Behold, the future of PC games ....... :/
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RULv6HbgEjY
:sucks:

No further comment.

It's rarely a product made out of love today, from freaks for freaks, as was used to be said back in the mid 90's. It's a business investment today and the game has to bring money which is all the criteria the games are made upon - better graphics, bigger games. There're rarely cases when game can be created as desired with fun and creativity, without time pressure and restraints from "above", so the result is thinned out content.
Well, the genre of video games has been chewed upon for many, many years after all. The high period was the beginning and middle of 90's. Earlier or later ideas start to run out, but the games are simply too profitable still to let go, so same and same ideas are being pulled out again and again from you-know-where to suck out that last bit of profit out of them that's still there.

Best and sad example is Arcannia - A Gothic Tale or also called Gothic 4 which has pretty much nothing to do with the previous games of the series, which was the tombstone put on them.

Lets not forget this game isnt a PC only thing...its on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Shooters tend to have dumbed down first missions...in this case it's over the top. Lets not forget that some of the best games ever have come out recently, Fallout 3 (wether you like the story or not it's still an epic game), Bioshock, and Far Cry 2. While these games have faults some greater then others the ideas behind the games are insane, pressure to get the game out has lost the gamers these great ideas.

Such as Far Cry 2, orginaly the idea was that the enviroment would be your ally or enemy, using animals and setting the grass on fire would all help you win the game. The buildings were going to be wreckable, and if you wrecked a town it would take awhile before the soldiers would start rebuilding the lean-too buildings.

This Call of Duty game, (Come on we all know it's only called Call of Duty to increase sales) is more about multi-player, they tacked on a single player campaign to appease the higher ups. And like all tacked on things it's bad...buggy, with stupid AI..who needs good AI when you are playing online against other humans.

On the last note I will say this, DONT BLAME CONSOLES FOR CRUDDY PC GAMES. Blame developers trying to appease to many markets and falling flat on their face, it can be done right..but normally isn't. Also blame excutives for pushing games to be out by certain deadlines, that the game just can't handle.....your fanbase won't mind to much if you need to delay for a couple of months to tweak your game some. They will mind if they buy it on release day and you have already had to patch your damn game due to bugs. That stinks of not having a good or long enouth Beta stage.

I've been seeing that a lot these days. It's all about great graphics and multiplayer support. If a game is targeted for multiplayer game play, why add a useless and/or repeating campaign?
The question is a trick, there is no reasonable advantage to that except complaining fans.

My god. Kill that abomination... kill it with fire!

That's actually so sad...I don't know what developers are thinking, "Let's make a game that plays itself!" Kind of makes me think of "lords of the realm 3"...cause you know that was a good idea, right?

Also kind of reminds me of the movie "Idiocracy"...we're just heading towards a dumbed down existence...user friendly is just another term for "we do everything for you" these days. Just look at the operating systems now adays...you get asked like a million times if you're SURE you want to delete a file or do this or that. Don't go into program files...you could mess up your computer!!

Even in high school...everyone just used calculators all the time, drove me nuts...I was like damn it, use your brain. And I'm talking about simple math here.

When I put my textbooks up for sale at a used book store I was going to sell it for 40 bucks and the girl pulled out a calculator and was like okay you get 75% so that's....hold on...and she used the calculator........she had just mentioned she was in 4th year university. Just thinking about that makes me want to yell in anger at the world!! 30 bucks damn it...

Age of Decadence

The Broken Hourglass

Bellatorus Deluxe

Academagia

Solium Infernum

...and many more. The fact that these recent or in-development PC titles of quality don't get publicity doesn't mean they don't exist. Just as you might think the only restaurants in every city in your country are fast food joints if you simply check commercials and ads, so the gaming industry's publicity makes it appear that there are simply Huge Pretty Titles on the market.

But it's not true. Research. ;)

It's the way society works these days ... people are using the technology to do the "thinking" for them. They also just accept what the press feeds them although most of it is at least partially incorrect ... It's a dangerous attitude, one where people stop relying on themselves but completely focus on other sources for information, opinions, etc.

What happens, is that you get the same symptoms all over the world: you strongly split people between different information sources. Because of how strong the media presence is today and the lack of criticism, media can create big divided communities which worked fine together before.

