Cracked.com on "When I were a lad..."

[ColOfNature]

I like Cracked. There, I said it. Phew, that feels better...

Anyway: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucia...y-video-games/

[Wizardry]

There's so much wrong with #4.

[ColOfNature]

Yeah, when I were a lad, we just called it levelling. Not strong enough yet? Not got the cash to buy the +1 Blade of Cutting The Buggers In Half? Level up, young padawan. Kill those harmless forest creatures like you mean it.

[imirk]

I like Cracked. There, I said it. Phew, that feels better...

RPS's commenters are wai better.

[ColOfNature]

That's a given.

[Batolemaeus]

I disagree with every single point.
Cutscenes are shit, too much meaningless text is bad, nintendo hard is bad, cutscenes need to fucking die, and gameplay trumps story any time. Also, grinding is filler, there is nothing good about it.
The only thing i can somewhat agree with is modern games being too easy. Stalker is great partly because it's hard.
Also, if my kid left a console running or an hour like that i'd take the console away for deliberately wasting my money.

[Drake Sigar]

I used to laugh at their articles years ago, but now they can barely raise a smile. Either I’ve changed, or they have. :/

[Xercies]

I don't think he was saying a lot of those things were good things, just how much change there has been with video games, for the good and for the bad. I think storyline is important to gaming, a game on its own doesn't make me want to push on sometimes, usually i need a decent storyline for me to push on and actually a storyline makes things a bit sweeter then if there wasn't one.

I think storyline and gameplay should be more integrated, its actually really bad at the moment, we haven't scratched the surface of what we can do but publishers seem to think the same things are just the way you go, never really innovating that much in this field. If I was to make a game that would be one thing i would be trying to achieve with it.

[ColOfNature]

Funny, the way I read it the writer was agreeing that cutscenes, walls of text and grinding were relics of a past age we can do without.

For the others, dead-is-dead and gameplay>story tend to go hand-in-hand - you can't tell a story if your audience go back to the start every few minutes, but I'd say it's down to context. Trying to tell a story in something like Beat Hazard would be pointless, and having infinite continues would defeat the purpose; but in (to use your example) Stalker you effectively do have infinite lives, in that you can load a saved game whenever you screw up. The gameplay may be hard, but there's little lasting damage done when you fail.

Edit: Drake Sigar - you matured. Some of us just got older :)

[Batolemaeus]

Funny, the way I read it the writer was agreeing that cutscenes, walls of text and grinding were relics of a past age we can do without.

I read it as a rose tinted glasses look at how gaming used to be better. The way he describes how awesome it was that missing a jump dumped you at the title screen is a dead giveaway.

[Rii]

If I were a developer I'd make cutscenes unskippable the first time around. Kids? Fuck 'em.

Also on the subject of Cracked and video games, this article makes for depressing reading.

[Tikey]

Well, to be honest, I don't expect a KID being interested in the story in fallout. They're kids after all and Fallout games tend to be more mature in its content, that's why this article is missing the point, the only thing I get from it is that kids are still kids.

[Rii]

Well, to be honest, I don't expect a KID being interested in the story in fallout. They're kids after all and Fallout games tend to be more mature in its content, that's why this article is missing the point, the only thing I get from it is that kids are still kids.

Yeah, what I took out of it is that this is a father who lets his kids play GTA.

[Gentleman Jim Stacey]

Yeah, what I took out of it is that this is a father who lets his kids play GTA.

You say that like there's something wrong with it.

[ColOfNature]

Yeah. Where, and at what age, do you draw the line? The first PC game I played (not console, that was Pole Position on the Atari 2600) was Leisure Suit Larry. I had to ask my mum what a prophylactic was. I was 10.

[Rii]

Yeah. Where, and at what age, do you draw the line?

Personally I don't feel that one should be bludgeoning prostitutes to death with a baseball bat until at least puberty.

The first PC game I played (not console, that was Pole Position on the Atari 2600) was Leisure Suit Larry. I had to ask my mum what a prophylactic was. I was 10.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I still don't know what a prophylactic is. I feel you pain, though. I once asked my Mum what 'phallic' meant. She told me to look it up in the dictionary.

[J Arcane]

I read it as a rose tinted glasses look at how gaming used to be better. The way he describes how awesome it was that missing a jump dumped you at the title screen is a dead giveaway.

Then you really need to go back and actually read it this time. Several of the subjects he brings up he explicitly points out that perhaps his own nostalgia isn't what it's cracked up to be and that it's maybe for the best to do away with these things. On the whole I think his points are a lot more nuanced than you're giving him credit for, perhaps because of the choice of publication.

Well, to be honest, I don't expect a KID being interested in the story in fallout. They're kids after all and Fallout games tend to be more mature in its content, that's why this article is missing the point, the only thing I get from it is that kids are still kids.

I was a kid once, and I fuckin' loved Fallout 1 for the story. The dialogue system was my first, and the whole thing felt so much like a virtual version of the tabletop games I was playing with my friends, and I fell instantly in love with the post-apoc setting and story and the mythology of the world.

[Spacewalk]

Oh man, "Radioactive Cock-Punching Punchcocks" is definitely going into the lexicon.

[soldant]

On the whole I think his points are a lot more nuanced than you're giving him credit for, perhaps because of the choice of publication.

That's how the Internet works. "Your website/print media/talking picture book is stupid by my standards so anything it says is automatically invalid." Except there's also a dash of avant garde (sometimes borderline Lady Gaga showboating) ranting included to claim the artistic high-ground when it comes to talking about PC gaming in particular.

Cutscenes are shit, too much meaningless text is bad, nintendo hard is bad, cutscenes need to fucking die, and gameplay trumps story any time. Also, grinding is filler, there is nothing good about it.

Meaningless text is bad, as is "Nintendo hard", but gameplay>story always and no cutscenes ever? If we followed that advice we'd never have gotten past Space Invaders. There's no doubt that if a game has crap gameplay no storyline will save it (or worse, if a "game" has no gameplay and is little more than a rambling story, it shouldn't even be called a game), but that doesn't mean that having decent gameplay is always an excuse for having no story. There are lots of games with some flawed gameplay elements which are carried by good stories. Good storytelling can make mundane games seem interesting. And there's nothing wrong with cutscenes if people use them appropriately (i.e. not trying to make a movie with sections where you do something every 30 minutes).

We can't just have a gaming world made up of little platformers, Audiosurfs, and Serious Sams. It'd be boring.

[DarkNoghri]

Yeah, what I took out of it is that this is a father who lets his kids play GTA.

That's actually exactly what I got out of it, as well. I'm not saying that this is necessarily bad, depending on their age and maturity. Still, I'm pretty sure he described them as young, and the way he describes how they were acting sounds like between 6 and 10.

Honestly? I can't see myself letting any 6-10 year old play some of the games he was describing.