By Jim Rossignol on September 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm.
Given recent discussions I thought it might be useful to create a list that demonstrates how videogames could be categorically improved. Of course, there’s a difference between this and other such lists. The difference is that this list is better. Thanks to coincidence, a game incorporating all these elements is guaranteed a 100% perfect score on Metacritic.
10. This:
9. Uncanny German plasti-retro-future (via John Coulthart), which should definitely be the setting for a Sims 3 expansion pack:
8. The Ethiopian Jazz of Mulatu Astatke. There is almost no first-person shooter soundtrack that couldn’t be improved by this:
7. The armoured mammals of Jeff De Bouer, for a unique twist on the horse armour concept:
6. Theo Jansen’s kinetic sculptures (but not BMWs), as vehicles for Unreal Tournament 4:
5. Things that travel along the ground at 10,430 kph and then collide with a wall. “Rocket Sled Manager” would be an ideal simulation tweak game, in my opinion:
4. The SA-60 airship prototype. Seriously, look, this has to be the basis of a game where you float ominously over farms in Kansas:
3. Historical bleakness. Forget six-shooters, horse-races, and gatling guns, what about starving to death in the wilderness? Here’s some surreal literary bleakness via Cormac McCarthy, from his nightmarish Wild West novel, Blood Meridian. Ideal for a videogame design document:
“They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing. All night the wind blew and the fine dust set their teeth on edge. Sand in everything, grit in all they ate. In the morning a urine-colored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature. The animals were failing. They halted and made a dry camp without wood or water and the wretched ponies huddled and whimpered like dogs. That night they rode through a region electric and wild where strange shapes of soft blue fire ran over the metal of the horses’ trappings and the wagonwheels rolled in hoops of fire and little shapes of pale blue light came to perch in the ears of the horses and in the beards of the men. All night sheetlightning quaked sourceless to the west beyond the midnight thunderheads, making a bluish day of the distant desert, the mountains on the sudden skyline stark and black and livid like a land of some other order out there whose true geology was not stone, but fear.”
2. This thing as a new pet/mount in World Of Warcraft:
1. Parties! We never have enough parties in videogames. Here’s the kind of fun time you can expect to have at a party:
What do you think videogames need more of, readers?
I always want to play Stalker or Fallout 3 as if they were a Cormac McCarthy. So I try to run away at the first sign of contact with anything at all. We need better bleak!
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RPS should be more serious and tell less jokes.
– David, UK
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the ability to jiggle the oversized breasts of your avatar
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Where are the Ekranoplans?
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I always thought games, as opposed to their cinematographic counterparts (“films”), are rather short on classical music scores. Some games have very good music and/or composers who make good new music, but given the availability – no copyrights – and its capacity of tapping into the human hivemind it’s somewhat perplexing how underused the genre is. Imagine a games counterpart for Apocalypse Now’s Ride of the Valkyries scene.
Also, emotion.
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http://imgur.com/3MyfW.jpg
But, seriously, realistic deep water settings. Bioshock aside, the ocean is as close to a terrifying hostile outer space environment crowded with ungodly lovecraftian monstrosities as we’re ever going to get.
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One – perhaps naive – thing I always wished MMORPGs did was a sort of crossover like those that crop up in comics. As in, characters crossing between different worlds (in this case, games). Going from EVE to WoW to CO as a sort of cooperative battlefest against some larger menace. MMO devs could envision some entity or force taking over several planes of existence (or the multiverse, natch), and characters joined to fight it off. Maybe a new MMO on the block could gather publicity by making ‘appearances’ in other MMOs, drawing curiosity from players to seek it out. As time went by, the cameos would turn into bigger events that actually required some players to cross into the new MMO (maybe use rifts to explain it) and prevent it from spreading, containing the invasion.
I’ve been (re)reading Crisis on Infinite Earths so don’t mind me. And of course, chances of this happening are zero to none, so :(
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Memes.
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That creepy walking thing at number two reminds me of a Llama. Anybody else?
