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Wolfgang Pauli posted:Is it similar to something like Black Ops/MW3/that one modern Medal of Honor game in terms of cheap 1980s homosexual tension action flick-iness, or is this actually a decently told story that's worth the money? My only real interest in this is the singleplayer campaign. No cheap 1980s homosexual tension action flick-iness, some normal smartass comments at the beginning, but no bro fists bumps, I promise you. It's been getting great reviews for the story so I don't think you'll go wrong there. greenmangaming.com has a 25% off coupon (25OFF-ALLTH-EGAME) until 9th July that brings Spec Ops to $37.50. It's not a bad deal for the game. Or you might want to wait and see if it's in the Steam sales. Also, I have zero interest in the multiplayer portion and still don't regret buying this.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 15:30 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 14:50 |
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Its still 25bux on amazon!
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 15:50 |
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The End posted:Play it for more than 30 minutes. I played it for five hours and it still had a horribly awkward cover mechanic, and uninteresting shooting? Help
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 15:51 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:I played it for five hours and it still had a horribly awkward cover mechanic, and uninteresting shooting? Help Did you try viewing those poorly executed mechanics as an actually really clever critique on other games with better executed examples of those mechanics?
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 15:53 |
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Well, clearly I wasn't supposed to enjoy the shooting, which explains the sick slo-mos every time I got a headshot.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 15:57 |
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I understand you are being silly, but what didn't you like about the cover mechanic? I liked that you could slide into cover really quickly and from a distance, and I really liked how run and cover are the same button. I don't play alot of 3rd person shooters but I thought that was pretty cool. That and the story was enough to allow me to enjoy the game for how much I paid, and will probably play through it one or two more times.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 15:57 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Well, clearly I wasn't supposed to enjoy the shooting, which explains the sick slo-mos every time I got a headshot. Well, you know the saying; "Imitation is the sincerest form of satire".
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 16:11 |
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It's weird how lovely/mediocre mechanics are tolerable in survival horror, even with the levels of retardation present in Capcom's plots, yet in this game, with its very loving cleverly done story, it's a bridge too far for many. Play for the narrative. The mechanics are a means to an end.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:13 |
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in that case, save $50 (or $25, or whatever), and watch the amazing narrative on Youtube, since apparently this game's good qualities are completely independent from the act of actually playing it
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:23 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:in that case, save $50 (or $25, or whatever), and watch the amazing narrative on Youtube, since apparently this game's good qualities are completely independent from the act of actually playing it Like survival horror, I'd venture that the semi-lovely combat adds to the impact of the game. Or you can just warn everyone away from an fps that is trying to do something different because hey, gently caress originality in gaming, right?
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:25 |
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The End posted:Like survival horror, I'd venture that the semi-lovely combat adds to the impact of the game. Yeah, the Horror Of War depicted by not being able to slide around cover. The End posted:Or you can just warn everyone away from an fps that is trying to do something different because hey, gently caress originality in gaming, right? "Originality in gaming"? What's more original than a cover shooter? If they wanted to be "original", maybe they should have actually tried to innovate mechanically, instead of adding "mature" cutscenes to a tired genre to appeal to the RPS games-are-art crowd.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:31 |
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The only thing that It's weird but, you know, you just learn to go with it. *Heavy Rain
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:34 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Yeah, the Horror Of War depicted by not being able to slide around cover. Uh, you can do that because I did the entire loving game. Not sure what your angle is, but you're just lying about the game at this point in the thread.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:35 |
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-Dethstryk- posted:Uh, you can do that because I did the entire loving game. Not sure what your angle is, but you're just lying about the game at this point in the thread. Not around corners, unless I'm missing something that's not shown on the controls screen, or the contextual commands. To do that, you have to stand up, walk around, and get in cover again.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:42 |
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The End posted:Like survival horror, I'd venture that the semi-lovely combat adds to the impact of the game. This is the worst excuse to justify any game's flaws. The combat is lovely because it is lovely, not because it's a purposeful attempt to enhance anything. precision posted:*Heavy Rain There's coming up short, and there's Heavy Rain, the equivalent of missing a field goal by kicking the ball between your own team's posts.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:50 |
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fivegears4reverse posted:There's coming up short, and there's Heavy Rain, the equivalent of missing a field goal by kicking the ball between your own team's posts. You do realize you just proved my point in the most perfect way imaginable, right? Just, you know, making sure. 