What the hell? The AI teammates in CoD actually do something!? All my life, I thought your AI buddies were just for show. In fact the only games I know where your AI buddies can do stuff without your help (except of course, when you're the squad leader) is Operation Flashpoint. More than once I've seen my AI teammates finish a mission without me firing a single shot.

Also, how the hell did a video showing the AI complete a mission turn into a argument about the dumbing-down of society?

Because the player doesn't have to do a damn thing. It's supposed to be a game, not a movie, remember?

kuger, good ai is cool but they don't have to be immortal and omnipotent

Well the Player in the game could still have died in most parts, the player was crouching and hiding so that he wouldn't die. The AI is just programmed well enough that if the player does nothing they still act, unlike some games that feature your AI partners just sitting there and missing every shot until you do something. It's only a movie because the PLAYER made it one, if he had played the game then it wouldn't have seemed like a movie.

the video obviously shows that even if he "played it" he wouldn't have any problems finishing the level at all, because even if he did nothing, bots would kill everyone by themselves

and please what is a player supposed to do? not hide behind barriers before enemies? or you suggest that this is not an fps but fphs? as in (hide and seek)

Just pointing out that this kind of AI, the kind that can do without the player, is better then the AI that stands around like an idiot all the time. I think this is one of the worst games I have ever seen. But lets not forget, this is the first level of a game that is kinda all about large set battles and it's not the first game ever to be more movie then game. It's not the end of gaming nor the future....it's just one market of gaming.

On the note of ducking and hiding I have seen a lot of new FPS and Third person shooters that are all about the cover mechanic...and I hates them so much. Having cover in your game is cool, forcing the player to use it non stop or die is just stupid.



FPS games are for noobs anyway. (Joking...kinda)

like i said man, ai is cool, but they don't even die and have unlimited ammo

if something is immortal and has infinite ammo it's not much fun

Very true...and I hate that too. I have never liked AI characters in my FPS games...they always ruin it one way or another.

I always figured CoD was a lowest common denomiator sort of game anyway.

wut an ugly game...

and I don't deem the graphics. I can't play such bs anymore. The only way to solve problems in those games is to kill everything in a hundred ways.

Just another example of the slow(?) progressing general stultification.

Btw, good example with the calculator Aramazon. Exactly the point imo.

CoD is a very scripted game. CoD's AI is programmed to follow that script. In that mission, their script is to kill enemies and advance through the level. And they did it. IMO, this is more of an issue with the game being too linear than the whole "game devs are dumbing down society" theory.

isn't the game being too linear actually the fact that the game devs are dumbing games down

Well, to be honest, my only gripe with linearity is the fact that the replay value goes down to 0 once you've finished the game. Also, I don't think that linear games are dumbing down society. In fact, I think the only reason why we're bashing the Ai in this game is because it's from Call of Duty, and we all now that CoD is only for the common gaming prole, and not us gamer elites.

well, back in the days "common" people's game was for example doom (not the third shitty one). it had really neat level design where you didn't just walk down the path and shoot everything. you really had fun exploring the maps and looking for the key cards back then

i don't say that there aren't interesting games nowdays, for example, just look at the brilliant psychonauts, but the majority of them dumbs down to "shoot all you see and walk forward". and they do it mostly wrong. a good example of doing this right is half life

btw, hey look, we changed the topic from the ai to maps

See R.u.s.s I agreed with you all the way up to Half-Life....I find it to be an overhyped, rather boring and linear FPS game. The expansions are the only thing I like about it, and Blue Force is the only one I realy like to play anymore.

And I am not mocking this game cause its CoD and thats for the plebs, I am mocking it cause it's crud. The game is based around highly scripted events, meaning the levels have to be very linear to fit into these events and the player has to play a certain way. The single player in CoD isn't the selling poing anymore (same goes for MoH) it's the multiplayer that sells the game.

Most of those "new" games like COD are just fast food. Nothing substantial.

But fast food sells well and satisfies the big need for something new. You might get a bang for your buck but not a game you can play over and over again.

So nothing which fits my taste in gaming. Same with fast food and eating.

I think your arguments is quite valid for the mainstream of the game industry, but there has also been a big increase in so called "indie games", which often is games with one "author"/creator. I guess these games are more likely to be "created as desired with fun and creativity" and "without time pressure and restraints from "above"".

However only a indie game maker can confirm if that's the case or not, but on a speculative level it seems reasonable.