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(lies)
I have watched the videos, and before reading the text, i was thinking.. “all this videos reminds me of Bucakor Banzai”. and “I will be fun if a guy make a movie based on buckaro banzai”. and “It will be the best game ever”.
After that, I have read the article text… :-O
(/lies)
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postdata:
There was a error on the 2th lie:
“I will be fun if a guy make a game based on buckaro banzai”
Sorry.
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We actually do need wingsuit games. AAAaaAAaargh!! (or whatever it’s called) is fun, but it would be even better over cliffs and forests and stuff. Maybe.
Anyway, I want to be wicked sick.
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Seriously, that ethiopian jazz music is utterly sublime. RPS, thank you!
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There is nothing in this world that can’t be improved by adding a Mulatu Astatke soundtrack. Fun article BTW.
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“Imagine a games counterpart for Apocalypse Now’s Ride of the Valkyries scene.”
You mean like Full Throttle’s toy bunny scene?
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Any kind of flying in games is pure awesome. I’m disappointed that gliding in Prototype was so short, and you couldn’t trade altitude for continuous forward momentum.
That’s partly why I’m looking forward to AssCreed2! DaVinci wings!
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Well, cheers RPS. I showed my daughters (8 & 11 yrs old) the wingsuit base jumping video, now they want me to book us a family holiday to do it. Thing is, I’d actually love to try it.
The jazz is super-slick, the kinetic sculptures are cool. I think the mammal armour is better than the sculptures, mind you.
As for what games need more of, how about violence? And armoured mammals.
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I agree we need more parties, the last decent virtual one I attended was in Invisible War, and that was only due to the borg disco dancer.
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Needs more schizophrenia…
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Sneaking up on people, but at an action pace (aka SC:Chaos Theory multiplayer).
Also:
The demo for the game Breed (the game itself sucks) had this part where you parked your tank into a transport, then took off with the tank from a space carrier in orbit. You then descended onto the planet and transitioned into flight, approaching your target island.
It was really cool where doing the things yourself gave the game a much more satisfying feeling of immersion. So more of that. Space games with dynamic non interrupted descents on planets. Landing and taking off from carriers and airfields/bases… flying in general, dropping with parachutes/drop pods.
And a proper Battlezone sequel (Battlezone was a sci-fi RTS/FPS mix where you fought commies on various planets in a space tank while building a base and commanding your forces, you could also leave your tank and walk on foot, then snipe the driver of an enemy vehicle and confiscate it. A real classic in my book)
Yeah that.
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Wingsuits are kind of done in Prototype and pretty well too. In fact, probably my favourite part of that game is just gliding around the city. Then again, nothing in it compares to the awesomeness that was in that video.
I’ve shamefully not read any Cormac McCarthy, but had it recommended a fair few times (perhaps one of the only failings of doing a English degree/Masters has been having to read books on my course and not having time to read what I would like to read.) That passage just makes me want to read some even more, so I’ll definitely be picking up a couple of books when I get some time.
In relation to games, that sense of fear is something that could really be tapped into more in games, but will always be a difficult balance. Even something like Stalker didn’t fully manage to do it. Perhaps in the early stages of the game when you have only the very weak pistol you do get that sense of weakness, but the majority of people say that those are the worst parts of the game, probably because they are so used to being the most powerful character in a game. A game in which the real enemy is the surroundings could be wonderful. In fact, a historical game where you had to explore New World could be fantastic. Simply making you having to travel from the east to the west, surviving through various different conditions, making sure you balance your supplies, etc. could be something very unique and filled with possibilities. If you didn’t want to do it as a historical piece you could equally do something similar in a futuristic setting where you have to discover a new planet.
Also, David Lynch as an influence on a game? Fantastic idea! Love some Lynch (still yet to see Lost Highway though, have been waiting for ages for it to move from my LoveFilm reserve list to my rental list,) and the possibilities that his mind bending worlds could have on games could make something very interesting. Probably the closest we have at the moment are the Tale of Tales’s games (reminds me, I really must finish The Path. I only played some of the youngest girls piece,) but I’m sure some imaginative developers could do something very unique with that style.
