quote:Originally posted by New Way Of Decay: Unless some funny bastard does a 'quick save' of your character leaping off into a huge chasmic space, so that the pc endlessely loops your death once loaded.
In one of the cut scenes in the PS2 version of LOTR: TTT, in the level with all the snow and the giant octopus at the end (can you tell I'm a girl yet), if you play Aragorn he runs to the edge of a cliff, then he slips off the end. It doesn't happen if you play Legolas or Gimli. When the cut scene ends, Aragorn is back standing on the edge of the cliff.
The first time it happened, Kovacs claimed "I did that! I did, I pressed right and he fell!" It's a cut scene.Posts: 1268
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by jnhoj: Well, either way, I thought the bullet time was far too gimmicky and didn't actually aid the game that much (as you know, a brake pedal might)
When I ranted earlier, what I meant to say was that I found the bullet time to be an actual proper game mechanic without which I wouldn't have enjoyed it anywhere near as much and certainly would have got the shit kicked out of me in more than one situation. In that repsect I found it equally as useful as a brake pedal in any driving game. Charging through a level constantly flicking bullet time on and off with one finger as the situation demanded whilst utterly destroying the poor unfortunate bad guys moving through treacle towards me made me giggle like a small child. Without the bullet time I'd have got quickly bored and certainly frustrated in the way you describe so I'm kinda spotting a connection there. Also, as far as the replay value you mention, completing the game opens up something like six new game modes so I don't know what you're complaining about there.
In general, I find most games too long these days such that I'm bored with them by the time I get to the end whereas MP2 left me gagging for more which was refreshing I feel.
Posts: 3502
| IP: Logged
posted
And it's not like Max Payne 2 just. stops. It does build up to quite a climax and it feels right that it ends when it is. I have to say it would be difficult for the new game to maintain the same level of intensity for any longer than it did. And the simple fact is that it's absolutely chock full of brilliant ideas, and no filler. The developers could easily have added in a few more miles of corridors at not much extra effort. It would have made the game longer, but it would have been much crummier. As it stands, it's small but perfectly formed. It's just so bloody good, and I think I'm going to go home tonight and play it some more because I liked it so much.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
Having said all that, the "one character protects the other with a sniper rifle" levels sucked like utter fuck. They took the vague suckiness of the nightmare levels from the first game and improved* on them in every way. Thankfully I managed to cheat my way right through them in an incredibly inventive fashion, even if I do say so myself.
*Assuming that making them suck more spelled an improvement in the field of suckingPosts: 3502
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: But then I'm a big fan of sniper sections. I like the unfairness of it all.
As do I usually except that this time I felt the unfairness of it was on the other side of the fence. You've got a shitload of guys all gunning for Max in a massive open area and you're expected to protect him when you even got to run through doors to different parts of the level to see the entire playing field. I dislike having my performance in a game being even partially dependant on someone/something else (in this case the computer controlled Max character), I prefer to know that if I fucked up then I fucked up, not the AI. I do admit though that I now remember not trying this section with the bullet time as it just didn't occur to me at the time for some reason and maybe this would have sorted it out.
Posts: 3502
| IP: Logged
posted
You want to try Medal Of Honour: Allied Assault for a massively unfair sniper section. That fair drove me up the wall, that did, continually getting gunned down by people I couldn't even see.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: You want to try Medal Of Honour: Allied Assault for a massively unfair sniper section. That fair drove me up the wall, that did, continually getting gunned down by people I couldn't even see.
I have done and it did. Mental equilibrium was restored when, after I'd finished it properly, I went through parts if it again in Invisible mode. Standing a foot in front of each of the little fuckers in turn, shouting abuse at them then popping them in the head with the weakest gun in my arsenal stands up as one of the most satisfying things I've ever done.
Posts: 3502
| IP: Logged
I tried to run the Halo demo on my PC the other day and it just c-r-a-w-l-e-d along. It was fucking feeble. I can't fathom what was going wrong - i was running it at 1024x768, with a P4 2.8Ghz processor, a gig of RAM and a 128MB GeForce 4. Unreal 2, which is surely more demanding, runs fine at that resolution. It's krazy.
