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I tried to play Harvest Moon yesterday with a hangover. It was very difficult and I kept getting lost on my farm. Then my wife came in and made me go to the pub. Has anyone else played it yet. Like Boy Racer. I wonder if he's played it. I wonder what he thought.
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When I first played it, I had no idea what on earth I was doing, just wandered around randomly for a bit before actually working out how to do actual farming things. It doesn't take too long to figure out how to do rudimentary farming, but making money out of it seems to be slow, and hard work.
For a couple of hours when I knew what I was doing, I was completely in love with it. Checking on crops, washing cows, giving gifts to girls to try to get them to like me seemed fun.
Now however, having played it for most of the day, I'm finding it mildly monotonous. Every day you have to get up, water your crops, milk your cows, take them outside, go talk to people, fish a bit, go back, water crops, milk cows, talk to people, ad nauseum. It's like having a job or something.
However, I've just proposed to a pretty blonde girl called Muffy, and she agreed, so I think i'll play for a bit longer, see where that goes. I think probably the hook of the game is that just as you are beginning to tire of it, it throws in a new element, to bring another day or twos interest. I'll keep playing (after ready steady cook natch) and see where it leads me.
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Yes played it. But not much yet. Initial impressions though. Much more complicated and involved than Animal Crossing in terms of relationships within the village and the whole farming aspect. The speed of the in game clock could be an issue as it makes things a bit pressurised in comparison to the very relaxed AC, which may reduce the appeal for some.
However I suspect this could become very addictive once you've got the lay of the land and start getting into the farming and trading aspects.
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Get behind it and give it a push, it may take a couple of trys but once it's moving it'll take itself outside. There's a button inside the barn to call it back inside at night.
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quote:Originally posted by London: How do I get my cow to go outside?
tell her you'll buy her a G&T?
There is a button on the outside of the shed, next to the field that calls all your animals outside. Much quicker than pushing.
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Ringus I just finished Generic Car Driving Game 7.5, would you like to borrow it? Jhunj said it was "the pigs nutz! ;-()"
Also lol at the thought of Roy pushing all his animals outside, one by one. And it taking him hours.
Also these games, whatever they are called, 'Cartoon Lifestyle Simulators', are so ripe for a parody they are practically tearing at the seams. The parody would have to not be made by a crap sniggering American company, mind.
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quote:Originally posted by SilverGinger5: I'm pretty unsure about this game.
When I first played it, I had no idea what on earth I was doing, just wandered around randomly for a bit before actually working out how to do actual farming things. It doesn't take too long to figure out how to do rudimentary farming, but making money out of it seems to be slow, and hard work.
For a couple of hours when I knew what I was doing, I was completely in love with it. Checking on crops, washing cows, giving gifts to girls to try to get them to like me seemed fun.
Now however, having played it for most of the day, I'm finding it mildly monotonous. Every day you have to get up, water your crops, milk your cows, take them outside, go talk to people, fish a bit, go back, water crops, milk cows, talk to people, ad nauseum. It's like having a job or something.
You people are completely fucking insane. Imagine if you heard a bunch of Young Farmers discussing video games like Office Drone and IT Helpdesk and Grind Out Pedestrian Copy - o how your narrow metropolitan shoulders would shake with asthmatic laughter at the yokels.
quote:Originally posted by Raz: Ringus I just finished Generic Car Driving Game 7.5, would you like to borrow it? Jhunj said it was "the pigs nutz! ;-()"
I think you are downplaying the importance of the Gran Turismo series, which is frankly by far the best series of driving games ever created and this latest installment is set to be the best ever
So convinced of this am I that I have also ordered Gran Turismo 4: Signature Prologue Edition so I can have a peek months in advance.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: I think you are downplaying the importance of the Gran Turismo series, which is frankly by far the best series of driving games ever created and this latest installment is set to be the best ever
Will the new game allow you to use other cars as a brake without penalty? Will your car deform when you drive it into a barrier at 170mph? Will the AI stick to an almost perfect racing line, no matter what?
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From what I've heard, there's a new penalty system which will impose a 10 second speed restriction when you collide with either barriers or other cars.