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Yay Theo Jansen.
That man makes the most stunningly wonderful contraptions.
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“Imagine a games counterpart for Apocalypse Now’s Ride of the Valkyries scene.”
You mean like Full Throttle’s toy bunny scene?
Yes! And we need more of it!
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Can’t help but think a new NOLF could incorporate most of this list, (notable exception: Historical Bleakness).
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““Rocket Sled Manager” would be an ideal simulation tweak game, in my opinion:”
I played it when it was called Armadillo Run…
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8 happened – NOLF.
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Urine coloured sun? Thats utterly useless. Urine after coffee? Urine after drinking 4 litres of water? Urine during detox?
In short, its a rubbish writer which would use such a prose. 7/10
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Heliocentric, did you miss out on the urine-calibration injections at school?
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” In fact, a historical game where you had to explore New World could be fantastic. Simply making you having to travel from the east to the west, surviving through various different conditions, making sure you balance your supplies, etc. could be something very unique and filled with possibilities. ”
Uh, Oregon Trail?
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No joking matter, Mike.
How about a game set in Einstein’s Tomb?
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He means a historical game where you explore the New World using a wingsuit and an airship.
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Or we could all just replay Another World again, really.
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Dracko: the architect for Einstein’s Tomb was cited way back in a Gamasutra article, and I’m fairly sure a couple of level designers have mentioned riffing from him since then (possibly Valve for Combine stuff?)
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Need more bloom.
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Oh, brilliant.
If games need to draw from any other medium, it would have to be architecture and landscape art in general.
Believe it or not, this was an inspiration behind the Halo series. The artist was an architect before trying to make a career out of funny books.
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I was expecting the injections to make everyone go all “I am legend”.
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Lynch for the win, also any care to go for a cup of coffee a at place i had a dream about?
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Good article.
I’ll tell you what video games (and movies) need less of : Character that wakes up with amnesia and super powers.
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All I want is a game where every level is inspired by a different Shonen Knife song. Is that too much to ask?
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More games need to do what Audiosurf did and make music the basis of their levels. Particularly some sort of first person shooter.
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I completely agree with point 1! After playing with the idea of a wingsuit/BASE game for a couple of years, and finding out that AAAAaaaaAAAAetc doesn’t really fill the wingsuit-void, I’ve started to build one myself. Right now I’m getting the basic physics down (nothing basic about those though, sadly), and I hope to have something concrete to show within a couple of weeks.
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“RPS should be more serious and tell less jokes.
– David, UK”
As everyone else, you start off as a committed person then you lose your mind, get soft, start taking money for things.
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Intelligent writers who can match, if not exceed, Planescape: Torment’s level of word-awesomeness.
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Games also need more Sims AI. Every game which has NPCs in it should run those NPCs on the Sims AI. Even if they live only for 30 seconds. With a little luck you could watch them make out before they die.
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more cowbell
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This is a very cool list of 10 things. I often worry about the potential interesting things that exist in culture/the internet/the world/life – that pass us by out of accident or a flawed searching method.
The flying man thing has swept me away the most. Nevermind planes/skydiving and so on – surely that’s the closest to flying like birds we’ve reached?
Also Ethiopian Jazz would be great for an alternative/anachronistic/offbeat/weird Noir FPS. But it’s great generally as well.
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@Schmung: World in Conflict (or possibly just the sov expansion pack) has Ekranoplans (including the loony ones with missiles on the top), thus making it at least 5% more awesome.
It would be 10% if they were playable units.
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Is this a joke? It’s not particularly funny.
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3D is a wall where imagination collide and die. making something using 3D is really expensive. You are under a budget, time budget, economic budget, polycount budget.
3D is hard. And hard is the enemy of experimental.
I think the logic on this article is “we need the awesome on games, I want more awesome games that make me feel :-O”.
I think the simple dificulty of it make soo only very few people (like Valve with Portal) can make use feel :-O
We could always go back to the “pretend 3D” of carmagedoom 1, and start drawing again. Or maybe start creating engines that are less about pre-design models and more like …. I don’t know,… Imagine a engine that use a fractal format for models, where you can infinite zoom, and theres always more details…. like a infinite fractal LOD system.
This very secret emo’s (this word is invented) of this thread is “I want The crazy”. Another problem with 3D is that only really sane people can make things, crazy people have his own problems, and can’t make much code or ideas.. so we have sane stuff, the crazyness is banned :-(
but i digress…. again…
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Steampunk plus light arcane; lots of zeppelins. Zeppelins are good things.
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Seriously good call on the Ethiopian jazz.
Oh and the zeppelins.
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@FernandoDANTE
unlike your hair which is fucking hilarious
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More
Ambient Noisecore
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@Cooper : darkwinter.com :)
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phuzz: You underestimate the Ekranoplan bonus.
Hail Ludocrats! Death to the Normalizers!
KG
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@vasagi
How the fuck can you even see my hair on such a small picture?
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theres a link next to the small picture which leads to twitter where you appear to have a picture of napolean dynomite as your avatar.
hmm thats enough internet stalking for one day……no i lie im off to bother walker on his site
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“Believe it or not, this was an inspiration behind the Halo series. The artist was an architect before trying to make a career out of funny books.”
Yesssss. Blame is bloody brilliant!
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@Wooly – One of my ideal dream-games would be a randomly generated Blame-based dungeon crawl. It’d be much slower and quieter than most games in the genre. No music (or maybe the occasional atmospheric ambient bit), just the hissing and distant whirring of machines, and nothing but the cold, empty expanse of structure around you.
And then the enemy would attack and EVERYTHING explodes. It’d need the physics engine from Red Faction Guerilla at the very least.
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A space ship which i can upgrade and fly around shooting at things. Also i can land on planets or space stations and do more shooting/ base building/ army recruitment there. Also i can bone alien chicks. Also I can buy a space station or cloud city thing and build it up as a base.
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What games need less of, Health potions/packs/magic. Man they are ridiculous they ruin immersion every time. Especially since enemies either 1 spam heals or 2 never use heals.
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Why the crap isn’t Monolith making NOLF3
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@schmung: I couldn’t find a really good Ekranoplan video, admittedly.
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Lost Highway scares me.
That is all.
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Hovering ominously above Kansas?! Utterly brilliant.
I could also not agree more on Ethiopian Jazz, though on general principal and desire, more games need Jazz. One day I hope a climatic scene of Mafia-esque proportions takes place to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, or Coltrane generally. Though uploading music to GTA IV’s Independence FM tides me over for now.
Miles Davis’s first foray into modal Jazz on the classic noir Ascenseur pour l’echafaud is the height of coolness and mandates a game built around it; (youtube).
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Wooly: BLAME! is basically Video Game: The Manga. There’s a lot to love about it and there’s not a trace of plot that isn’t a red herring for lingering shots of a far future nightmare in sight!
Tei, tons of games make me go :O
Maybe you’ve just all lost your child-like sense of play and turned into that which you hate the most. :(
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@Dominic White:
No. what you need there is a “3d tile engine”. One where as you advance, more “3d tiles” are added, and the old ones removed. Much like a old 2D game, but with 3D tiles.
Most engines today use a single world, and you browse in it. So it a “closed” world (with limits) and finite (there are a finite of things to see). But a tile engine can let you have a open map (not limits, you could fly in any direction forever), with infinite areas.
Normally games load areas from the disk, because these areas are pre-defined, but you can create these areas on the fly proceduraly. No-random but procedural areas mean infinite diverse areas.
Something like this will also work in multiplayer.
You can have a procedural city, and play L4D forever in it.
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That’s what I was talking about – procedurally generated sprawling cyber-mazes.
