Be Excellent To Each Other

As per Curiosity's suggestion, a thread split from the MySpeccy one.

I interviewed Jops (he of Sensi fame) for a Retro Gamer piece a couple of weeks back and, as usual, we ended up just talking about the games industry in general. Jops is understandably pretty annoyed out how things have gone, and blames an ultra-conservative market and investors looking for stupidly quick turnaround for wrecking the industry. By way of comparison, he talked about his own time during and post-(meaningful) Sensi. From 1985-95, he argued that there was massive progression in games, and when you compare the following decade, almost nothing happened by comparison.

Any thoughts?

It's not that surprising. Games used to take considerably less time and money to make, and there was less specialism in the hardware.

(quoted from the original thread)

Given that Jops unreleased meisterwork, Sex, Drugs... and Sensible Software with it met such an untimely end, I can immediately guess at why he might see the games industry (since the late 90s, around the time that SDnRnR died) as having become conservative and staid, stale.

However. Just what is there left to 'do' that isn't basically A Message with some kind of befitting game strapped on top?

Even the most innovative games of recent times have been done before, but erm, so what? To say that, for example, The Sims is 'just' Little Computer People would be to decry the best guitar song you've ever heard for being 'just' Robert Johnson again. edit: For that matter, I'd argue that Populous was unoriginal tat, being just LCP again, but with lots of people at a time.

I don't think it's possible to really agree with Jops without agreeing that this 'stagnation' began much, much earlier, about 1985, by which time just about every half-baked concept had been 8-bitted out to some degree...

I think that the Wii is perhaps one of the most innovative things to ever happen in gaming - the phrase "even my mum can play bowling" may be clichéd now, but it's true.
Does mum still play though? No, probably not.

I don't know what my point was.

Also, hasn't Jops just made the same game for the last ten years?

Money, yes, but that's down to idiots thinking games are movies. Time, no. The game I interviewed Jops about took 18 months. The typical time investors want a modern title out the door is 12–18 months.


I think it's far worse than that now. Look around: there are very few people even remotely interested in publishing anything new or different. It's not a case of that late 1980s malaise where a lot of stuff was the same—now things HAVE to be the same, otherwise they won't get published. Also, they pretty much always have to have a licence attached, otherwise the people with the cash just aren't interested.


My mum happily played 8-bit stuff on the C64. All the Wii's done is put straightforward basic games back in the mainstream, and attached some decent controls. Wii Bowling is basically the same as a bowling game I had on an 8-bit Atari console, just with cute graphics.


A better question is: "Why has Jops just made the same game for the last ten years?"

I wasn't sure that he had.
So where's Cannon Fodder 3? Huh huh huh huh?

Well, he hasn't really. He's done loads of games for various companies. However, the perception is that he's been flogging a dead SWOS for years, and that came about due to publishers in 1995 deciding that new product was scary and that sequels and licenced garbage was the way forward, hence what we've ended up with today.

Really? I'd say it's a far better situation than it was a few years back, even ten years back. When British developers and publishers were going bust or being bought up (see: Gremlin, Ocean, Psygnosis etc.) it was a quite drastic situation. Now, there are some potential new distribution methods (Steam, XBL, PSN, Wiiware) which have empirically allowed for smaller developers to get a foot in. For example, Introversion's games (themselves rather different, I'd say) have taken off on Steam.

True enough, they (and other) developers have found that competing in GAME was getting them nowhere. So if you were to say that trying to sell Game X in a typical high-street store was a loser's game, when going up against e.g. the new Harry Potter game, then sure, maybe.

But as regards publishers in general - eh, looks pretty healthy to me. In the past year we've had Microsoft released an ace vertigo simulator in Crackdown, a ton of interesting stuff on Wii and DS (Super Mario Galaxy being essentially an advert for the potential of the format), and Sony heavily pushing its big new title. Which is about making your own platform games out of cloth and stuff. Pretty original.


What else can be done though? Wii Taxidermy? The Atari VCS and Speccy between them provide examples of damn near every genre ever. Eventually, you've got to start recycling a bit.


'Cos Sensi Software died after the costly and ill-advised move into 'interactive entertainment'?

EDIT: Since writing this I kinda realised how off topic it is. Oh well!