[RANT]
Got Borderlands from a friend to try out.
Could have been a pretty good game, but alas, it's completely dumbed down.
Close to retarded.
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/7205/border001.th.png
Oh look, goodies, and with extra laser light, we could miss something!

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/2...rder002.th.png
Here no HEADSHOT but 'CRITICAL' , the whole damn game through CRITICAL in ya face, damn boring.....

http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/9...rder003.th.png
Aha, a box with goodies, and of course the obligatory laser lights, we could miss the whole box .......

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

And so on and so on .... do this do that go there go here everytime you get low on ammo RELOAD RELOAD in ya face, pylons to save your game because we are to dumb to hit a key when we want to save, RELOAD RELOAD CRITICAL CRITICAL .... hit ENTER to do this hit ENTER to do that hit ENTER for something else RELOAD CRITICAL ENTER ENTER
[/RANT]
OK, 15 minutes and it's uninstall, I've got it with that kind of dumb games.
Shame, because it could have been a good game.

man, and you didn't geven get into the half of the game yet. it's fun to shoot things around until you realize that the game is so unbalanced that you take any boss on 10 hits without a any trouble at all and every quest becomes "trivial" or "easy" difficulty in the quest list

if anyone wants to play borderlands and enjoy it properly he must not do every sidequest, he must just go after the main one so he doesn't overpower everyone halfway through. i didn't even finish playing it with my friends because of how boring it became

Now see the first playthrough by yourself you do end up overpowered...and there is a reason for that, the game is meant to be played with friends. Every player who joins your game makes the game harder, and the game even tells you that. The bosses the mooks all get harder, and the ammo stays the same. So while you might have way to much now, when 4 people are picking over it after a big boss fight the game is a lot harder. Plus the first playthrough is rather easy, the second third fourth and fifth all get harder...and hey you stop leveling at 50 (or 60 I think with the DLC) you almost reach that level in the first playthrough. I have played the game on the "third" playthrough and got my but handed to me over and over.

The mistake here is pretty simple Borderlands is not a single player game, it can be played as such but is meant to be played MP. The game has it's faults don't get me wrong, but the fun that can be had with friends far outweighs them.

You can't just include SP and say it's an MP game. If there is an SP mode, you got to make it work as well as the MP, else it's a half-assed game, and it should seriously affect the overall score, or the conclusion in other words.

Plus, of course a game should be a lot harder when playing in coop. But the question is compared to what? I got the feeling when you were talking about the difficulty augmentation that you were comparing it with the difficulty in SP mode. If in SP the difficulty is 1, and in 4 Coop is 4, then what the heck has changed? Well never mind that, russ was talking about coop too, so I don't understand what you're trying to prove.

No you misunderstand how the game works TA, it isn't supposed to be a SP game at all. The game can be played in SP or MP and is really intended that you will be playing online and people can drop into your world. Whenever anyone does drop into your world the game raises the difficulty, (two people need more challange then one person alone, three people need more then two). Borderlands has been rightly called the MMO of FPS games, thats the idea behind it. It was even how it was sold, as a online MMO style FPS game.

i don't know what are you talking about man, it was 4 of us playing the game (every class) and it was still a walk in a boring garden of eden for wussies. every quest->trivial, every boss->down in a few seconds. it got really boring eventually and we just stopped playing it. and played some icewind dale instead :woot:

i never played the game alone actually, but i imagine it must be even more terrible

Haven't played borderlands since release, but yeah I found it really easy. We all took different classes and never died fighting anything. Plus the beserker was BS Overpowered at the time (still probably is)

Damn it, this thread makes me feel weird for having fun with Borderlands.

Why ...? Each his own, as usual.
There will be more games I don't like and that you will like.
And not only games, diversity, it would be a boring world if we would be all the same, a 'brave new world', and unbelievable boring.....

i think a person can have fun with borderlands if he sucks at first person shooters and doesn't do every quest- there still would be some challenge left for him

:(

:D

bump
 

Oh, where's the QWERTY? Where's the point? Duh... I'll just stay with oldies. I've tried Wii, and it was really disappointing. Xbox and PS3 are nearly equal, but they just don't worth that s..tloads of money to me, 'cause I don't have the time to play with them. PC 4 teh win - too bad it's ruled by WoW, CoD, and other 3-letter-named games... Plus mine is quite old now... so I'll just stay with oldies. I have reviews to be written as-well...