facts.

I agree. Not so much bad, but a lack of any great highlights compared to recent history.

I dunno, when I look back I feel like I played some great games. I think it's just some of the titles that people expected to be great and awesome, like Mass Effect 3 or Assassin's Creed 3, were disappointing for some reason. Then again, XCom and Dishonored have both turned out great.

Maybe it's just some of the truly heavy hitters like Bioshock Infinite or The Last of Us being 2013.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

As a massive life-long Nintendo fan, I think Mario 64 is awful. I've never talked to another person who remotely agrees with this (there's always someone who agrees on Halo) so this must be me. Admittedly, I never owned a Nintendo 64 but I did play this game at launch at various places as well as some of the DS remake and I just don't get it. The camera is horrendous to control, it's zoomed in way too close, the levels are confusing, the platforming is made difficult by the camera position and you could regularly get lost. I love Mario games but I still think this is bad.

I hated Mario 64, too. The controls were awful and it was frustrating to play.

I thought of it as more of a tech demo to prove that Nintendo "had 3D," but it still looked like ass compared to PC/Mac games at the time.

Okay, I finally have some good ones to post, I think.

RPGs (including MMOs) are for kids; now that I'm all grown up, I don't feel the need to be someone else nearly as strongly, and game "stories" bore me to no end.
That said, I played FO:NV recently and still enjoyed it, but my completionism has massively attrophied. I had a friend watching me play Skyrim earlier in the year and he was nearly apoplectic with rage as I button mashed my way through every dialogue/story section. I think, essentially, my own life story has become far more interesting than any game story (to me).

I have never finished the campaign in any CoD game, despite owning everything since MW1.
I have no interest in auto-aiming my way through robots for bad story and meaningless achievements. I play CoD solely for the multiplayer.

Dakuna wrote:

Okay, I finally have some good ones to post, I think.

RPGs (including MMOs) are for kids; now that I'm all grown up, I don't feel the need to be someone else nearly as strongly, and game "stories" bore me to no end.
That said, I played FO:NV recently and still enjoyed it, but my completionism has massively attrophied. I had a friend watching me play Skyrim earlier in the year and he was nearly apoplectic with rage as I button mashed my way through every dialogue/story section. I think, essentially, my own life story has become far more interesting than any game story (to me).

c) I never finished FO:NV. I intentionally avoided finishing it because I didn't want to be disappointed in the ending.

I loved the story of my courier in FO:NV so much, I didn't want it to ever end - so I didn't let it. I just parked my Courier on a cliff somewhere instead of going to the scripted finale.

Actually refusing to finish a game because I love it so much is something I've never done before or since, but it felt like the right thing to do. I mentioned earlier that I think of FO:NV as perhaps my favorite video game, and I don't know whether failing to see the ending is a response to that fact or a partial cause of it.

d) I can't stand Skyrim

The setting, story, and dialogue is just so cliched and bad. God, talk about boring generic fantasy. And unlike you, I can't simply ignore it, because I also find the combat system mediocre.

jlaakso wrote:

Related to that, Bioware does not have good writing. They may have good writers, but as a whole the games are tedious to get through. What they need is a merciless editor who cuts off some 50% of the boring text they stuff the games with and puts the rest where it should be - within gameplay. Much of the best stuff of ME1 was hidden in the codex, which is just all kinds of stupid.

...wait, is that controversial? I thought it was accepted fact.

kexx wrote:

Friends don't let friends play with inverted Y-axis. It's that simple. You people should burn in a fiery fire of doom!!!

There are now two reasons you're not allowed to fly the company jet.

heavyfeul wrote:

I bought Bayonetta and Heavenly Sword for reasons beyond just the game play.

IMAGE(http://www.autowallpapers.org/thumbnails/large_Bayonetta_Wide_35197.jpg)

IMAGE(http://www.gamewallpapers.com/previews_480x300/wallpaper_heavenly_sword_07.jpg)

You would love Catwoman in Arkham City. She has fantastic gameplay.

MojoBox wrote:

It was like being able to break out of the confines of Tetris and go punch the jerk tossing all those blocks at you right in the face. Awesome.

Yeah, that was cool. For about five minutes. :p

I think it's interesting that people hate some of the games mentioned though. I mean, I had my aforementioned issues with Portal, but I still thought it was a great game. Just not perfect, as some people seem to think. I was disappointed in HL2, but I don't think it's a terrible game. It's just that it does some things better than others (as all games do), and the weaker parts tend to push my buttons more than some other games.

