Once again, I never said that Halo itself popularized real is brown, but it is the patriarchal series that revolutionized the modern FPS formula (cover based, team mechanics, focus on multiplayer), and this genre later popularized the real is brown motif, so in case you still didn't catch my drift:
HALO DIDN'T POPULARIZE REAL IS BROWN!!
But how do they stand up against the other franchises? off the top of my head I can only think of Madden and Forza; I'm not saying there isn't more, but I'm just trying to make the point that they are scarce here, like i said, not enough diversity/innovation.
Not really, as my point stands, I'm making a point that there isn't enough diversity to dismiss "realism" as restricted to FP Ses, because most of what there is here is FP Ses.
Speaking of stagnation, let me count the ways of Japanese stagnation in the industry: Demon Souls: very challenging wonderful multiplayer mechanics. Nintendo: no slouch itself, very interesting concepts for Mario and Metroid, heck, the Wii itself can be considered an innovation. Persona series: interesting mix of RPG gameplay, a dating sim and a funky style to boot, and it does it on a last gen console in this generation, no less.And Ironically, the MGS series: the man seems to forget he's actually Japanese at times, what with his top of the line tactical Espionage games. Plenty of Fighting Games to choose from, All of which are Japanese, in case you haven't noticed. And Lastly Gran Turismo, possibly one of the few realistic games that are actually... Well, realistic! Honorable mentions go to the Ace Attorney Series and the Nippon Ichi Software Brand, particularly for the witty and often quite hilarious dialogue.
Yup, very stagnant indeed...
You're equating originality with quality, bad move, especially when you consider that this is the forum of TV Tropes; you know, the place where it clearly says "Tropes Are not clichés" right there on the main page?
Oh yeah, and thanks for the additional point on the awesomeness of Mario:
Good Characterization
edited 23rd Jun '10 1:11:58 PM by Viredae
"Put the days together, and they start to do some damage. If the mean is in the middle, then I know that I will manage."IGNORE THIS
Except you said:
The one "style" you mentioned is RIB, and Halo can't populazrize something it didn't feature. But honestly, I'd prefere we give up on this as it'll only degenerate in hair-splitting semantics.]] IGNORE THIS. Bah, whatever AC drawing said below.
All of EA'S other sport franchise, Split/Second, Blur, 2K Sport's games (of which there are almost as much as EA), the upcoming NBA Jam, Wipeout HD, Project Gothamn Racing, Motorstorm... ect, and that's just on the top of my head.
... Mortal Kombat says Hello! And thought it may be a rebalanced remake, Super Street F Ighter II Turbo HD was primarly developed by an American team.
All but two of the metroid developed since 2002 have been made by American devs, uh.
You're acting as if that was actually my opinion instead of a remark. And hell, I could make a similar list for "western" (god do I hate the Nippon vs Rest of the World undertone of this) developers:
- Little Big Planet: A vibrant take on the platformer genre with a powerful yet very simple editor, the like of which have never been tried before. Blast Works and Mod Nation Racers are the same thing to shmups and racers, respectively.
- The Rayman/Rabbid series, say what you want about their overexposure and minigaems compilations, but that series is definitely oozing in personallity and wackiness.
- Zeno Clash: Who would have attempted to mix Beat 'em Up and First person viewpoint?
- Puzzle Quest
- Geometry Wars
- Anything indie or on downloadable services: Don't tell me Braid, Castle Crashers ect... are FPS rehashes.
Unoriginality is not bad, as long as it is done well, yes. But formulatism (when not part of an established series) and predictability are bad yes. Otherwise Eragon wouldn't get so much shit here.
edited 23rd Jun '10 2:15:30 PM by Glowsquid
What was that about scarcity?
Also, top notch on saying UFC isn't a fighting game, despite it being about you FIGHTING!
edited 23rd Jun '10 3:32:26 PM by IndigoDingo
I think I've figured it out - the difference between this trend and the others is that now, everyones bitching about it, feeding a self perpetuating cycle of hyperbole as people exxagerate the extent of how many FPS's there are more and more, losing all touch with reality, until they post 3 similar looking screenshots, ignore all other factors of the games and say they're the same thing and they're the full extent of the industry (why yes, I didn't like that picture, how could you tell?).
now I have the ocassion to get back at this:
"The people who've been playing since the days of, say, the pac-man clones have naturally played up and through to the fighting games, while the fighting games players have played.... The fighters once more "misinformation" based on lack of experience, and being the majority, the industry is afraid of changing a formula they know will work %100 of the time and they will use it instead of aiming their energies into creating something even slightly innovative."
Yeah, totally what happened. What makes FPS inherently lazier and less innovative than other, formely dominating genres anyway?
Even sillier is acting as if "classic"/old games are now supposedly some sort of lost knowledge. E Mulators are becoming much more simpler and compatible. Bloated Compilation Re-release are becoming more and more common. Many services such as Gametap and the Wii VC exist to distribute older games. If anything, the influence and propagation of classics can only go up.