I agree with him to an extent. Maybe we go through periods of unpolished experimentation followed by periods of culling and polishing

I think the PC becoming increasing unviable for high budget geeky FPS wanks, whilst the DS and Wii not being about bumped up graphics and XBLA just existing has lead to a people having respect for games that aren't cutting edge graphicxz wankz. I'm so glad that things like Crysis are failing. Because the PC needs to get back to interesting things again.

I mean, the DS is slowing down now but it's had the most innovate and varied catalogue since the 90's. It's literally the best console I've ever owned.

When has a list of successful games ever been as varied as the DS?

Phoenix Wright (90's interactive story/point and click),
Space Invaders Extreme (proper amazing arcade and synthesisa),
New Super Mario Bros (2D platformer),
Metroid Prime Hunters (FPS's),
Kirby Canvas Curse (Stylus platforming)
Mario 64 (3D Platforming),
Trauma Centre (Sugery Sim!)
Zoo Tycoon/Sim City (God Games)
Brain Training (New Genre!),
Elite Beat Agents (Music Rhythm),
Wario Ware (Minigames),
Mario Kart DS (3D racing/online racing)
Advance Wars (Strategy)
Zelda (action/puzzly things)
That Square Game thats really JRPGy and grindy and about shopping (JRPGs)
Nintendogs (Pet simulators).

And thats just of the top of my head. There hasn't been a line up that varied since the amiga.

It's amazing. And to be honest, I would probably put the DS on it's own above either of those two decades.

I agree with you and disagree with you Lave. It's a good and varied selection, but I'd argue that none of it is original. Please read this as me attempting to initiate a one-to-one dialogue with you re: originality in games, and not an attempt to case-by-case tell you that you're wrong...

Phoenix Wright (90's interactive story/point and click), text adventure
Trauma Centre (Sugery Sim!) all about carefully and accurately moving your cursor. Like any 'Don't go out of the lines!' game ever
Brain Training (New Genre!) Alter Ego among others.
Elite Beat Agents (Music Rhythm) Bemani games aren't new, and are arguably just Simon again.

Space Invaders Extreme (proper amazing arcade and synthesisa) and New Super Mario Bros (2D platformer), old

Zoo Tycoon/Sim City (God Games) and Advance Wars (Strategy) are as old as the hills, really. I can't even think what the earliest example would be, on computer. Something on a mainframe.

Mario Kart DS (3D racing/online racing) Night Drive or whatever that vector-era game was.

Metroid Prime Hunters (FPS's) it's an FPS.
Kirby Canvas Curse (Stylus platforming) Super Mario Bros with different controls
Mario 64 (3D Platforming) Super Mario Bros but in 3D
Zelda (action/puzzly things) & That Square Game thats really JRPGy and grindy and about shopping (JRPGs) Rogue

Wario Ware (Minigames) this is in my opinion the most 'new' here - but still is essentially a Stars On 45 style redux.

But are we (as a consumer) looking for originality, or innovation within the genres we already have? I'd be happy with either, to be honest.

Aye, but thats my point really. Before the DS only

3D 3rd Person shooty adventure
3D FPS
3D Platformer
3D RPG
3D Racing

really remained as viable genres. The DS commanded a respect the GBA never had, and the PSP never will have, and confired respectability on those genres. It made 2D and 3D a choice not a evolution that had to be made.

I mean a text adventure? in 2008? Yes please!

The DS didn't innovate new genres particularly, but it did allow old genres to be made and respected again.

This is why I'm so excited about the Wii getting both a 2D full price platformer (With Wario Land) and at the same time another proper nes game with Mega Man 9.

We've seem to got choice back again. And thats amazing.

I'm not sure, frankly. The Wii and DS have skewed the market a little, but there's so much me too bollocks spoiling things that we're almost back to where we started. Also, although certain forms of distribution do make original IP more possible to get out there, they don't make such games any more commercially viable in the current marketplace. Jops noted that something truly original needs a decent shelf-life—years, if possible. Most games have a window of about a month, maybe three at the outside. And while indie devs can get by on less cash than the likes of EA, they still need more than most download titles can have any hope of earning.


