State of the games industry

[Dashers 0]

Then there is Rainbow Six: Raven Shield and Splinter Cell being released soon... I don't think either of those lack gameplay. Although I have only played the Racen Shield multiplayer demo, but the Rainbow Six games are always good.

[Othin 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Albert Schweizer @ Feb. 12 2003,11:38)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">You step on you own feet here. OFP was an eyekandy<span id='postcolor'>

So you're trying to insinuate that OFP had no groundbreaking or enjoyable gameplay? Careful, don't trip on your feet.

The gameplay of OFP is what keeps people playing. If it was graphics alone, people would have moved on by now. But they haven't because the GAMEPLAY is a stronger element the the graphics.

[ale2999 0]

you guys dont see what is really happening here. In the last 5 years gamers have attended to groundbreaking breakthrough, because most of the things in those game were thought to be inconceivable in a game. All this stuff now, is just norm because ppl just expect it. Some games have avoided to fall in the prejudice to be inferior to their precedessor being very immensive, or very creative, but other have failed altogethere and got bashed by the communities. Yet it doesnt mean that games that don't bring something fresh are crap, as they can be very enjoyable. By me unreal 2 was a good game, kinda short, but I prefere that cuz I have to do other stuff like playing ofp and study .

Well game future might be stagnant according to some of u but by me it is well and kicking

[Antichrist 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (WKK Gimbal @ Feb. 12 2003,18:30)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">There's plenty of games with new, groundbreaking gameplay and innovations - I'd say more than there ever was. This discussion is as old as the game industry - people probably used to complain that Donkey Kong didn't have as good gameplay as Tetris and was all flashy show-off.

Look at the upcoming Deus Ex 2 - it's AI detection and search programming is absolutely groundbreaking. Same goes for Neverwinter Night's ability to play multiplayer RP with a live DungeonMaster (I need a drug to stop playing this game). What about Mafia? It had little/no support for player modding or expansion, but the gameplay was a blast (as long as it lasted), I've always dreamt of drive-by shootings in a Ford A, yay. Hitman 1 & 2 also shows/showed some great innovations in objectives and solutions.

Sure, there's tons of lame no-brainer games, but there always has been - those of the past have just been forgotten. I think we have lots to look forward to.<span id='postcolor'>

Well they said the same things about U2 and look what it turned into. Hopefully Deus Ex 2 is not going to dissapoint, but I seriously doubt that now, I bet the storyline is going to be full of cliches and some crappy plot twists...... I hope I am wrong, cause I really wanna play that game.

Yes NWN was good, but one game that you can call revolutionary out of who knows how many released last year. Your whole statement just proves the point that gaming industry is going to hell. Mafia is GTA3 but in different setting. Hitman 1 was revolutionary, but Hitman 2 is just nowhere as good as the second one.

And you say that we've got lots to look forward to. Just name me several games that you reckon are going to be revolutionary and we'll see in a year's time if you were right or not.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

As far as eye-candy goes, I can honestly say that I don't really care too much about it. I mean, I still play Steel Beasts. Yeah.

Not to say I don't mind some graphical flair, its just I look at it as strictly bonus, and almost never take it into account while reviewing a game (except when talking about things like flight sims, where graphical fidelity can really put the game on a whole new level).

[PiNs_Da_Smoka 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Antichrist @ Feb. 13 2003,01:24)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Hitman 1 was revolutionary, but Hitman 2 is just nowhere as good as the second one.<span id='postcolor'>

What!? Are you saying Hitman2 was nowhere as good as the first? I can't agree or disagree with that if meant either way. I'm currently playing HM2 and i'm loving it just as much as i loved the first. Honestly, one of the things i like alot is the camera work in the cutscenes. But either way, its still a great game, and hella fun. Although most missions i play, i occaisionally get "Professional", i'm not ashamed to admit that on a few i've gotten "Postal, Psychopath and Mass Murderer" But getting "Proffessional and Silent Assasin" are for the second time i play through the game.

