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TheMaskedUgly posted:Game enthusiast journalism, by people who like video games, about video games, rather than this endless slog of antagonistic fart-huffing "Fat ugly women took away my god-given right to enjoy titties, and here's why this signals the decline in western civilisation" vs "Tifa wears a sports bra now and here's 10 reasons why it's A Good Thing that gaming is finally growing up", video games are art and thus must be taken Very Seriously. When I was a kid I loved magazines like Game Players/Ultra Game Players that were run by goofs who were totally unprofessional in a good way and just lathered all their articles with in jokes and running commentary between writers and editors. It was more like reading a forum than a streamlined product
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Jun 27, 2019 16:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:$5 A MONTH FOR END OF ROUND PROTECTION AND IMMUNITY FROM AUTO BALANCE AND YOU CAN PICK YOUR TEAM TO PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS!!! $5 MORE AND YOU GET ADMIN RIGHTS!!!!!! lmao at cowards in tf2 who didnt auto-team to the losing side the instant they joined a server and go defense soldier and completely shut down the massacre that was happening to your team.
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Jun 27, 2019 18:56
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Aesop Poprock posted:When I was a kid I loved magazines like Game Players/Ultra Game Players that were run by goofs who were totally unprofessional in a good way and just lathered all their articles with in jokes and running commentary between writers and editors. It was more like reading a forum than a streamlined product I remember having a metal gear solid strategy guide (another outdated practice!) that was really funny and unprofessionally written. Can't remember who made it now, but they went off on some crazy tangents had some great filler.
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Jun 28, 2019 01:42
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Pre-rendered backdrops. They fell out of favor very quickly when graphics got more powerful, but I still miss them at times. This technique isn't used much anymore: the most modern examples I can think of are Bravely Default and its sequel.
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Jun 28, 2019 04:02
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Mizuti posted:Pre-rendered backdrops. They fell out of favor very quickly when graphics got more powerful, but I still miss them at times. This technique isn't used much anymore: the most modern examples I can think of are Bravely Default and its sequel. Nothing transports be back to playing Playstation in the 90s like a detailed background from a weird angle with super blocky 3D characters moving around it.
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Jun 28, 2019 04:59
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Phthisis posted:Nothing transports be back to playing Playstation in the 90s like a detailed background from a weird angle with super blocky 3D characters moving around it. Those of the Resident Evil remake on Gamecube looked loving great. It really helped sell the atmosphere.
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Jun 28, 2019 12:09
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2D graphics have actually been coming back but it always drove me insane when everybody went ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING MUST BE 3D THE CUSTOMERS ALL DEMAND 3D SO WE MUST GIVE IT TO THEM. Except that a ton of the games looked like rear end or were the already mentioned low poly 3D models running around against a 2D background.
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Jun 28, 2019 12:33
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Yeah, 2D graphics are the best choice for many things.
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Jun 28, 2019 12:43
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Simcity 4 had a really good 3D-2D compromise.
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Jun 28, 2019 14:06
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Aesop Poprock posted:When I was a kid I loved magazines like Game Players/Ultra Game Players that were run by goofs who were totally unprofessional in a good way and just lathered all their articles with in jokes and running commentary between writers and editors. It was more like reading a forum than a streamlined product Game Players in particular loved to put jokes in the masthead and the legalese that print publications had. If a game was dogshit there'd be maybe a paragraph about it's actual content and why it wasn't good, and the rest would be jokes. They did a review of a game made about the Atlanta Olympics mascot, Izzy and most of it was dedicated to deciding what the gently caress Izzy was supposed to be. My only beef was they used % to rate games which is fine if you use basic numbers like 80 or 50, but they'd be like "Game's not bad, has some flaws but you might like it. 74%." Why 74? El Gallinero Gros has a new favorite as of 15:43 on Jun 28, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 15:35
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It's better than 73 but not quite 75
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Jun 30, 2019 08:02
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It's still around a bunch in fighting games but for general platformers, actions performed by holding a direction and a button at the same time. Mega Man 3's slide, Sonic 2's spin dash, etc. For NES games it made sense because the two buttons were typically already being used. Sonic had less of an excuse because the Mega Drive controller has three buttons and in Sonic all those buttons are jump. So the decision to make spin dash "hold down the down arrow, tap jump a few times, release down" was a curious one when you could have just made it C or something. But it did give you different strengths of spin dash for different numbers of taps of jump. And there was this pleasing visceral quality to it, as well as being an extension of the roll mechanic of hitting down roll while running to start spinning up into attack mode. It's flavourful. But it has one huge obvious downside to it that I hadn't considered until I recently spent five weeks watching kids try to play Sonic 2 (I have a pretty crazy job sometimes): it's really unintuitive. With no chance to read the manual, if they didn't have anyone there to tell them how to spin dash they got stuck on the first incline that they couldn't get past a different way. Which often would be in Emerald Hill Act 2 or something. I ended up spending a good chunk of those five weeks teaching kids how to spin dash.
