21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men

[Gentle Ben]

The majority of us are wired for 2D gaming.

I basically gave up gaming after Final Fantasy VII - in the past 10 years, I've beaten maybe 7 total games?

Now I see all this talk about Bayonetta, Yakuza, and whatever else.

I think its the same shit with different mapping.

My "glory days" and skill level are still 2D, and will always be.

Fuck more than 6 buttons.

Amen, brother! No, seriously, Madden used to be fun on Genesis....now it requires mental powers approaching Xavier to play it.

 

[SNKorSWM]

A few years ago, the U.S. Army had actually given a seminar during E3 about involving in developing games. I guess this is the result, that these FPS games are all US made.

 

[Neo Alec]

This article got it exactly right. I've been complaining about this for years.

We all play games just as much as 14-year-old kids these days do so don't try to say you don't.

Can't say that I do. These days I buy a lot of games I don't end up really playing. Like Bayonetta. Still working on Assasin's Creed 2 and Forza 3. And those are the games that got my time. I tend to prefer TV when I'm not with friends these days. It asks nothing of me, and games take effort.

 

[ForeverSublime]

So we should recycle the same shit over and over for the sake of playing it safe? Sounds like a terrible plan.

Not exactly. Cost justification isn't necessarily between a developer and publisher, but between a buyer and the product as well. If you take a game like Closure and pour an extra 1,000,000$ into it. . . the end user isn't going to get that much more bang for the buck.

Regardless, pouring a lot of money into chance endeavors also sucks. Ever fund a project with your own money? Or started any sort of business and been responsible for someone's salary? With a family? Perspectives change on what type of chances you want to take with what ratio of cash you have to spend. A company can be that times 1000. But, hey, I guess a CEO could turn the statement around and say anyone not opening a business is playing it safe with their life, and that's not a good plan either.

Just to give you a virtual charliehorse, I would like to passively reference the irony of your "recycled shit" statement and point to your Bladeru. . . I mean, Snatcher avatar*. As if Kojima doesn't recycle other concepts much less his own series (Metal Gear). Most everything we're surrounded by doesn't live up to its potential and plays it pretty safe - the clothing we buy, the power grid we use. . . games aren't much different.

People actually like crappy games, too. Sometimes they're just looking for something different in a game. Sometimes they just have crappy taste. Don't be mad at the developers. Be mad that there are that many people walking around to justify the cost.

*Or is that an A-ha video?

 

[ForeverSublime]

A few years ago, the U.S. Army had actually given a seminar during E3 about involving in developing games. I guess this is the result, that these FPS games are all US made.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army

 

[voodoodoctorx]

“The younger guys have much more refined motor skills, [having grown up] with more-advanced systems,” Walsh says. In other words, they cut their teeth on Halo 2 while we were playing Pac-Man."

this really got me... play though a game of mega man, ninja gaiden or any number of old school nes titles and tell me that they don't require refined motor skills. if you move into the 90's with all the fighting games this point really becomes funny.

"Thompson is careful not to mix school and gaming — he politely declines requests to play with his students, preferring to mix it up with fellow dads. One of his teammates is expecting his first child, and the gamers discuss birthing classes and day care during firefights."

what the hell!?

the whole article sounds like the rantings of a shitty player. most of us have lives where we don't have much time for gaming, and as a result it just takes us a bit longer to be really good at a new game. thats probably the reason why id rather play battlefield 2142 or team fortress 2 over say a newer title like modern warfare 2.

My dad is in his early 50's and he's still a dominant force and a monster in FPS and he played them from the very first moment. Maybe some old mofos can't let go of the old days. Look at Fighting Games, most of the badasses are people who have been in the scene for a while.

my dads the same way, and on a saturday morning like this i can guarantee hes having a ball playing world at war right now.

 

[not sonic]

i feel like reflexes dont really mean anything with console fps.

moving around with a controller is so slow that it doesnt matter.


also i noticed a few people here saying they used to own ut or quake or whatevs and suck at halo and cod. imo, its way harder to take someone whos always played fps with a mouse to learn to play well with a controller than someone whos never played a game at all.

 

[elixir]

War simulators are boring as all fuck. I used to work in an internet cafe, I'd know. I have probably 3000 hours across Counter-Strike 1.5, 1.6 and Source. They fucked up Nuke, Militia and Oilrig in the process. Job's long passed now and I'm in my 20's. I still play Team Fortress 2, but I burned out of that and now only play on a Warcraft modded server.

I only bothered to play Goldeneye to put remote mines in the Facility using invisibility cheats, then hide and watch the game drop to 2 fps. It was pretty fun. FPS like Borderlands are pretty enjoyable although I didn't buy it, since I don't like how Steam overprices their stuff depending on your location. I liked the whole RPG aspect of it. The whole RPG aspect in a war simulator though.. ugh.

My major gripe with FPS has always been that they're hindered by fundamentally poor design limitations. It's first person, yet you have no field of vision aside from directly in front of you. You can't see to your left or right, you can't see out the corner of your "eyes". They have already dealt with this but there's no way I'm buying 3 monitors just to play one genre of game. Everyone has already adjusted by now (by force) anyway.

 

[Neo Alec]

this really got me... play though a game of mega man, ninja gaiden or any number of old school nes titles and tell me that they don't require refined motor skills. if you move into the 90's with all the fighting games this point really becomes funny.

I agree about the old games needing coordination and reflexes, but the point is the new games require different training. And it definitely helps that gamers today were playing FPS's when they were six while we were not.

What I find funny is how people today complain that the NES Ninja Gaidens are too hard, or that Mega Man 9 was too hard, of that Contra was impossible without the code. My brother and I bought Ninja Gaiden 2 back when we were little and beat it in the first game. I think we had to pause it over night, but it was the first game.

 

[SNKorSWM]

NG2 was the easiest of the three because you can let the shadows do all the work and not put Ryu in harm. So when people say that game is too hard, maybe they mean the platforming?

 

[SNKorSWM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army

9 million DLs? No wonder everybody's making them these days.

 

[Rocko]

A few years ago, the U.S. Army had actually given a seminar during E3 about involving in developing games. I guess this is the result, that these FPS games are all US made.

I don't know about that. PLENTY of FPSes are coded in europe, Operation Flashpoint and Arma2 for instance. However FPSes are not really popular in Japan, so very few of them are made there, if any...

 

[SpamYouToDeath]

Europe makes plenty of FPS games. Crytek is European. So is GSC-Gameworld. So is People Can Fly (although I think they got bought by Epic or someone). If you don't count multiple entries in the same franchise, I'd say only a little over half the FPS games I play are American-made.

 

[norton9478]

What I find funny is how people today complain that the NES Ninja Gaidens are too hard, or that Mega Man 9 was too hard, of that Contra was impossible without the code. My brother and I bought Ninja Gaiden 2 back when we were little and beat it in the first game. I think we had to pause it over night, but it was the first game.

One of the reasons why the older games seemed easier is because of the lack of being able to continue/save at every movement. Or better yet, limited continues.

After your 3 continues are up on Contra, you have to go back to the beginning. And because of this, you actually master the early and middle levels... Then you get your 3 continues on the level that is kicking your ass... And you have to start at the beginning on each continue... Not the screen before you died. Hopefully those 3 continues will be just enough to learn from your mistakes.