[Guest]

To be honest, I would never have gotten OFP if it was just for the eye-candy. It looks nice enough, but it ain't spectacular (have a look at STALKER....now that's impressive....although it could be vapourware). What got me was the whole idea that you had a mission to do, but how you did it was largely up to you. Got an installation to blow up? Sneak in plant a bomb/shoot everyone blow it up/find a tank go crazy/shoot down a helicopter or two/run to the other side of the island and drown yourself.........etc etc. It's one of the few games where you work out how you want to do things, rather than work out how the game itself does things, then just find the best way around it. Of course it still helps to know a little bit about OFP's AI, but it's not the same as something like Unreal2, where all you have to do is find some monsters, duck back around a corner and shoot them as the come around it. This is an example of where the player just has to work out a little trick to the game, and then can easily exploit it to win. There is no replay value in this, as you are going to play it the same way everytime. In OFP (bless your little cotton socks BIS) you can play the same mission (or campaign) over and over, trying different ways each time, or trying the same way but getting different results. This is what really drew me to OFP, and I guess what draws me to one game over another. Gawd I dribble a bit

[Sith 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Yes NWN was good, but one game that you can call revolutionary out of who knows how many released last year. Your whole statement just proves the point that gaming industry is going to hell. Mafia is GTA3 but in different setting. Hitman 1 was revolutionary, but Hitman 2 is just nowhere as good as the second one.

And you say that we've got lots to look forward to. Just name me several games that you reckon are going to be revolutionary and we'll see in a year's time if you were right or not.<span id='postcolor'>

While I agree with you on the fact that a few recent "big name" games have been rather lacking in gameplay diversity, it's not true that there's hardly anything out there.

Last year had some awesome releases, with games like Mafia (very different from GTA3 IMO), Morrowind and many other games on the various consoles (or are we strictly talking PC games here?).

For upcoming games, Stalker is a great example. Then there's SW Galaxies (even though they degraded half the game's original content to "patch material") and the still very promising Republic.

But the real problem is not the amount of ground braking games on the market but, like my fellow-back-from-the-death Gimball said, the ever increasing level of content and quality expectations on the part of gamers. If you take a closer look at your average game these days, it's absolutely amazing to see how much work has gone into it. Yet our judgement strikes, swift and deadly, dismissing a whole game within a matter of minutes, based on whether the pixel-shading on the water stands up to that of the game you deleted 10 minutes ago. Granted, not everybody is that quick on the draw, but unfortunately many gamers are.

Games like Thief and System Shock 2 are two perfect examples of this problem. Both games offer great depth in gameplay, and got some very good ratings in the various reviews. Yet these games didn't sell very well, simply because they didn't offer the instant dose of flashy turbo-graphics explosive woah action of other, much shallower games. I can see why some developers might not want to (or might not be able to) take this risk, and thus turn to producing (relatively) shallow flashy turbo-graphics explosive woah action games. But I'm getting a bit off-topic here ...

I personally started to get way too technical about games a while back. I started to notice how every single new game I played was nothing more to me than analysing the models, the lighting system, the way the AI nodes and triggers were set up, and most of all, comparing each and ever element of the game to other games. No game seemed to offer anything new or special anymore. Games started to look like one of those local papers you always get but never want to read, each new issue looks somewhat different from the previous one, but it's still the same letters put down in the same style, telling stuff you heard 10 times before.

If you start to notice this as well, STOP! BRAIN REBOOT! Change Bios settings Primary Game Device from "Technical" to "Immersion". Otherwise it'll seriously mess up your appetite for games as a whole, and we don't want that to happen now do we?

Try to get into a new game a bit more, don't go around judging it based solely on technical achievements. Look past the polygons and textures, and try to immerse yourself into what the developers had in mind when creating the game. Heck ... go wild and play some games in a genre you never really tried before.

It's absolutely amazing. It really works! And if you order now you'll get a free copy of the special book "How Unreal 2 changed my life!"

[Guest]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Sith @ Feb. 13 2003,15:18)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Try to get into a new game a bit more, don't go around judging it based solely on technical achievements. Look past the polygons and textures, and try to immerse yourself into what the developers had in mind when creating the game.<span id='postcolor'>

As I see it the problem goes both ways. The game industry makes things that they know that they can sell. The result of that is that the developers of the games don't look past the polygons, textures and vertex shaders. I believe that the hardware industry is also in part responsible for this. They need quick releases of games that can support their brand new hardware.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Heck ... go wild and play some games in a genre you never really tried before.<span id='postcolor'>

I followed your suggestion and bought "Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf ". Sith  you owe me 20 €,  

[Guest]

Yes and no.