There was actually a 'damage' option on GT3 which caused your wheels to knack when you hit anything, making your car undriveable. Nobody ever seemed to notice that one though. Besides, the quality of a game is not measured on how you can cheat, but how good it feels when you play it properly. If you spent your whole time crashing into other cars and walls then it's no surprise you got no enjoyment out of it. Perhaps you could try practicing in slower cars until you develop the requisite skill?
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Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
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A friend of mine's car of choice in GT3 was the Volkswagen Lupo. I think that tells you all you need to know about him.
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quote:Originally posted by SilverGinger5: However, I've just proposed to a pretty blonde girl called Muffy, and she agreed, so I think i'll play for a bit longer, see where that goes.
dude, muffy is a total hosebag. im not saying shes not pretty but its blatantly obvious that she gives it up to all the valley guys, especially the twins. i bet in three days time you walk into your cowshed and find muffy getting bummed up by scary murrey the apeman.
actual conversation between me and roy tracer about muffy:
me: new chick! ooh shes pretty. id do her.
roy tracer: i think shed probably let you.
me: you should marry her.
roy tracer: well, maybe i will. she blatantly wants it.
(roy tracer talks to muffy)
muffy: i love the springtime! it makes me feel so alive!
quote:Originally posted by Ringo: From what I've heard, there's a new penalty system which will impose a 10 second speed restriction when you collide with either barriers or other cars.
There was actually a 'damage' option on GT3 which caused your wheels to knack when you hit anything, making your car undriveable. Nobody ever seemed to notice that one though. Besides, the quality of a game is not measured on how you can cheat, but how good it feels when you play it properly. If you spent your whole time crashing into other cars and walls then it's no surprise you got no enjoyment out of it. Perhaps you could try practicing in slower cars until you develop the requisite skill?
I'm not going to rise to your baiting and turn this into a pissing contest. I can confidently handle the driving in Gran Turismo, but if I happen to make a mistake, I would expect my car to look damaged. It might not seem like a vital part of a driving simulation, but it's something that stands out as pretty ridiculous with the likes of TOCA Race Driver 2 and Colin McRae on the shelves.
Both of these CodeMasters games have very realistic driving models and damage models - and the level to which you can customise the driving experience is now approaching that of the GT series. Also, the graphics (on the PC version at least) are leagues ahead of anything the PS2 can put out.
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I haven't played Toca Race Driver 2, but the first one was rubbish. I took it back to the shop after a week. If Codemasters hold true to their previous form, the second one will simply be the same as the first game but with some slightly improved graphics (which frankly it needed). At it's heart, though, I'm willing to bet that it's still the same formula - start off in slow race cars then do endless repetitions of tracks until you can go round in slightly faster race cars.
I have got Colin MacRae Rally 4 and, in my opinion, this is the only game which can seriously compete with Gran Turismo in terms of giving something extra to the player. I would say, however, that even this brilliant game is starting to seem a little tired, really offering nothing over Colin MacRae Rally 3, except slightly nicer graphics.
I'm hardly about to get into the PC vs console debate, as I have both and get different things out of each one. What I can say with total conviction, however, is that nothing even comes close to Gran Turismo in terms of sheer vastness. Admittedly GT3 did suffer a big loss in the number of cars it allowed the player to drive, with less than 200 compared to GT2 which had, what, over 1000?
What you get from GT that you don't get from any other racing games, is the appreciation of the vehicle you're using. In the garage saved on my memory card, is a Mazda MX-5. It's the car I started out in, I've got loads of modifications on it, the suspension is set up just how I like it, as is the gearbox and the differential. Gran Turismo makes the racing experience a very personal one. That's something I don't think you get from any other racing game.
So what if you can't smash your car to pieces. I'd rather have an excellent game that didn't have this feature, rather than a generic race game that did.
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Does GT4 have a dashboard view? I think that's a feature that would definitely add, not only to the sense of immersion, but also to the feeling of having a garage full of your own cars.
TRD2 (from what I've played so far) is leagues ahead of TRD1, but it's a shame that you can't collect cars as you can with GT. I'd advise you to download the demo and give it a play. It should run as smooth as a pre-teen's flange on your beast PC.
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quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: You make some interesting points.
Does GT4 have a dashboard view? I think that's a feature that would definitely add, not only to the sense of immersion, but also to the feeling of having a garage full of your own cars.
