By: beavinator

beavinator — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 01:46:13 +0000

When I was a kid I must have tried to beat the Grim Reaper in Castlevania literally hundreds of times, and I was never able to. I played it again a couple years ago and beat him on the FIRST TRY. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve had many years of practice gaming in general since then, or because I read about strategies online first, or I just got lucky, but I found it amusing. (I still couldn’t beat Dracula though…)

By: Werd Smyth

Werd Smyth — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:34:42 +0000

What disappoints me is that all of the gamers at my high school can be divided into categories based on what game genres they prefer to play the most. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they all have so much zeal for their particular games that they don’t see what a more open style of playing can offer them.
The FPS crowd is high-strung and pompous, picking a single or pair of shooter series to follow, while bashing and insulting everything else indiscriminately despite never having played the games.
The MMO fans only care about, as you mentioned, attaining high-ranking characters with which to lord over one another. They’ll spend any computer time available to them doing this, or finding cheats and exploits to aid them to these ends.
To use an example, many of my fellow RPG ‘fans’, always skip through cut scenes in the newer Final Fantasy games, which pretty much defeats the purpose of playing an RPG.
I see games as the most evolved form of entertainment. In books, we have something pretty basic; they shape the world, but allow the reader to, in most cases, paint their own picture of how it looks in the specific. Artwork typically shows the audience a piece, but what it actually means is left up to interpretation. Music can provide a unique blend of both sides, following a story, but exactly what the story means, if anything, is variable. Cinema converges all three, sometimes it does so exceptionally, other times not so much. Video games add a fourth factor that make them truly special; the ability to physically draw the player into the game setting, more commonly referred to as ‘gameplay’.
This alone doesn’t make it a ‘good’ game, just as having a plot, a musical score, and mooveeng pitchers doesn’t automatically make a ‘good’ movie. It’s the blend of those factors which does. A lot of people really don’t see that when they play a game, or for that matter, when watching a movie.

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:52:34 +0000

Nah, 15 years later I’ve sat down to try and beat Contra 3 on Hard and Battletoads, still can’t do it.

By: ss

ss — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:54:38 +0000

… This would be more accurate if the panels were swapped.

By: gen

gen — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:22:48 +0000

nah a lot of those games are still a pain in the ass now >.<

Comments on: Classic v. Modern

By: beavinator

By: Werd Smyth

By: Justin

By: ss

By: gen