Mafia would be a fantastic game if you could switch between 1st and 3rd person perspective. As far as I know ('cos I played the demo only) it's 3rd person only, and I'm not a fan of trying to shoot things in that perspective. I don't know how hard it is to code that sort of thing, but there are games going back a few years now that do it. Why not have the option? Other than that I think is was an excellent idea...hmm, maybe I'll download it

But to counter the arguement just a little Sith, two words. The Sims. Ugly as hell graphics-wise...certainly not flashy turbo-graphics explosive woah action â„¢ (do you really own the trademark to that? ). Yet I could quite happily retire on one-tenth of the profits. It was gameplay people bought it for. And they bought it in droves...(suckers )

It's a pity more people didn't investigate System Shock 2, because although the graphics aren't flashy, I find them very cohesive as a "universe" of it's own, and quite atmospheric. Sort of a less-is-more thing.

And just to throw something else in the ring...Quake3. Most (if not all) Pro or close-to-it players....or even just most of the top 25% of all players change the picmip setting to 4, 5 or 6....making the whole game look very "Lego". Certainly not a game you would look at at those settings and think wow...cool graphics. But they do this to improve their own performance skillwise....again, gameplay outweighing super wizzbang ultra sexy â„¢ graphics. Food for thought?

[DarkLight 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Feb. 12 2003,16:35)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Heck ... go wild and play some games in a genre you never really tried before.<span id='postcolor'>

I followed your suggestion and bought "Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf ". Sith  you owe me 20 €,  <span id='postcolor'>

You know, there's a reason why this game only costs €20

[FallenPaladin 0]

What I can`t understand: why are almost all console games presented in a better way than on PC? Take for example Metal Gear Solid 2 on the PS2, great gameplay, wonderful and complex story and the best cutscenes I have ever seen. Everytime I see my brother play on his PS2 I`m deadly jealous, because I would give my left hand for games with that depth.

Ok, OFP has depth, because I`m playing it since version 1.00 and I`m still stuck with it, but all the other games...

The last epic games or games with a high replay rate I played on PC were Final Fantasy 7!!     & 8, Morrowind and Resident Evil 2.

Why can`t we PC gamers get games like MGS2, Onimusha, Zone of the Elders or The Lord of the Rings Hack`n`Slay??

When you read my post carefully, you`ll notice that almost all the games mentioned are from Japan. That may be a reason, but why can`t we have games like Goldeneye where you could unlock hundreds of eastereggs when you were good enough. Or why can`t we have games like Onimusha which opens up new Chapters, after you first finished it?

No! Our PC games are different, e.g. Medal of Honor: a dozen missions, no real storyline that sucks you in and after you finished the last mission all you get is a black screen saying "The End".  

 

[Tex -USMC- 0]

If you don't buy crap, they won't make crap. If the next MOH game flopped, I guarantee you they'd can the franchise. If really high quality games got the attention and sales as bigger budget, smaller scope games got, they'd make them all the time. Of course, this strategy doesn't work when a majority of gamers still see Counter-Strike as the pinnacle of gaming. Just stay the course, and you'll get your good games.

[Aaron Kane 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Othin @ Feb. 12 2003,01:07)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I'm not really impressed with the majority of games that have come out lately though.  I hold Fallout (1&2), Ultima VII, and Daggerfall as examples of games where you could do almost anything you wanted, and interact completely with the environment.<span id='postcolor'>

Ultima VII... best game ever...

[ran 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 13 2003,17:36)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Zone of the Elders<span id='postcolor'>

zone of the enders

[dayglow 2]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Aaron Kane @ Feb. 13 2003,11:45)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">7--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Othin @ Feb. 12 2003,017)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I'm not really impressed with the majority of games that have come out lately though.  I hold Fallout (1&2), Ultima VII, and Daggerfall as examples of games where you could do almost anything you wanted, and interact completely with the environment.<span id='postcolor'>

Ultima VII... best game ever...<span id='postcolor'>

I couldn't stand UVII The fact that my guys whined about eating every 3 minutes absalutely killed the game for me. I could never get into it because my time was spent feeding the grown men in my party. Interesting how such a small detail can just wreck a game for you.