I tried to run the Halo demo on my PC the other day and it just c-r-a-w-l-e-d along. It was fucking feeble. I can't fathom what was going wrong - i was running it at 1024x768, with a P4 2.8Ghz processor, a gig of RAM and a 128MB GeForce 4. Unreal 2, which is surely more demanding, runs fine at that resolution. It's krazy.
I've heard bad things about Halo on the PC and its requirments. Bare in mind that Unreal 2 was designed to run on the PC, and wasn't a console conversion. I had similar problems with Metal Gear Solid 2 on the PC. The install took up over 7Gb of disk space, and it barely moved on my Athlon XP 2000+ with 768Mb DDR RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti4200.
In future I will buy console games for the xbox and PC games for the PC.
Posts: 14015
| IP: Logged
posted
Halo ran fine on my machine and my processor is much slower while my graphics card is either only slightly better or the same as Thorns which is a bit odd. It was the full version I was running (well, the leaked press Beta which is as near as dammit) though, maybe because it was the demo you were running the code wasn't fully optimised hence the slowdown? Mind you, I'd be surprised if they were releasing public demos with such bad code.
posted
Going back to my earlier question, though I like playing Max Payne and things like the fairly easy Two Towers, in a way the intense emotional/psychological involvement gets to me and makes it less than pleasurable -- it's almost frightening or stressful at times.
I think the fact that some of my favourite gaming experiences on PS2 are 2-player Tekken 4 and 2-player Timesplitters 2 does indicate that I, perhaps because of my generation, look for something different in a game -- not a cinematic story with a character progressing to a climax, but 15 minutes of kinetic action.
Maybe I'm too OLD to comfortably mesh the pleasures of cinema and literature with those of computer and video games? I start feeling really worn out through my identification with and responsibility for Legolas or Max.
posted
"in a way the intense emotional/psychological "
I think you're joking? I don't think any kind of game has achieved this sort of effect, except maybe for a few moments in very few games, it hasn't really been achieved at all, except for being "in the zone"
Kovacs, if you're so old skool and just love those intense 15 minute action bursts, rather than a story (what suckers those that like "story" are!) then post your Ikaruga score.
Oh whats that captain kovacs, you don't even know what that is
posted
Or Psyvariar, these games didn't just cease to exist when they became unfasionable, companies like treasure just took them a little further, culminating in radiant silvergun series, bangaio and although not a "true" arcade shootery intense action game, rez is my favourite ever. Which can suck you in for fifteen minutes, or fifteen hours if your on drugs.
posted
Saying that I can't play Resident Evil on my own because it is too scary and requires me to think too hard about which potions need storing where and whether or not I should kill or run past this zombie. But thats because I'm a big fat girl.
posted
I didn't understand most of your above three posts, jnho j. You seem to be talking about games and companies I've never heard of -- remember that my field of expertise in the 1980s was Spectrum and to an extent Commodore, and to a lesser extent arcade machines up until around 88.
Yes, I certainly think games can be intense, involving, stressful and frightening. I'm surprised if you don't agree. But then, you do, when you come to think about it.
Even a primitive Spectrum 3D maze game called Corridors of Xenon* (I think that was the title) really psyched me out ...it was set in circular corridors and a hoovertube-nosed guardian, like something out of Yellow Submarine or Monty Python -- or, for that matter, like Q*bert -- was gradually catching up with you.
*actually "Genon" -- New Generation Software 1983! the villain was called Bogul.
Is it really so strange if Max Payne, with almost photorealistic 3D settings of backlots, rooftops and alleys, constant atmos of deserted streets and distant sirens and the building paranoia of one man making a thousand enemies, has the surely-desired effect of making me feel emotionally involved?