And yeah, Dracko – I think the official subtitle for Blame was “Adventure-seeker Killy in the Cyber Dungeon quest!” – which is about as videogame a premise as is possible. Infinite, constantly-shifting levels of dungeons and horrible monsters of all kinds, with occasional friendly towns scattered inbetween.
We probably don’t have the tech yet to really do the game justice yet, though.
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A game with rogue pheasants would be awesome.
Or so my sister repeatedly tells me. It certainly would be different at any rate.
No, I do not have a clue what precisely a rogue pheasant is but if words can be trusted we can safely assume that it is a small, and tasty, bird that has decided to go rogue against all things bird-esque and tasty. Which means it might stalk men in brightly lit streets, or it would just taste absolutely terrible when you eat it. Could go either way.
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More climbing of Colossal Things. Preferably while holding a sword and the thing is alive.
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Steampunk plus light arcane; lots of zeppelins. Zeppelins are good things
You mean Arcanum 2?
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“Hmm-Hmm. says:
Steampunk plus light arcane; lots of zeppelins. Zeppelins are good things.”
They did that. it was called Arcanum, and it was amazing.
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Um. It wasn’t released for the mac? I plead ignorance! Even so, it sounds neat.
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Ethiopian jazz? I’d opt for some Tlahoun Gessesse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExSfsPDT0Jc
Can’t find my fave tracks on youtube, unfortunately..
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More things games need more off:
1) East Anglia
2) Hissing sounds
3) Cock physics
4) Sleep Timers
5) Playable avatars of Simon Sebag-Montefiore
6) Beige things
7) Voluntary insubordination
8) A sense of interconnectedness of all living things
9) Locksmiths
10) Retirement to the Costa del Sol.
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Hot air balloons that can be shot at/ignited from the ground.
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What!!! a top ten listing with all items on one page, no clicking through ten pages to get to number 1!! Blasphemous!!
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Really, I agree that games need more The Sims AI for NPC. It’s brilliant because it makes you really believe you are in a living town and NPC are trying to fulfill their needs, desires. Something which Oblivion engine tried and failed miserably.
Also, more comedy. Games generally take themselves so seriously. Humour is a good thing. Oops, another reason for wanting NOLF 3.
More night/day cycles. They make you feel like you’re in a real world. Weather too.
Procedural landscape yeah! Also procedural textures, making every person in the game be slightly different and with different clothes. No more identical NPC!
Better AI and path finding.
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Reading that list I could vividly see the face of god.
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- More first person point of view.
- Less guns (see for example Portal.)
- Non-linear scope.
- More philosophy.
- More literature.
- More arts.
- Less comics.
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More games.
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More games about love.
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#9′s a German video but it’s not German design. That’s Verner Panton’s work who is, I believe, Danish, or maybe Swiss. Pretty sure he’s Danish.
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@ Hmm-Hmm
The Arcanum cover: a zeppelin, steam and magic captured in one image! :-D
http://arabolge.org/files/arcanum-kapak.jpg
No idea if it was ever released for Mac though…
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Thank you for introducing me to Mulatu Astatke’s music.
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HAHAHAHA HAHAHAH HAAAAAAAAAH! that list is the best list in the history of lists
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Yay for Ethiopiques.
Also yay for Coltrane.
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Oh, and a possibly ideal list:
1. More seasons, real, having an impact – a changing world.
2. More finite resources that can be broken up and rebulit ad infinitum and where nothing ever goes to waste (re-enginering extreme).
3. More crafting systems that really allow player creativity – not just imitating it (while at the same time not requiring a degree in physics to understand).
4. More humour – and more variations of it.
5. More physical interaction between players, holding, pulling, pushing.
6. More games where anything in the world can be climbed, crawled under, broken down, pushed aside (if you have enough power or friends).
7. More games made by artists.
8. More games not made my marketing.
9. And yes, more love, a lot more love.
10. More jazz, african, tango, klezmer, balkan, arabic, punk, noise, dub, sample, indian, accordion, ragtime and crisp pianos.