It's hard to say exactly what features are going to end up in the final version of GT4, though I haven't heard anything to suggest that there is going to be a proper in-car view. I do think this would add an element, although I'm sure there was something I read about them wanting to preserve the pure driving experience, hence the lack of damage and a proper in-car view. I have heard that one thing you *might* be able to do is add aerodynamic aids to your car, such as spoilers etc, which I think is something that has been missing from previous versions of the game. Also the ability to change the colour of your car.
These things are just minor tweaks, though. Other things that have been confirmed are the new tracks, plus over 500 cars, lots of new tracks, improved graphics and improved physics modelling which is apparently the most realistic and intuitive to feature on any racing game.
Apparently there is also a new steering wheel (not sure if you ever used the old logitech one for GT3) that turns 900 degrees lock to lock, just like a real car. There were, apparently, plans to also have a clutch pedal but it was dropped because it made the controls too complicated/expensive.
Hopefully, with the extra cars, the new one should hark back to when you were able to load up the game and take a digitised version of your own RL car out for a spin round the track. This is something else that has made the series so popular. Ok, so you did need to have a 'reasonably' sporty car to do this, but let's face it, you name me one other game where I can chuck my Puma round Laguna Seca.
The TOCA series is good, but I reckon my favorite was TOCA Touring Cars, either the first one or the second, both were excellent. Of course by todays standards the graphics are crappy, but you really did get the feeling you were hurtling across the British countryside. Back then it was new and innovative, and just had seemingly infinite playability.
I've got the demo of TRD2 on my PC here at work and it does seem like a big improvement over the first one. Frankly I found the first one so shockingly bad, I'm left thinking that I might play it one day if someone offers me a copy, rather than ordering it more than 6 months in advance like I've done with Gran Turismo.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: You people are completely fucking insane. Imagine if you heard a bunch of Young Farmers discussing video games like Office Drone and IT Helpdesk and Grind Out Pedestrian Copy - o how your narrow metropolitan shoulders would shake with asthmatic laughter at the yokels.
What next? You Want Fries With That?
Please Do Not Abuse The Baristas ??
Ben: you're only angry because, like Boy Racer (only throughout your entire farming career), you didn't find the button on the shed that calls all the animals outside, and instead had to push them out one-by-one.
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I was in an arcade the other day and encountered a fighting game where instead of shooting a light-gun, you wave a fucking plastic sword. This experience was trounced round the corner when I came face to face with the mentallist machine called "Brave Firefighters" -- in which you wield a fuck-off huge hose and douse flames.
Ben has a point: I was expecting to see "Toyko Dog Walk" or "Super-Subway-Driver" in the next aisle.
Wat nxt!! "Mighty TV Watcher" in which you press buttons on a simulated remote and have to channel hop in competition with your digitised sexy moon-eyed manga Girl-Friend. Reversal Turbo Hop! she wants to watch Dating-Shows, you want Sports-Action. Button-bounce...Capital-Time-Limit....AWWWW you have to watch ten minutes of Cutie-Boy-Series now.
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Oooh Grumpy Farmer Ben and (I suspect) Devil's Advocate Kovacs think it's daft to play a game that involves running a farm.
Firstly. Do children play with farm set toys? Are there a huge number of successful (not just) children's books, and even a couple of films that paint nice, rosy, I'm sure utterly inaccurate, portraits of farm life. Oh, there are? I see. Do the same sort of things exist for office temps, er no. Mmm, farms = romantic rural setting, offices = not. Ok.
Secondly. The farming aspect of Harvest Moon is far from the only point of the game; which is as much about collecting items, giving gifts, and interacting with the other characters within the game as it is about milking your cow or cultivating watermelons.
Thirdly. This is not the first example of a game representing a not necessarily enjoyable occupation in a fun way; I don't think I enjoyed being a barman as much as I enjoyed playing Tapper, and I found actually being a Paperboy pretty dull too, for example.
Oh and you get to watch the TV in Harvest Moon too, whatever next.
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quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: Oooh Grumpy Farmer Ben and (I suspect) Devil's Advocate Kovacs think it's daft to play a game that involves running a farm.
I wasn't saying it was daft to play a game that involves running a farm. Back in the 80s there were numerous games simulating football management, running a successful band and making a film. I can see it makes sense to have a business simulation on a PC or console, though neither they nor manga cuddly animals in a freako Japanese/pseudo English setting appeal to me.