For me I can enjoy a game even if it isn't 'revolutionary'. Right now I'm enjoying U2. No it doesn't really add anything new to gameplay, but man, it feels like you are in a sci-fi movie. The environments have such an attension to detail it's amazing. The sound is good and the fights are hettic.

Hell I get frustrated with OFP a lot. The ai kills me on how it acts sometimes and it wrecks the game for me ocassionally. Also I enjoy flight sims and it's slim picking right now. Strike Fighters hopefully will be playable in 6-12months. LOMAC looks promising and FB is out soon. That's it. F4SP3 is the old standby, but it's getting long in the tooth. If you want to talk about an area of gameplay that is suffering it's the flight sims. They taken a huge amount of resources to be made, don't sell well and the community loves to pick them apart. Now look at it. No one want's to make them, devs have been driven out of the business and the ones that still plug away get hammered on. Sad, but hopefully LOMAC will prove that flight sims are still viable.

COLINMAN

[FallenPaladin 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (ran @ Feb. 13 2003,19:54)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 13 2003,17:36)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Zone of the Elders<span id='postcolor'>

zone of the enders<span id='postcolor'>

LOL, I meant that

Zone of the Elders, hehehe, would be fun too:

"Fight with gigantic robots and a crew of over 80 year olds! Action, thrill until they die of a heartattack!!!"

[ran 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 13 2003,20:44)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (ran @ Feb. 13 2003,19:54)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 13 2003,17:36)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Zone of the Elders<span id='postcolor'>

zone of the enders<span id='postcolor'>

LOL, I meant that  

Zone of the Elders, hehehe, would be fun too:

"Fight with gigantic robots and a crew of over 80 year olds! Action, thrill until they die of a heartattack!!!"    <span id='postcolor'>

lol , yeah , that's what i thought when i first read it too

[interstat 0]

One of the points that I made im my original post is the CD staying in your dribve for months. That, as someone else said in this post, you can reply a mission or sequence over and over doing it a different way, which is the joy of OFP>

The thing with many FPS is you can see how the triggers are all layed out: 'if I move a couple fo cenntermetres i know that guty will come out the window and shoot at me' That sort of thing reaaaallllllyyyyy annoys me, because you just think that is so lame.

Having played the Black Hawk Down demo SP I know this game will just be like that, the same men in the same places, waiting for me to take them down. Like a fairground shooting gallery. Am I asking for too much for developers (BIS excused) to put some decent effort in scripting and triggers, not maturbate over pixel density and colour diversity.

Roll on Independence Lost!

Again Morrowind is mentioned, is it highly rated by people in this forum, must read up on it.

[hovmand 0]

Anyone heard of or tried Silent Hill 2? Now theres a scary game for ya!!

I am seriously to big of a wuss to play this game, last night i  turned off all the lights in my room and turned up my sourround system.....OMG was that scary, i was still shaking when i shut down the game and went out for a smoke. It is like playing a horror movie.

I have never been so freaked out before in my life by any movie or game, this is a must try.

[PiNs_Da_Smoka 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Hovmand @ Feb. 13 2003,14:30)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Now theres a scary game for ya!!<span id='postcolor'>

Every played Ninja Gaiden 2 on NES? There is a part when you are in the sewers or something and the evil guy shows up and this really scary music starts playing. Now THATS scary when you're like 10!

[STS_SolidSnake 0]

Final Fantasy 7 was waaay better then the 8,9 and 10

[FallenPaladin 0]

FF7 rules!!

I played 100!! hours to get Level 99 characters,  the golden chocobo and the knights of the round and all master materia   

Then I formatted my harddisk and lost the saves somewhere    

[Blademun 0]

The state of the gaming industry? Well..if you want jus by Simcity 4 its VERY VERY bad. Fortunately there have been much better games released that arn't as bugged out, poorly documented and messed up as SC4. Civ3, Flight Combat Sim 3, American Conquest, Medieval Total war, Splinter Cell and a few others are very very good games. A couple I couldn't play on my system, like Splinter Cell and FCS3 but all are quite good. There are only a few gems to be found in the rough. You have to really llok for them/ In SC4 I just pulled up a big chunk of fools gold. My mistake.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

I like SimCity 4 alot as a matter of fact