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:53 |
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precision posted:The only thing that This isn't just contrarianism, this is something that's been bothering me with game journalists for a while. There's this weird trend for people (journalists, usually) to clamor for "mature" games. By their definition, "mature" has nothing to do with mechanical innovation, or challenge, or even anything to do with gameplay design at all. It's instead a desire for game narratives to tackle subjects usually associated with classic films, or classic literature. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/03/its-time-for-games-to-offer-us-solid-food/ posted:Certainly, the first few films might have been people falling over, but 35 years in and they were making All Quiet On The Western Front. We’re making Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare. So why is that? Does it matter? Is this how games are supposed to be? And who am I to be making such rash generalisations? Spec Ops: The Line was tailor-made for this school of thought. It has absolutely nothing new to say from a mechanical standpoint; it's entire reason for existing is that it has a "mature" story. Even that story isn't terribly original, the developers themselves have given interviews playing up Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness namechecks: things already known to be "mature", so their game becomes "mature" by association. (not to mention that too many writers conflate "mature" with "unpleasant", resulting in games showing burnt corpses of women and children, except you're supposed to "tsk tsk" at them, so it's Totally In Good Taste). i mean, if you can't tell already, I absolutely hate this school of thought. it completely ignores the strength of games as a creative medium, the fact that players can choose what to do. It's amazing to me that people want to sacrifice that strength for the purpose of telling tired narratives.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 22:59 |
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by the way, if you want a game that actually tackles "war is bad" in an interesting manner, go to GOG and pick up Cannon Fodder. They even remembered to make an interesting game around their message!
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:01 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Spec Ops: The Line was tailor-made for this school of thought. It has absolutely nothing new to say from a mechanical standpoint; it's entire reason for existing is that it has a "mature" story. Even that story isn't terribly original, the developers themselves have given interviews playing up Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness namechecks: things already known to be "mature", so their game becomes "mature" by association. Well it's not really that I disagree with you, and I haven't actually played Spec Ops so I can't speak to it specifically, but I think in general there's a school of thought that making a game with a good story but mediocre gameplay is somehow a failure. I'll use the go-to example of Silent Hill (or Silent Hill 2, or 3). The gameplay in those is barely better than Resident Evil, and especially in 2 you get almost literally zero sense of danger or fear from the gameplay mechanics - it's one of the easiest games I can think of, bar none. But I'm not going to fault it too much for that, because each separate game can advance Games In General in its own way, one step at a time. Killer7's gameplay is laughably... "weird", to be charitable, but it's a great game to me. People are generally quick to shower praise on games with amazing gameplay but bland story (Portal comes to mind, though I'm sure someone will tell me why Portal's story is actually amazing) so I don't see why the door shouldn't swing both ways. L.A. Noire did little to advance open-world gameplay, but did a lot in service of creating a fantastic setting and a truly affecting story, for example.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:08 |
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Games are an artistic medium with a wide berth of what can be done, just because they don't fit your preconceived notions or desires doesn't mean they're "worthless" or "uninteresting."
