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"Yeah, I get it."

Started by The Boston Crab, July 01, 2018, 10:19:35 PM

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I've played more games for two hours than any other activity over the last eighteen months. Lots of great fun games, lots I wish I could be tempted to play more but mostly it's just because I'm like, "yeah, I get it."


Everything from God of War to Golf Story, unless it's absolutely brilliant I'm just like, "yeah, I get it." Mario Tennis Aces. Hollow Knight. Blossom Tales. Rayman Legends. Shantae. Owlboy. Kirby Star Allies. Axiom Verge. Stardew Valley. Everything really except shmups, fighting games, puzzle games and arcade type stuff, I'm just like, "yeah, I get it."


Mario + Rabbids. Cave Story. Doom. Disgaea 5. The End is Nigh. Night In The Woods.


You get it?

remedial_gash

Well yeah, the pure gameplay stuff is easier to get, because there is nothing to get - I naughtily nicked the latest ass creed game and it probably took longer to download and install than it did for me to play a few sections and go, 'yeah I get it' and uninstall.

Had more fun on mame being rubbish at battle Garegga than that triple A bore fest.

If a game doesn't have a jump button it can sod off, and a 'mantle/climb/skip' button doesn't count.

Kelvin

The problem is that some games aren't varied enough to sustain the gameplay over tens of hours. Madhair mentioned this over in the Hollow Knight thread, and although I disagreed initially, it's become abundantly clear 12-15 hours in that, "yeah, I get it". Same environments, same types of platforming and enemies, all just getting slightly harder. It simply doesn't introduce enough new ideas, abilities and (types of) enviroments to justify the size of the map, or the length of the game. As Madhair himself said:

Quote from: madhair60 on June 14, 2018, 12:04:34 AM
Very good game but nothing as mechanically limited as this needs to be longer than 5 hours tops. It'd be one of my all timers if they'd simply condensed it down to its best bits.

and although I see it more as a 10 hour game, his main point is so true. So many games simply cannot sustain their ideas - no matter how good - over such considerable amounts of time. It's not that they don't have a ton of ideas, or interesting things to see, it's just padded out too much between the new stuff. Even something like Mario Odyssey, which has to be one of the densest, most varied games of recent times, could still have cut 30-50% of it's (880+) moons, and ended up a more satisfying, replayable and wholly pleasurable experience. This obsessive need for big budget games to amount to 50+ hours of content, is, in most cases, utterly unnecessary and counter productive.   

Excellent example with Odyssey. Even though I adored that game, I basically had to say that 500 moons was the end of the game for me, and even that required a certain amount of forcing myself to play through some boring moons so I could access the last level. Far far too much repetition and padding in it. I'll probably never touch it again and have no desire to replay it, whereas I could replay Mario 64 or either Galaxy pretty much any time.

My current game of choice is Ikaruga, such a beautifully designed creation with an unfathomable skill ceiling, every session I feel myself improving both physically and mentally and I'm slowly improving my score on chapter one. That's all I play. Three minutes or less on a loop. It's a work of genius. That one level has more depth and nuance than any other game I've played this year aside from Dark Souls Remastered. That's what is missing, not just from AAA walk-em-ups, but from every game with a couple of great ideas and prosaic execution. If you don't know how to work with your mechanics to wring out every last drop of depth, you come to rely on arbitrary illusions of progress like skill trees and similar shit.

Kelvin

Games with slow, one note starts are particularly vulnerable to this. If you don't feel like you're seeing much imagination or at least potential in those first minutes/hours, I do think you're likely to just say, 'Yeah, I get it', even if you don't.

One of the things I like about the xenoblade games is that right from the start there's an insane amount of ideas on offer, but it's either gated off or too much to take in or understand initially. As time passes, and the stuff is unlocked or explained to you, the games take on new depths and virtually transform into a totally different type of experience. But right from the start, you have a sense of that promise and where it might end up.

Timothy

Quote from: Kelvin on July 02, 2018, 12:17:09 PM
Games with slow, one note starts are particularly vulnerable to this. If you don't feel like you're seeing much imagination or at least potential in those first minutes/hours, I do think you're likely to just say, 'Yeah, I get it', even if you don't.

One of the things I like about the xenoblade games is that right from the start there's an insane amount of ideas on offer, but it's either gated off or too much to take in or understand initially. As time passes, and the stuff is unlocked or explained to you, the games take on new depths and virtually transform into a totally different type of experience. But right from the start, you have a sense of that promise and where it might end up.

Funny you say that. I wanted to put Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in my ''I get it'' comment. Saw all the icons, played the first few chapters, uninstalled.

Kelvin

Quote from: Timothy on July 02, 2018, 02:07:13 PM
Funny you say that. I wanted to put Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in my ''I get it'' comment. Saw all the icons, played the first few chapters, uninstalled.

Sort of. I almost feel like Xenoblade 2 has the opposite problem, where you don't really start getting the most out of the combat system until a long way into the game, which probably creates the early sense that you've seen everything, when in reality you've barely scratched the surface.

In that sense, it's susceptible to the issue I described in my post:

QuoteIf you don't feel like you're seeing much imagination or at least potential in those first minutes/hours, I do think you're likely to just say, 'Yeah, I get it', even if you don't.

Now, imo, the game did keep introducing enough new mechanics, abilities, and story to keep me engaged, but with combat, in particular, I don't think you could have any sense of how awesome the later battles will be based on the combat in the first few hours. It was tens of hours before I really thought "Holy fuck, this combat is great!", whereas early on it's far too slow and repetitive.   

Timothy

Interesting. Might buy it again to give it a second chance.

Kelvin

Quote from: Timothy on July 02, 2018, 03:48:53 PM
Interesting. Might buy it again to give it a second chance.

Have a read through of the thread on here, maybe. Several of us really liked it, others gave up on it, but there were very mixed feelings from most of us. It's not an easy recommendation, but if you can see past and push through the various issues discussed in that thread, I think it's an incredibly rewarding experience.   

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Alien Isolation is a classic example. Good will generated by the spot on visuals runs out long before the game's absurdly distended running time.

I lasted about two hours with Dying Light before getting pissed off by the stupid, invincible zombies. I really don't like games that make you grind for ages before you can play as anything resembling a functional human being.

Phil_A

Doom 3 for me. Played an hour or so, thought "Yep, this is going to be all it is for the whole game," stopped.

Darkened room, push button, monster spawns behind you. Repeat.

Twed

I feel this way about most games these days. I do miss being a teenager where you'd play all sorts to fill up your time, rather than being an adult where playing something unfulfilling is off the cards entirely.

Zetetic

Quote from: The Boston Crab on July 01, 2018, 10:19:35 PM
I've played more games for two hours than any other activity over the last eighteen months. Lots of great fun games, lots I wish I could be tempted to play more but

Yup.

Zetetic

You're not going to like it, but some of the answer might really be found on the PC and places like itch.io with games built for a couple of hours rather than 40, 60 or 300.

Maybe even listening to gout_pony's recommendations.