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Jun 30, 2019 08:43
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El Gallinero Gros posted:Game Players in particular loved to put jokes in the masthead and the legalese that print publications had. I remember reading some game review magazine at school that had me laughing out loud. Highlights include a huge "one sentence review" section for a ton of games, one of which was a Fantastic 4 game: "A game so unfantastic we gave it an unfantastic 4%" and a two-page spread review of some platformer based on Iznogoud which started with a long diatribe along the lines of "Imagine a TV with a screen round back so you can't see it. IT'S NO GOOD. Imagine a platformer where objects hurt you seemingly at random. IZNOGOUD." (repeat for multiple examples) If I remember right they gave Iznogoud 2% and said 1% of that was because it started up successfully when they put the CD in. I still chuckle thinking of that one. I think Somethingawful's ROM pit gave me my fix of 'hilarous bad reivews' for quite a while. I still like the Superman (NES) review on there...
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Jul 1, 2019 00:40
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Shibawanko posted:Simcity 4 had a really good 3D-2D compromise. Another outdated practice: EA producing things that were actually good. Now we get poop agents and playable only by technicality garbage that never gets fixed. SimCity4 wasn't perfect by any means but it was at least functional and fun.
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Jul 1, 2019 01:46
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Aesop Poprock posted:When I was a kid I loved magazines like Game Players/Ultra Game Players that were run by goofs who were totally unprofessional in a good way and just lathered all their articles with in jokes and running commentary between writers and editors. It was more like reading a forum than a streamlined product This was very much the style in the UK gaming magazines, and every platform had at least one magazine written like that (Your Sinclair, Amiga Power, etc) which other magazines would then either try and copy or react against, and it's had a lasting influence on the writing style in the few gaming magazines left. It's hilarious when you're 12 years old, but if you go back and read those old mags it comes across as irritating monkeycheese.
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Jul 1, 2019 12:26
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FilthyImp posted:Banning people for exploits is. I know that a few unmoderated servers during the CS years would grind to a halt when someone hacking showed up. I also figure convenience works into it. Your average person doesn't really care and just wants to jump into a game with randos, maybe make a party with a few friends before jumping in. They see a huge list of servers and their eyes glaze over. I'd much rather have server options but I can absolutely see from a consumer appeal point of view why matchmaking won out for most games.
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Jul 1, 2019 12:34
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It it not just legacy from the console manufacturers deciding that they wanted people to pay for their online service?
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Jul 1, 2019 12:39
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Gaming magazines being the only real way of deciding what was or wasn't worth your time besides demo discs. Physical strategy guides. Community clans and small amateur run leagues. Games by large devs that were pretty much just insanely weird. Frag movies.
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Jul 1, 2019 12:43
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Jeza posted:Gaming magazines being the only real way of deciding what was or wasn't worth your time besides demo discs. God my nostalgia. gently caress I miss the way things used to be.  ... well, maybe not frag movies. They were boring.
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Jul 1, 2019 13:18
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Even though I'm an old man now and don't have the time, I really miss community clans. My group would just shoot the poo poo in a semi-private Jedi Outcast server for hours on end. I'd even haul my huge setup over to my friends house so we could do the same but have a bunch of snacks between us. Now everything we do has to be on a schedule and uuuggghhhh
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Jul 1, 2019 16:21
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TheMaskedUgly posted:It it not just legacy from the console manufacturers deciding that they wanted people to pay for their online service? It's been around longer than that to be sure.
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Jul 3, 2019 02:35
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The craziest game mag memory I have was how anarchic the OFFICIAL Nintendo Magazine used to be in the early 90s. The Official Nintendo Magazine was like all the other mags around at the time. Joke reviews, ripping poo poo games down a peg or two and all the reviewers had their own little ways about them, including the "Seal", their cartoon mascot seal who used to go apeshit on bad games as a sort of antagonistic parody of the "NINTENDO SEAL OF QUALITY" that did gently caress all to stop piles of wank LJN games getting shovelled out onto the consoles. And as daft as this sounds (especially for a Nintendo mag) it used to look badass in that dumb, edgy 90s way. All the pages were black, they'd illustrate their reviews with caricatures of the reviewers as the Terminator if it was a terminator game and the like. It just had so much character to it and even if they covered a game you weren't interested in you were guaranteed a good chuckle from the coverage anyway. And then the N64 came along and all of a sudden this edgy grimdark magazine was printed on white gloss, all the reviews were soulless, glowing raves and there were no jokes to be found.
