FireWolf said:
Out of curiosity, do you people feel that sequels should be classed as new games, or as expansion packs and priced and marketed accordingly?
It depends on the game. Just how much money and effort was put into the sequel, though that's just my opinion. I'm sure if you asked developers and publishers they would more than likely disagree, though at times they are willing to acquiesce to my view. Just look at Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna for an example.
FireWolf said:
From these reviews it appears the interesting features that Ob put into the game were interesting in concept, most likely wel executed, yet the game shied away from making them too integral to playing the game for fear of damaging the forumla of the predecessor. The ideas are interesting and workable. It seems, at least to me, that ob hyped up these features and put a lot of work into them because they felt they would make the game better. I see no reason why they'd add these items and have them almost superfluous to the actual game by design.
I know Volourn would disagree with me, but I truly believe that was the intention of LucasArts. They saw just how highly praised the original was and told Obsidian to stick with the formula. I would wager that's probably the main reason some of the more interesting features such as influence are not an integral game concept. Hopefully for Obsidian, this title can be considered more of a research project. Getting feedback on the influence system might allow them to develop a future title where that gameplay element is more tightly coupled with the rest of the gameplay.
FireWolf said:
The original Kotor probably attained higher praise than it truely warrented. Why it was lauded so highly is probably because, compared to the recent lucasarts titles it was extremely well executed. It was set in a period not addressed by previous titles and thus, was fresh while being recognizable as Star Wars. Kotor 2 probably has a harder time of it. People expect to have the same sense of freshness and craftmanship of the original, with bells on but don't want the game to shoot off into a new genre.
The original KOTOR most definitely receieved higher praise than it deserved, but then again I think most games tend to. I prefer a system of rating that tries to be more absolute than the systems out there. If a game rates in the 8.5-10.0 area it should be a game of such great caliber that no matter what year you play it in, it's still an amazing game. I truly don't believe graphics should hold such a high position in the measure of a game's score. There are plenty of older games that can easily be plugged in and enjoyed, yet if you look at the graphics you will be greatly disappointed. Maybe there could be a relative score as well, one that accounts for games that have been released within the last year or two in which you might consider graphics. The relative score could simply pit the current crop of games against each other so that if you really want a new game to play, you have a way of choosing among the games.
Ultimately people play games because they are fun. I don't care what graphics whores have to say, if a game doesn't have fun gameplay it turns into a short lived extremely faint memory. That can be fine if you are in a fix and want a new game, but don't have one, yet if you are more selective for whatever reason, then wouldn't you want something that you can enjoy for a longer period of time.
FireWolf said:
I've said it before and I say so again, the RPG genre is too diluted. There's too much diversity within the genre since different people have different concepts of what an RPG actuallly is.
I don't take as much of an issue with the genre being diluted. Inevitably all genres become diluted. Head to your local movie rental store and you'll see what I mean. Look in any genre section and more than likely you'll find a whole slew of movies that seem to fit into multiple genres, yet they have to decide a single genre to put the movie in. Genres are imperfect, that's why reading reviews is so important. Just looking at the score of the game, simply won't cut it either since a score can't tell you about gameplay, only the meat of the review can. More and more, I'm beginning to prefer the system that Moby Games has. They have games categorized by a main genre and a sub-genre. It seems to make sense. Most things don't fit into one genre neatly. Now, I do believe genres should have definite meanings though, such as RPGs should be categorized by the value of the role-playing, action games should be categorized by combat, etc. Though just because a game holds a specific genre label, it doesn't fully describe the game. That's what reviews should be for, but most reviewers aren't very good at giving an accurate description of gameplay.
Video game reviewers in my opinion seem to be in a state of infancy rather than the maturity of the media and entertainment sectors. It doesn't seem that reviewers (even for some of the bigger publications) are hired on their ability to accurately portray a game. Instead they seem to look at writing ability and the willingness to play games, which just isn't enough of a criteron to go by. Spouting florid prose isn't why I read a review; it can add to the review it just isn't the sole reason to read the review. I want something with substance which I don't believe most gaming outlets yet comprehend. Ideally that will change more and more as the industry continues to mature.
FireWolf said:
This was only supposed to be a two sentence post.
Wow no kidding. I need to end my rant now, before I start foaming at the mouth and type up a manifesto.