I think Ben's coming from this angle because of his real-life farming experience, which I can understand.
My comment was about what seems to be the first wave in an import of Japanese-type "everyday simulation" arcade games into British resorts, and the hardware that goes with it. I hear that Japanese gamers play "dog-walking" and "train driver" machines, with the appropriate controllers, and "Brave Firefighters" seemed the first example I'd seen of this type of game, expanding the gamer's experience into different types of real-life career or hobby activity rather than placing them in a spaceship or fantasy environment.
quote:Thirdly. This is not the first example of a game representing a not necessarily enjoyable occupation in a fun way; I don't think I enjoyed being a barman as much as I enjoyed playing Tapper, and I found actually being a Paperboy pretty dull too, for example.
Not the same thing as these were never intended as simulations. "Harvest Moon" is clearly not intended as a simulation either, but "Brave Firefighters" is.
Can I advise that your sarcasm-soaked rhetoric ["Oh, wait, let's see...hm, can we say that? Yes, I think we can. OK..."] needs a sharper writer to carry it off.
I think firefighting is a fairly glamorous / action man type of occupation though, compared to say dog walking, but I see your point.
I think real occupations have always been an inspiration for game design though. Look at the two examples I gave above, Tapper and Paperboy, from relatively early in the development of video games.
Was the arcade in London or was this when you were biggin it up Stateside?
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quote:Originally posted by Raz: Ben: you're only angry because, like Boy Racer (only throughout your entire farming career), you didn't find the button on the shed that calls all the animals outside, and instead had to push them out one-by-one.
I fail to detect the appeal in herding animals if it doesn't involve bellowed obscenities and menacing plastic hose gestures.
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quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: Thirdly. This is not the first example of a game representing a not necessarily enjoyable occupation in a fun way; I don't think I enjoyed being a barman as much as I enjoyed playing Tapper, and I found actually being a Paperboy pretty dull too, for example.
Not the same thing as these were never intended as simulations. "Harvest Moon" is clearly not intended as a simulation either, but "Brave Firefighters" is.
Well I was refering particularly to Harvest Moon, because that's the title of this thread, and I haven't played Bravefighters; and yes it's not a simulation so the examples I used are appropriate to the dicussion. And, er, how much of a simulation is Bravefighters anyway? Do flames shoot out of the console at you? Do you spend 80% of the game sitting around drinking tea and lifting weights?
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: Can I advise that your sarcasm-soaked rhetoric ["Oh, wait, let's see...hm, can we say that? Yes, I think we can. OK..."] needs a sharper writer to carry it off.
You can advise all you like, but how much attention I'll pay to a fantasy pube collector I'm not sure. By the way I'd be surprised if there wasn't a Hentai game available were you could fulfill your imagined hobby.
Lol at Ben.
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A "fantasy pube collector" is not a bad thing to be as it means you're not genuinely collecting pubic hairs at all. Please, to cuss me next time call me simply "pube collector".
BRAVE FIREFIGHTERS was in historic resort and heroin centre HASTINGS, and I think it was an American game (post-911 "real-life heroes" spirit I would wager) put out by a big corp like Sega.
It looked a lot like Backdraft but also rather too accurate and boring, in that you had to control pressure and drain your hose with separate controls on the nozzle, or it would overheat/steam up/whatevs.
I played House of the Dead II instead and managed to survive for 20 mins on 50p! Also last week I almost won The Star Wars Saga arcade at Heathrow airport! I think PS2 has really honed my skills.
quote:It looked a lot like Backdraft but also rather too accurate and boring, in that you had to control pressure and drain your hose with separate controls on the nozzle, or it would overheat/steam up/whatevs.
By the sound of it, anyone who likes this would be better off just joining the frigging fire brigade. In the real fire brigade, you sometimes get to drive the fire engine too.
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i cannot work out how to plant my tomatoes. ordinarily i would ask br but he must be like, doing some work or soemthing stupid like that, because hes not answering his phone. for three days i have beeen wandering around trying to work out how to feed cows, let cows out of barn, etc, and it is silly. i have some very hungry animals and no plants! i want my tomatoes to be planted now.
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