One of my favourite quotes from him was that it's a real shame people need to eat—if we could have a market for a few years that had literally no interest in commercial elements, we'd soon see some really fucking amazing games. And, yeah, I think we go through periods of commercial and experimentation. The problem is that, in a general sense, we're stuck in a massive rut all over right now. Homogenisation is 'in'. Hopefully, people will tire of this soon, but it shows no sign of letting up just yet.

Despite my misgivings about the market in general, I do mostly agree about the DS, though. It is the one system that's pretty much shown you can do something different, or combine 'modern' and 'retro' titles with no bother. I just hope Nintendo realises this and doesn't rush out its next hand-held for at least another five years.

I think the Wii, with Wii Fit and Wii Sports has been innovative, and think Nintendo recognised the market for innovation within a genre and thought, as the dreaded saying goes, 'outside the box'. Especially with Wii Fit. I think a Fitness 'Em Up is a first, no?

Also Singstar. That's a decidedly new spin on kareoke (or however you spell it).

I'd say that it's hard to think of something truly original. I've been idly pondering this all day, but what kind of new thing would people like to see? Everything can be, as CUS said, brought back to a predecessor. It's a lot easier to create new genres when precious few exist. Once the sports games are taken up you can go to new sports (Free Running, etc) or to unusual ways of controlling them (Wii Sports). Or you can take elements of various past genres and make a new one, a la GTA (Crime 'Em Up... which I'm sure I'm about to be corrected on, as it was doubtless not a true originator, but you can see the point I'm making, I hope).

But it's tough.

I can see how a balance has to be struck in matters of commercialism, and sometimes the best ideas come about as part of a big-ass risk (such as the Wii). But sometimes the franchises break new ground and put out fantastic games too.

I'd personally say that Virtua Fighter, and then Tekken revolutionised the way Beat 'Em Ups were thought of and played, taking away some of the arcadey-ness that had been the norm since Street Fighter II. Placed somewhere a little closer to reality, with counter-moves, sidesteps and so on and so forth... it brught the genre forwards massively. Things like Resident Evil too... I think around the time of the PSX there was a lot of innovation, just because the developers had a new toy that could suddenly do some awesome shit... and even though most of it was refining ideas already out there - it worked. A lot of franchises started around then.

That said, back then things were still being driven by the coin-op market (at least to an extent).

This post doesn't have much of a point, but I've enjoyed reading this thread and the views of the people herein, and thought I'd have a little ramble.

I'm talking total man hours, not just the amount of time it takes the project to go from start to finish.

As games are limited to peoples' experience, and/or imagination, then of course the gaming market is going to repeat itself. Until the human race evolves sufficiently to experience something new, there is going to be a finite number of genres available. If you are going to characterise "all FPS games as an evolution of the very FPS racing, and therefore not new," then you are going to be a for a long wait for something new. If however you see Portal as a new innovation within a genre, then you are going to be in much better place (IMHO).

I can see where the comment comes from, in that unless it is truly excellent, one FPS is pretty much the same as the next. However, the fact remains that there are some truly excellent games out there, that while not a new genre, push the boundaries of an existing genre. In fact, there are more and more games which cover a number of genres, see Bioshock, as has been admitted, it was System Shock 2 with a bit more action. Oblivion, is at times a FPS, all the modding of cars required in GT and Forza, are almost RPG attributes, and even Pro Evo on the Wii allows you to boost specific player attributes at the expense of others, a classic RPG tactic.

So, I wouldn't say the gaming industry has "stagnated", I would say that there is room for improvement.

Yes, well, if my mother was a bloke, she'd be my father.

Short of SMASHING THE ENT!RE SYSTEM AND BRINGIN' DOWN DA MAN that ain't going to happen.

How much does it cost to buy the bits to develop for a console? A five figure sum? There is your problem right there. The bedroom coders have moved onto the web, 'cos the development environment is free.

I really can't decide which to go with... but I have to lean towards the 1985-1995 thing.

Why? A number of things.

Firstly: 'Build your own level' games. The old days was filled with these - from simple level builders like those seen in Stunts! to the extremely detailed construction kits like the Pinball and Adventure Construction Sets by Electronic Arts. Now, I grant that with contemporary graphics and level interactivity higher than ever, making a convincing 'custom' level takes a lot more effort. But Halo 3 and a few others aside, no games come with any sort of editor any more.

Secondly: Attention to detail. I loved simulators back in the day, so a game filled with a thought-provoking and carefully researched collection of vehicles, locations and equipment was a huge plus. I know where Kharg Island (where Iran is filling tanker after tanker with oil, in the hopes of the price dropping so someone somewhere will want to buy it all again) is because it was a target for me in F-15 Strike Eagle 2. Or that US submarines avoided Japanese depth charges by diving deep (the Japanese set the charges too shallow) from Silent Service 2. But now you never get a thick manual to teach you the geography of your war nor the technology and abilities of your weapons. You just get a rudimentary blurb (not even with the real weapon name sometimes) and an in-your-face movie style presentation.

Third: Longevity. X-Wing, even before you added Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing, lasted you for AGES. Hell, you got several complete tours of duty, each at least half a dozen missions long if not more! Wing Commander likewise gave you a huge campaign and story. Project Sylpheed and Ace Combat, despite their excellence, are extremely short in comparison.

@ MetalAngel.

1) A number of PCgames come with design your own level stuff, look at the huge amount of HL2 stuff on Steam for example, Civ3, Oblivion, I think they have just becaome a bit harder to use, you almost need to be a games coder to use some of them.
2) I think that we have just become used to the level of detail as standard. I am not sure about CoD weaponry, but any of the Rainbow Six games will be accurate, Clancy would ensure that is the case. And also, look at the Cars in Forza and GT, and the scenery in Call of Duty 4 is an almost perfect replica of Prypiat.
3) How much of this is to do with the longevity of the game, and how much is due to the concentration span of the average person. How many of the games in your collection have actually completed? I am pretty poor, at completing games, but on the other hand I have played CoD4 online for over 6* days, I played Morrowind for ages, and Oblivion also, and I still am. Although I haven't played it, I imagine GTA4 must be pretty large.

I miss the "games that never end" games. Like Liberation and Frontier. Now there were games you could load up and chip away at for a while. No, I don't like MMOs before you ask.

Oooh completely. Obviously I would kill for another Frontier.

And on the opposite side I would love "Games that can be completed in a night" to return. More games should be like board games, designed to be played multiple times, but the game is still over in one sitting.

Thats what has drawn me to Civ on the 360, the rumour that it can be completed in 2-4 hours.

That's kinda what I thought Dead Rising was going for. It got slated for it.

Aye it was close, but I thinkit compromised too much. It should have made it just 2 hrs you had to survive for.

It also hamstringed you so that you'd have no chance until your third or fourth go, even if you were skillo.

I was kindof optimistic in Early'08, lots of nice gaming coming distributed to me in a nice- non-boxy way, which i could redownload at will.. , seemed like a heaven for new, indie developers etc...

but the MS axed badly selling (often niche games), setting a meta critic ranking as barrier, increasing the downlaod limit (so probably in the end the development cost, just to have more cutscenes), and set it would focus on large rmore profile titles...
so in a year xbla games will probalby just like normal games, and raiden iv will be sold at full price, and maybe not over here...

maybe xna will do sonething and wii ware is supposed to be friendlier to developers (although they released yesterday pokemon range, basically a screensaver for your pokemon collected on the ds, for a measly 1000 points)

but hey, at least swos xbla happened..

Like anything that has a significant level of progression in its early development that level of progression will inevitably slow down and the focus turns to refinement rather than pushing the envelope.

We take far too much for granted these days. When the 8 bit era started I was pretty much orgasmic for 2 years about having a BBC model B in my bedroom attached to a 14” black and white portable TV. When I was sat in virtual solitary confinement trading across a map in various goods so I could upgrade my pulse laser to a beam laser it would take days of grinding and in reality fuck all happened other than the odd skirmish but back then every time I went into my bedroom and fired up the computer I really was entering another universe. It was all white lines on a black background and a few plinks and plonks but at that time I didn’t think gaming could get any better.

These days the internet is full of ungrateful cunts who moan because Xbox Live is down for 10 hours for maintenance and when it comes back up there’s no free dashboard update. The on-line element of consoles now is still amazing to me – persistent leaderboards that I can compare against the rest of the world or just my friends if I want to, the fact that I can pull up the dashboard mid game and see what my mate from round the corner is playing and if he’s joinable. The kangaroo defence employed in CoD4 was a community spectacle that made me laugh like a complete idiot with people I have never met in real life.

The 9 year old in the house that 30 years ago would have been sat upstairs flying his Mark II Cobra now comes downstairs and asks to play Boom Blox with myself and his Mum. Gaming has become inclusive rather than exclusive for different demographics and social groups and that is a greater sign of progress to me than the odd new genre being created.

I'm not sure whether it's a better indicator of games or me in general, but I'm having more fun with games now than I ever have done.

Absolutely, we're missing new genres (although some games are so different they might as well BE genres). For motorsport fans for instance, not only have we seen the likes of Ridge Racer since 1995, but also Gran Turismo's ilk which are like nothing that went before. F1 games that look and feel remotely like F1, or the FIA GT or the WTCC are new since then, the ability to actually "do" LeMans, the ability to drive real world tracks you'd have a hope of actually recognise...

All this is huge but would be dismissed by Jops as "Oh, racing game". If that's his attitude, why did he make Sensi in the first place, he'd already made a football game for Microprose after all. He did because he could do something different with the same genre, but to anyone who doesn't like football Sensi would be dismissed with "Hmm? Football game." just as casually as he dismisses Geo Wars as "Just Robotron", Rez as "Just rail shooter", Bioshock as "just FPS", Dead Rising as just "Scrolling beat em up". Each of those games took a genre, slapped it about a bit and told it to step up and fly right. Certainly as much as any Sensible game did, I love the majority of them but the only one that comes close to "new genre" territory is Cannon Fodder and really that's pretty much Airbourne Ranger or maybe even Commando with a different control scheme.

(Plus the entirity of Trouser's post above. Xbox Live "Just works". Demos on demand for free? A range of budget games in the traditional price sense that I can just buy right there after trying out? Being able to instantly see what my mate is doing? Being able to see my brother online, invite him to PGR3 and have it bring him right into my private or public game lobby automatically? Hell, being able to play my brother at PGR3 even when we were on different continents?

Being able to check exactly how my friends are doing with a new game? First time I played Nascar 09, Myoptika was straight in there with a message asking me about it, if we'd liked I could have grabbed my headset and had a chat with him about it, for free, while I was still playing. That's just excellent interaction. Just the kind of smooth online play we get is massive, I remember when online racing consisted of posting my times in a thread and that was it. Now I can contact a bezzie for a race anytime I like...

This is huge, and a massive step forward in just making games excellent than the odd couple of new genres. And as CUS implied, most can be traced back to pre-85 anyway. If Populous invented a genre despite LCP exisiting, GT1 is a new genre, Phoenix Wright is a new genre, Wario Ware, Cooking Mama and Brain Training certainly are...

Yes, I love retro, always have but only because I can cherry pick like a mofo, just play that 10% that didn't suck. But the best games are being made now, and I'm not seeing it get worse in the future.

My family had mixed up priorities. I had a BBC model B but couldn't get Adidas Samba or a replacement tie when I lost mine - I ended up getting called a tramp at school and no bastard would believe I had a BBC at home.

Also I never completed a single lap of Revs.

That's perhaps the point - compare the HL2 editor and the amount of effort that you need to put into that (or my last effort of map editing which was Sudden Strike which took days and days and days) and the amount of effort it took to make a new level in, say, Repton.

Obviously the complexity of the games and the graphical environments is a huge factor in this - I suspect it would take far more effort to make a completely user-friendly drag and drop "done in 30 minutes" map editor for COD4 than it did to make the game.

Anyone remember Stunt Island though? A whole game based around spending ages desiging your own "levels" and then flying your plane through it and recording your stunt. Absolute awesomery.



However, look at a lot of the current flight "sims" and they're nothing of the sort. I can't think of a single accurate flight sim on a console, and the PC ones have been diverging rapidly between the completely spoddy and unusable (Falcon 4) and the "simplify it so much it may as well be an arcade game" (Comanche 4). And that was 5 years ago.



