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Sequels, Better or Worse?

May 4th 2010 11:03

Alot of people fear the word "sequel" and i am definetly one of them. There is nothing worse than finding the greatest game that you have ever played and saying to all of your friends "get the sequel! The first one was awesome!" just to pick up that sequel at some later date and realise that all that awesomeness has become a game not even worthy of an appearence on the $5 clearance rack. There has been a few games that have gotten better but how many old-school games have you seen being sullied by a 2000 re-release. The answer: too many to count.

I remember when i was a child me and my siblings where infatuated with Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. And who wasn't? The game was great! Then the years passed and the Nintendo 64 came out and me and my family rushed out to purchase our copy of Donkey Kong 64. What we thought, would be the same basic game but graphics like nobodies business! It turns out we where wrong. The graphics where great for it's time but that wasn't the problem. The whole structure changed and now you had this free-roaming ability which was just too much for a game that was set on one straight path. Nevertheless, i was dissapointed.

Banjo and Kazooie was another game that was awesome. It was practically the same game as Donkey Kong 64 but with new characters and no expectations, and isn't that what ruins the sequel? I mean, if it was any other game, with new characters and a new story, the game would be great but because of the expectations you set on that particular series you can't enjoy it unless it adheres to those pre-conceived ideas. Anyway, even though Banjo and Kazooie frustrated me with about a million musical notes that i was supposed to continue collecting but eventually ignored when possible, the game was fantastic, especially Mumbo Jumbo, possibly the best character Rare has ever created! (besides Kiddy Kong of course.) Then they made Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts... I don't really have to say anything here. But if you do need me to say something then just go on you tube and look up "Banjo and Kazooie 64" then look up "Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts." The fact the Banjo looks like some sort of experiment gone horribly awry should be enough for you.

Of course there are some success stories. Army of two: the 40th day was not just esthetically pleasing but a major step forward for the series. Splinter Cell was, in my opinion a horrible game. The fact that you where constantly caught and silently killing enemies was almost as hard and awkward as trying to jump up onto a slightly raised platform. But Splinter Cell Conviction was a massive overhaul on all of the bugs and glitches that i experienced throughout the other games.

There may be others out there who dissagree with this and might say that "Splinter cell lost its soul when it changed to suit the needs of those less stealthy" and that, "Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Donkey Kong 64 where just keeping up with the times and made a great effort in doing so" and this all may be true, but it all really depends on when you've entered the series. I, personally, hated all other Splinter cell games and was glad to see a more thought out approach to the series, but i have only played double agent. While i have played all the Donkey Kong games, but someone who was brought up with the Nintendo 64 might argue that the new version far surpassed the SNES versions. As i mentioned earlier, we all have idea's of what a sequel has to possess in order to live up to it's predecessor, but if it where any other game with any other name it would have done well.

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Posted By: Nathan C 1992 - Category: No Category

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Levelling Systems: Are we really Evolving?

May 4th 2010 10:07

Games have developed from two sticks moving up and down, passing a small square to eachother, to vast landscapes and charcters with just as much depth and personality as those backdrops. But are we actually going forward? I mean i'm impressed with the amount of detail that games can put into the smallest most trivial things, but is that really enough? When someone explains a game to you do they always lead off with "The graphics are really good"? Shouldn't what measures a game be how much enjoyment you get out of it, or the amount of insane stunts you can pull off? Now this is a pretty huge topic so i'm just going to cover the topic that bothers me the most and thats levelling systems and how they've slowley but surely bludgeoned this once great system to death with a large stick.

It's not to say that I completly despise all games that have tried to expand on the old levelling system. Some games have managed to make it different and still fun. Final Fantasy 10 was able to create a system that was interesting and quite well thought out, but 13 came out and "upgraded" it with this thing called a crysatarium or something to that effect.

First of all all your charcters can be any class of warrior you want them to be which is... different at best, secondly the the classes in which your characters are originally given can only level up after you've beaten a boss or passed a certain point in the game which made me dissapointed since i was going back and forth trying to rack up as many CP (crysatarium points) as humanly possible, and thirdly in 10 you had some sort of choice in what skills you levelled your character with but when levelling up your charcters in 13 its just a straight line and alot of holding the "a" button (or "x" depending on your system)

There's not much to be done with levelling, i mean it's not the most interesting part of a game but i much rather the olden days when they would just cut out the middle man and tell me what skills i developed each time i filled my experience bar. Because the only difference between the new systems and the old is the fact that you can see where your character will end up, development wise. Nothing much else. All i can say is why try and mess with something so simple, so perfect when you could be dealing with other problems or just making little adjustments on other things.

