Can’t really be mad at MGS5 demo considering where it took place, and with BB just waking up from a 9 year coma. Also, its a MGS game I can assume it plays like an improved MGS4
Konami gets a pass because Konami delivers. And when the information starts to flow its non-stop. I’ll give Konami that. If we knew where the generation was headed before we said MGS4 was weak, in comparison to whats out these days…
Konami gets a pass because Kojima writes inane bs that he doesn’t understand himself and people think he’s genius.
Your not the first person , especially on SRK to say this lol, but all of you who think this way are clearly very ignorant about the situation and not aware that it isn’t always so black and white like most things in life. Instead you guys choose to fall back on truisms that offer about as much insight as “the sun is hot”, “the ocean is wet”, “don’t stand in the middle of traffic”, “don’t vote for Mitt Romney”. SRK isn’t known to be the bastion of the casual gamer so saying shit like “don’t buy bad games” here is preaching to the choir. To illustrate my point let me ask you this question which I’ve asked others on here, but they never answered presumably as to not look like a hypocrite. Anyways:
If a new game from one of your favorite developers and/or franchises was being published by a company you abhor, would you buy said game or not? Obviously an answer to such a loaded question hinges on several factors such as how much you enjoy the developer/game in question, how much you hate the publisher, etc but at it’s core the question is a test of juxtaposing principles. So I’m curious what side Mr.“there is never any gray area” you align your convictions on.
For me generally the answer is a yes. For example I hate EA with a passion, but Mass Effect and Dead Space are my 2 favorite 3D game franchises so as long as the quality both series have shown continues I will gladly throw my money at EA. Full disclosure: I’m aware of the very negative user reviews ME3 got and to a much lesser degree the disappointment some had with DS3, but that won’t stop me from buying both games at some point, be aide the first 2 installments in both series were that GDLK
I feel sorry for you and anyone who has found so little joy from games this generation love while others like myself have for the most part been very happy.
Anyways back on topic all I have to say about OP is that I hate it when anything be it a film trailer, game trailer, or whatever reveals way too much and ruins all the surprise and possible suspense it may have. Information blackouts are stupid as hell especially for games that have 0 fucking marketing and are left to die like Remember Me, but the opposite AKA spoiling the fuck out of 99% of the shit leaving nothing for the audience to find out for themselves is much worse. Publishers/developers have to walk a fine line between revealing too much or too little of an upcoming game, balancing fan curiosity and interest with the integrity of the gaming experience to be seen with fresh eyes.
Ideally. But no. When I was growing up, there was no accessible internet. There was no video game channels. You had word of mouth and magazines (GamePro/GameFan/NintnedoPower/EGM). Too many that was a golden age of video games. And with no twitter, no e-mails, etc.
The ‘golden age’ excelled with out ANY lines of communication. Hell even things like E3 and the such were limited.
The way some industries and companies have shifted to social media has ‘warped’ the consumer into thinking how much input they ‘should’ have on something. The problem is the consumer has no fucking clue what they are talking about 99% of the time, especially when it comes to game development. Consumers don’t see bottom lines. Think about a couple months ago when they started talking about the cost ot add a single character to Skullgirls. People were blown away by this. Now if people are blown away by that, should they really have any ‘real’ input on how to make a game?
People who aren’t in an industry don’t understand the resources it consumes to do something, so you have ot balance budget and meet timelines, if you are listening to Joe Public constantly, you’ll go back and forth back and forth, and end up burning money, to end up with a game that only a niche market can even appreciate. SFxT? The negative reactions to it weren’t driven by the gameplay, people moaned and growned because of gems and on-disc DLC. For its part, Capcom - with Seth’s help at the time - actually did ALOT of listening to the community and continues to do so, but people are still up in arms about on-disc dlc and gems, or games like SF4 - few care about as its run its initial course.
Now adding to it all is competition. Back in the ‘golden era’, information was relatively slow to get out and system tools made implementation of things moderate at best speed wise. Now, if I’m developing a FPS and I hear CoD has a new ‘Rambo’ class they are adding that’s based on stealth and knifing, its EASY for me to lift that idea, make it my own, and with such a highly publicized street date - I can beat it. Then as necessary I can tweak after the fact if there are any glaring balance issues.
So as a developer, I’d have ot keep my information in house so it doesn’t get ‘swiped’, and I cna’t listen to Joe Public as the elitist will make my games to niche and inaccessible, the idiots will blow my budget, and the conformist will have me ripping off every game that ‘just came out’ that has some new feature that I couldn’t steal before because they kept the information to themselves.
