There’s a bunch of good and bad from both sides of the world. I actually think the good vs. shit game ratio is better than before, because I can always find a game I like, from the East or West, and ignore stuff I don’t like with so many options to choose from these days. I remember back when I was a kid, I would rent random SNES games from Blockbuster and holy shit, there were a lot of bad games out even back then, a lot of people now-a-days just talk about the good games back then, because their childhood trauma prevents them remembering the shitty games. I bet kinds born this current console generation would remember playing something like ME3 or Bioshock amny years down the line but in the back of their mind, they hide the fact that they tried out the Burger King Game, just like we remember playing Chrono Trigger but try their hardest to forget the one time they rented the live action Batman game with the shitty mocap :sleep: .
But anyways, Platinum Games really makes awesome gameplay and I think a lot of people who are wanting to get into the game industry can learn quite a bit in how they design gameplay. There was a video with Inafune playing Bayonetta while talking about game design decisions as he played and it was actually pretty cool and informative. I think FROM software makes interesting gameplay decisions in how they risk and reward the player. Also in making a conscious multiplayer decisions like no voice chat so they can keep the world feeling desolate. It’s weird but you can always tell when you are playing a game from a certain country based on game design, sort of like how you can guess pretty closely what country shot a movie/show because they all seem to use a different type of camera/filter.
Does anyone ever find indie developers kind of pretentious? I’ve played my share of indie games, good and bad, but they usually don’t hold interest for very long. Now the indie games I like the best are usually the skill based ones where you can play over and over again and try to master (Super Meat Boy is a great example) but I never got the acclaim for games like Limbo, I found it okay the first time through but I never felt the urge to play though it again. It was one of those games that “run off atmosphere”. Now I do find the game Fish is interesting, but before I would judge him properly, I would like to play his damn game first. He’s been taking longer to make it then some commercial games from Japan.
Since I’m a castlevania fan, I have to admit my favorite indie game from japan would be the touhouvanias. I admit, I think the touhou games are pretty fun indie games since they are basically bullet hells and the pvp multiplayer bullet hell is a fun and interesting concept. Though the fan base is creepy imo.
Eh, my game collection says there are great games on both the East and West. West is over saturated with cliche FPS/McSeriousWhopper games, East is over saturated with cliche RPG/AnimuTakuLoner games. Both indie scenes have gems and overrated decent games.
On the RPG front, as long as Atlus keeps pumping out Etrian Odyssey or Shin Megami Tensei like games I’ll be fine. Need some damn challenge.
If you have a billion jillion dollars just try really hard and be passionate about your games like Valve and Blizzard.
If you don’t, be creative and try hard like the people that make all the amazing PSN/XBox Arcade games.
That has probably be the highlight of this current gaming gen for me. Cheap really fun games made by unknown developers.
And everything hasn’t been done. Look at Heavy Rain, they took a thing that has been overdone in every game this gen, made a game that only USES that overused mechanic, and it was great because it was based around a creative idea and untaken with polish.
You don’t have to do something new for it to be something worth experiencing. Hell, just look at KOFXIII for the proof. Nary a ‘new’ idea in the entire game, it’s more or less a mish-mash of KOF2002, SF3:TS and CvS2 - but it doesn’t matter, because it did what it set out to do so well.
Persona 3 may have just been a dungeon crawler mish-mashed with a life simulator, but it blended those two things so well and made both elements seem like full-featured and complete games in and of themselves. It didn’t do anything original, but that really doesn’t matter. It was high quality, well-designed and just plain fun - and that’s all a game needs to be.
The desire to be ‘new’ and ‘innovative’ may very well be the problem with gaming this generation. Too much effort is placed on being new, and not enough is placed on being well-made.
I agree, I think what a lot of companies to do is more “refinement”. I never tried kof13 in the arcades, but from what I hear the console version is so much better because they took the work to refine a lot of things.
Atlus also does it well in their gameplay. P3 to P4 people didn’t like having AI for their teammates, and in P4 they rectified that. Raidou 1 to Raidou 2 was a huge leap in terms of gameplay. The first one had meh gameplay but I liked the setting and atmosphere, then when I tried the second one I was like, “Wow, they really put in work to make the game play better.”
I don’t know, I can see why people don’t like JRPGS and stuff but personally, I’d rather play a Tales game Man wish Tales GF was on 360 over something like Fallout 1,2, and NV are pretty dope though over most Western counterparts.
I feel like Fish is just saying shit to get his name out there. He’s basically saying “japanese games suck because I said so” which does sound a little xenophobic to me. The manner in which it was said is also mean spirited and disrespectful. I mean this guy hasn’t made a single game yet…
I believe Fish is Canadian so I don’t know how your comment was relevant, unless you are talking NA. But Netherrealm studios is in Chicago and even though I’m not an MK fan you can’t write off their success.
And Fish won the award at IGF, I don’t know what exactly, but I don’t know how he won anything without releasing a game, unless people REALLY love his game concept that he has been working on for a long time.
You can rephrase that to “call me when the west makes a decent fighter worth a shit” if you want. Till then, we’re all still gonna be playing and participating in tourneys for the bad games japan has been making,