You think this has to be a joke -- but then, "your on drugs".
posted
I'm with Kovacs on this one. I found the Aliens vs Predator games - especially the first - too tense to actually be enjoyable. I mean, I know that was the intended effectbut I just kept thinking "why am I putting myself through this - this is horrible". It's a different experience to watching a scary movie too, because with a film there's nothing you can do about it, you're just watching unfold. I suppose that adds a sense of powerlessness that can be effective, but with certain games that's replaced by a sense of pressure on you, to do what's expected of you. And it's especially apparent when a clever game like Fall Of Max Payne teases you into becoming involved with the characters and the storyline, at least as much as if you were reading a decent detective novel.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
posted
Just remembered another good example -- I found myself feeling really tense and edgy during American McGee's Alice. I actually wrote about this in my chapter on the game, trying to work out what exactly I was experiencing; it might seem a bit pretentious but perhaps I'll paste it in later.
It was a mixture of the anxiety of watching Alice, a teenage girl in a dark maze with enemies all around, and being responsible for Alice, knowing you could get her killed, combined again with identification with Alice, a sort of surrogate fear for yourself, seeing as you "are" her during the game. So it was a merging of different responses familiar from being a film viewer (where you're a passive observer) and a game player (where you're a participant) but the realistic 3rd person perspective combined with the control aspect, combined with the lack of control introduced in cut-scenes and death-scenes, invokes what I think is a unique experience.
posted
Don't think I'm being all heavy-handed and laying down my reams of previous research to weight my own side of the argument: I just think this extract I wrote earlier will probably express what I mean better than I could do it now, some months later.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
What is our relationship with Alice? Are we Alice ourselves, or are we controlling her; or are we playing a small part in her new adventure? The relationship is ambiguous. We have already seen Alice’s independent existence, her quick retorts to the Cat and before that her “real life” status in the asylum, so the switch from cut-scenes to gameplay seems like a temporary handing over of control, a donation of responsibility. For now, you hold the strings. That this first level is regularly punctuated with cut-scenes to guide and advise the player emphasises this sense that our control never lasts long; we alternate between watching and taking part, although as the game progresses this pattern inevitably changes and the ratio of gaming to spectating settles at something like 9:1.
Jason Rutter and Jo Bryce suggest that the third-person shooter genre allows us the position of “both being in control of the onscreen avatar and able to watch it. This perspective permits a highly sexualised focus on the female form…” They are discussing Lara Croft. Whether most players would gain voyeuristic sexual pleasure from the Alice avatar – slight, stern and, in contrast to many game heroines, showing only the slightest curve of breasts – is open to question, although as we shall see, some fans have depicted her as an erotic figure. More generally, the relationship between player and character in Alice does take on the doubled perspective that Bryce and Rutter describe. My experience may be slightly different to that of other players, in that I grew up with Alice from the age of seven, and the icon of a girl in a blue dress with white apron has a potent significance for me, calling up memories of the books and their spin-offs from the last few decades.
Playing Alice, and especially dying as Alice, I felt a mixture of conventional gamer’s pleasures, anxieties and frustrations, and a responsibility stemming from my control over the character. What fears I felt during the game’s more challenging levels were not just a reluctance to face powerful enemies and risk loss of life, or the more general, enjoyable creepiness of the horror genre, produced by the disturbing detail of the graphics and the effective soundtrack, but an empathetic fear for Alice as a character. This sense arose specifically from the third-person display, from being able to see the comparatively small and fragile avatar – a teenage girl, despite her weapons – in a large, threatening, often vertiginous environment. It depended on this dual dynamic of being and watching at the same time, of seeing a version of “yourself” who is also “her”, not a sexual object but a vulnerable figure.