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Read the whole post playa… I also said this:
Looking at my stack of PS3 games(and a few 360 titles I still have, even though the 360 is nothing more than a memory after its SECOND RROD), I have titles from shitty developers/publishers such as EA, Capcom, Sony, Square-Enix and Ubisoft, so to answer your query, yes, if a bad publisher made a good game, yeah I would buy it, because THAT’S WHAT I WANT- for them to MAKE GOOD GAMES and stop selling shit.
I don’t buy shit games. I buy good(IMO) games that I enjoy. I could give a fuck less about what Johnny-COD-Bro likes, I only care about what matches my tastes. A bunch of glorified interactive movies don’t do that for me, but apparently I’m a relic of a bygone era who just wants to play fucking video GAMES, not ‘experience’ a ‘moving, gripping’ tale of a middle-aged white male on a ‘cinematic journey’ that has all of about 20 minutes of me actually pressing a button or interacting at all beyond pressing up on the analog stick to get to the next cutscene.
TL;DR version: Yes, I am a grumpy old man. I hate the majority of this pandering new shit that is just Dragon’s Lair with a higher polygon count and 450% of its budget. Companies have to spoonfeed info because they’ve forgotten how to make compelling gameplay and have to rely on ‘hype’ and mystery to garner interest in their 5-6 hour movies that cost far too much for what they actually offer.
That pressing buttons stuff reminds me that I need to actually try finishing Castlevania Rebirth someday. Key word there being try. Remember the days when progress in games was measured in challenges completed, not hours spent wading through QTEs?
Are you saying this is directly related to the decline in the quality of games or no?
Because if not I think the ideas are separated. I dont think gamers should have literally all the input when making a game, but games arent as good as they used to be so they would be better off listening to be completely honest.
I bet it would be insulting as a game dev, but its the truth. They making shit these days.
No, they are not directly related. My point was that ‘listening’ to the public is not some mystical ‘answer’ and actually will make things worse 9 out of 10 times. People moaned and growned about Ultra bars in SF4 and X-factor in MvC3 - yet they don’t realize how much intensity they both add to the games. It’s a combination of ignorance and “I should be the best” - where the average CoD player feels like either they are the best, or the person who does better than them has no life and plays 24-7 or if the average person loses in SF, its because the other person either has no life or is doing something ‘cheap’. But if say SRK developed a fighting game, more than likely it would end up being a super boring footsy-fest 9000 or something so complicated that no one outside of our community would be able to follow it.
Now to hurt feelings, people who think the quality of games has fallen are idiots. Or ignorant. You choose. It’s pretty simple to grab an emulator and play some of the old shit. go back and play some old shit, then come back and play some new shit. Try playing GoldenEye on the N64 and then play a CoD. Oh nose - there’s no jump button (0_0)’. Play the original Mario’s and compare them to the new ones. The feature sets have grown exponentially. This is a fighting game site - go back and play Killer Instinct…or Primal Rage…or Fighter’s History…or Samurai Showdown…or Mortal Kombat…or Street Fighter 2, especially the earlier versions. Not as engaging as the new shit now is it?
The problem with new games isn’t the games. It’s expectations by the consumer. Especially people in the under 30 bracket who came up during the SNES->PSX/N64->PS2 era and saw the huge leaps in graphical progress and how it affected gameplay…people who grew up during the shift from 2D to 3D. They expect ideas and technology to continue to improve at that same rate. I myself am a little guilty on the tech front see any comment I made about the PS4 heh. People expect God of War 4 to be leaps and bounds more ‘innovative’ than God of War 1, because they saw Mario grow from his sprite days to true 3d motion with momentum. GoW1 was a genre defining title, if they change it too much, it loses its initial appeal, if it doesn’t change people are disappointed - its no different than being a music artist. Street Fighter 4, upon release, there were alot of people bitching that it was too much like previous SFs. Like really? That’s your complaint? if they changed up the formula as much as people on here were asking, they should have just made friggin Guilty Gear or something.
And then, just to pour Listerine into a wound already dosed in salt, the internet magnifies EVERYTHING. Back in the day, if you didn’t know how to beat a certain part, you had to talk to friends or wait and ‘hope’ that GamePro tackles it in next month’s issue. Now, the moment there is a hiccup in a game I can just google a solution from my cellphone. Or if you are trying to unlock something, instead of doing it the intended way you can go on the internet and find a shortcut. This has DESTROYED replay value. This has DESTROYED difficulty to the point where developers have to do ‘stupid’ stuff to make things difficult like ohk or massive volumes of enemies to wear you down. It is NOT the developers fault, and its not the game’s fault. Before - you played games alone, now it’s essentially you and a million people playing it together - so the difficulty is completely skewed. On top of that - with the internet there are a million voices, so you have a million people analyzing, bringing up negative points and complaining about those instead of highlighting the good shit. Look no further than SRK GD, look at the movie threads or the music threads where they are 75% bitching instead of praising or recognizing.