Not Quite Batman
I love TGO. Best game culture commentator in my opinion. His 'Escape to the Movies' reviews are always informative and fun, too.
"Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse." —Mycroft Next^THANK YOU!
I must agree, after all we rarely get smart ones of his kind.
Well, except maybe Danny Floyd here.
who comes at a close second. I think we need more great minds like these going more into the industry and it's facets.
I'd put Yahtzee well ahead of this guy. TGO isn't even in Daniel Floyds league - the only problem anyone can ever find with his work is that there's not enough of it (Floyd is brilliant, but he works like 3D realms going at Valve Time). His reasoning is sound, his research is always obvious, he's never pandering or biased, he's genuinely funny, and his voice is nowhere near as annoying.
edited 25th Jun '10 3:24:29 PM by IndigoDingo
Yhatzee ahead of these guys? I keep wondering why people keep comparing Mr. Croshaw to TGO when Croshaw is a reviewer and The TGO is a culture analyzer.
Besides, I can hardly stand Yahtzee. His vulgar and overly long tangents that are meant to be some vague, amusing extended metaphor take away form the supposed review and I can hardly tell what he's talking about half the time. I suppose his refuge in audacity is simply not my cup of tea.
When All Else Fails, you have fun and flirt wit da ladies, dats da Drawings way!^Still not quite. The GTA clones were mainly last gen before the FPS trend began - your True Crimes, your Drivers, your Getaways, your Scarfaces, your Godfathers and ypur (shudder) State of Emergency's. The ones this gen all seem to be moving to a different pattern, keeping freedom but stressing characters ability to move - inFAMOUS, Red Faction, Prototype, The Saboteur, Just Cause 2 - I'd call them taking notes from (or clones of if we wanna keep the term) Assassins Creed.
I'd be interested to see the number of games that take influence from that title. Of course, when the differences include eating people, controlling lightning, destroying any building that stands and the power to give inertia the middle finger, brandishing the word clone is just stupid.
No, I said Yahtzee was beter than TGO, not Daniel Floyd.
edited 25th Jun '10 10:44:39 PM by IndigoDingo
Not Quite Batman
Yahtzee is a funny guy, but he'll never be in TGO's league. And it is fair to compare them because neither of them really critique games: the former just cracks jokes about them, the latter discusses their cultural impact. Of the two, only TGO ever discusses games in the context of the broader cultural zeitgeist, and that, in my opinion, is much more interesting than rapid-fire gags about chest-high walls. Both of them have flaws (for instance, whenever they criticize something, both of them can rarely break away from "I don't like it and I don't like things that I don't like"), but if I could only have one, I'd pick Bob in a heartbeat.
"Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse." —Mycroft Next
Not Quite Batman
I saw it. It's very good, as usual.
"Extra Punctuation" and TGO still don't fulfill the same function, though. Yahtzee talks about games and their influence on gaming; he dissects gaming conventions and opines about what makes good games work and bad games flop. He talks about developers and their quirks. But TGO is more about, say, "what do the games we play say about us?" It's more of a social commentary, rather than commentary on the industry in and of itself. And again, I find that much more compelling.
edited 28th Jun '10 9:10:07 AM by EddieValiant,Jr.
"Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse." —Mycroft Next"Red Dead Redemption treats players like dogs instead of wolves".
That sounds like talking about what it says about us to me. Meanwhile, TGO never does that.
Not Quite Batman
If you honestly believe TGO never talks about games as reflected on the player, you've either never heard him or being argumentative for its own sake.
"Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse." —Mycroft NextI believe he never talks about it in a credible way. Lets take the build a better gamer thing - he talks to us about keeping in shape, while he looks like the love child of Rosie O'Donell and Jabba the Hutt (which is coincidentally the least adressed topic for erotic crossover fic in the history of the internet). Or about how we need to stomach the existence of games that fail all standards of quality by our definition because the medium is supposedly "dieing", and needs to bring in more people, yet when another medium thats even more plainly dieing produces another catastrophic critical failure that becomes a hit, thus bringing in new people to this medium they would avoid, he says, with no irony whatsoever, that this is the end of civilisation.
Even assuming his overweight is a result of laziness and bad nutrition instead of other biological factors, being a hypocrite has nothing to do with credibility, neither the point's nor the hypocrite's
For the second part, please cite your source. He defends the existence of simplistic and/or kid-friendly games for the sake of a new audience. I don't remember any case where he went on file defending games that 'fail all standards of quality' These two things are not the same.
Yes they are. By our standards of quality, they're bad. Saying that all standards of what makes something good should be thrown out when looking at something designed for a new audience (The words were "I can at least tell when something wasn't made for me") while decrying such an idea as inherently stupid with another medium.
edited 28th Jun '10 6:52:13 PM by IndigoDingo

Look like you never played some of the more modern b-mups (Fighting Force, Die Hard Arcade, Denjin Makai II).