kingmohd84 wrote:who is going to pay $60 for 2d game with how many levels you will play before you get bored of it?30?
It could be a title for WiiWare, 360 Arcade or whatever PS3 downloads are called. Look at megaman 9, SSFIIHD Remix and Bionic Commando Rearmed, those 3 worked and the last 2 were pretty much the same concept from the pic.
In that sense, I think it would sell and sell a lot.
I just said 30 because I never knew how many levels were in the usual platformer, so I said 30 to be on the safe side.
Though you have to know that the today gamer is far more intelligent than years ago, finishing a mario level or a sonic level today seems so easy.
Forewarning - this did not get proofed and like usual, it is stream of conciousness:
I would state it differently. I would say the modern gamer is far less intelligent overall than those of decades ago. I say this for two main reasons:
1. Gaming has become more mainstream and accepted
2. Games on the whole have become less difficult
And before you discredit me completely, let me explain my points.
1. In the 80s and 90s games were considered a very childish pastime. Many of us were targets of harassment from friends, family, and even our teachers. I remember being told by one of my uncles that if I did not grow up I would never amount to anything (that uncle now owns a Wii and many non party games). It is impossible to discredit that with the advent of the 3d Grand Theft Autos and the American Rhythm gaming boom that gaming became cool. Halo and the Wii only cemented this into our worlds daily life and lexicon. The Wii brought a whole nother issue of this but for now we will leave that be.
Many believe that with each generation, it became more acceptable to continue to play games throughout ones life. The Genesis/SNES made it possible to play arcade games at home, and many loved the fact they could practice Street Fighter 2 before they threw down real money – oddly arcades have almost always been accepted by the general populace (some condemn them completely as games of chance but you cant please everyone). The N64/PSX continued with arcade ports but also added “realistic” “adult” content to games and with the use of cinematic FMVs made games more like movies and ofcourse we have the arrival of 3d console FPS games, or murder simulators as they tend to be called, to give us even more acceptance. But gaming becoming mainstream really comes down to the PS2 being everywhere (cheap DVD player being the primary theory behind that) and when Grand Theft Auto 3 hit gaming really became cool again. Like I said, Halo added to this but what really sealed it was Guitar Hero and the Wii.
So why does this make modern gamers less intelligent overall? Well I shall share with you a conversation I had recently with a coworker. He is in the marketing department and was trying to help a large scale lanparty with somesort of sponsorship, but was in way over his head. I helped him on a conference call then he came by my cube and started to ask me questions. He said he was a gamer (owns a Wii and PS3 and has a level 60 WoW character), but he did not know what I was talking about. While I have the utmost respect for him in his job, he is what our world sees as a typical gamer (along with the rest of my office). While he is not the most knowledgeable at the subject, he enjoys it, and has no problem talking about it in public. Finally the stereotype of a gamer being a grimy individual living in their parents basement is gone, however it has been taken over by another set of terms. Calling one person “Hardcore” and another “Casual” is our new definition of Gamer. Its ironic that even the most starched shirted fortune 500 banker can find the time for a game of Solitaire and therefore may call himself a gamer (an extreme example I know).
Years ago I wrote an op-ed piece entitled “Gamers are Everywhere” and while it was never published and I have lost the original, I have one part of it still. For a time in the late 90s and early 2000s I worked at a Software ETC (Gamestop) inside of a mall. Often we would make runs to the downstairs food court (the A&W shop gave this awesome mall discount. Were talking 48oz rootbeer float for under a dollar awesome). During one of these runs the guy at Wendys was giving me flak since I was wearing a game polo shirt. Calling me all sorts of names that I will not repeat but I am sure that yall have heard them. I didn’t care, but the guy in the line behind me, wearing a very nice suit, spoke up that he was a hardcore Everquest player, the nearby Security guard was a hardcore Madden player, and the guys boss had just been in our store buying a copy of some PSX game (Chrono Cross I think). Needless to say the guy was hushed and the point I made was that Gamers were everywhere. From the boy bussing your table, to the women who was on tv, Gamers were everywhere. The article was dismissed by the paper as inaccurate, but I doubt they would have a second thought printing something like that nowadays.
I guess the point I am getting at is that gamers nowadays are less intelligent since there are more of them. Its just a simple bellcurve, and in the past 10 years the middle has just grown larger and larger. And lets be honest – the majority of the worlds population are sheep. And from my experience in a slaughter house, sheep aint all that bright.
2. I do not believe anyone will question that on a whole modern games are much easier than their predecessors. There are extreme examples from both decades, but lets stick with the middle of the road titles. Lets take a look at action games – Prince of Persia on the PC/NES and Prince of Persia Sands of Time on the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube. In the original you have a strict 60 minute time limit and a severe penalty for dying (restarting the entire stage from scratch minus the time you wasted). Sands of Time introduced the Sands of Time, which lets you rewind the past few minutes of gameplay – great for those pesky jumping puzzles, but it is a lot like savestates in that it makes the game far easier. Do you think Sands of Time would have sold as well if every time you died you started over the area? Sure Sands of Time may be more cinematic, and that is what games are becoming, but we are talking about difficulty.
