About Gears of War, the reason I think it was so popular in the first place was 1.) Hype (obviously) and 2.) the cover/shoot/cover thing. I think it was the first (second, if you count that shitty ps2 game) action game to utilize that and look what happened. Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon etc now use that thing in their games. GoW is like the Cannibal Corpse of shooter games, even though I KNOW it's overrated etc, I just can't stop playing it. It's so damn addictive and FUN.

That mechanic is actually pretty old. Old Medal of Honor games even had it.

Really? I don't think you had to hold down a button near a wall in MOHAA. I remember you could just stand and use Q and E to lean left and right, but you couldn't stick yourself near a wall, hold down a button to shoot.

I think Rougue Trooper had it too, before GoW and that shitty ps2 game.

Yeah, it's called hide behind a wall and lean. It's the same exact thing you're doing in GoW, except even better because it doesn't restrict you. It's a natural process that doesn't need to be complicated like it is in GoW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UaM-b3pvJk

This one?

Yep. What an awful game.

Well, this is the best conclusion we are going to come to, because I know you are a PC gamer, which for the most part, had always had interesting stories and likable gameplay. Console games to me, at this point are only now getting to that sort of point. That's not to say games didn't have good stories, but like the word you said, games have become more cinematic.

It sucks what you mention about companies shitting on your favorite series in favor of simplistic gameplay. I do see where you are coming from, and that basically has nothing to do with storytelling or anything else, so it sucks that's being sacrificed as it is. I understand how passionate PC gamers are about their IPs, so I know how hard it is to watch this shit happen.

I mean hell, I'm a hardcore gamer as well, albeit, console. I remember back in the day games you used to be fucking hard. Nowadays, all games are pussified. Even if they're difficult at some point now, they're still pussified with all of the save systems and unlimited retries. Old games on the Sega Genesis and Sega Saturn, if you died, you were dead. You went all the way back to the beginning.

But, all of this is in the movement of bringing games to a wider audience. Which, I don't really agree with. I am entirely convinced this is all of Nintendo's fault, this whole casual gaming thing. The Wii for me is basically like, whatever. I don't give a shit about terrible Super Smash Bro. game number 3, Mario title number 27, or some stupid M&M adventure game.

The game is popular because it's fun, simple and addictive. Games don't need to be complex to be good, you know. You seem to have this fallacious mindset that the more complicated a game is, the better it is... but a game is only as good as how much fun you have with it. Gears of War is a simple action game with fluid controls, intense action and just enough variety in level design to keep things interesting. Again, you rail against the fact that everything is so "simple", as if that was inherently a bad thing, but that's fallacious. The weapons are plain -- so what? What more do you need than a machine-gun, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, etc.? There are some more original weapons like the torque bow, the Hammer of Dawn, the ink grenades, for instance; not many but we don't need to have that many of them anyway; they spice things up but in the end a good ol' machine-gun is always good -- plus, it comes equipped with a chainsaw, that's pretty neat. The enemies are generic - true for the most part since they're usually just humanoid reptilian-like beasts (personally I liked the Berserkers, the maulers and the Kantos), but they're still fun to shoot and kill; it's an action game, not a horror game. Weird-ass freaky monsters are better off in games like Silent Hill or Dead Space. The cover system is made simple -- indeed, and that's actually a strength of the game; it's easy to use and works quite well. A cover system is about hiding and shooting, it doesn't need to be complex.



And you know what, that actually kind of sucked. When we were kids, we had nothing else to play AND all the time in the world so we took the time to retry from the beginning over and over again, but as adults with full-time jobs? Not so much. I like my checkpoints, thank you very much. That doesn't mean games ought to be that easy, it's just that the difficulty is manifested in a different way than before. Also, games are much longer now. Minus all the time spent on restarting, old action games were pathetically short. Nowadays they can be 10+ hours, which would be impossible without saves and checkpoints. A nice trade-off, IMO.



Complicated? Here I thought it was too simple. Guess you can't please everyone.

I agree with the content of your post. I always felt that casual "video games" were alright if they didn't stop the real games from being good, but I've thrown away that ever since I played the latest Unreal Tournament game. The game used to be so fucking HARDCORE, and it's now completely "pussified" as you said about other games. And yet, it's probably the most hardcore game on the 360. Sad, indeed.

Really? All the new games are much shorter compared to old ones, especially series games like The Elder Scrolls, Grand Theft Auto etc.