TLTR - Games haven’t gone down in quality, are expectations have just grown ridiculously without fair adjustment for things such as the internet or progressions in technology.
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I’m convinced Xbox One is a result of an intra-Microsoft competition where the aim is to waste as much money as possible on as irrelevant a feature as possible and then putting it all in one product. Including being unreasonably goddamn fucking huge.
No one understands the Wii success. Is more techtechtech, more social media, more every kind of irrelevant bullshit imaginable.
I haven’t peeped the M$ conference yet, but no.
The Wii’s ‘INITIAL’ success was predicated on a combination of ‘gimmick’ and ‘price’. Nothing more. Don’t try and build it up to be more than it was. Even taking saturation into account, one can look at the current sales of consoles and software and see M$ is kicking Nintendo’s ass with regards ot home consoles - and for a good reason. Why did I get a 360 over a PS3 - especially since hte PS3 also was a bluray player?
Because my boys were on there. Social reasons. (yes I own all the consoles now including a Wii U).
I said it when Sony did there thing. The new consoles are too early. They are at least a year early, if not two, as the benefits of new hardware won’t be noticeable to most short of the tech demoes that everyone is going to prance around showing, even though the games themselves will never achieve the same level of detail. Since hte hardware won’t drop jaws initially, everyone is going to run around touting little touches, and other ‘more easily tangible’ aspects of what they’ve been working on. It just is what it is. But even Nintendo - trying to follow in the Wii’s footstep has stumbled horribly out the gate…and I say that as an owner of a Wii U.
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Wii U is a 180 degree turn from the Wii’s values, not a thing following in the Wii’s footsteps. It’s a dead doornail of a console, and deserves to be so.
I dont think my expectations are too high, games are just disappointing. I’m not a graphics whore or someone who has a SF2 shrine in my closet, I’m not elitist but I do feel like games this past 10 years have lost a lot of the magic. Only a few standout titles that really shook it up and provided a real experience without all the necessary DLC and providing real replay-value that increased the experience, thats not an opinion thats a fact. There arent a lot of games this go round that are giving you a quality piece of work out the box.
This is why I hold a select few games like Bayonetta and MGS in such a high regard (minus Metal Gear Rising anyway) games done well, with a core point and a real emphasis on reliving the experience multiple times. And not microtransaction-ing you to DEATH.
Just gimme a good game I only gotta buy once. They cant even do that right.
Thats the thing, the internet is so vast now that three things have happened:
- Everyone has an opinion
2.Everyone speaks their opinion
3.Everyone thinks they’re right
Opinions are like noses, most people have them and hate being told when theirs is wrong. Companies can’t really listen to fans if the fanbase is split 8 ways to Sunday on everything. For example if Capcom listened to the FGC on designing SF5
This split becomes worse when more information is announced. From what I’ve noticed, fighting tends to be calmer when people are equally as ignorant on something. I could be wrong, but people tend to not let facts get in the way of their opinions and will actively fight facts that go against their opinions. Naughty Dog is smart, people can’t really complain about something they are interested in and know nothing about.
Also, while I agree that Naughty Dog’s last forays at multiplayer have been…interesting, I’m glad the company has the drive and willpower to keep pushing forward to creating an impeccable multiplayer experience.
But here’s the irony, you well didn’t lamblast DLC, but speak down to it, yet here we are with games costing mroe than EVER to make, but the cost not ‘really’ going up, yet people get irritated about asking to spend more if they so choose? It’s all about expectations and perceived value. People don’t realize how many games came out during the ‘golden era’. I’d wager the percent of ‘transcendent titles’ is pretty similar to the 80s and 90s. Shovelware isn’t ‘new’. Remember when EVERY movie had a SNES & Genesis game? I think there was even a friggin ‘Scream’ game.
And just to make sure you get my point - I’m not referencing just graphics. There was a HUGE shift after the SNES - towards 3D gameplay - that in itself opened up world’s of new gameplay, and as the graphic power of consoles got stronger, what we could do in 3D got better and better - gameplay wise. IT went beyond 7th Guest & Myst to Resident Evil & Tomb Raider. But since that leap, we haven’t made any large leaps, because ‘it’s just not there to make’. Bayonetta is nothing but DMC with a female protagonist. MGS from my view has been the same type of game for forever…even hearkening back to the 80s.
