The Video Game Critic

[QUOTE=Steerforth]

Atari Fever -

 

    I'll admit, I kinda forgot about conectivity. I had Pacman VS, that was a cool game. I also played a little 4 swords (1 player) and that was very enjoyable. The only problem was, I didn't know anyone else who had a GBA at that time, so it was  fruit out of reach for me. Obviously, that was my loss. We have 2 DS's in the family now, so I'll hope for a Wii version. I remember the media really pounded Nintendo on connectivity, because they wanted online so bad. Ideas and games are seldom judged by what they are , but by what THOSE WHO KNOW BETTER want them to be!

 

     Also, to be fair, the N64 had pretty good momentum from the SNES, but was  not able to give the Cube much of a push at all at the end of its life. The Wii created its own momentum, hopefuly it does not fizzle and pop too soon!

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Hopefully they start catering to the "mature" crowd soon. THEY need more games like Red Steel except good.

[QUOTE=Superjay]THEY need more games like Red Steel except good.
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I don't think it is possible to review Red Steel more perfectly than you just did there.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]

Also, to be fair, the N64 had pretty good momentum from the SNES, but was  not able to give the Cube much of a push at all at the end of its life. The Wii created its own momentum, hopefuly it does not fizzle and pop too soon!

[/QUOTE]
I honestly think that the N64 did far more to hurt the Gamecube than the Gamecube did to hurt the Gamecube.  Nintendo needed to do something like the Wii this generation, as they haven't had a decent head of steam since the SNES.

[QUOTE=Superjay]

Hopefully they start catering to the "mature" crowd soon. THEY need more games like Red Steel except good.
[/QUOTE]

They already have mature games out...this is a step up considering it took the gamecube a long time to get a single M rated game (Eternal Darkness).  Plus they have The Godfather coming which will be a mature title and they just announced Scarface.  Sure they may just be ports, but you can bet your bottom dollar ALOT of companies are watching to see how those two title sell...if they sell well, expect more mature content.  So if people want to see more mature content they had better buy what is available, otherwise companies deem it too risky to put out mature content on the Wii.  Its that simple.  Besides, hacking people with a chainsaw in Scarface has to be fun right?

My wish for Wii?

 

Design games that make good use of the Wimote! Simple, ain't it? RTS's should be a cinch with Wii, some point and clickers would be a nice change of pace as well. It wouldn't hurt to design games from an "arcade" standpoint, either. Build a game around one principal concept, and do it really well. Make it  bright and fast and out there, just something to counter all the heavily story driven games. Video games are a terrible medium for telling stories, but, thanks to CG, devs can't seem to help themselves. I want variety, baby! And some $20 games, brand new!!

[QUOTE=Steerforth]

My wish for Wii?

 

 Video games are a terrible medium for telling stories, but, thanks to CG, devs can't seem to help themselves. [/QUOTE]

 

*gasp*

 

I really couldn't disagree more. Video games are a very exciting medium to tell stories in, and have a solid history of doing so, even in the days before graphics. Infocom text adventures, the Sierra and LucasArts glory days of the late 1980's early 1990s, not to mention Final Fantasy VII, which (regardless of how one feels about the actual quality of the narrative) made telling "stories" in a game a commercially viable option. Halo I and II wouldn't be as succesful if it didn't have some basic storytelling components in place: an interesting opponent, some fun supporting characters, and a "mysterious stranger" hero archetype.

 

Galaga is a personal favorite of mine. But modern games that are simply about blasting always seem like a sort of perverse pasttime, with modern graphics making the destruction ever more realistic. So I like to have context for what I'm doing. Even Gears of War, which is action oriented as they come, has something of a narrative.

 

Different tastes, though.

-Rob

[QUOTE=Steerforth]

 It wouldn't hurt to design games from an "arcade" standpoint, either. Build a game around one principal concept, and do it really well. Make it  bright and fast and out there, just something to counter all the heavily story driven games.

[/QUOTE]
Can I get an Amen!  I actually think Yoshi's Touch and Go is one of the best DS games, and it's just a weird little arcade game.


I was just thinking yesterday how much I'd like an old fashioned shooter.  Nanostray and stuff are great and feel pretty arcade like, but I want something that looks like it was made for the 16 bit era.  I want a bright game with no ploygons at all.  Just a flat, colorful masterpiece.  I've got a simple concept story written and everything: "there are things on the screen and you have to shoot them." 

Feilong -

 

    I like storyboard type stories. My point is, they generally should be simple and not take up too much time. Look at the origional LOZ : You walk into a cave (if you want) some hermit gives you a sword, you can get to the first dungeon in 30 seconds and beat the first dungeon in 5 minutes. ACTION! Compare contrast with Twilight Princess. I know a lot of people really like their Zelda stories, and that's cool, I just feel the stories are overdone and not that great anyway . Although I have to give them some credit with TP, you can skip any cutscene if you want on the first playthrough. Nice feature.

     But we have all seen many, many terrible CG cutscenes, and ussually it is forced watching, "we worked hard on this and your gonna like it, mister!"

No good for stories eh?


Monkey Island , Full Throttle, The Dig. Need I say more??





Back on topic, it seemed that Nintendo was spinning it's wheels during the Cube's life cycle. You can make points about the wavebird and the innovations in specific software but thats not really the point. Nintendo as a company really got out of touch with gamers. Starting with the 64. Sure you had Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. But everyone think back to 1996, what did we want? The Playstation (or at least we wanted our systems of choice to be like the playstation )

The point? With the 64, Nintendo went with Carts over disk based media, poor third party support and fewer Mature games (in comparison the other consoles of the time, heck even the Saturn gave the 64 a run for its money in terms of third party support)


With the Cube, again, a poor media choice (Minis??), poor 3rd party support (again compared to other systems of the time, which by the way is what you all should be doing, not doing cross comparisons of different [I]generations[/I]! And a substancial lack of mature titles.



There are some grave similarities here. Things are different with the Wii, and that proves my point. That Nintendo lost touch with the most important aspect of this entire business, the gamers. Now they're making it up to us.


The Big N is back. For me at least, and i'm a [B]SEGA[/B] fanboy.

[QUOTE=Steerforth]

Feilong -

 

    I like storyboard type stories. My point is, they generally should be simple and not take up too much time. Look at the origional LOZ : You walk into a cave (if you want) some hermit gives you a sword, you can get to the first dungeon in 30 seconds and beat the first dungeon in 5 minutes. ACTION! Compare contrast with Twilight Princess. I know a lot of people really like their Zelda stories, and that's cool, I just feel the stories are overdone and not that great anyway . Although I have to give them some credit with TP, you can skip any cutscene if you want on the first playthrough. Nice feature.

     But we have all seen many, many terrible CG cutscenes, and ussually it is forced watching, "we worked hard on this and your gonna like it, mister!"

[/QUOTE]

 

I'll give you one thing: in general they aren't done extremely well. But that is changing. Having professsional writers are becoming the norm at this point, so I bet you will see an improvement over time.

 

As for Twilight Princess, that's probably the best story driven Zelda yet. And there are some very unique things about how they choose to go about telling that story that I like, but I won't get into that here.

 

-Rob