The downside to playing obscure games on retro systems...
Plus a responsible adults, we don't have as much time anymore to experiment and stuff.Mozgus wrote:Practice only makes perfect when it's a matter of skill. When you've tried everything already, practice will never help you.lordofduct wrote:I remember how we beat games before the internet... and how I try to still beat games.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.
Where is the fun in a damn walkthrough!?
Isn't it amazing how much crap we put up with as kids?
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Gamerforlife
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 10184
- Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:15 pm
- Location: Florida
I kind of skimmed this topic, so feel free to flame me if I'm just repeating anyone. It seems there is debate over whether or not people should use guides with their games. Here's my take, I have beaten many tough games on my own over the years. Megaman 1, the original Ninja Turtles on the NES, Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2, MDK 2, Shinobi on the PS 2(it haunted my dreams)and some others that I may have mentioned in the gaming accomplishments thread. I got to the last boss of Subterranea on my own too. I feel like I have nothing else to prove to myself as a gamer, so I don't get so upset if I use a guide every now and then when I game today.
As I think others have pointed out, there's less free time when you get older. When I was younger I didn't care if it took me an hour or two to figure out how to beat one stage or boss. I had nothing better to do, and all the free time in the world. Now it does bug me a bit because I want to make the most of the little gaming time I get, so if I get stuck on something for too long, I use a guide.
This is also affected by genre and series, as I'm less likely to turn to a guide for a genre or game franchise I'm generally good at, but if it's a game from a genre or series I don't usually play and I just want to have fun, I'll use a guide since I know I might be frustrated otherwise, but I usually am too proud to use a guide for a game from a genre or series I'm very familiar with. I used a guide to help me get through Legendary on Halo since I'm not a pro at first person shooters, but I was playing Maximo: Ghosts to Glory on hard right from the get go and was getting master rank on each stage with no help at all. I beat the original Maximo with no help too
Some gaming accomplishments are IMPOSSIBLE without a guide. Try getting and doing EVERYTHING in a Final Fantasy game without a guide. Good luck, so much of it is weird and random crap. Now, that's a fault of the design, but that's how Final Fantasy is and always will be. As a fan of the series, I've learned to live with it.
It's worth noting that for skill based games, it doesn't matter if you consult a faq, guide or whatever. You still have to be able to actually do it. For something like Panzer Dragoon Orta, even after watching a pro play it still took me many efforts to get S ranks and perfect shotdown ratio for most of the levels. The videos I watched showed me some good strategies, but I never could match the player's skill in some portions of the game and I had to kind of do things my way because I couldn't do it his way. Don't even get me started on other games like Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. You can watch Shinobier show you how he gets through a level, but good luck matching his incredible skill at actually DOING it. You'll need a lot of practice just to get good at the game, and even then that guy will still be leagues better than you
Oh, and for the original topic creator, I find a lot of helpful vids for older games online at Youtube.
As I think others have pointed out, there's less free time when you get older. When I was younger I didn't care if it took me an hour or two to figure out how to beat one stage or boss. I had nothing better to do, and all the free time in the world. Now it does bug me a bit because I want to make the most of the little gaming time I get, so if I get stuck on something for too long, I use a guide.
This is also affected by genre and series, as I'm less likely to turn to a guide for a genre or game franchise I'm generally good at, but if it's a game from a genre or series I don't usually play and I just want to have fun, I'll use a guide since I know I might be frustrated otherwise, but I usually am too proud to use a guide for a game from a genre or series I'm very familiar with. I used a guide to help me get through Legendary on Halo since I'm not a pro at first person shooters, but I was playing Maximo: Ghosts to Glory on hard right from the get go and was getting master rank on each stage with no help at all. I beat the original Maximo with no help too
Some gaming accomplishments are IMPOSSIBLE without a guide. Try getting and doing EVERYTHING in a Final Fantasy game without a guide. Good luck, so much of it is weird and random crap. Now, that's a fault of the design, but that's how Final Fantasy is and always will be. As a fan of the series, I've learned to live with it.