And you mention replay-value - that’s something else I hit on. Imagine playing SF4 without SRK. Without the internet. Do you know how much longer the game would have lasted to casuals? But our ability to easily study the best, watch counter-pick matches, study combo-vids, talk to people about strategies on how to beat stuff has COMPLETELY altered the replay value. For those hungry to be the best at something, it’s great, but it means that things get explored quicker. There is no more ‘Save that shit for Nationals’. We no longer have a Ninja Gaiden moment where you have to figure out by yourself that you HAVE to get hit by the bird to make the jump, you just Google That Shit (GTS). And rewinding history abit…most golden age games were beatable in a single sit down session as they didn’t have the constant save points. By SNES you had more RPG like titles using save, but shit like Contra was based on an Arcade game, so one or two hours of mashing and you beat it. Now, how many games can be beaten in a single sit-down?
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Well of course we wont see eye to eye you think Bayonetta is a female DMC. Its the best hack n slash comb-based game ever created.
The 80s MG were totally different from the 90s MGS btw. Even from MGS 1 to 3 there was a dramatic shift. Regardless the series itself is more refined and put together and at its worst executed very clean with maybe a few missteps. Its not a Ninja Gaiden 3 or Lollipop Chainsaw. Half assed over hyped thrown together etc etc
Again youre saying that I’m saying companies should listen to EVERYONE. I’m saying they should get feedback as they make games and you are disagreeing but hey you would be hard pressed to really think games like Asuras Wrath and Marvel 3 wouldnt have or couldnt have benefited from real user feedback. Even though I felt like the MK9 patches went a little overboard you have to appreciate the fact that midway was on the forums really listening and tweaking the game based on what the community wanted. I dont believe this concept about the “majority begin ignorant” or course there are going to be a difference in opinions the whole point is to just analyze the concerns, not do absolutely nothing because you cant please everybody…thats ridiculous.
But hey we can agree to disagree.
But they do get feedback! they go thru playtesting. Then like Diablo 3, people whine grown and bitch that 'we’ve been playing a beta for a whole year! :facepalm:
I can’t comment on AW at all, didn’t bother as I heard it was QTE-fest.
I can comment on MvC3 though. And no I don’t feel user feedback would amount to anything ‘better’. Like I said earlier, it would evolve the game too much, or devolve the game too much. There is ‘balance changes’ and look! Everyone was bitching about Sentinel early on, yet in the time-frame Capcom super-nerfed his health, people figured out how to beat him, so not only is he a shell of himself, he’s pretty ‘crap’ tier and reduced to ‘assist whore’. Then there are ‘engine’ changes. The only engine change that needed toying with was X-factor consistency. User feedback wasn’t needed for this…it wsa obvious after the game had been played by the masses, but its not something that you can skullgirl - take to a tournament, get feedback, and adjust…it has to play itself out, or you end up in another Sentinel situation. The other 90% of user feedback would amount to “add megaman!” just for everyone to ignore him like they did in MvC2.
Companies have internal playtesters who should be capable of pointing out the issues. But no matter what you do the customers aren’t going to be happy. It’s a lose/lose. If you give the consumer a game to ‘correct’ - then you shipped an unfinished game and people are beta-testing it for a year idiots. If you ship a finished game, then people feel it is always missing this or that to be exactly how they want it. If it’s going to be a lose/lose situation, then you do what will cost you the least and make you the most…which is what most companies do, higher people who know their shit to go thru and tell them how it is (see Razer and their joystick). But to open up for general populous is inviting trouble - plain and simple.
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Well the customer isnt going to be happy because eventually the game will flesh itself out and if the bottom and top tiers are too skewered then theres going to be an issue, wouldnt that be a fair assessment?
I hate to put them against each other but take a game like Soul Calibur 2 where even though you had a “bottom” tier you still had a game with fundamentals and even a bottom tier with effective tools to be competitive. Tekken 6 was the same way. Bottom tier was seriously lacking, but with good fundamentals you could hold your own, Koren and Japanese high level Tekken have shown the last 15 years that tiers in tekken are trivial.
Capcom fighters…not so much. So then lies the issue. Its not that people are going to complain no matter what, its just sometimes the reasoning behind a character being unplayable in a fighting game really gets under the skin of a lot of people. Myself included. Why not address those issues?
It’s the typical problem of companies building up consumer’s expectations by overselling their product. If you get people so hyped that no matter how good your product is, they’ll be let down, then you’ve failed. Overselling/ultra-hype hasn’t worked in the music or movie industries, so why would it work in the game industry?
On another note, I don’t get why people think the DMC Reboot is bad. I really don’t. It’s a fine game. Maybe it just because I didn’t follow all the hype/info leading up to its release, but I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit, and I’ve been a DMC fan since the first game came out.
I think it’s funny people keep using Asura’s Wrath as some kind of poster boy for this shit when it never once pretended to be something it wasn’t. That’s a case of people wishing for it to be something it clearly wasn’t ever going to be after like…the first fucking trailer. Game companies are guilty of all of this, but you guys are just as guilty for ignoring what was right in front of you.