miffy495

goty.cx 2009?

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Book the Third: in which Jon Cole gets comfortable enough to start shooting back. I like it.

Edit: Jon, I'm not giving you a hard time. I'm just saying I like it that you're challenging people. I, for one, am too drunk to respond intelligently. But still, good on ya.

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You mean you can pinpoint the exact moment where it stopped being interesting for you. For many people, while those areas may have been slow, traversing those environments and making use out of the objects to make bridges through the sand were award enough.

Heh, I forgot to say "for me". You're right, though I can't see how anyone would see that part as being fun. It's too punishing.

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I don't think there has been a game with such an outstanding quality compared to others that it deserves the title of game of the decade.

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I was just thinking about all this a bit more while procrastinating at work and I just thought to myself "Man, I love video games."

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I don't think there has been a game with such an outstanding quality compared to others that it deserves the title of game of the decade.

Since I am so undecided, I concur. With movies I can decide a movie that was awesome and impacted a majority of other movies over the next ten years ... I can't seem to do this for games; one that has outstanding quality over others and completely revolutionizes most games around it in a positive manner.

I can see how HL or HL 2 could be tip toeing around this definition, but I don't think it or anything else really met that criteria.

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It's insane how much Half-Life 2 has become a part of my life. I replay the game regularly. Alyx asking me to set up turrets is like a wife asking me to take out the trash. Suburban bliss!

I even seek out Half-Life 2 in other media. I saw Children of Men because a friend told me, "Dude, it's like Half-Life 2." I purchased the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes" about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky because his industrial landscapes resemble Highway 17 and Sandtraps.

That said, game of the decade is still Thief 2: The Metal Age.

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It's insane how much Half-Life 2 has become a part of my life. I replay the game regularly. Alyx asking me to set up turrets is like a wife asking me to take out the trash. Suburban bliss!

I even seek out Half-Life 2 in other media. I saw Children of Men because a friend told me, "Dude, it's like Half-Life 2." I purchased the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes" about Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky because his industrial landscapes resemble Highway 17 and Sandtraps.

This, most definitely this!

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HL2 would definitely be up there, but I don't think I could call it my favourite of the whole decade. I'd put Beyond Good and Evil above it, for example.

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Was Braid 2009? If so, that's my GOTY 2009.

Also, WHAT THE FUCK:

LucasArts: "IGN must have loved Monkey Island Special Edition! Adventure game of the year? With such tough competition we are flattered!"

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My picks for this year;

Uncharted 2

Uncharted_2__Among_Thieves-PlayStat.jpg

MLB 09: The Show

MLB09TheShow_1.png

Dragon Age

dragonage08.jpg

ArmA II

arma-ii-imagery-20080821112931666_6.jpg

iRacing

lotus_ss_6_screen_full.jpg

And (the cop-out) honourable mentions for Flower, PixelJunk Shooter, Football Manager 2010, Empire Total War, Left 4 Dead 2, Noby Noby Boy and Men of War. The Mount & Blade: Warband online beta is also fairly awesome.

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Well, "games as games" (I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean) can bring out a good emotional reaction. I don't mean that you should be tearing-up as the credits roll. But it seems that far too many people - off and on Idle Thumbs - are going with games that seem to be designed around certain game mechanics, and not the other way around. Part of the reason I love Ico so much is that they cut out anything they thought was unnecessary. It's a fun game - and the keyword here is "game," as Ico would not have worked as well had it been a movie, since so much of it is catered to the medium, like the the beating controller, etc - but it's also an engrossing emotional experience.

Half-Life 2 was fun, sure, but large parts of it were frustrating and choppy. I remember a lot of people complimenting its story, though I find it sparse and without direction - if it weren't for Wikipedia I would have had no idea what was going on. Again: I love the game (I don't think there's much out there that rivals the Nova Prospekt attack), but I think it's far too bloated for its own good. I'm usually much happier playing the episodes, which are a lot more focused.

I can pin-point the exact moment Half-Life 2 stopped being interesting and just devolved into being "fun": during the sand/ant lion levels. There's all these houses around that are off the beaten path. If you decide to pop in, all you get is an empty place with no signs of life; there is no reward for experimenting. I know that Newell is big on linear, but there's a line. The whole thing felt like a puppet show afterwards.