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:09 |
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Thom and the Heads posted:I can't help but feeling that the game would be better off not telling the player what white phosphorous is before the big "incident". The fact that you see a couple minutes beforehand what WP does kind of takes away from the big surprise when you unleash it on a whole bunch of dudes. I feel like if the game just didn't show it to you before that and just said "hey, that looks a predator missile station" or something, it would bring more punch to the "holy gently caress we just brutally killed a poo poo ton of people in the worst way" part of the story.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:17 |
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precision posted:People are generally quick to shower praise on games with amazing gameplay but bland story (Portal comes to mind, though I'm sure someone will tell me why Portal's story is actually amazing) so I don't see why the door shouldn't swing both ways. L.A. Noire did little to advance open-world gameplay, but did a lot in service of creating a fantastic setting and a truly affecting story, for example. Because we're dealing with video games here, and games are intrinsically defined by their mechanics (as in: if they didn't have mechanics, you'd be unable to call them a video game). If you ignore mechanics and focus on narrative, fine, but what you're doing has nothing to do with game criticism. I don't want to get into the "art debate", so I'll stick with artistic examples. It'd be like if you decided that you, as a film critic, would completely ignore cinematography and direction, so that setting up a camcorder and having it record a stage production of "Hamlet" would be equally good as Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Hamlet. It's nonsense.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:19 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:I don't want to get into the "art debate", so I'll stick with artistic examples. It'd be like if you decided that you, as a film critic, would completely ignore cinematography and direction, so that setting up a camcorder and having it record a stage production of "Hamlet" would be equally good as Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Hamlet. It's nonsense. But you can praise a film for its script and acting above all other considerations, or else nobody would be a fan of Hal Hartley's early films.  What I'm saying is simply that if something does A Thing really well, that can make The Thing good even if it does Other Things poorly.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:22 |
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precision posted:But you can praise a film for its script and acting above all other considerations, or else nobody would be a fan of Hal Hartley's early films. precision posted:What I'm saying is simply that if something does A Thing really well, that can make The Thing good even if it does Other Things poorly. The problem is that you're assuming that the narrative in a game and the mechanics of a game are equally important, because they aren't. They can't possibly be, otherwise a game with no story (pick one. Chess. Poker. Basketball, even) would be just as ludicrous of an idea as a game without any gameplay. One of those things defines the medium of gaming itself, and the other doesn't.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:30 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:The problem is that you're assuming that the narrative in a game and the mechanics of a game are equally important, because they aren't. They can't possibly be, otherwise a game with no story (pick one. Chess. Poker. Basketball, even) would be just as ludicrous of an idea as a game without any gameplay. One of those things defines the medium of gaming itself, and the other doesn't. Horseshit. They're equally important. Story can make a mediocre game excellent, and good controls can make a mediocre story excellent. Yes games without a story, as your examples, exist, and yes these are good games, but that is because they have great mechanics. If a game had no story and poo poo mechanics, it would be... let me do the math here... poo poo What your effectively saying is that the story is minor to your enjoyment of a game, which to me is like saying that the taste of your meal is minor to the enjoyment of a meal, and that really, the cutlery is the important part.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:34 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:You can say that it had a good script, but you couldn't possibly call it a good film. That's the point here. I'm pretty sure that I can, actually. There are plenty of films with fantastic scripts and acting but terrible budgets, bad direction and cinematography, but are nonetheless good films. I mean, I'd say that Trash Humpers is a brilliant film, despite having almost literally no "objectively good" qualities. The point is that any artistic product can have about it things which make it "good" (in the sense that it is notable) and can itself be "good" (again, "notable") without having every element be "good". I'm pretty sure this is going to spiral into a sophomoric "What is Art?" debate though, so I'll refrain from saying more until I actually play the game this thread is about.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:42 |
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Conot posted:Horseshit. They're equally important. Story can make a mediocre game excellent, and good controls can make a mediocre story excellent. Yes games without a story, as your examples, exist, and yes these are good games, but that is because they have great mechanics. If a game had no story and poo poo mechanics, it would be... let me do the math here... Many things can make games more or less enjoyable, but that doesn't mean they're all equally important. You even seem to agree with this, if they were equally important, than the absence of one of these elements would be a fatal flaw: and yet you can totally have a game without a story. And yes, a game with no story and bad mechanics is a bad game, for the exact same reason that a game with a good story and bad mechanics is still a bad game. It's possible to enjoy the latter for the story (and no, I'm not saying that it's "wrong" to enjoy game stories, or that they can't add to how enjoyable a game is), but it's also possible to enjoy a lovely car because it looks cool. Conot posted:What your effectively saying is that the story is minor to your enjoyment of a game, which to me is like saying that the taste of your meal is minor to the enjoyment of a meal, and that really, the cutlery is the important part. The concept of a game is defined by how it is played. The concept of a meal is not defined by silverware.