It's worth noting that for skill based games, it doesn't matter if you consult a faq, guide or whatever. You still have to be able to actually do it. For something like Panzer Dragoon Orta, even after watching a pro play it still took me many efforts to get S ranks and perfect shotdown ratio for most of the levels. The videos I watched showed me some good strategies, but I never could match the player's skill in some portions of the game and I had to kind of do things my way because I couldn't do it his way. Don't even get me started on other games like Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox. You can watch Shinobier show you how he gets through a level, but good luck matching his incredible skill at actually DOING it. You'll need a lot of practice just to get good at the game, and even then that guy will still be leagues better than you
Oh, and for the original topic creator, I find a lot of helpful vids for older games online at Youtube.
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Gamerforlife
- Next-Gen
- Posts: 10184
- Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:15 pm
- Location: Florida
I agree with Mozgus. When I was a kid I used to have amazing patience for games with poor design, but now that I'm 28 I will just stop playing a game with stupid puzzles or that requires a FAQ to play.
Case in point, my friend lends me God of War and Final Fantasy XII for PS2. I play through God of War. Sure, its a simple game but its designed near-perfect. Never did I search the internet for a FAQ while playing, and never did the frequent puzzles confuse me for longer than a few minutes. Sure, some of it gets pretty hard (playing on hard difficulty), but you just need to suck it up and fight smarter.
Contrast this to FF12. I'll preface this with the note that I've finished basically every FF game up until FF-X. FF7 is one of my top five games.
I start playing and I'm subjected to about 30minutes of low-interaction cutscenes. Finally I'm turned loose in a desert to hunt for a killer tomato of some kind. I search for it. No luck. I fight wolves instead. I consider searching for a FAQ. Its just such a tiring idea that I don't bother. Just pop the disc out and give it back to my friend.
So I believe I've gotten to the point where I just won't tolerate bad game design anymore. Perhaps its a lack of patience, but its also a bullshit detector. I don't have time in my life to play every last game that ever got a good review. So from now on I'll be skipping the Oblivions and FF12s of the future, timesinks that require a FAQ by your side and an endless weekend to finish...
Case in point, my friend lends me God of War and Final Fantasy XII for PS2. I play through God of War. Sure, its a simple game but its designed near-perfect. Never did I search the internet for a FAQ while playing, and never did the frequent puzzles confuse me for longer than a few minutes. Sure, some of it gets pretty hard (playing on hard difficulty), but you just need to suck it up and fight smarter.
Contrast this to FF12. I'll preface this with the note that I've finished basically every FF game up until FF-X. FF7 is one of my top five games.
I start playing and I'm subjected to about 30minutes of low-interaction cutscenes. Finally I'm turned loose in a desert to hunt for a killer tomato of some kind. I search for it. No luck. I fight wolves instead. I consider searching for a FAQ. Its just such a tiring idea that I don't bother. Just pop the disc out and give it back to my friend.
So I believe I've gotten to the point where I just won't tolerate bad game design anymore. Perhaps its a lack of patience, but its also a bullshit detector. I don't have time in my life to play every last game that ever got a good review. So from now on I'll be skipping the Oblivions and FF12s of the future, timesinks that require a FAQ by your side and an endless weekend to finish...
Mozgus wrote:The best games don't require such frustration though. When I get stuck on something, and find out that the solution was something horribly retarded and irrelevant to the event, I usually consider it a flaw in the design.lordofduct wrote:I'm saying that games aren't impossible with out them. What we did before the internet was trial and error and understanding that the game ISN'T impossible and we may have just missed something. Of course a Walkthrough is very nice when you've tried a thousand billion times (for instance with Silent Hill...) but hey... shit happens.