Oh, here's a blasphemy: I don't like the grav gun. The only time I enjoyed it was when it gets super-powered at the end. When I figured out what it could do, I'm pretty sure I said (out loud) "I am teh uber-Gordon!" as I ran around mowing down Combine. So make that a blasphemy and a confession, I guess.

I think the only reason the first-person shooter is such a big genre is because it's the only one that worked in 3-D up until recently. Or to be more specific, the era between Sega Saturn/N64/Playstation and Xbox/GameCube/Playstation 2 was horrible compared to the SNES.

I don't know how PC gamers would feel, but I'd consider isometric games to go similarly with SNES games as they're still limited to 2D game design, just with the illusion of three dimensional movement. However, while everyone else was going nuts over 3D graphics on the Playstation and N64, I was longing for a return to SNES style of gameplay. 3D games controlled awkwardly. They looked terrible. And they continued to control awkwardly into the Xbox, PS2 and GameCube with a handful of exceptions.

It feels like this generation developers have finally started to grasp movement in 3D space, but nothing is still nearly as polished as games had a tendency to be on the SNES (considering how many games were mostly limited to 2D space or navigation on PC, I'd wager same holds true there for the most part, but PC was dominated by FPS games, strategy games, isometric RPG's, simulationist games that were in the first person (I'm making this broad to cover MechWarrior style and flight simulator) and point-and-click adventure.

I enjoyed listening to the discussion and was determined to lift the deep dark rock from my shoulders and reveal the deep cuts, so here we go:
1. I have never owned a Nintendo home console and have no immediate desire to

This is generally a product of my childhood, my first console was the Sega Master System followed by the Mega Drive, then Playstation, Playstation 2 and currently the PS3. This is not to say I didn't dable with nintendo I played brief parts of the Marios and the Zeldas but never really gelled with any of it. However I did own the Gameboy, the Gameboy Colour, DS and DSi.

2. I have never played Bioshock, any of them

I have both Bioshock 1 and 2 sitting waiting to be played on the PS3 but since I have heard them praised so much especially by the GWJers, I fear if I don't like them I may be shunned from the community.

3. I have only played and completed Final Fantasy VIII, IX, X and X2. I never made it outside of Midgar in FF VII

When I played VII originally I think I wasn't in the right head space to play it, so I don't think it grabbed me. I can't go back and play it now, I'm not very good when going back to the older graphic games, it mars my enjoyment. I have in recent times replayed X however and absolutely loved it, toss up between it and IX for my favourite.

I think I have more gaming sins but I can't think of them right now.

Budo wrote:
heavyfeul wrote:

I bought Bayonetta and Heavenly Sword for reasons beyond just the game play.

IMAGE(http://www.autowallpapers.org/thumbnails/large_Bayonetta_Wide_35197.jpg)

IMAGE(http://www.gamewallpapers.com/previews_480x300/wallpaper_heavenly_sword_07.jpg)

You would love Catwoman in Arkham City. She has fantastic gameplay.

Way ahead of you.

Halo is a better First Person Shooter then Half Life - From gun feel, weapon balance, audio feedback, to enemy AI, Halo is just more engaging as a shooter. Sure, Half life has some fun physics puzzles scattered throughout but the actual gun combat is just very bland. I don't play FPS games for story, I play them to have fun with the gunplay and AI (With the exception of Bioshock). Its time for a source engine makeover!

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

As a massive life-long Nintendo fan, I think Mario 64 is awful. I've never talked to another person who remotely agrees with this (there's always someone who agrees on Halo) so this must be me.

High five buddy. Hated it! Playing that game actually prevented (re:SAVED) me from asking for an N64 for Christmas. Instead I got Quake and the original Red Alert for my PC. Way better choice for me.

EvilDead wrote:

Halo is a better First Person Shooter then Half Life - From gun feel, weapon balance, audio feedback, to enemy AI, Halo is just more engaging as a shooter. Sure, Half life has some fun physics puzzles scattered throughout but the actual gun combat is just very bland. I don't play FPS games for story, I play them to have fun with the gunplay and AI (With the exception of Bioshock). Its time for a source engine makeover!