The first paragraph has a lot of interesting chicken and egg stuff going on. Of course I'd rather have a game with mechanics built around a premise, but there's a risk you could end up with something equally unsuited to the medium. Ideally, I'd like to think designers only go with concepts they are confident would work within a certain video game framework, established or not, but I fear most literally are just "we want to make a shooter and here's a guy we employed to tack on a story". We could also get into a massive tangle about the use of the word game. It's no longer an appropriate descriptor for some interactive experiences (though sadly for the majority it probably is), but it's the established name of the medium, thus difficult to shake off. It doesn't explicitly mean "game" any more anyway. There's probably some proper way to describe what I mean, for I feel I've failed to articulate it properly.

And I think, rather than "story", which a lot of gamers on the internet purport to value but are never quite sure what they mean, Half-Life 2's success lies in the narrative techniques Valve use rather than any sort of complex plot. It feels like a more organic, player-driven and adventure style experience despite being very, very linear.

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I can pin-point the exact moment Half-Life 2 stopped being interesting and just devolved into being "fun": during the sand/ant lion levels. There's all these houses around that are off the beaten path. If you decide to pop in, all you get is an empty place with no signs of life; there is no reward for experimenting.

That was one of my favourite parts of the game, actually.

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My game of the decade is:

Outcast

I know it came out in 1999, but I think it's the game I've most replayed this decade. I can barely go a year without replaying it. Nothing has ever really topped it for me -- even if lots of games have done some things better, the style of the game and how it mixes genres really Appeals to me. Beyond Good & Evil is most similar to it I think, but I prefer Outcast's world. Also, if I could go back in time and change one thing in the history of gaming, it would be to make Outcast sell gazillions so Appeal could have kept developing Outcast 2.

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That was one of my favourite parts of the game, actually.

Yeah, me too. That's exactly what makes it unique for me. The rest is excellent, but seen in other games too. But the atmosphere in those parts is incredible.

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Just downloaded the Rubber Soul pack for Beatles Rock Band and played "In My Life" a few times. Goddamn. That game may end up actually being my goty. So fucking good.

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Well if we are going to start talking about games as games and then make some serious considerations for game of the decade then I'm torn between Mr Driller on the Dreamcast and Earth Defense Force 2017.

Shallow? Yes. Games that I would go back and replay at the drop of the hat? Most definitely.

Any other game where I have become engrossed in the narrative are good and I like them and everything but usually once I'm done I never want to play those games again. Even if the games had great mechanics I find I remember too much of the plot and therefore get bored.

It is why I've only played Bioshock once but played Gears of War 2 three times. The moments of narrative in GeoW2 are time to go and get another beer/cup of tea whereas Bioshock is so fresh in my mind for all its impact that I don't want to play it again until I've forgotten it.

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I don't put any stock in replay value. Besides the fact it almost always means diminishing returns, the game as an experience, like the best films, needn't require multiple playthroughs to appreciate.

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Bioshock is another game I think is unfairly praised. I'm very appreciate of the work that went into the world, but the narrative centers around the dicey moral choices of whether or not to murder little girls. I face a larger dilemma when I pick my lunch off a menu. And the gameplay is just your standard shooter fare, though granted, those Big Daddies put up a good, intense fight.

And I think, rather than "story", which a lot of gamers on the internet purport to value but are never quite sure what they mean, Half-Life 2's success lies in the narrative techniques Valve use rather than any sort of complex plot. It feels like a more organic, player-driven and adventure style experience despite being very, very linear.

If you say so. Games are fickle that way. There's a lot that bothers me in shooters that I can only assume people take for granted, things that won't totally affect their pleasure the way it does mine.

The way I see it is, you sit down, you think of what you want to do and you design it to cater to whatever medium you're working in. This is something that Team ICO have been doing and that's worked out very well for them. But most games are essentially tech demoes: we need a level where it's snowing, we need a level where you escort the McGuffin to the place you need to take it, etc. We need a place to show off this idea, and another to show off that.

