Bulldrek v3.0

Can anyone check on this?

video games are stupid

Despite the fact the author kept repeating himself, I have to agree with his sentiments. Though after playing Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, I found I miss the old SSI gold box games. Sure the graphics were crappy, but you knew the commands to get your char to do the things you wanted, they remained true to the heart of AD&D, and most importantly, the dice weren't loaded against the player because some fuckwit who doesn't know the game thinks one class is over balanced! Gee, I'm not bitter, am I? *wry*
As for the back of the hero perspective, I found that hugely annoying in Crusaders of Might and Magic (I am sooo glad I got that in the bargin bin for 7 bucks).

About the only decent video game I've encountered recently has been Arcanum, okay so the graphics aren't the greatest, but you do have a top down POV, you have control over your chars, you actually have some sort of interactive dialoge with the NPC's, your actions actually influence how people receive you...it's great, and it's a pity there aren't enough games like it.

Oh well, I've ranted and raved enough. Ask Jackal about my reactions to some of these games, I'm sure he can give you an earful.

Thanks, Buddha. I had to wipe my computer monitor off when I saw that.

This man has a bit of pent up angst

I think he's a retard.

Yes, I think gameplay has suffered at the expense of graphics and sound. Umm, so? But for those who like serious gameplay, there are still about a million games out there that are all about gameplay. They're just not being released by the major development houses, because they don't sell well.

Dude wants to slam gameplay, he can go play Qbert all night long - because, god knows, that's a game that requires some shocking intelligence. Me, I'm going to go play some Final Fantasy X.

His core point is valid, and has been made over and over again since, say, soon after Doom started getting cloned badly. But he's couching it in really horrible rants about chess - I just have to say he's an idiot one more time - graphic designers, and why this article isn't getting published. Dude, newsflash: It's not because game magazines don't want to admit that they and the entire industry are stupid, because articles stating that have been printed in every major mag I can think of. It's because your writing is bad. It's just bad. It's incoherent, rambling, ill-phrased, and you know what else? It's bad.

He has a point, but he's buried it in crap. He's an idiot.

Shit, I stopped reading at the Battle Chess part. Poor fucker totally missed the point about that game, and he further alienates gamers by using the word "stupid" repeatedly.

OK, I struggled through the parts where he claimed to have turned this in to a couple of zines and was rejected. There's a reason for that: lack of structure. Needless to say, I'm not too happy. Hell, I'm prone to ranting myself, but at least I know enough to go back and clean up the grammatical afterbirth that is my article.

Obviously someone hasn't played

• Halo
• Max Payne
• Pikman
• Super Smash Bros.
• Einhander

Those games are so full of ROCK it hurts.

Complete crackpot. Statements like:

Unfortunately, the comedies they made as talkies were never as funny as the silent comedies. In fact, to this day no one has made a movie as funny as the silent comedies.

Simply seal it.

He goes on to talk about the 'advantages' of a top-down view when looking at a maze, but it sounds like he just has no capacity for three dimentional recognition. Example:

If, instead, you have a 3-D view inside a maze on a video screen, and you turn around a corner, you somehow don’t feel like you’ve turned. Some cognitive information is missing. Instead of feeling you have turned, you just see the picture of the maze pan across your screen. It is impossible to build a mental map of the maze.

It seems to me like this guy is just plain bad at a lot of the current games, so of course, they all must be bad. Which, of course they are, seeing as 'good' and 'bad' in this instance are just statements of preference. I, of course, think he's full of shit, and that his 'reasons' are stupid and pathetic, but hey, that's just me.

Have you looked at the rest of his site? Here's a funny excerpt:

That moron from that site wrote: March 13, 2002: My essay about video games just got another interesting notice. It’s on this site: Kuro5hin.org...

Uh, the web site you're looking for is "google.com." You can find all sorts of answers there. The answer to the question you don't know the answer to is "corrosion." Moron.

And here's an example of a "really fun game." You know, a maze. And I'll tell you, you certainly "feel like you've turned" because, in this badly rendered 2-D maze, there's nothing attractive to distract from the massive amount of "cognative information" that the maze is imparting to you. What a stupid shit.