I completed so many of my old PC games - X-Wing and the expansions mentioned above being good examples. Also Theme Hospital, Ultima 7 Part 1 and Part 2, The Monkey Islands, Beneath A Steel Sky, Gunship 2000, System Shock, and so on. There were very few games I gave up on. Maybe that was because they were (relatively speaking) more expensive and so you'd be more inclined to get your money's worth. I remember paying £20 for B-17 Flying Fortress 15 years ago, for fuck's sake. That's, what, £50-£60 in today's money? I must have been minted.

I also played most of my BBC Micro games to death too - but with the massive availability of pirate copies I didn't feel quite such a need to finish everything.

I'd love to see an XBLA version where everyone dipped in and out of the same universe. Lave might get a bit crowded though.

Is it not?

Gamers Don't Deserve Great Games. Pick any random games forum and in between the wanking over the latest MGS or Generic FPS, there is utterly uninformed bilge masquerading as pontification on the state of the market. Remember how the Wii and DS were "underpowered" compared to the Funsquare and PS3 and consequently Nintendo were "teh doomed". These people still trot out those arguments despite Microsoft and Sony losing billions on their consoles. The only thing Nintendo is collapsing under is the strain of carting wheelbarrows full of money to the bank and still these idiots don't fucking get it.

Hardcore gamers are the industries worst enemy. They whine and moan about "teh casuals" buying the latest version of FIFA like sheep and then flock to Halo 3, MGS4, GT5, Tekken 72 or Street Fighter II 37 Turbo Nutter Edition In A Shiny Tin. They whine and moan about lack of innovation and then ignore it when it comes up and smashes them in the face because it is too strange and too different. Okami, Space Giraffe, Killer 7 - weren't they all flops? Portal would have been too, if it wasn't for the bundling in the Orange Box.

I genuinely think that a large part of the reason Crysis flopped isn't because of its hardware limitations, but because it was aimed fairly and squarely right at the kind of gamers who know where to get torrents and cracks. The same people who then moan that "PC gaming is dying". The same people who go online and smash up n00bs because UR teh LAM3 SUXX0R.

I don't play much these days, haven't even gone next gen. But I've finally found a reason to buy a new console, and it isn't MGS4, or Gears of War, or Halo. It is Guitar Hero. Why? because I played it at a mates and it was fun. It wasn't brown, or 40 hours long, or astonishly detailed or saving the (yawn) planet from (yawn) alien invasion. But I am willing to plonk down 70 quid plus the price of a console for the chance to have fun and laugh my socks off and feel like a rock god for ten minutes at a time. I realised that the last two games I bought were Trackmania and Portal - games that put fun and enjoyment and accessibility above all else. I don't need twenty minutes of installs and three hours of tutorials.

All I have to do is decide which console to go for. It will probably be a Wii over a 360, because it looks like more fun.

In short, where has all the fun gone?



Apologies for the rant.

I quite like saving the planet from alien invasion.

..Have you played Trackmania nations? it comes with an easy enough to use editor and has 1000's of user generated tracks online (5 of them are ones I knocked up myself).
yeah I know it doesnt "count" as its not a console game , but still....

No Jopps.



On the 360, the Wii is an entertaining gimmick, but being single player means it's wedged back in the world as Jopps perceives it and the forced use of the remote above sensible controls ruins the vast majority of the system's games.

Mine doesn't get turned on except at parties, the 360 is on every day.



And it fucking well should be, the 360 was made for TMU.

Ultimately, my choice of console comes down to 360 or Wii. If they put TMU on it - and by God was that ever designed for Xbox Live - then it would sway me a long way.

However, the RROD issues are a major, major drawback. I expect my purchase to fucking work.

warning : waffling barely ontopic post:
I reckon myself that games have split into 3 1/2 distinct genres,(this may be bollocks but its what I've been musing over the past while).
Interactive fiction: I'm not talking about shitty cd based games , but most of the AAAAAAAA++11ty one or whatever console/fps etc games - where you have a holywood budget , the emphesis is on it being as realistic and believeable as possible , and the narritive comes first (cutscenes, indestructable doors, invisble walls etc)

Work/reward simulators aka MMO's: look I'm not saying they're actually not enjoyable or anything ,(I mean I've been playing W.O.W for about 3 years) but mmo's are games that reward the player for the amount of time performing repetive tasks rather than just skill .Oh by the way I'd class Elite/Starflight/most of the wonderboys and nearly all japanese and western RPGs as this as well.(someone even mentioned "grinding", a term usually used for MMO's in Elite).