We can continue to push points back and forth, but while it will make me sound hypocritical, it comes down to your view point. Many will factor out the technical issues of the older games, stating that they were difficult because of the limitations of the hardware, and there are countless other factors we could throw in here. Be that as it may, I still doubt many people on the board will disagree with me on the point that modern games, on the whole, are easier than older games.
Finishing a stage in Mario may seem easy, however I have blown through many of todays more “difficult” games with few hiccups. For example, many considered Ninja Gaiden Black to be the hardest game of last gen. To me, it was a cakewalk compared to that damn train level in Ninja Gaiden 2 and the Mummy boss in Castlevania 3. Granted I still cant figure out Intelligent Qube so maybe Im just an anomaly…
We're flying WAYYY off topic here, but what the hoot.
Ninja Gaiden black is pretty easy once you have an understanding of how to properly fight (Don't stop rolling). The game only REALLY starts to shine on the harder difficulties, which is what brings me to the problem with todays casual gaming market: They don't want a serious challenge. They don't want to spend time learning how to defeat a boss, or learn how to navigate through an onslaught of bullets. They don't want to realize that they are inadequate, and that they couldn't save the world when they were the last hope.
I read a review for Metal Slug 3 (Xbox), and they spent a paragraph going on about how it was stupid that they only get a limited amount of continues. If you are credit feeding your way through a game...you aren't beating it. Hell, you're hardly playing it. A lot of people expect games to be walks in the park, with the only surprises coming from cut-scenes. if that's what you want, why are you playing a videogame? put a movie on.
(My attempt to get back on track)
As easy as Sonic the Hedgehog is, they incorporated the challenge of obtaining all the chaos emeralds. #1 did it the best. Have 50 coins when you finish the level, then navigate that nerve racking spinning maze.With this system you cant just run through the level not caring about what happens, because you have rings and cant die. You now need the rings to obtain the emeralds. #3 made it way too easy; just find the hidden ring and you are good to go. You'll have Super sonic halfway through the game, then your unstoppable.
Sonic Adventure had the emblems, which were a nice touch, strictly for Sonics levels (No one should care about the others). It proved that the game wasn't THAT broken. I still find certain trampolines flinging me off into the great abyss though. I stopped playing Sonic Adventure 2, because too many did.
I would like to say one thing about credit feeding in Metal Slug...I enjoy it, mainly because I can compare each time I get through. The first time I made it through Metal Slug 2, I had used 45 credits. I sucked. Horrendously. The second time, I used 40. From there, every time I beat it I would watch the number drop. While I never invested so much time into to beat it on a single credit(at least not yet), I did manage to get beneath 10 a few times, and I genuinely felt accomplished and wanted to try for more. So no, I don't think it's a bad idea, but some folks just aren't interested in that.
Maybe it has to do with how long you've played games, or how much they affect your life? The last time I played Metal Slug with someone, they decided to never play it again because they had died constantly. Yet that same person loves fighters and would dedicate hours to playing the same one over and over, even after we had exhausted the cast list in full multiple times.
I do see gaming as much more mainstream, and I do agree that a lot of it's pretty easy, but I still think there are interesting games out there, worth looking for.
Personally I think game difficulty these days has less to do with games not being challenging and more to do with how many tries you get to beat it. When games were a lot shorter they were artificially lengthened by limited lives. You get 3 lives to beat the game and if you can't do the whole thing with 3 lives you have to start over. Maybe some would call this difficulty but I call it annoying. Now that games take hours upon hours to beat nobody feels like starting at the beginning of a 20 hour quest because they messed up. I think there are plenty of challenging games today but we might think they're easier because we get unlimited tries at a level, we're not as careful while playing because if we die we can try it again from where we were 30 seconds before we died. That means you can master a game a lot faster than before.
With limited lives you're forced to be at your A-game all the time. The annoyance of having to start over again will prevent you from making the same mistake again.
With lengthy games that take numerous hours to complete save states are welcomed with open arms, however alot of games allow players to abuse the save system, allowing them to save whenever they please. This makes games too easy, because their is virtually no punishment for making mistakes...which I find boring.
So you storm the castle (save), massacre hordes of enemies(save), leap across the holes in the sprial staircase as it collapses beneath your feet(save), then solve the puzzle to show the doorway to the boss (save), then do battle with the boss (save), whats that? that wasnt his final form and you were killed by a falling brick from the sky? Well now you can start form moments before you died.
I dont know about anybody else, but i wouldnt feel like accomplished any great feat after beating the boss like that. Wipe out all those save states, and i'll feel like a CHAMP for doing that.
I wouldnt even say I mastered a game if i played like that. Id keep that maybe one peg down from using cheat codes.
Methinks I see someone who's never saved at the wrong moment and had to restart one of those bloody lengthy games because he didn't realize there was a stray bullet about to pop him in the skull.
Ack wrote:Methinks I see someone who's never saved at the wrong moment and had to restart one of those bloody lengthy games because he didn't realize there was a stray bullet about to pop him in the skull.
If the game only had a few select spots to save that wouldn't happen.
fast wrote:
I guess the point I am getting at is that gamers nowadays are less intelligent
Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with it. Yes, games are easier these days, but I don't think in order to beat Castlevania 3 you need to be a rocket scientist next to the guy who plays Halo, if anything, it's the capability to put up with trial & error. I'm not against older games, I like them as well, but your assumptions are crazy.