32...damn...I was playing that site last night.

Coyote wrote: Obviously someone hasn't played

• Halo
• Max Payne
• Pikman
• Super Smash Bros.
• Einhander

Those games are so full of ROCK it hurts.

Deus Ex...
Metal Gear Solid...
Alien vs. Predator II...
Ok, AvP II wasn't that great, but I had a fucking blast playing it.

Ok, AvP II wasn't that great, but I had a fucking blast playing it.

Then it was fantastic. I mean, if a video game entertained you enough for you to say that you 'had a fucking blast' while playing it, then it's done the job just about as well as possible.

FlameBlade wrote: 32...damn...I was playing that site last night.

While you were doing that, I was playing Diablo II, which has got to be one of the "stupidest" games out there. And I was still having a bunchof fun. So, as Scamp says, that's what matters, right?[/u]

The guy phrases shit wrong, but I see his point. I've been a long time subscriber to the PCZONE magazine, from back in the day where it was called ZONE and only featured SNES and Megadrive games. I have found that my tastes differ quite a bit from the majorities simply because I want a bit more depth in my games. Something has to appeal to me, if it doesn't...then...well, the games up.

The last few games that I enjoyed were;

Max Payne - Nice graphics, nice atmosphere, ass gameplay.
Deus Ex - Everything was right in this game.
Kingpin - Nice atmosphere. Mediocre game.
Dreamweb - An old game with a tremendous amount of atmosphere.
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers - I am in awe. Too bad the follow ups were ass.
Phantasy Star II - This was a Megadrive/Genesis game, god knows why I enjoyed it, but I did.
Shadowrun - SNES game, I loved it and still do.
Rick Dangerous 1 & 2 - Amiga games...

...I can go on...but my point is that there are _very_ long pauses between the games I enjoy, because...well, I think I'm picky and look for that little something that appeals. It's definitely not the rehashed shit that we see today.

Perhaps I've changed, and it's the industry that has stayed the same.

*sneaks Anarchy Online onto that list*

Tekken Tag? anyone?

3278 wrote: And here's an example of a "really fun game." You know, a maze. And I'll tell you, you certainly "feel like you've turned" because, in this badly rendered 2-D maze, there's nothing attractive to distract from the massive amount of "cognative information" that the maze is imparting to you. What a stupid shit.

dude, this is actualy entertaining.....

TheScamp wrote:

Ok, AvP II wasn't that great, but I had a fucking blast playing it.

Then it was fantastic. I mean, if a video game entertained you enough for you to say that you 'had a fucking blast' while playing it, then it's done the job just about as well as possible.

It's only fun because I'm an absolute Alien junky. Climbing on walls and ceilings and shit was fun as hell once your brain adjusted to playing in a shifting 3d environment.

It's only fun because I'm an absolute Alien junky.

So? It was still fun. I only liked Max Payne because I think diving around corners in slow motion while unloading a double barreled shotgun blast to some guy's chin is nifty.

Everyone loves games for different reasons. My vote is show this guy a table top and call it a day.

Deev: Dreamweb fucking rocked for it's time and yet it got looked over on the shelves here. I picked it up and it was fun as hell. To me at least, the game seemed like it had some pretty origional ideas.

You people fear the fact that Defender was the magnum opus of electronic entertainment, right next to Bobby is Going Home.

Kill the humanoids!

I'm reviving this so I can finish Thesus and Minotaur.

Spiral, I hear ya. My god that game can get confusing QUICK. Especially when you're running away from something...you stop...and you say to yourself..."Where the fuck am I?"

The games on my shelf that see the most use are Blood (1 & 2; but mostly 2), Fallout (1 & 2) and Thief (again, both 1 & 2). I can play them for hours on end, beat them, then start a new game and play some more, and never get sick of them (plus, you can download fan-made levels for Blood and Thief, extending the fun).