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Jul 3, 2019 08:53
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I used to read PSM, and aside from what I recall being reliable reviews and halfway decent jokes, my favorite thing was the covers. Every month they commissioned a different artist (usually a comic book artist like Adam Hughes or Joe Madureia) to do artwork for the cover for whatever the 'headliner' game that month was. They also had a one-page feature showing rough drafts of the cover piece (and I think an interview). The covers were just way more eye-catching and dynamic than other game magazines (particularly GamePro; they had an artist, but a lousy one). However, you occasionally got a hilarious cover, like 'ridiculously buff Tidus' 
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Jul 3, 2019 09:17
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Drunken Baker posted:The craziest game mag memory I have was how anarchic the OFFICIAL Nintendo Magazine used to be in the early 90s.  ONM was pretty loving great back in the day. And the Seal was funny, for a young teen.
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Jul 3, 2019 10:31
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Was it ONM that had an issue with a VHS of "How to beat Street Fighter 2" on it? Might have been the world's first "Let's Play" video because I don't think there were any tips or tricks to it, just two of the lads playing a game through and chatting poo poo. Haha. I might have all my old copies in the loft somewhere. Wouldn't mind digging them out for a bit of nostalgia. Also remember hiding a copy of CVG from me mum because it had Posion on the cover (I think) and it was basically just an artistic rendering of a giant pair of tits.
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Jul 3, 2019 11:05
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autoaim ("assisted" aim) I know console casuals still need it for their inferior controllers when it comes to non Dark Soul games but goddamn is it ruining game design as a whole. See Grand Theft Auto 5. You can turn it off but the entire AI shooting system is balanced for it in mind. Hide behind a bush in smoke? Snipered from a cop with a pistol half a mile away. Drive your car into water at night? Spear fished your through windshield by the swat chopper
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Jul 3, 2019 11:23
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Drunken Baker posted:And then the N64 came along and all of a sudden this edgy grimdark magazine was printed on white gloss, all the reviews were soulless, glowing raves and there were no jokes to be found. The best description of the new presentation and style would probably be "a particularly daft 10-year-old Nintendo fanboy's idea of cool as interpreted by a bunch of guys in their thirties, also BRANDING EVERYWHERE ALL HAIL THE BIG N! THE FONY GREYSTATION SUX!!1" DMorbid has a new favorite as of 12:06 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 12:04
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Yeah, that's what I was saying. Before the editorial change it was a little punk, a little bit cool. They used to get into slap fights with readers in the letters page and stuff. They'd fill out the back end of the mag with weird off the wall poo poo too that I vaguely have a sense of, but can't recall properly? My memory is for poo poo. Early 90s stuff. Using "edgy" and "grimdark" there with a touch of artistic licence, as well. Edgier and grimier than the super family friendly porridge it turned into. Like The White Crane said it was definitely aimed at mid-teens in its early days before shifting to being all ages. I wish I could remember more specific examples rather than the whole vague "it was just cool" memory I have of it.
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Jul 3, 2019 12:23
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I barely even remember a time when the letters page wasn't crap. From mid-1998 until 2001, they straight-up didn't print any letters longer than a couple of sentences, and the "best" letters (read: the most blatant Nintendo bootlicking and/or console warrior bullshit) won prizes. They also liked to dismiss any suggestions that the N64 might in fact not be this infallible wonder machine with a perfect game library, especially if someone dared as much as hint that the GreyStation might have decent games or just something the N64 doesn't. For example, someone would write in and ask why the N64 didn't have horror games like Resident Evil (before the RE2 port) or Silent Hill, or more serious racing games like Gran Turismo or Colin McRae Rally, or any good fighting games at all, or any RPGs in general. Even if you don't care for those particular series or genres, those were valid questions and they'd always be handwaved with "eh, you have Turok 2, what do you need Silent Hill for?" or "who needs crappy Colin McRae Rally when you have brill racers like Beetle Adventure Racing" (no slight against Beetle Adventure Racing which is a great silly arcade racer, but that guy specifically wanted other types of racing games on the system) or "who needs Final Fantasy when you have Zelda" and so on and so forth. We should have an old gaming magazines thread. I love talking about this dumb bullshit.
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Jul 3, 2019 13:01
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LAN parties man. Me and about five friends would haul our PC’s over to one buddies’ basement where we’d spend five hours trying to get our computers to talk to each other and then spend the rest of the night ripped on Mountain Dew and Doritos playing Quake II and III, Half Life and Sin. This was from like ‘99-01 so there was lots of mp3 swapping and CD burning from the one friend with a burner.
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Jul 3, 2019 13:39
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Hahaha god that famboying poo poo was terrible wasn't it? The letters page was Twitter before the Internet in the early 90s. Sure it was unedited too, because it was really volitile at times. I know Street Fighter 2 had just come out (93?) and someone wrote in complaining their moves lists didn't work. So the reply to this kid was asking if he was an idiot who forgot to take his pants off when he went for a poo poo. (A though that haunts me to this day) One of the writing staff had a mullet too and he drew a lot of ire. One standout was a letter claiming they knew this mullet man used to finger his own bumhole.