Similarly, when Alice died, my pragmatic annoyance at having to start a level again was often secondary to my feeling, however fleeting, of guilt about what I had allowed to happen; of watching, unable to help, as Alice screamed in flames, or choked for a third time and drowned, or went down moaning with blood on her apron. Again, it took the phenomenon of both controlling a familiar character I was used to only watching, and yet still watching her as she followed my directions – of guiding her, and yet not being her – to produce this effect. At the point of death itself, the player is caught in a further twist as the game takes over for the final seconds, allowing only a helpless observation of Alice’s fatal plunge or sad rise to the water’s surface: the inability to save Alice is made more intense by the fact that only a second ago, she was in our hands. Of course, it also requires the richness of the soundtrack and visual setting to create this level of involvement; even the most devoted fan of Alice as a character would probably be unmoved by seeing a little blue square bump into a red “X” with a beep and “Game Over”.
My response may, as I suggested, be partly due to my personal investment in Alice as a character, and a vague feeling of having “known” her most of my life – after following her through Wonderland and Looking-Glass, I let it end here, by failing to move her away from a giant mushroom – but the Carrollian baggage I brought to the game only enhances its internal storyline of Alice confronting her own guilt and grief at what she allowed to happen to her parents. However, the experience of watching Alice die is further complicated by the visual spectacle of the game’s gorier moments – though it may be painful, it is also, on one level, morbidly fascinating, and so there may be a shameful pleasure in the mix too, somewhere between sadism and masochism.
posted
I found The Secret of Monkey Island to have one of the most engaging characters I've encountered in a computer game. I loved Guybrush, and all of his 'whacky' friends. Zak McKracken, which was a ridiculously illogical game, also provided a warmth that made it fun to play even when I had no idea what was going on.
The old three-headed monkey gag makes me chuckle to this very day.
[ 19.11.2003, 01:24: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: I found The Secret of Monkey Island to have one of the most engaging characters I've encountered in a computer game. I loved Guybrush, and all of his 'whacky' friends. Zak McKracken, which was a ridiculously illogical game, also provided a warmth that made it fun to play even when I had no idea what was going on.
I never actually played any of the Monkey Island games although I'm not sure why as I quite liked the look of them and was utterly enthralled by the (apparently very similar) Broken Sword games. This is perhaps partially due to me reading the Illuminatus books at the same time as playing through the similarly Knights-Templar-conspiracy themed first game in the series. Should it please the good Doctor, the first two Broken Sword's are readily available for much cheapness and the third one in the series is due out very soon. In a similar vein (and equally as acclaimed/funny by all accounts as the others I've mentioned) are Sam & Max and the comedy-noir of Grim Fandango, both by now and aged and cheap as hell.
Posts: 3502
| IP: Logged
Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
posted
Bamba! You donut.
How are you liking Doubledash? Are you going to mount an impassioned defence?
Edit to add: I had Sam & Max (!) on the PC - it came in a trio of games with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and something else called Crazy Tentacles or something. Anyway: it rocked, as I recall, in a way that only point-and-click games can.
quote:Originally posted by Astromariner: Bamba! You donut.
How are you liking Doubledash? Are you going to mount an impassioned defence?
Astro! You empire biscuit. (Is that right? I'm not sure what game we're playing here.) I'm afraid you'll have to wait until lunch time to hear my opinion as I'm snowed under at the moment, but with work instead of the more traditional crystallised water.
Posts: 3502
| IP: Logged
Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
posted
That's it! I've been feverishly racking my brains. I remember a time machine and Benjamin Franklin flying a kite, and a bookish, maladroit hero.
Posts: 2814
| IP: Logged
Or Psyvariar, these games didn't just cease to exist when they became unfasionable, companies like treasure just took them a little further, culminating in radiant silvergun series, bangaio and although not a "true" arcade shootery intense action game, rez is my favourite ever.
posted
I lose! I was having a bad day yesterday, that is all. Though I'm not sure I've ever experienced anything quite as intense regarding characters...its only ever really been fear/excitement thats got to me "intensely" in a game, which I can't stand in films books, or anything so.
Or Psyvariar, these games didn't just cease to exist when they became unfasionable, companies like treasure just took them a little further, culminating in radiant silvergun series, bangaio and although not a "true" arcade shootery intense action game, rez is my favourite ever.
Names in bold are also invented.
Not true Ko-IknowfuckallaboutvideogamesceptinwhatIreadinacouplabooksormakeup -vacs.
