Good Article on Next Gen

Kazaanova

Theres a interesting article here on gaming. The guy makes a lot of good points on the current state of gaming and where its going, and brings up a lot of little annoyances. Worth a read.

ShiverinEskimo

Good read. Mostly very valid points - did turn into one helluva rant near the end though.

steviec

Yea very pessimistic but some really good points.

Especially on arbitrary triggers in RPGs. I gave up in Final Fantasy VI cos at one point I didn't know what triggered the next part of the story and I was wandering around for hours before just giving up.

I'm not sure what it means about the new console designs working against good AI though. I thought all the tools are there for great AI if developers actually put effort into it. And I'm not sure theoretical AI, as in neural nets, are necessarily the best practical approach to computer controlled players in games. Enemies in games are only gonna get smarter I reckon.

Kazaanova

Yeah that A.I. point is the only one I'm not sure about. At this early stage its extremely hard to judge A.I. because all we have are videos and screenshots. The few demos we saw at E3 were probably highly scripted and not a level from a game. But honestly, I've seen or heard very very little on next-gen A.I.

steviec

I'd have expected, and hoped for the processing power to mainly be spent in two areas - physics and AI. The physics have certainly been shoved down our throat by press conferences but AI is something you can't just show in a two minute video, you need a full level of real gameplay to really see the AI in any given game. Plus physics, when they're realistic and they shouldn't necessarily always be, are fundamentally the same in an FPS or a Car Game or whatever. AI has to be very specifically tailored to any given game, so it's not something thats guaranteed but I think the best developers can be counted on to do it well.

RobertFoster

Good article.

A Gamer's Manifesto wrote:

YOU CAN'T SEE YOUR MOTHER****ING FEET. IT DOESN'T WORK.

I love the two ideas for games in the second point.

A Gamer's Manifesto wrote:

Why isn't a there a spy game where we actually get to be a real spy rather than a hallway-roving kill machine? You know, where we actually have to talk to contacts and extract information and tap phones and piece together clues, a game full of exotic locales and deception and backstabbing and subplots? A game where a gun is used as often as a real spy would use it (that is, almost never)?

Where's the game where we're a castaway on a deserted island and the object of the game is to find food and clean water and build a shelter, a game where we can play for one month or six months, because whether or not we get rescued is randomized? Where every time we restart we get a different island with different wildlife and vegetation and water sources?

steviec

That first idea sort of reminds me of Broken Sword in some ways. I loved that series!

And the second idea, well there's a game in development for DS that basically does just that! How fully realised it is I don't know but here's a link:
http://ds.ign.com/articles/614/614913p1.html

gobby

What an article. Very insightfull.

I now dont feel bad about not having enough cash to buy a new gen console!

BlitzKrieg

interesting read...but i dont agree with the little comment at the end about jumping puzzles...i find fps like medal of honour to be boring when it constantly ends up being a shoot as many as quickly as possible gaemplay. Admittably Call of Duty got around this with having the level design properly recreate a a battle but i quite like the jumping puzzles in half life 1 + 2 why? because they immerse me in the world more, the whole idea your on the run is enforced when you got to climb your way out of a trap or make your way through some vents. Yes random pointless jumping puzzles are annoying ala tomb raider. but in fps just moving room to room shooting things (like the majority of doom 3) is also quite dull.

Kazaanova

steviec wrote:

That first idea sort of reminds me of Broken Sword in some ways. I loved that series!

Yeah I love Broken Sword too, theres not enough games like it. And I don't mean adventure games, I mean games that put you in real situations as a real guy.

ShiverinEskimo

I miss point and click adventures so much - bring back Full Throttle, The Dig, Sam and Max, Broken Sword, all them. Fantastic genre and yet seems to have just been forgotten about.

RobertFoster

Look out for a game called Still Life, coming out in early June. It's point and click and has got good reviews. Played the demo and can't wait for the full thing

[edit] Seems cheap too.

steviec

I like the sound of Still Life. Never heard about it before, will have to look for some good articles.

I agree totally about games that put you in real situations, and Broken Sword was the best for that. The reaction of the barman when George walked into that bar in Ireland in typical American fashion was fantastic, along with so many other moments. The characters and stories had a real fleshed out feel to them that I don't think any medievil/fantasy/futuristic RPG could achieve.

I've often wished for a game with the sort of gameplay mechanics of Planescape: Torment, but set in an interesting real life environment instead of an overly complicated fantasy setting with more background than I cared to read about.

I think thats one of the ways that Grand Theft Auto has succeeded so much in recent years. The radio stations, the characters, the dialogue, the many many references, they mean so much to the game.

dceire

Very Interesting, some good points.

I really liked his ideas about A.I & totally interactive environments.

Syth

An interesting read, espcially about the crates.

A game where you are stranded on an island sounds fun, and 'Lost in Blue' seems interesting but it sounds a bit like a minipuzzle game which doesn't sound that fun. Though I think the suggested game should really be called a toy as opposed to a game.

yawnstretch

That was a laugh and a mostly deserved poke at the industry.

Deadwing

The spy game he talks about sounds exactly like operation stealth, a game on released on the atari ST about 10 years ago :rolleyes: