I read Cracked pretty much every day, and David Wong's articles always knock it out of the park. This one will make you look at unlockable armor and the daily challenges Reach will be offering in a whole new light.
While I agree heavily with him, it's unfair label to all gamers. Honestly, it's the xbox/ps2 forward generation of gamers that are ruining gaming. Those FPSers who want blood and rocket launchers but can't handle a 5 minute FMV telling a slight amount of background information. Halo would have been amazing with 15 minute cutscenes actually explaining all of what the books did, the lore behind the series is awesome but CE, 2 and 3 are awful in regards to storytelling. Coupled with the birth of the FPS on consoles, is this generations Live or bust and Gimicks or bust attitude. What has motion controls done for gaming? **** all. Your 4 year old and 45 year old don't need to be catered to, and if someone is going it..let Nintendo ruin their reputation with gamers. As for Live or bust? Hell, I'm guilty of it and I hate it. I hate paying 60 bucks for a 10 hour game that I can't repay as well though. So it's a two part problem here. Developers focus on "Live" for replay value, rather than a 40 or 50 hour game with a **** ton of side quests. It's easy to make a cheap 10 hour shooter and throw in "Prestige" mode in multiplayer. Instant millions. However, I'll be a sucker an buy into a game who promises me hours because of multiplayer. Truth is, the only multiplayer that truly lasts is Halo 3 and CoD (for a years time until the next installment). What happened to Final Fantasy games (not the series, the style). Forty hour storys, 20 minute FMV's, epically long sidequests, world exploration. Where are the Oblivions? It's the best damn game on the 360. Period. Anyway, after that rant haha I will say I do agree with him, probably entirely now that I recall his "the industry thinks we're 17 year old douchebags". It's sad, but there is hope as long as we have Bethesda and BioWare. /Rant
Cracked is immature, crude, juvenile, and uses crude language. It has an unhealthy obsession with dicks, dongs, and boobs. It is morally reprehensible, offensive, and often outright evil. It's also quite funny, and (usually) provides citations for its source info. I guess what I'm saying is, it's not for everyone but it's funny and educational if you enjoy that sort of thing. Of course it's unfair to label all gamers. He said right in the intro that he's a gamer himself, but out of all his other (fictional) hobbies, only gaming makes him ashamed to admit. That's true I think even of the gamers who don't fall into the 17 year old douchebag or lonely virgin categories. Gamers who've grown up have seen most of the gaming audience and the game industry itself stay almost exactly the same. Bethesda and Bioware and a few other select devlopers are providing games for grown ups, and they're awesome for it, but the best selling games are the ones that cater to the audience that gives gamers a bad name. Can't move past the stereotype if the stereotype is being reinforced by $$$.
Yah, Oblivion was great at story telling and I'm still playing it and Fallout 3, though I don't agreed with the 15 minute FMV idea. 1 's a convinience thing, you can't choose a part to rewatch those things from and the only game I've ever seen that lets you go straight to any cutscene, before or after a level, is Red Alert. So think of it this way, you beat the hardest level in the game, just before the big final fight, you watch 12 minutes and learn all of the plot twists, only for something to interupt you so you miss the last big twist and have to play that level all over again to know what the hell is going on and why you'e fighting the last boss. So in order for 15 minute cutscenes to be goos their accesibility would have to be greatly improved. 2. It's a game, not a movie. You play video games to put yourself in the action, not do a few things then see everything you work to get to do happen in a movie. My friends and I were talking about this just today, Final Fantasy has great cutscenes, but the characters can do amazing things you only wish you could get them to do. Cutscenes put in amazing cinematic moment (Halo 2 "giving the covenant back their bomb.") But you get to play some amazing things as well (James Bond: Everything or Nothing for the gamecube, jumping OFF a cliff to catch a girl while guys shoot rockets at you) so if you put in to many cutscenes then it becomes an interactive movie an not truly a game. Producers need to find a way to demonstrate a story WHILE you play, Halo did this pretty well but as you said there is considerable room for improvement. But tme will tell, sooner or later time will tell.
I wouldn't call them immature. This is one of the very few times I've visited Cracked, and the way I see it, they just write what they want, not what people want them to write. If they think of a funny **** joke, they'll slip it in, because in reality 90% of guys think of these things daily. They aren't trying to be professional.