Reika wrote:About the only decent video game I've encountered recently has been Arcanum, okay so the graphics aren't the greatest, but you do have a top down POV, you have control over your chars, you actually have some sort of interactive dialogue with the NPC's, your actions actually influence how people receive you...it's great, and it's a pity there aren't enough games like it.

Well, there's Fallout and Fallout 2:
- Graphics are good, but not amazing (about equal to Diablo, I'd say; actually, as a comparison, the "look" of the game is a lot like Diablo - but the "feel" sure as hell isn't).
- Top down POV.
- Only control over the main character, though (which sucks, because the NPCs in your group, if any, tend to act like complete retards, doing things such as using burst-fire from an SMG/assault rifle/combat shotgun to attack rats, and that's not even the worst...).
- Tons of interactive NPC dialogue (your dialogue options are determined by certain factors, the most influential being your character's intelligence stat, which is fuckin' cool and realistic).
- Your characters actions influence events in the game (especially in the end narrations).
They seem to be quite a bit alike. I should try Arcanum someday.

DV8 wrote:Shadowrun - SNES game, I loved it and still do.

That game rocks! :cool
The gameplay isn't as "true" to the PnP game as the Sega Genesis SR game, but damn, it is fun to play.

Oh yeah, and two little "by the way"s here:
1. The guy who wrote the "video games are stupid" thing is either a total fuckwit, or he's like my dad (way to stubborn to try and appreciate anything newer than Pong).
2. Diablo 2 is, in fact, the dumbest game I have played in recent history. Don't get me wrong, it's entertaining in it's simplicity, but it gets exceedingly boring after about the first 30 minutes; it's good, but far over-hyped.
"Oo look, some monsters..."
*click*...*click*...*click*...*click*...
"Hey, some more..."
*click*...*click*...*click*...*click*...
"Cool some items..."
{repeated for several minutes/hours until something fulfilling happens, like going up a level or getting to see a cutscene movie}
The sad part being, of course, that that isn't an exageration at all.

Perhaps, but D2 is fun; I've been hooked on it ever since its release. It's sorta like a really fancy verison of Progess Quest.

And no-one's yet mentioned the replay value of strategy & simulation games. Civ III, for example, which totally owns me. (Taking over from Civ2, which owned me for about five years previously.)

Yeah, I have been known to play long sessions of Diablo 2, and on occasion, I have a blast just running around and slaughtering things left-and-right. Something that would make Diablo (& 2) 150% more interesting, though, would be multiple death animations for the monsters (since killing monsters is basically the only thing you do in the game, it's the only thing that can really be improved upon). That is one thing about the Fallout series that I can't get enough of (especially the "melting" animation for critical hits with the plasma rifle and the "run around, flailing arms while on fire" animation for the flame-thrower).

That is one thing about the Fallout series that I can't get enough of (especially the "melting" animation for critical hits with the plasma rifle and the "run around, flailing arms while on fire" animation for the flame-thrower).

I'm a big fan of the multiple wounds to the chest and collapsing on his back death animation in Fallout 2. Actually...it's tough to pick a favorite...most are awesome.

I like the sound that one makes.
It would rock monkeys if the flaming animation had a sound to go with it: "Ahh! It burns! It burns! Aaaaaahhh...!"

Played Diablo, thought it was okay. I still have not played Diablo 2. My short list of excellent computer games:

Deus Ex - The best FPS I have ever played. This game had everything.
Hitman
System Shock 2 - Best mood setting of any game. Ever.
TIE Fighter - Favorite flight/combat-sim and I'm a Star Wars freak.
Starcraft and Brood War - Favorite RTS
Dune 2 - The base upon which all RTS games have been built.

System Shock 2: okay mood setting, downright terrible attempted "realism"
It's annoying as hell to be shot at by an enemy with a shotgun, to kill said enemy, then find out that the shotgun is fucking broken ("WTF!? How was the bastard shooting at me with a broken shotgun!?"). Add that to the fact that all the guns in the game (the ones your character uses, not the enemy's) need constant maintenance/repair just to simply function, and that makes a recipe for one horribly annoying game to play. I found the Thief series far better that System Shock 2 in all respects, including atmosphere and mood.