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Jul 3, 2019 13:39
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PC Gamer (UK) during its heyday was the only PC gaming magazine I ever read that wasn't pretty much trash. Even in the end times of games journalism when good scores were clearly bought and paid for on AAA titles, the text of the reviews themselves was always reliably honest. I always remember the console mags as absurdly toadying and unreliable.
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Jul 3, 2019 13:45
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Jeza posted:PC Gamer (UK) during its heyday was the only PC gaming magazine I ever read that wasn't pretty much trash. Even in the end times of games journalism when good scores were clearly bought and paid for on AAA titles, the text of the reviews themselves was always reliably honest. Plus it was where Charlie Brooker got his start. Whether you see that as good or bad is up to you. EDIT: Or was that PC Zone? Both pretty good magazines, honestly, though Zone tended to lean more into the edgelordy gamer culture than Gamer. SnafuAl has a new favorite as of 13:57 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 13:54
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I miss OPM giving me a new demo disc each month with cool poo poo on it, like seeing import versions of games before a publisher picked them up (Mr. Mosquito, Finny the Fish) or ones that never got picked up (freakin' Chaindive, would have loved that) or them just pulling up old games on the the demo to get people excited for the sequel (like putting out a demo for Klonoa right before the second game came out). It's also where the first dubbed version of that one FFX thing that bridged those two games appeared. Also I swear there was an article about translation wrt old final fantasies and they mentioned V having it's entire script replaced with the collective emails of the building because of some error with their mail client or something like that and I wish I could find that again.
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Jul 3, 2019 14:27
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El Gallinero Gros posted:My only beef was they used % to rate games which is fine if you use basic numbers like 80 or 50, but they'd be like "Game's not bad, has some flaws but you might like it. 74%."
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Jul 3, 2019 14:34
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Brooker started in PC Zone and almost got them cancelled completely about twice iirc
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Jul 3, 2019 14:36
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El Gallinero Gros posted:Game Players in particular loved to put jokes in the masthead and the legalese that print publications had. Percentage scores are really just a 0-30 scale considering nobody ever gives anything less than 70%. Jeza posted:Even in the end times of games journalism when good scores were clearly bought and paid for on AAA titles Games journalism has always been like that. There was never a golden age where reviews were objective and magazines impartial. Sinclair User in the mid-80s was infamous for giving glowing reviews to certain publishers, often based only on a few pre-production screenshots. Or literally never even seeing the game and just saying it was good because the developer told/paid them to. Sweevo has a new favorite as of 16:16 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 16:04
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Sweevo posted:Games journalism has always been like that. There was never some golden age where reviews were objective and magazines impartial. Sinclair User in the mid-80s was infamous for giving glowing reviews to certain publishers, often based only on a few pre-production screenshots. Or literally never even seeing the game and just assuming it was good because the developer said so. You're probably right, but I believe that it was a problem that got noticeably worse over time. Big titles didn't always get plaudits in PC Gamer, but over time it became like every other mag and most its best writers fled the nest. It makes sense to me that as publishers got more money and clout, they wielded it more cynically. I always remember Spore as the game where I felt the distance between game review scores and the actual game reached a pretty untenable point.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:19
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Sweevo posted:Percentage scores are really just a 0-30 scale considering nobody ever gives anything less than 70%. Every magazine did that. And gently caress you, Sinclair User was the best. Re-reading old issues of Speccy mags now and I still find SU entertaining if a little childish, whereas Your Sinclair comes across as too monkey cheese, Mighty Boosh, trying too hard to be random funny. The PS1 generation seemed to mark where publishers noticed that videogames were serious business and cracked down on the people making magazines having too much fun. None of the magazines seemed to have any real character to them, and I'd just buy them if they had a demo disc with something I was interested in, or I had some time to kill at bus stop.
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Jul 3, 2019 16:42
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- getting the first call of duty and reading the entire manual on the car ride home. - installing it (swapping discs 2-3 times). - starting it up for the first time, crashing to desktop after 4-5 minutes. Rinse and repeat a hundred times or so. Ask everyone you know how to fix this. - accept that you probably won't be able to play cod after all. - months later stumbling on a 'patch' because this was a pretty known issue with certain graphic cards. - spend 2-3 hours on dial-up to download that 32mb or w/e patch. - finally get to play the game!! - find out what clans are - join a clan after a while - download x-fire to see when and where your clan mates are playing and join them - download teamspeak and buy a headset - putting your clan tag and rank in your name - organising clan wars - try to make a promo vid for your clan - don't finish it because why would you, who's ever gonna watch it? Man what a great period of my life. Especially when we got dsl internet.
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