I can't vouch for Psyvariar or the radiant silvergun series, but the rest of the bold names are all real and I have played them or games by them, though i think Bangai-o was spealt like this.
Rez is one of the best shoot'em ups EVER. The only way to play it properly is with your console/TV through your stereo, FUCKING LOUD.
-------------------- Some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light... Posts: 3770
| IP: Logged
posted
The bit where I try to elucidate what I have just rambled on about. With quotes so I can remember what people actually said.
quote:I wonder if my lack of impetus to win contemporary games, and my satisfaction merely with the process of playing levels -- I even go back to earlier rooms in Max Payne just to do the same shootout again -- is because of the stuff I grew up on?
What I meant to say in response to this was, anyone over the age of 16/17, will have grown up on almost exactly what you grew up on, which makes the argument seem rather strange and my further ranting about made up games (sorry but again I'm going to have to guess you're joking ) was just to illustrate the point that it would be possible to grow up now on a diet of these games, although these are admittedly hard to find, cliquey games, but do represent well the type of game you seem to enjoy, so I thought I might help you there.
I think you probably enjoy short blasts of games more, not because of what you / we all grew up, but rather a combination of time constraints and the amount of effort playing a story for a long time is. I'm not saying that games should be reduced to simply slogging through (which is why I got narky, I thought you implied this is how I play all my games) but that they do take an invested effort if you are going to play them to completion...which leads me onto my next point...
Emotional / Psychological intensity
I'll admit that before I'd thought much about this it sounded well, completely ott. Then I realised (as you kindly pointed out) that I had become involved in some games, and like Thorn was pretty freaked out playing Aliens...but...
The point that might have been hidden under my rantings, was that computer games in general do not suit easily emotional interaction. I think this area of games has a lot of barriers in its way. One of which is quick save, the emotional impact of the beach landing in MOH was good, but was dulled rapidly by the continual quick saving I had to use to get to the head of the beach. The difficulty of the game and the stylings of the character can play a huge role in how you feel about them, but continual repetition for me, often damages it too much. You mention Alice, but did you really feel guilty the 23rd time you fell off that platform?
So I agree with you generally, that there are moments in games where emotional intensity comes to the fore, but its far easier to create the fear and sense of lonliness than it is other emotions such as hate for bad guys, loving / identifying with the central character etc.
As people have mentioned point and click games are great for this because they tend to be funny, lots of dialogue to get to know the character etc, but again can suffer from the same problem, being stuck on a puzzle. Once you get stuck on a puzzle your emotional and identification just goes out of the window. See Goat in Broken Sword.
Although I know you think MGS2 is camp tosh, that and MGS1 have been the best examples of actually caring / feeling about the characters, who I thought all had good indivual styles and enough of a cinematic feel to make them interesting. The difficulty of the MGS games is well done too, and especially in the first one I never really felt hindered by the game, rather than myself. Unlike 2, where it took about 5 seconds to switch into the first person view.
quote:Maybe I'm too OLD to comfortably mesh the pleasures of cinema and literature with those of computer and video games? I start feeling really worn out through my identification with and responsibility for Legolas or Max.
I think this kind of inadvertently set me off, I mean, identify with Legolas, I haven't actually played two towers but isn't it a pretty straightforward hack and slash game, well done? There doesn't seem to be lots of chance for you to get "involved" with the characters, when a large part (?) of the game is played out though cutscenes, although I'll be happy to listen how you came to identify with the character. And not just your bare good looks If anything I'd have thought the type of involvement in a Lord of the Rings game, being in the heat of the battle would be exhilarating rather than tiring. I think scary games are the only ones with the potential for the involvement to become too much (as it has for me)
I may add more later ! I hope this has been of some benefit. to someone. anyone. help
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
) was just to illustrate the point that it would be possible to grow up now on a diet of these games, although these are admittedly hard to find, cliquey games, but do represent well the type of game you seem to enjoy, so I thought I might help you there. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic