Hello again, Nate’s dearest, darling doves.
Earlier this week I found myself reflecting on the fact that the content on this site is weighted rather heavily in favour of RPGs, and Squeenix in particular. This is a natural reflection of the gaming history and preferences of many of the staff, myself included. As a result, I often find myself zeroing in on RPG and Square stories when we are gathering news for the MAP and dismissing stories from other genres due to an assumed lack of interest on your part. I also tend to focus on RPGs when writing my weekly posts – this is perhaps more forgivable, as I cannot blog about games and genres I do not play and have no interest in.
In the interest of fairness, equity, and journalistic integrity (we haz it!) I would like to ask you guys: what genre or style of game do you like? What kinds of games do you want to hear and read about? Are you okay with the way we tend to favour RPGs, MMOs and Action/Adventure games? Do we have a closet contingent of Halo fans in our midst?
I have discussed this before, but other than my blatant Squeenix fangirlism, I am also a huge fan of Simulation games. I believe I addressed this in a previous article, where I confess to having a case of OCD, and I use that to justify my taste in games.
I really do want to know what kinds of games you folks like. I know that people do respond well to most of the content here, so presumably you are interested in the content that is discussed, but I am sure that there are holes in our coverage that can be filled, but only if we know about them! Unless the hole you want us to fill is the gaping black pit of despair where our Pokemon coverage should be, in which case, go jump down a well and drown yourself.
If I survive the week without Lusipurr murdering me, or sending ninjas to murder me, I might review the Sims expansions next week. Huzzah! Uh, unless you all hate Simulation games, in which case, I don’t know, I’ll play some stupid boy game with guns and soldiers and stuff and try to blather about that.
Lusipurr
Bup
Ginia
Lane
Jenifer
SiliconNooB
Post ur boobs
Sims aren’t games.
I hate anything to do with “warfare,” like Medal of Honor or Call of Duty. One, they’re not fun. Two, their story lines suck ass. Three, to a lot of people I know, that’s “the deadly situation I work in every day,” not something that can be safely enjoyed from a couch.
I do not mind sci-fi FPS; I used to play quite a bit of Quake back in the Quake I/II days on my old Pentium (yessum, them were the days when we had only single core Pentiums).
I played a bit of Lost Planet and Gears of War. I find those games fun, but can’t stand the “community,” as it is, populated of homophobic thirteen year olds. But I’m not averse to chainsawing a motherfucker or two.
I play mostly RPGs/adventure games because I like the storylines, and I have a soft spot for swords. MMOs are really the only thing I play at a “hardcore” level, and that’s only because I find that I am better, in terms of technical ability, at them.
I like the RTS genre, but find it frustrating because at easy levels of difficulty, the games are too easy, and at hard, they are ridiculous. The same (generally) goes for turn-based strategy. And SN is right: Sims aren’t games. They’re expensive electronic action figures without the patented kung fu grip.
Survival horror games are no fun; I do not like the experience of dying repeatedly as I try to puzzle something out. That principle applies equally to platformers. Platformers were an adequate gameplay experience for the NES. Since those days, however, the experience of existing in a world apparently FILLED with deadly, bottomless pits leaves me less than excited. If Mario worked a better trade than plumbing, say, masonry, he’d just fill in those goddamn pits with some quick-crete and walk to the castle.
So, given limited playtime, I gravitate toward RPGs and adventure games, mostly within the fantasy genre (because it’s my favorite), but with plenty of love for sci-fi as well. My favorite games are the ones that blend the two (the ever-lovable science fantasy, like FFVI, the Assassin’s Creed series, Rogue Galaxy, etc.) or the ones that take you to an evil and scary place known as dark fantasy (Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate, Devil May Cry, etc.).
That said, there’s a few MMOs I’ve got my eye on as not being total disappointments compared to WoW — Warhammer 40K (with hopefully less suck than WAR) and The Old Republic, which causes my inner Jedi to squeal with glee at the same time I wonder how classes will possibly be balanced for endgame raiding. Seems to me like a raid of 10-15 Jedi are all you need: a Consular to heal, a Knight to tank, and a bunch of Enforcers to slice some motherfuckers up with lightsabers.
-Most survival horror games tend to separate the puzzle sections from the combat sections.
-I don’t know that I’d call DMC dark fantasy.
I liek Simz. :D
I am an RPG or platforming kind of girl really, but I also quite like fighting games, even though I suck at them. And all hail the pokeymans. And whilst I quite like some puzzle games, I agree with Lane about the survival ones completely.
Yay, awesome feedback so far. ^.^
MOAR B3WBS!!!!
Also, we require more vespene gas and a Ginia review of Hello Kitty Online.
I made the best homemade pizza tonight. ^.^
I’m a fighter gamer through and through. I play Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Blazblue, and Guilty Gear. I’m not the biggest fan of Capcom fighters though, after playing Arc System Works fighters Capcom always felt too tame, even Darkstalkers.
I’m an RPGamer second though my favorite game ever is FF Tactics. my favorite RPGs after that would be Romancing SaGa, Valkyria Chronicles, Shiren The Wanderer, FF XII, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, FF II (the Beat Yourself Stronger Edition), SaGa II, Kingdom Hearts, and Persona 3 & 4, in no particular order.
my least favorite rpgs are Suikoden 4, FF I, FF VIII, and DQ VIII.
I would very much like to hear more about two Action MMORPGs I’ve been excited for, Vindictus and Blade and Soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS1RdOsQqvE
and put a bunch of Tri-Ace games in my list, they’re my favorite developer. wordpress really needs an edit button -_-
Tri-Ace? That’s an interesting choice … good battle systems …
@SN – yea, that’s why. combat is king for me. no matter how good everything else is in an RPG if the battle system sucks I’ll hate it. if the battle system is awesome and everything else is shit I’ll bare through it. I love JRPGs because they tend to have complex systems that take a while to truly understand and master. essentially, I like JRPGs for many of the same reasons I like fighting games.