I love me some Half Life, but +1. Halo still has the best combat of any shooter around. Every encounter is engaging. I cant tell if the Halo hate on this site is primarily from stubborn PC only guys or a bunch of dudes that just don't like varied and interesting shooter combat. Either way, it puzzles me. Sorry GWJ, but the masses are right on this one.

Dyni wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Halo is a better First Person Shooter then Half Life - From gun feel, weapon balance, audio feedback, to enemy AI, Halo is just more engaging as a shooter. Sure, Half life has some fun physics puzzles scattered throughout but the actual gun combat is just very bland. I don't play FPS games for story, I play them to have fun with the gunplay and AI (With the exception of Bioshock). Its time for a source engine makeover!

I love me some Half Life, but +1. Halo still has the best combat of any shooter around. Every encounter is engaging. I cant tell if the Halo hate on this site is primarily from stubborn PC only guys or a bunch of dudes that just don't like varied and interesting shooter combat. Either way, it puzzles me. Sorry GWJ, but the masses are right on this one.

I love me some Half-Life 2 (never played the original) but I have to agree with this as well.

Dyni wrote:
EvilDead wrote:

Halo is a better First Person Shooter then Half Life - From gun feel, weapon balance, audio feedback, to enemy AI, Halo is just more engaging as a shooter. Sure, Half life has some fun physics puzzles scattered throughout but the actual gun combat is just very bland. I don't play FPS games for story, I play them to have fun with the gunplay and AI (With the exception of Bioshock). Its time for a source engine makeover!

I love me some Half Life, but +1. Halo still has the best combat of any shooter around. Every encounter is engaging. I cant tell if the Halo hate on this site is primarily from stubborn PC only guys or a bunch of dudes that just don't like varied and interesting shooter combat. Either way, it puzzles me. Sorry GWJ, but the masses are right on this one.

I agree with both of you, but still feel that Halo's gunplay could get tighter.

I mean - why no iron sights? Why doesn't my accuracy improve when I crouch?

Meanwhile, I do love that I can use the difficulty slider in Halo to change between "shooting gallery" and "intelligent AI that treats me like the wrong end of a shooting gallery". Nothing like going through a Spartan Ops mission with a dozen Knights taking turns destroying me before I can even take down a single one because I'm playing on Legendary.

My problem with Halo is I find the shooting the only good part of that game. Everything else about it is pretty mediocre. Especially the cut and paste, rushed, confusing level design. If you want to compare it to Half-Life then Halo's level design becomes even more embarrassing considering Valve did more with much, much less.

And I'm not sure I'm sold on the idea that it's all that "varied" either, most enemies have one critical weakness that's easily exploitable. Grunts are grenade fodder, Elites just need their shields taken down and shot in the head, Hunters can be one shotted incredibly easily. In fact, you can pretty much just roll through the game with a plasma pistol for shields and a regular pistol for everything else.

Until you face the flood of course, then the game just turns into a tepid pool of piss that I'll pass on. I've played Halo up to the library dozens of times, I've only beat it once or twice.

gore wrote:

c) I never finished FO:NV. I intentionally avoided finishing it because I didn't want to be disappointed in the ending.

I loved the story of my courier in FO:NV so much, I didn't want it to ever end - so I didn't let it. I just parked my Courier on a cliff somewhere instead of going to the scripted finale.

Actually refusing to finish a game because I love it so much is something I've never done before or since, but it felt like the right thing to do. I mentioned earlier that I think of FO:NV as perhaps my favorite video game, and I don't know whether failing to see the ending is a response to that fact or a partial cause of it.

I felt that way at the end of FO3. I just kept wanting to play, so I made sure I had to the DLC installed before doing the final mission, but I still

Spoiler:

missed losing daddy Liam Neeson

But I'm almost the opposite with most games. Unless the DLC is streamlined into the middle of gameplay (and not extra missions tacked on at the end), I'm probably not going to play it.

I've still got the ME3 DLC out there waiting, as well as the two packs for Borderlands 2, and a few other games. Basically, I've beaten the game, and don't want to go back into those worlds because my character's story is over.

Don't even get me started with the denouement in Red Dead Redemption. The moment the camera fades in from black,

Spoiler:

as you're standing over the graves of John and his wife, and you're in the boots of his son

it was over for me. I tried to go back and finish up some completionist things, but I just couldn't.