Skip Morrowind, not Oblivion. I didn't use a guide for Oblivion as far as I can remember. It always points you to where your quest objective is, or it will, in plain English, tell you what to do. Morrowind however, requires that you place yourself in that world entirely, study every inch of it's geography, memorize every NPC in the game, and so on. Until you do all that, the quests are going to make you their bitch.JJJ wrote:So I believe I've gotten to the point where I just won't tolerate bad game design anymore. Perhaps its a lack of patience, but its also a bullshit detector. I don't have time in my life to play every last game that ever got a good review. So from now on I'll be skipping the Oblivions and FF12s of the future, timesinks that require a FAQ by your side and an endless weekend to finish...
I actually bought my 360 last year to play Oblivion. I just couldn't get into it - I decided that these types of RPGs just aren't to my taste.
*small review coming*
Oblivion presents you with such a HUGE WORLD, but its such a bland, personality-less world. You can travel for hours, but you rarely meet someone with something truly interesting to say/offer. The dungeons may not be random anymore (I played Daggerfall and experienced random 3d dungeons back in the day... yikes!) but they feel like it. Each of the 1000s of NPCs is voiced by about um, say 10 different voice actors - it got so bad that I just turned off voice. A game this large should be about the joy of discovery and adventuring, but I didn't feel any joy as I entered yet another dreary dungeon or a cookie-cutter town.
Contrast this to Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape Torment. Games with very large worlds (nowhere near as large as Oblivion though), but are packed with interesting events, characters and items. The dungeons seem crafted, not random. Dialouges may be mostly text, but I'll take the well-written text over badly-voiced stuff any day.
I just couldn't bear putting hundreds of hours into Oblivion so I sold it after about 20 hours...
*jjj still awaits X360s first good RPG*
*jjj hopes its Mass Effect!*
*small review coming*
Oblivion presents you with such a HUGE WORLD, but its such a bland, personality-less world. You can travel for hours, but you rarely meet someone with something truly interesting to say/offer. The dungeons may not be random anymore (I played Daggerfall and experienced random 3d dungeons back in the day... yikes!) but they feel like it. Each of the 1000s of NPCs is voiced by about um, say 10 different voice actors - it got so bad that I just turned off voice. A game this large should be about the joy of discovery and adventuring, but I didn't feel any joy as I entered yet another dreary dungeon or a cookie-cutter town.
Contrast this to Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape Torment. Games with very large worlds (nowhere near as large as Oblivion though), but are packed with interesting events, characters and items. The dungeons seem crafted, not random. Dialouges may be mostly text, but I'll take the well-written text over badly-voiced stuff any day.
I just couldn't bear putting hundreds of hours into Oblivion so I sold it after about 20 hours...
*jjj still awaits X360s first good RPG*
*jjj hopes its Mass Effect!*
Hrm.... A downside to playing retro games on original systems...
I don't have enough damn AV inputs on my TV and home theater system. I also don't have enough outlets with room for power bricks close to the TV. My NES and Genesis are, sadly, sitting fallow at the moment, not connected. But then, there's not enough room in the TV cabinet for them anyway :)
I don't have enough damn AV inputs on my TV and home theater system. I also don't have enough outlets with room for power bricks close to the TV. My NES and Genesis are, sadly, sitting fallow at the moment, not connected. But then, there's not enough room in the TV cabinet for them anyway :)
All valid gripes on Oblivion, and yet I hated those 2 games you mentioned. Now THOSE seemed bland to me. And too slow. But oh well, we're off topic again, heh.JJJ wrote:*small review coming*
Oblivion presents you with such a HUGE WORLD, but its such a bland, personality-less world. You can travel for hours, but you rarely meet someone with something truly interesting to say/offer. The dungeons may not be random anymore (I played Daggerfall and experienced random 3d dungeons back in the day... yikes!) but they feel like it. Each of the 1000s of NPCs is voiced by about um, say 10 different voice actors - it got so bad that I just turned off voice. A game this large should be about the joy of discovery and adventuring, but I didn't feel any joy as I entered yet another dreary dungeon or a cookie-cutter town.
Contrast this to Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape Torment. Games with very large worlds (nowhere near as large as Oblivion though), but are packed with interesting events, characters and items. The dungeons seem crafted, not random. Dialouges may be mostly text, but I'll take the well-written text over badly-voiced stuff any day.