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| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:47 |
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Fag Boy Jim, you probably got a boner reading this: http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/02/d...e-designer.html It speaks to a real amateur understanding of art when someone reduces an entire medium to a core section and refuses to accept someone only using the base elements of that section to communicate an ideal within that medium. With film, and paintings, and sculpture, nobody whinges on about this sort of argument - it's only in games, and it speaks to a real misunderstanding of what exactly art is. A piece of art, regardless of medium, is all the elements combined into a single whole. It is not only a few of them, it's not how well it uses one specific element, it's all tied together into one whole, one single piece, and this is where the failed critics trip over themselves. At this point, who gives a poo poo. If the mechanics are passable enough to communicate an ideal, unintentional or not, then that's what really matters. Jefferoo fucked around with this message at Jul 8, 2012 around 23:57 |
| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:54 |
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Jefferoo posted:With film, and paintings, and sculpture, nobody whinges on about this sort of argument - it's only in games, and it speaks to a real misunderstanding of what exactly art is. I should probably say that I have major issues with SO:TL's narrative that have nothing to do with gameplay mechanics at all, so it's not as if I'm saying "Great story, but it's worthless" here. Jefferoo posted:At this point, who gives a poo poo. If the mechanics are passable enough to communicate an ideal, unintentional or not, then that's what really matters. Fag Boy Jim fucked around with this message at Jul 9, 2012 around 00:00 |
| # ? Jul 8, 2012 23:58 |
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quote:and I guess that's where I diverge from people who want more games like SO:TL. I don't think games should strive to have "passable" mechanics. This makes it sound like the act of being a game is an unpleasant obstacle of some sort, which makes me wonder why you're interested in games in the first place. Now you're just making up arguments to argue against. That's not at all what was being said, there was nothing negative about game mechanics being talked about here. It's simply that you're fetishizing game mechanics as if that's the only worthwhile content in the medium.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:10 |
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Jefferoo posted:Now you're just making up arguments to argue against. That's not at all what was being said, there was nothing negative about game mechanics being talked about here. It's simply that you're fetishizing game mechanics as if that's the only worthwhile content in the medium. you're the one saying that you don't care about game mechanics as long as they're "passable" (read: they don't interfere with the game's ability to tell it's narrative). I mean, really, taking this viewpoint suggests to me that you'd rather not have mechanics there at all. At best, you're completely uninterested with them. Jefferoo posted:It's simply that you're fetishizing game mechanics as if that's the only worthwhile content in the medium. Not the only worthwhile thing in the medium, but absolutely the most important thing in the medium, and the only necessary thing.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:17 |
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Jefferoo posted:At this point, who gives a poo poo. If the mechanics are passable enough to communicate an ideal, unintentional or not, then that's what really matters. I'm pretty sure artists "give a poo poo", since many of them spend their lives honing the mechanical sides of their craft.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:18 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:you're the one saying that you don't care about game mechanics as long as they're "passable" (read: they don't interfere with the game's ability to tell it's narrative). I mean, really, taking this viewpoint suggests to me that you'd rather not have mechanics there at all. At best, you're completely uninterested with them. No, you're completely misconstruing the argument for your own sake here. Mechanics are great. Mechanics, done well, are fantastic. Mechanics that are at least enjoyable and part of a larger whole are fine as well. You're simply, again, fetishizing this one part of the medium in order to dismiss anybody that bothers to attempt anything new or interesting that doesn't fit within your narrow little spectrum. Games as a whole are more than simply mechanics, however. They can be simply mechanics, and survive for thousands of years, but they also are again, an entire medium, and more than simply mechanics are necessary in communicating a lot of ideals. quote:I'm pretty sure artists "give a poo poo", since many of them spend their lives honing the mechanical sides of their craft. This is again a false argument. Nobody brings this sort of argument up in any other medium as it's complete horseshit, and utterly disingenuous.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:31 |
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Jefferoo posted:No, you're completely misconstruing the argument for your own sake here. Mechanics are great. Mechanics, done well, are fantastic. Mechanics that are at least enjoyable and part of a larger whole are fine as well. You're simply, again, fetishizing this one part of the medium in order to dismiss anybody that bothers to attempt anything new or interesting that doesn't fit within your narrow little spectrum. quote:At this point, who gives a poo poo. If the mechanics are passable enough to communicate an ideal, unintentional or not, then that's what really matters. quote:With film, and paintings, and sculpture, nobody whinges on about this sort of argument - it's only in games, quote:Nobody brings this sort of argument up in any other medium as it's complete horseshit, and utterly disingenuous. Maybe games aren't at all like other mediums, then.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:47 |