Ah, for me the battle system alone can’t make the game, but it can sure as hell ruin it.
<3 Tri-Ace
And Atlus
And NIS
And Konami … sometimes.
And Hello Kitty … always. =P
Personally, I’d probably put myself in the same camp as Lane, minus the MMOs. I find myself playing games for the story more than anything else, so I pretty much gravitate towards RPGs.
I’ll usually try anything, though. Despite all my time spent gaming, I’m pretty horribly uncoordinated, so I wouldn’t really say I’m “good” at any particular genre, but I can hold my own in Halo and I’ve finished the campaign modes for most of the Command and Conquer games (although playing against an AI hardly counts in RTS games, but I get absolutely slaughtered online, so I stick to what I know).
The only games I really don’t play are platformers, mostly due to the high frustration level. I’ve never tried The Sims, but I played a random spattering of SimNoun games when I was younger and enjoyed them (mostly SimTower. Played the crap out of that game when I was, like, 10), so I’d really be hard pressed to argue that The Sims isn’t a legitimate game.
I’d agree with SN in that a game can’t hold my interest based on it’s battle system alone, but it can certainly be sunk by it.
Overall, I’d love to play more games that aren’t RPGs, but I just don’t have the time. Especially given how long RPGs can take :F.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned FF II bein in my list of favorite RPGs.
I joke about how the Sims ain’t games but I believe they count. when boys get too old to have pinecone wars they play Call of Duty. when girls get too old to play with dolls they play The Sims.
Devil May Cry is dark fantasy through and through. It combines fantasy with supernatural horror elements. No lie.
The Sims isn’t a game. What are the conditions for victory or failure? Can it be played competitively?
The Sims is a sim, not a game.
@Lane: DMC is too flamboyant and camp to be dark fantasy, true it borrows some dark fantasy tropes, but it then churns them through Japanese anime aestetic reducing them to window dressing on a hyper kinetic pun spewing hack ‘n’ slash. It’s as much dark fantasy as the Sims is a game.
*aesthetic*
Webster’s dictionary
Game – activity engaged in for diversion or amusement.
Then you had better go tell EA, they’ve labelled it a simulation in it’s title …
There are a great many activities from which one can derive pleasure (lampooning Montok, trolling camwhores, yelling at small children), but these things are not games. They are lacking in a certain quality that turns an arbitrary amusement into a fun challenge. I would argue that a game needs win-loose conditions, else it’s more akin to an activity centre.
Now, The Sims has most conveniently labelled itself a sim which should effectively side-step any such ambiguity. Sims is certainly a lighter example of its genre and is made to be enjoyed, yet shares its classification with software made for professional training, scientific research and various forms of architectural/environmental software modelling. The mechanics involve manipulating a situation in order to observe a reaction, that is not a recipe for a game. You could perhaps make a game of using it in certain unintended ways, but that game would be external to the inherent qualities of the simulation.
so if one were to play GTA IV or Prototype without doin any missions then that’s not playin a game but just playin. I’m not arguin here, I’m tryin to get a clearer picrure of what you’re sayin.
GTA and Prototype are clearly in possession of objectives which can be won or lost. You can dick around as much as you like but both games will still have the inherent qualities of a game. Simulations on the other hand are simulations, like many things an individual can build a game around using them in a certain way, but the software in question will not have the inherent qualities of a game.
I guess I’ll be playing Xenogears and going through my old games because there is alot of suckage out there right now…
ah, OK, I see what you’re sayin now. you’re talkin about the software in and of itself, not necessarily the actions of the player.
I actually have old PC copies of Sim Ant and Sim Farm for Win3.1 on my shelf. I don’t own a floppy drive to see if the disks still work though. :(
Nowadays my favorite publishers are NIS America and Atlus. If Aksys licensed better games, they’d be up there too as their localizations are usually very well done, but the games they choose tend to be sub-par. As far as older games go, I’m a huge fan of the SNES era Final Fantasies and most anything Working Designs touched.
Outside of RPGs, I pretty much play the Civ series, the occasional Madden or MLB game, Smash Bros. and a platformer or two. Never been a fan of most fighting games or FPSes, though.
Actually, there -are- objectives and goals in games like the Sims – or other simulation games. Sometimes they are set by the game, sometimes by the player. In the Sims 3 I will be satisfied and feel I have “won” when I reach max level of my career path and fulfill my lifetime wish. I can then set new goals for myself, or perhaps make a babby and play again as the babby. In Harvest Moon, I usually set a goal of marrying a certain girl, having so much money, having so many cows, or whatever the game allows.
The difference between simulations versus other games, is that in sim games, there are as many ways to play and as many ways to win as there are people to play the game.
I do agree, though, that girls DO like games like the Sims, because it’s a more grown-up way to play house. :)
Player set goals do not make something a game. You can create your own set of conditional rules and play a game using the sim, but that game isn’t inherent to the software.
I only have one request, that a picture of UNDERBOOB be posted in every article from now on.
I’ll do my best Oyashiro.
The Sims is a simulation GAME. Da-dah. I win.
Just out of curiosity, what happens in The Sims when your sim dies? Does it just jump back 5 minutes or something like that? Or do you just spawn another copy of the same sim? Sorry, never played the game, just curious as to how it works, you know?
I played The Sims for about an hour. I ended up trapping the Goth family in a pen made from the graves in their backyard and watching them piss themselves over and over until they starved to death in high-speed. I think the lot just became available to create a new gaggle of Sims once the pre-fabbed ones were all dead.