Uh, we're talking 15 years ago, haha.

Haha, I didn't look at that part of the post.

Those ARE the new games. We're talking about games when you weren't born yet, or were still in diapers.

Probably the hardest game I have ever played, is probably Bare Knuckle III/Streets Of Rage 3. I was decent at the game on normal difficulty and it was one of those games where on normal you got two extra levels which let the story continue, and ultimately officially complete the storyline, fully. The very last boss, it was a 2 minute timer. It was their weird floating robot that quickly moved around the screen and was impossible to hit. Man, that was a bitch.

Speaking of a newer game, GTA2 was legitimately hard. It took absolutely nothing to kill you, and I can't even tell you how many times I restarted.

The modern game that I felt got the difficulty level right was Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. IMO they nailed the difficulty level. It was perfect. It was hard enough that it was challenging but never felt imposable.

Well, yeah to an extent. I didn't mean to imply that the mechanic itself was complicated but rather that they complicated (using a loose but accurate definition of the word) it by adding more than was necessary. If you can just lean/duck and cover manually with standard FPS controls, why have a seperate mechanic with seperate functionalities for it? I just personally don't see the need. I have played GoW and that feature really didn't do much for me.

I definitely agree with that. I can't tell you how many times I "got stuck" or tried to cover but couldn't or something similar because of the cover system in GoW. It works, but not as freely and surely those in other games.


Yeah, but that was just on normal. If you have Ninja Gaiden Black (or the Hurricane packs for the original version), check out some of the unlocked missions. Once you've beat an individual mission, you can up the difficulty for them individually. I've beaten about 2/3 of them altogether, about half of those on hard, and a handful on Very Difficult Ninja Master mode. Now, that's fucking hard.

That game is unbelievable though; probably my favorite Xbox game. That, or Chronicles of Riddick.

And thanks to rexxz for bringing SF4 for PC to my attention! I'll definitely be buying that. The game is so much fun.

Well, please don't misunderstand me. The loss of checkpoints and saves in this day of videogaming would be entirely catastrophic and set our industry back 20 years in evolution. But when you look at the difficulty of games now, they are certainly much easier than they used to be, regardless of checkpoints. Players are less likely to get stuck and jacked by the AI.



I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what your issue is with the cover system. First off, Gears Of War is a third person game, so that's probably why you're getting confused. There's nothing overcomplicated about it. You pull the left trigger to aim when you are not in cover, the right trigger to shoot. When you hit A to get into cover, the left trigger becomes the mechanic for which you then pop out and aim, and the firing button by itself becomes a blind fire mechanic. Everything is controlled by one button and it works surprisingly well. Getting out of cover, whether it be moving forward or jump-dodging is incredibly fluid.

I'm not really understanding what you mean by--



The only reason I can think of for you thinking is because the A button may do too much since you can get in/out of cover, hop over cover, move around cover, jump, roadie run, jump out of cover and a couple of other things. Even then, it's just a matter of timing and that takes literally no time to master those controls.

You're right, you did misunderstand. I explained once that I said that I don't think the mechanic in itself is overcomplicated, not in the sense that you're thinking. I was using a different definition of the word. I am saying that the whole mechanic is not necessary the way it is designed. I pointed out Medal Of Honor for a game that does the same thing but in a much more simplified way.

Genre or system do not automatically make a game more or less simple than another. For every game you'd like to tout as complex on PC, there's a handful more on it that are simple.

Also, what exactly makes any RTS automatically complex? Rock paper scissors with sprinkles on top doesn't scream complex to me.

What do you mean by that?

Medal Of Honor was an FPS. Gears Of War is a third person title.

If you really can't elaborate what you mean, then I am going to assume you're not really sure what you're talking about.

I don't think I can explain it any better, I'm sorry.

FasterDisaster, think of the programming behind automatically locking on and taking cover with respect to the standard line of sight cover that the game also has. It's extra work that takes away much of the control from the player while locked onto cover. This is what rexxz means by complex. He means that they didn't need to even put that into the game, because the alternative, ducking or leaning around cover manually without locking into cover, requires more player skill and precision, such as in any FPS that implements "leaning" such as MoHAA.

The X unit beats Y unit, while Y unit beats Z unit, while Z unit beats X unit is common in many of the RTS' I've played, hence rock paper scissors.

Sprinkles can be your graphics, hotkeys, resource gathering mechanics, etc.

