Like Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Asura’s Wrath?
But seriously I can see where you are coming from with this. In Books, stage productions and movies script writing the saying is “Show do not tell”. I think it should be for gaming Don’t Show, Make the player do it/live though it".
You really would hate Radical Dreamers on the SNES (which some argue is more a sequel to Cronotrigger than CronoCross was)
Yes it does. A game is an activity with a set of rules. When you set conditions for victory there must be conditions to fail. Not having neither one turns the activity or product into something completely different. There’s no way to fail in Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls. This is a big part why they ain’t viewed as games. Then there’s stuff like Dear Ester that doesn’t even have a goal. You just walk around an island listening to a voice tell you shit about your surrounding. It has as much interactivity as a DVD menu.
I think another way to look at it is that when you beat a game, there needs to be a feeling of “Yeah I beat this game!”, and not “Ohhh, so that’s how the game ends”. Whether or not the ending is happy, sad, victorious, or impending death, there needs to be a feeling that YOU made it happen. Not just like you guided the plot in a certain direction the entire game. You need to be able to take experiences away from the game, not just how a cutscene gave you feels.
So in a manner of speaking, you need to feel like the main character in a movie. Overcoming obstacles and taking down enemies or completing a major task. You arent supposed to feel like the guy putting rolls of film into the projector at the back of the theater. The David Cage games make me feel like that. And at some point I admit that even TWD games make me feel like that. Difference being that you can actually majorly fuck up TWD games. It’s fairly hard to do, but it can be done.
***Took me like an hour to write this post because im taking notes for class lol
How would you deal with games without a plot/story or don’t actually end then? Say papertoss or minecraft? Or even real life examples like Eye Spy that potentially goes on forever until one gets bored.
I’m inclined with Lord_Raptor, the direct interactivity is what makes a game imo. Without that it may as well be a video or whatever else. However then you get into the whole Visual Novel territory and that definition kinda falls apart. Should those even be considered games? Some are just straight up virtual books with added pictures + sounds. If those are let in, should real life books be considered games too then?
I only ever felt this way about the Walking Dead was during the badly written parts. Episode 3 of Season 2 was terrible.
You can fail in a visual novel. Fate/Stay Night has a ton of dead ends.
Yeah I’ve only played one Visual Novel that was absolutely impossible to lose in. And it was boring.
Some are straight up linear, with no choices to make what so ever. You just read it like as it were book. Planetarian is one that comes to mind.
Visual Novels can be good but I don’t think they should be called games.
So you’re saying Ace Attorney shouldn’t be called a game?
Why? Because it’s still pics + interactive menus?
Games from the likes of Telltale are no different from Otome Dating Hentai Sim #9002; only animation and some parts where you point the cursor to kill somebody.
The Walking Dead game works so well because not only is it a game making you exercise your morals but it also allows you to interact with your friends/family on decisions giving it a cerebral multi player dimension. also the fact your choices get compared with other people around the world even if you were playing alone you will feel like it was a shared experience.
you don’t get that in any other game
Saya no Ulta was the only visual novel I played that was like that. Through the whole game the player had two choices to make.
I wouldnt qualify Ace Attorney as a visual novel. A good example of a visual novel passed off and sold as a game is Sakura Spirit. I havent played it, but it is getting a run through on game grumps. They are 18 episodes(about 200 minutes) in and have yet to do anything but read text boxes. They have not had to make a decision, choose dialogue, move to different areas of their own accord, nothing of the sort. Sakura Spirit is a “game” that literally indisputably auto pilots. I think it’s actually on Steam to further solidify my point. Go Go Nippon! is another example of that bullshit.
Calling Ace Attorney anything less than a full blown game is blasphemy. The two I’ve played are pretty much Demon’s Souls for the brain. Not counting the warmup cases, I’ve only managed to beat 1 case without needing a walkthrough near the end.
Maxmillion Galactica can suck my dick. I hope I never have to defend him again.
…Ace Attorney is certainly not Demon’s Souls for the brain. Sure it can be tricky, but nothing ridiculous that doesn’t require some thought. Biggest problem was probably Case 5 in AA1 because you had to rely on a rule that you only learned of a short time ago and it’s hard to PROPERLY use the rule and failing that part leads to a Bad End.
No it does some pretty fucked up shit that most wont get on the first try unless by accident. I mean seriously I had to prove a murder theory without a murder weapon, and then claim that the weapon was hidden in the court room with the handicapped guy? Really? I never understood how I was supposed to derive that whole conclusion from ANY of the evidence that was gathered beforehand. That whole case wasnt even tricky. It was plain wrong. Dont forget the whole ending case of JFA. The case itself was easy to figure out, but the problem is they made you drag it out like 3 times longer than it needed to be on the smallest shit imaginable.
Why do we have to stay with rigid definitions of what constitutes a game? Why is failure necessary? What if the game doesn’t need failure to get it’s design across?
Well the thing is most of the REALLY hard crap was due to unfortunate things. Like having to guess at things with no foreshadowing or prior knowledge and so on. That’s more along the lines of fake difficulty. And the case you’re talking about initially…wasn’t that terribly hard. Especially that theory, that one was relatively easy to figure out. The issue with that case was everyone was so…fucking…annoying (there’s a reason that when the Big Berry Circus returns in AAI2, a grand total of ONE character…and one animal, return from JFA).
And the ending case of JFA was fine. Hell, it’s often considered one of the best if not THE best case in the entire series (ironic since it came from the worst game). The drama didn’t rely on difficulty and figuring the case out, it came from the context of what was going down.
If you think JFA Case 4 is long though, boy you have not played AAI’s Turnabout Ablaze. That shit will have you head banging within five seconds.
Look, I just want to feel like I have a direct impact on the game and its results. I want to be a participant, not a spectator.
I abhor long cutscenes and an over-reliance on voice acting and set-pieces to do things that I could(and should) be directly engaging in and experiencing.
I just want to punch niggas in the face… Not watching my character punch niggas in the face.
Scenes like this also say hi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ngQsxqXIeM
And the music too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Ji4Taw3aE
The guy and his work aren’t what stereotypes and preconceived notions would tell you, you should know that it’s almost never that cut-and-dry in anything ever.