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Posted By: Nathan C 1992 - Category: No Category

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Morality: Does it Really Affect Your Storyline?

April 28th 2010 10:49

We've all played games that give us the oppurtunity to choose whether a side character lives or dies, whether we rough up an innocent bystander to collect information or to spare the life of an evil-doer. It's fun at the time, bieng the master of your own fate. But after the game is finished what did you really accomplish, aside from your slightly altered appearence and if you're really lucky, one town out of the whole virtual reality will change due to your decisions. Good and bad choices do give a game a sense of realism, but when you think about it did the decisions that you make really change your game play experience and make any difference to the story that anyone else out there played?

Games such as Fable give you a clear explanation of what is good and what is evil and left the decision making up to you to choose your course of action. Fable gave you the opportunity to dress and act the way you wished and as seen more extensivly in Fable 2, showed how your actions have consrquences, shaping the world around you as you chose to cause poverty in your home town or to enrich it. But even with Fable, you only where practically forced to choose between misbehaving or protecting the civillian from the start of the mission. There was no clear cut option or menu that drops down and makes you choose what your intentions will be before you can set out killing random monsters but the missions where always planned out, and you could tell from the descriptions what your choices will be. The Problem with this is the fact that even though you may have been protecting that little munchkin from all those golem, dwarf things, and at the end that weird nymph spirit tries to stop you from leaving the cave with the kid and in advertently kills the little boy, then you come out of that cave looking like the bad guy (which is what you will be once you've completed the mission!)

Although i havent played the other Fallout games but i was lucky enough to play Fallout 3 and experience, what i think is one of the best idea's when developing a game based on morality. The grey areas of the morality spectum are explored. For the first time that i can remember neutral actions are available for the player. (I may have missed a game, but as i said this is the first game that i have played with the ability to remain neutral.) Although the majority of actions only have the two basic choices, the game gives the player the ability to remain neutral and basically not cause any further damage to the Wasteland as well as not helping the people you come across either. Being neutral, in my opinion, just creates another way to be evil. If you've played the game you would have had the oppurtunity to wipe i city off the map by detonating an unexploded nuke or save the town byt disarming it. Now if you choose to walk the neutral path, you would choose to do nothing and leave the people's fate to chance. If you where to do this however wouldn't it be the same as detonating the bomb in the first place? Now in this situation, what you do will directly effect your game play. When i was playing the game i found myself doing exactly what i expected to do in a game that's based in a post-apocalyptic world and that is scavenging for food and supplies (which is a welcome change from the usual games where even though you live in a baron wasteland you have an endless stream of supplies and more money than you know what to do with). Now with this outpost destroyed your survival becomes even more challenging as selling scraps becomes a longer, more treacherous walk. Although you can destroy this town, nothing much else changes besides some crude reactions from the civillians,nothing really changes that drastically to your game play.

Mass effect and Mass effect 2 however are 2 of the greatest games (in my opinion) that really let you choose your own path. Although your choices are based on the idea that you are working for the overall good of the universe. You do however get to choose how you go about doing justice. You usually have three options when talking to other people although on special occasions you will get two options that are decisivley good or evil. The best part though is that throughout the game your character does not speak until you choose what you want him to say. Sometimes depending on how harsh your attitude is side missions may alter. Mass effect 1 has a side mission in which you have to talk down a woman who is planning on blowing her brains out. Obviously if you choose the option "just do it" the subsequent consequences can be somewhat... predictable. The reason why this game towers above any other game that attempts to create a "unique gaming experience each time you play." is at the end. Albeit this all important decison comes at the very end of almost 60 hours of game play (side missions included) but it is one that i think was worth all that time. You are given the choice which of your crewmen you sacrifice for the greater good. This decision along with your choice of saving some political big wigs and damning thousands of civillians or vice versa, are carried on to the sequel as you can upload your game data and witness how the universe has changed due to your decisions. Side missions are also effected as those you have killed in the first game do not come back to life to talk to you.

I guess what i'm getting at in the end is that although i am aware that there is way too many variables and options if the player was able to choose every little aspect of the game, i still wish that games could be slightly reminiscent of the "choose your own adventure" books that i used to read when i was little. It would be good if instead of choosing left at an intersection or running over that innocent pedestrian would then amount to greater injustices or the difference between freedom and enslavement. Again, I'm aware that kind of freedom of choice and the consequences that follow is something that one can only dream about since the amount of time it would take to create these games would far surpass the life-span of the creating it, but sometimes i wish that some of these creators would give some thought before they give the player some bland choice that makes you well aware of what is good and evil, or even worse a change that does not deliver any sort of change.

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Posted By: Nathan C 1992 - Category: No Category

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