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So, Fag Boy Jim, I'm interested on your take on the flip side of the coin - particularly modern Japanese games. Generally, they're mechanically brilliant, or at the very least, inventive. Yet most of them are hugely derivative in terms of setting, plot, character etc. Would you prefer that to games like Spec Ops, which might be rudimentary in terms of gameplay, but genuinely contain advancements to narrative in games (arguably their weakest element at the moment). If so, I can't get behind that. It seems regressive, and will restrict gaming advancing beyond its status as a 'toy'.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:53 |
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Games are art, art is communication. Games are like other mediums, in an astounding number of ways. quote:At this point, who gives a poo poo. If the mechanics are passable enough to communicate an ideal, unintentional or not, then that's what really matters. You've taken this statement out of context. Games can do many different things with many different elements and prioritize those elements in different ways to do different things. You keep twisting other people's arguments and it's pretty pathetic.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:54 |
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Yeah, the Horror Of War depicted by not being able to slide around cover. The End posted:If so, I can't get behind that. It seems regressive, and will restrict gaming advancing beyond its status as a 'toy'. quote:At this point, who gives a poo poo. If the mechanics are passable enough to communicate an ideal, unintentional or not, then that's what really matters. That said, I'm going to give this a shot. And then probably watch Apocalypse Now afterwards. Wolfgang Pauli fucked around with this message at Jul 9, 2012 around 01:00 |
| # ? Jul 9, 2012 00:57 |
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Jefferoo posted:You've taken this statement out of context. Games can do many different things with many different elements and prioritize those elements in different ways to do different things. You keep twisting other people's arguments and it's pretty pathetic. Fine. Here's the sentence in context. quote:It speaks to a real amateur understanding of art when someone reduces an entire medium to a core section and refuses to accept someone only using the base elements of that section to communicate an ideal within that medium. With film, and paintings, and sculpture, nobody whinges on about this sort of argument - it's only in games, and it speaks to a real misunderstanding of what exactly art is. A piece of art, regardless of medium, is all the elements combined into a single whole. It is not only a few of them, it's not how well it uses one specific element, it's all tied together into one whole, one single piece, and this is where the failed critics trip over themselves. I don't see how this significantly changes anything. I mean, structurally, I just posted your conclusion, instead of the argument you drew it from, which seems like fair game. It's not as if I took a sentence from the middle of the body and called it your viewpoint. quote:Games are art, art is communication. Games are like other mediums, in an astounding number of ways. Name a medium where the most enduring examples have remained popular because they have fulfilled societal functions, rather than for their communication of ideas and aesthetics. Name a medium where one has no choice but to approach a work on it's own terms (game mechanics and rules), rather than our own terms. (we can, after all, watch Triumph of the Will from a standpoint that is completely opposed to the filmmakers', but we can not play chess and reject "Bishops move diagonally") If the function of a game is to communicate ideals, it's very, very weird that the most highly-regarded examples of games don't seem to actually do so, except in a highly convoluted manner.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 01:17 |
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Jefferoo posted:This is again a false argument. Nobody brings this sort of argument up in any other medium as it's complete horseshit, and utterly disingenuous. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but are you actually saying that technical skill isn't considered by artists or critics when it comes to making music, cinema, or poetry, etc?
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 01:21 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 14:50 |
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The End posted:So, Fag Boy Jim, I'm interested on your take on the flip side of the coin - particularly modern Japanese games. Generally, they're mechanically brilliant, or at the very least, inventive. Yet most of them are hugely derivative in terms of setting, plot, character etc. Would you prefer that to games like Spec Ops, which might be rudimentary in terms of gameplay, but genuinely contain advancements to narrative in games (arguably their weakest element at the moment). yeah, I would prefer mechanically inventive games to games with boring gameplay but interesting stories (setting aside the fact that I think SO:TL's story is not very interesting at all). I play and enjoy games primarily for their mechanics, and if the game's narrative happens to be good, or, even better, interact with the mechanics in a way where the player's gameplay shapes the narrative, fantastic. It's not as if I can't see someone enjoying games primarily for their stories, but, really, I'd suggest that there are many many better ways to enjoy good stories than games.
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| # ? Jul 9, 2012 01:30 |
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