What I'm saying is, the inherent RTS complexity notion Shutdown has is a mistaken because many times the 'complex' mechanics are more a function of player strategy than actual mechanics. I'd consider fighters like Guilty Gear and Soul Calibur more inherently complex than Starcraft.

You can play ping pong in such a way that it induces mind games and makes players strategize, but does that make the game any more inherently complex than "use paddle to knock ball onto opponents side for two bounces to score a point"?

Well, Medal Of Honor is indeed an FPS. You can't exactly take cover in a way that Gears Of War has you doing so and be able to play without getting intensely frustrated. Gears Of War is, after all, a third person game.

Hm, the most competitive and best RTSs don't use the set up you're talking about. I think I might know what you're on about because I've played a couple that are really shitty like that; but a game like Starcraft is far more complex than the 'X beats Y and Y beats Z and Z beats X' deal.

Sounds like you've never played an RTS before. Just compare StarCraft to WarCraft 2. The levels of strategy in StarCraft are far greater. Teams play completely differently and the units have no equivalents. The analogy to rock, paper, scissors is flawed for two reasons. One is that no unit is guaranteed to kill another unit due to HP considerations. The other is that every game boils down to this concept if you push it to the extremes you seem to be doing.

Except most (I don't think there are any, but I could be wrong) RTS aren't unit vs. unit vs. unit. X>Y>Z>X may be true, but when you start getting things like 23X>58Y>2Z>23X (or some such combination), you've obviously over simplified the mechanics of the game beyond relevance, haven't played enough RTS, or have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm not even a big/good player of RTS and it's not difficult to see your fallacious reasoning.

Edit: rexxz and Shutdown have both explained it better. It seems my last statement has revealed itself.

Ever play Kill.switch? They did it way better and without the problems that Shutdown and I are talking about.

Saying the rock paper scissors concept doesn't apply just because it's not 1 unit vs 1 unit is silly. It's still a huge consideration in matching up single units, or armies of units.

That's the inherent game mechanic. Unit placement (outside of elevation/terrain utilization) for strategy is not exclusive to the particular RTS (you could do it any other RTS, generally) and is a function of the player, not the game.

You say Warcraft 2 is less complex than Starcraft (I'd agree it is anyway) but you provide no examples of Starcraft's presumed complexity other than trying to refute my assertion that it's a simplistic mechanic with complexity sprung from player utilization.

Also, even if I were to accept Starcraft is awesomely complex, how does one game make an entire genre more complex than another genre if the other titles don't even come close to SC's "complexity"?

I don't understand this. Max Payne is a third person game yet cover is used extensively in that (as well as jumping out of cover using bullet time). Any game with a relative camera instead of a fixed point camera (i.e. first and third person games) can just as easily get behind cover by just walking up to a wall and leaning out to shoot.

Max Payne doesn't really have any sort of cover system. It's more or less common intelligence that when you are getting hit, you might want to hide behind this wall for a second. I'm talking about an actual cover mechanic.

Line of sight and projectile collision detection creates a cover mechanic. What planet are you living on?

Since you are big into RPGs are there any in specific that are pretty good on 360? I saw Eternal Sonata but I am not sure about that, I heard N3 was terrible, and Tales of Vesperia is iffy because I hated Tales of the Abyss.

I've also heard Saint's Row 2 was better than GTA4.

You just said what I did, but in better terms. Again, I was talking about an actual cover mechanic. See Gears Of War for a reference. That is a mode where you can either be running around, or purposefully get into cover, and not just freely ducking behind a wall. A cover mechanic is defined by being able to use cover-specialized moves and mechanics when only in cover and not any other time.

You are really bad and comprehending things. I meant what I meant but you took what I meant to mean what you meant. Sorry but you're wrong about what you think I meant. Does this mean anything to you?

Gears of war features two cover mechanics, one "better" than others at preserving your health. One is to block the enemy's line of sight to your character, the other is to press a button near cover to lock into a position. This is what rexxz meant by being overcomplicated while making the game simple, because this second mechanic isn't needed. Understand?

Yes, but the fact that you can lock on to a position is what makes it that mechanic. Without that you might as well just run around, considering there's no actual crouch button.

I understand what you mean by just having a standard "duck" type of mechanic without needing to lock on to a specific position. I still don't know why you think it's overcomplicated. I don't think it is at all.

You haven't yet told me the advantage of it.

Lost Odyssey is the best RPG on 360 at the moment. Eternal Sonata is alright, but it's easy and short.