A few days ago, I gave an interview (in Czech) where I mentioned my disdain for most of mainstream games of today.
Here I have two perfect examples of current high-profile videogames.
First, here is one of the levels of the latest Call of Duty videogame, played on "Hardened" difficulty. The player beats the level WITHOUT SHOOTING, just semi-randomly dodging bullets.
Even funnier is the following racing game using Kinect (i.e. controlling the car using your own body). Note that the player doesn't do anything during the whole race, not even pushing the gas. He finishes third out of 8 racers...
You can argue the second game is aimed at "casual" players... You can argue anything you want but I consider this to be very sad. And I consider it amazing that no high profile review mentions the interesting fact that you don't in fact have to play these games to finish them...
To be fair, though, that CoD mission is the very first mission in the game and it's meant to stand in as a tutorial of sorts for the most part. I don't think you could actually finish the game like this. Or at least I hope so... (even though it's still more of an interactive movie rather than a "proper" game)
ReplyDeleteI did not play this CoD game so I might be on a thin ice here... But I think if a FPS game has tutorial which can be finished on rather hard difficulty without shooting, it's not a good tutorial and not a good game...
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, even System Shock 2 can be finished without attacking the enemies, and it still is considered one of the best FPS/RPG games of all times.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: There are other games where you don't have to shoot in order to finish them (Ikaruga, for example) but then you must have some other skills in order to finish them. Here in CoD it seems he just has to semi-randomly strafe a little bit.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually pretty easy to answer - these FPS games are now severely dumbed down to be playable via demented console controllers.
ReplyDeleteAt first it was sufficient to use button "shortcuts" for the actions which are absolutely trivial to do manually with a mouse (like in Assassin's Creed - you can't really ask a console player to jump on a timber and walk over an abyss - there is a button to do all of that; and you can't really ask a console player to run and hide behind a box in Gears of War, but you can sure give them a button to do just that), now there seems to be another way to prevent their frustration.
To the interview. You didn't tell much about your current programming. Is it a secret? Which language do you like? Now I'm thinking about learning Pharo (fork of Smalltalk) or Android stuff (I like Java and Android).
ReplyDeleteDigger: As for my current programming work, part of it is secret, part of it is at www.dynawa.org. I still like Lua.
ReplyDeleteI am very grateful to both the gamers who made the videos and Fuxoft for pointing out this embarassing and pathetic turn videogaming has taken. This has nothing to do with skill or even interactivity, this is purely passive "entertainment" aimed at stupid and lazy people, being sold as "hi-tech".
ReplyDeleteWe need more such videos, blogs and Fuxofts in general.
While that CoD video is funny, it's sort of like playing Poker and folding every hand. It's a "safe" way to play, but you have much more fun if you take part in the game.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'm quite convinced that video took quite a bit of effort and definitely several tries to capture. It isn't as random as he claims :)
On the other hand, here's a funny picture relating to the topic:
ReplyDeleteKubaU:
ReplyDeleteFunny picture indeed! But i prefer realistic map instead labyrinth. (Where i have to spend hours searching for a trigger, when all enemies are dead).
As fk wrote, the downside is everything is now designed for consoles = average TV consumer. On the other hand (sometimes) low quality in singleplayer is because games (especially FPS) are also more and more multiplayer oriented. Which imho very positive. Yes, Doom 1&2 FTW but still better to play against bunch of real opponents than any UI...?
ReplyDelete