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Dunno about games but I’m on a mission to find out what I need to do in order to have a go in one of those flying squirrel suits. This must be achieved…
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I am so very happy that Mr Rossignol (and by extension the Rock Paper Shotgun collective) is one of the people who are familiar with the wonder of the future that is wingsuit base jumping, AKA “Whaddya mean ‘where’s my jetpack’? Here, put this on. NOW YOU’RE BLOODY SUPERMAN.”
Also, an FPS featuring Ethiopian Jazz would prove the existence of God. I’m glad that everyone agrees that NOLF is the logical choice, proves how amazing those games were, but I say whatever Brendon Chung makes next should include it too.
Generally speaking, Videogames need less games inspired by other games, and more games inspired by posts on BoingBoing.
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Awesome :) I like the armoured mammals the most, myself :)
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More British people shouting “wanker”
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I’d like to see a Ken Loach re-imagining of that Lost Highway clip, where Robert Carlyle batters the shite out of that creepy looking the guy.
Perferably to a soundtrack of Ethiopian Jazz.
In a game. Possibly.
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Wingsuits must be added to just cause 2 asap!
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Incidentally to do wingsuit flying like that you really need/ought to be a very experienced base jumper first. To be a very experienced base jumper you really need/ought to be a very experienced skydiver first. You can try shortcutting the process but that most likely results in you smearing yourself across a cliff somewhere. Staying stable and controlled in freefall is considerably harder than those guys make it look.
Killing yourself makes other base jumpers unhappy because it makes it difficult for them to get permission to do their thing. So, best to learn properly, which is fairly expensive, time consuming and not exactly risk-free. But you get to FLY.
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More art galleries. I base this only off the one in Planescape, but that one was a fantastic way to reveal the wider setting without cramming it down your throat.
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@Ginger
There is actually a survival game set in the New World. It’s by the same guys who made that flash game Mud and Blood. It’s flash too but it’s downloadable and still only in Alpha:
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forgot the link.
Et voila
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For #10 make that a open world FPS where you fly around with a jetpack. And T-rexs in F14s chase you.
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# Flooded cities (the ‘new’ version of post-nuclear-apocalypse).
# Scuba diving (with realistic bouyancy, air, lines, equipment, decompression, currents, lighting etc).
# Afro-beat.
# Massive game worlds integrated with Google-maps, Wikipedia, Spotify and user-produced content (games-as-browsers/browsers-as-games).
# “Ironic” pork-pie hats and beards (punchable)
# Charlie Brooker
# Islamist terrorist anti-heros
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Biology (no not that aspect) -
Proper ecosystems with animals and plants that interact with each other somewhat realistically (doesn’t have to be genuinely realistic, that would be staggeringly complex). So animals hunt each other, reproduce, go about in groups if appropriate, that sort of thing. Plants grow and die, providing the timescale makes sense for that.
Basically I like worlds that feel alive, and most importantly feel complete even if I The Player was not there and had never existed. This idea can work in nearly any genre, but I think would most obviously benefit open-world RPGs and involved strategy games. It would be magic to pan over a living, breathing world, not just another sandbox with different colouring.
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Funny about the jazz; I used to listen to Lou Donaldson’s The Righteous Reed whilst playing Delta Force.
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I took my 4 year old daughter to an art show that included that creepy hand/bird thing.
She literally couldn’t look at it, or even talk about it…!
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I want a new Pilotwings game or something similar (i.e. blantant rip off). Best sensation of flying, without necessarily being best simulation of flying something. Would be even better if you could shoot down / blow up other flyers such as hang gliders, planes and (as someone mentioned)explodable hot air balloons.
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If there was a god, he would be Mulatu Astatke!
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I thought this was going to be a serious article. Then I realized it was RPS.
You should do a serious one. Then I might leave a nicer comment.
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fuck you guys, we need levicars!(sounds like unlimited altitude as opposed to hovercars)
I thought game were supposed to be fun, and unless you beat me to it i will make game in 32nd century populated by advanced robot society that among others has levicars and imitated lightsabers.
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