Games (or casual games) i.e. stuff where the actual game play is paramount , and if theres a story its ususally squeezed around it.EG most DS games , most of the "my mum plays it" wii ones.Arcadey stuff on steam/live/vc/whatever the fuck sony have called theres.Basically what games were back in the VCS days atcual games (ala football or snakes and ladders) rather than stories.

oh and the half a genre andbox games , but really only in the sense of Civilsation/spore whatever .Too complex to lump them with the casual games, but no real story as such to make them interactives .GTA's etc are still interactive fictions though .I mean when you play as Tommy Vicetti you'll always have to be a gansgster , and you'll always eventually have to move the story along.

Thing is , theres actually nothing wrong with any of these genres , despite the fact the the first 2 are villified.Why shoulnt I enjoy the story of System shock II or Bioshock? I get to see it played out over a lot longer time than a movie, and with more detail and minutiae available to me than a TV show.And the instant reward I get from getting new gear in WoW for running a quest , is something that doesnt happen as easily in real life.And if I need to see innovation in these 2 I'd rather see it in storylines and immersiveness, you cant really remake the fps , but you can give me a more believeable and more interesting reason to want to kill bad guys.





Waffle over

Why not the wii?controls would work just as well , and the wiimote would probably be better for editing.Plus a download Tracks channel or something.
There is the DS version thats out in a bit though.

Slightly OT, but as technical advancements are getting us ever closer to entirely immersive, photorealistic games, would anyone here actually *want* a photo-realistic FPS? I think I'd rather just have them look a bit like computer graphics, but I'm struggling to aticulate even to myself why that should be.

Do you think we all rate the 360 so much despite not having any fun with it or something?

The fun hasn't gone anywhere, it's just that other people enjoy different things to you. GTA IV, already for me it's 40 hours long and it features a lot of brown buildings, I don't find either of those things have prevented it from being fun. Also something like Forza 2, I don't just think I enjoyed pouring all those hours into it, I actually really did and find the insinuation that doing so makes me some kind of mindless sheep to be slightly patronising but mostly just lazy and a bit shit. I really enjoyed Okami too, and all sorts of other games but looking back I can't say I've had nearly as much fun out of them as the less original (ignoring the fact that there's nothing much original about Okami) but highly competent ones.

It's already been said lots of times but it's getting harder to be original, you get the odd quirky title that people rave about for a week or two but usually they don't spawn a new genre because they lack that kind of substance.

To be fair to Jops, he's not an idiot, nor some kind of up-their-own-arse arty type. He happily made a Casper game recently, noting that "you can do anything with Casper". His point is that truly original content and concepts are nigh-on impossible to get past publishers these days, and that homogenisation is inevitable in the current market. Cannon Fodder simply could not exist in the current climate in a way able to pay for its development. Perhaps if it was tied to a movie, it might, though.


I'm hoping that it's coming back. That said, Sony especially but also Microsoft seem to be shrugging off the Wii's success as some kind of bizarre blip, not the start of some greater trend. "It'll be back to normal with the PS4 and Xbox 2352626", etc. I really hope not.

Glad you mentioned GTA IV.

I've got III, Vice City and San Andreas. The day after I played GTA:III on a mates PS2, I walked out of a shop with a new PS2 and a copy of the game*. Gran Turismo was the major factor in me getting a PSX.

Played GTA IV on PS3, recently. It looks a lot of fun, but crucially, the same trick isn't going to work a second time. If it wasn't for the existence of a 360 version then I would definitely be getting a Wii. I don't have a HD telly either and don't plan to. As for GT5.. meh.

To clarify, I didn't the 360 was no fun, I meant it seemed less fun than standing in a room pretending to play tennis or bowling.

I might end up with both, but the question of which one will tide me over is a future RMD...

* The security guard caught me and made me pay for it, though.**
** Oh-ho. Did you see what I did there? Hello? Is this thing on?

Sports and party games on the Wii are insane amounts of fun, definitely - at least while they're new.

If you buy both, though, I would be willing to put money on the 360 being the one that you are still playing in 6 months time.