I disagree, the gaming industry hasn't stayed the same at all, it has strayed heavily towards the casual audience. Not even so extreme as the Wii has done, but the casual audience who needs the hand holding. This is that 17 year old and under age. This zone wants FPS FPS FPS, no story and a little arrow telling them where to go. This isn't the gaming industry I grew up with. Genesis, SNES, 64, PSone, Dreamcast. They were all about RPG, Adventure, Platformer. The only shooters were things like PD and Goldeneye, Hexen, Doom, Duke Nukem and Quake. Those games never held your hand (I'm skipping CS and PC related shooters). Besides the most epic games were things like Legend of Zelda, Diablo, Star Craft, Final Fantasy and those were the types of games everyone tried to copy. It's only this passed generation, since the success of Halo that you see the shift to FPS with people running the CoD or Halo solution through their build. Gaming has changed quite a bit, but it's just changed for the negative.
great read. i loved the storytelling part the most because its entirely true. yeah halo and CoD have good stories, but not great stories. take Uncharted 2: Honor Among Thieves. EXCELLENT game. could not put it down for days until I beat it. and at that time I was working nights so I'd come home at like 7 in the morning and play until like 2 in the afternoon and then go to sleep and wake up at 7 at night to do it all again. got little sleep but thoroughly enjoyed an excellent game. God of War 3, another excellent game with an excellent storyline. Assassin's Creed 2, inFamous, Gears of War 2, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age: Origins; just more examples of excellent storytelling. but then you look at all the other crap out there. the only reason the Call of Duty's are so sought-after are because of the multiplayer. I certainly wouldn't go back and replay the storymode again just to kill Zakhaev again, or kill Colonel Shepherd (except maybe in Veteran for the hefty Gamerscore it delivers). games need to focus more on the storytelling aspect, people will be more happy with a great storyline and great gameplay rather than just great gameplay (I mean come on, Assassin's Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2 came out on the same day, but after playing through MW2's story line, I played a little MP and then switched to AC2 for the next week-two weeks. I still turn it on at least once weekly to run from rooftop to rooftop; and it doesnt even have a whim of multiplayer!)
OMG! I ****ing loved Golden Sun, 1 and 2. That game was so brilliant and fun. The boss battles were epic too, but I think the discussion was about console games, how console shooter are ruining video games... Or something like that, lol! I personally hate playing games that are "too" long, especially if its a game that I am borrowing. If a game has a very in depth and vivid storyline that i can easily fall into, then I wont have a problem with playing games that are like 100 hours long, the gameplay HAS to be good in order to keep me focus in the story. IDK, its all just preference...
I'm not afraid to admit I'm a gamer. If you're a real person, then you just stand up, say you don't give a **** about what that other person says and you be proud that you play. Everyone I know in my entire life has played a video game. My family, my parents, nieces, cousins, friends. It's actually alright to say you play games, what it isn't alright to do is say you play hardcore or you play 7+ hours a day. People really do frown on that, believe me, I've been there. I'm actually there now, I got a Wii and Monster Hunter Tri this past Friday and I already have 80+ hours logged into that game. That's a good 3+ days worth already and I'm playing it as I type. But this is just a phase. I play for a while, get bored, move on. It's what I do, not sure about others, especially ones who play WoW. I'm sure it's entertaining and I would like to give it a try, but I would eventually tire of it really fast so I don't want to spend the money. I agree with the story telling part which is why my favorite game series of all time is Metal Gear Solid. Literally every 5 minutes there was story or a cut-scene and I loved every bit of them. Even after I beat the games I would go and watch the cut-scenes over again just to grasp the story better. Konami does it right with Metal Gear Solid and other gaming companies need to follow their path. As for everything else, gamers enjoy violence. People in general enjoy violence. It's human nature, so I don't mind killing a ton of things. It's just fun to me.
I dont agree with the storytelling part. Gears, Halo 1/2 (i dont like 3's story), Cod 4/MW2, Assassins Creed 1/2, Splinter Cell Conviction, CoD WaW, and especially Red Dead Redemption have better stories then most movies.
Omg lol. Aside from Red Dead and Splinter Cell, most of those games stories are either so convoluted, unintelligent, told poorly, or just plain uninteresting that they would either bust at the box office, go straight to dvd, or be the lucky few movies that succeed with a terrible story because of brand name, technology, or being over hyped. I guess it's opinion, though.