By contrast, look at, say, Portal (I'm aware that I'm comparing Valve with itself). They decided they wanted to make a game about portals, so they sat down and designed as many puzzles as they could around ideas like contrasting distance, making it longer (the momentum puzzles), using the portals to guide an energy ball down a certain path, and so on. The interesting thing is that Portal is minimal, by which I mean that usually, if something won't serve to help you in your puzzle-solving, it isn't there. I remember getting stuck on some puzzle, and starting to walk around. I saw a fork/bolt cutter/whatever and picked it up. My first instinct was to think I needed it; my second was to realise I didn't. The game was designed around the idea that you need nothing, and the sparse art direction with knowledge of previous puzzles saved me from frustration. This all helps to serve the idea that you're going to need everything you use to finish the game. I guess that's how the Companion Cube happened: they wanted you to burn things around GLADoS, so they had you burn your "friend" earlier on as a tutorial that also served the story.

Now if this were something developed by, I don't know, Infinity Ward, they'd have you run off and do all these side-missions. They'd have you fight against a horde of walking turrets or something to get you to the second gun. It's not that extreme, but that's how most developers seem to approach their games: "We need to place something that can show off our HD Rendering and have it affect our gameplay. Maybe have the player fight a turret with the sun blinding their eyes." And then they hire a writer to make it look somewhat less tacked-on.

Actually, Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw were talking about something similar in this here podcast (not sure at exactly what point, but upwards of 22 minutes). They even mention that they plug in the dialogue/sound themselves so that they can pace it the way they want to.

Edited by Kroms

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I don't put any stock in replay value. Besides the fact it almost always means diminishing returns, the game as an experience, like the best films, needn't require multiple playthroughs to appreciate.

Huh, I'd say all the great films can be appreciated the first time, but rarely fully understood. At least all movies that are talked about as great movies are way too dense with detail that you could just take all of it in with just one viewing. Usually there are details and new insights to find in the second, third viewing and beyond.

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I don't put any stock in replay value. Besides the fact it almost always means diminishing returns, the game as an experience, like the best films, needn't require multiple playthroughs to appreciate.

I don't really agree. It's not about necessity of multiple playthroughs, it's about the reward of multiple playthroughs. For instance, a game like Dragon Age gets better with multiple playthroughs because you gain more insight into the deep world. Similarly, a movie like Inglourious Basterds has complexity of dialogue and multifaceted characters that may not result in full understanding after the first viewing. In the same boat (for me), Godfather, Blade Runner, Roshomon, well... actually anything by Kurosawa, for that matter.

It's not necessarily a replay value -> quality relationship, it's more of a "if replay value is a result of nuance, then replay value may be an indicator of quality" sort of situation. In the case of a game like Half-Life 2 where there are several layers of themes, I think that that particular relationship is cogent.

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I don't put any stock in replay value. Besides the fact it almost always means diminishing returns, the game as an experience, like the best films, needn't require multiple playthroughs to appreciate.

See, I'm talking about the fact each of those games supply me with instant gratification for hours and hours each and every time I sit down with them. I'm not saying that games have to have replay value for them to impact me in any meaningful way. However, if they can rekindle the joy I first felt when I play them like the very first time I played them that pushes them above everything else.

See, now Way of the Samurai 3 can only be appreciated properly after multiple playthroughs with the story not being clearly unfurled without subsequent runs. It is my Game of the Year but once I get all of those playthroughs I don't think I will want to pick it up again for some time.

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Was Braid 2009? If so, that's my GOTY 2009.

Also, WHAT THE FUCK:

(I thought Braid was featured last year...)

I wrote something mean on their Facebook page about how they didn't deserve it, but then I realized it was IGN and that it's probably unbecoming to leave angry messages on people's Facebook so I deleted it.

Really though, they were competing against at least Machinarium or Tales of Monkey Island. Besides German adventures that weren't in English, those two at least had to be better than a quick outsourced-to-an-asian-country remake?

Just a thought.

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(I thought Braid was featured last year...)

I wrote something mean on their Facebook page about how they didn't deserve it, but then I realized it was IGN and that it's probably unbecoming to leave angry messages on people's Facebook so I deleted it.

Really though, they were competing against at least Machinarium or Tales of Monkey Island. Besides German adventures that weren't in English, those two at least had to be better than a quick outsourced-to-an-asian-country remake?

Just a thought.

Braid on XBLA was 2008, PC version was 2009.

Also, yeah, not played Machinarium but surely Tales of MI is more deserving than a game released 20 years ago with new visuals and voicing.

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