{"id":940,"date":"2009-11-12T01:25:50","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T01:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chocobeam.me\/playground\/2009\/11\/it-stinks\/"},"modified":"2009-11-12T01:25:50","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T01:25:50","slug":"it-stinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2009\/11\/it-stinks\/","title":{"rendered":"It stinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I fell. <\/p>\n

Steam got me. Steam is awesome (I don\u2019t get that people are afraid of this platform while they use iTunes and don\u2019t see the problem with it). With the release of Left 4 Dead 2, I ended up playing the games I bought and didn\u2019t play like Half Life Episode One and Two. Pretty great. Of course I’ve downloaded L4D 2 Demo and of course now I want and I am waiting for the L4D\/L4D2 pack at 39$.<\/p>\n

About Episode 2: crazy how npc like Alyx are emotionally bringing something while I totally didn\u2019t care about the story. It\u2019s boring. Aliens. Portal. Rescuing whatever.<\/p>\n

Also enough with these corridors, especially when they look like intestine. It\u2019s boring, it\u2019s not really scary it\u2019s just gross. I don\u2019t like having the feeling I\u2019m running into a giant sphincter. you find it funny? Okay..<\/p>\n

The part outside with the car and the Striders is great though. But the last part when you can\u2019t run with the gravity gun and some bomb you have to throw while you have like, 7 weapons including a rocket launcher is just plain annoying. I know it\u2019s for balancing the gameplay but it\u2019s not logical at all. Against Striders you really want to run.<\/p>\n

Nothing like a gameplay flaw to put you out of the immersiveness.<\/p>\n

\"Alyx<\/a>
Alyx Vance, hacker, scientist daughter, chatterbox<\/em><\/p>\n

On the other side L4D 2 is making sense. Not a lot of weapons, only two to carry and tough choices (long distance riffle with a fried pan or shotgun and unlimited gun?). The AI Director<\/a> is great. I don\u2019t know how many run I did but they were all feeling different and that\u2019s pretty much the point of it. It works, even on a solo game offline, even if the level design is quite linear. <\/p>\n

But still, it\u2019s classic fps. Watching cutscenes in HL2 I could not help but think about some fps with HUMOR! Why do we have to get this seriousness in this type of games I don\u2019t understand. I want to laugh and move my mouse to look at the sky before having some action, not listening to a discussion trying to be mildy amusing in a dark corridor, waiting for the next dark mission in an alien belly (or worse, a missile silo).<\/p>\n

Modern Warfare 2 is out and it\u2019s the biggest game launch of the year. I watched a lot of footage and the fact it\u2019s connected to wars from now with this uber realistic aesthetic makes me feel I don\u2019t like it. Not funny at all.   <\/p>\n

And this is it, I feel fatigue: last week headlines were about Zynga<\/a> \u2013Farmville, Mafia Wars, YoVille!- using scam practices to get revenue.<\/p>\n

Also this inner interview of Keita Takahashi at Gamasutra<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere are two main reasons for it, I think. Firstly, I\u2018m just frustrated with the industry as a whole. I can\u2019t seem to predict where it\u2019s going, which makes me feel uncomfortable," he says. "Or maybe I just don\u2019t like where I think it\u2019s going. I\u2019m not sure."
"That\u2019s probably related to my second frustration. I just can\u2019t perceive where the fun is in recent hit video games. I see nothing in them that resonates with me and, their success leaves me feeling confused. The things I find interesting and enjoyable just aren\u2019t reflected in the popular games of today and, I feel like there\u2019s not much room for my voice because of that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I sort of feel the same way, even if I\u2019m enjoying a good fps. I feel I could be addicted as a user. I could be addicted to some Facebook scam games easily too. <\/p>\n

But as a developer I don\u2019t think it\u2019s great. It\u2019s complex but I feel what Keita means, especially with games like music games or something as bad looking<\/a> as the last Tony Hawk game. On the indy side, I feel fed up with the retro 8bit aesthetic, or platform games. <\/p>\n

So the game market either seems like it\u2019s not fun or it seems like you have to dig the addictiveness, especially with leaderboards and online rankings. Like this report said<\/a> free-to-play game developers are using the social weaknesses \u2013like peer pressure- to gain audience and money.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that it\u2019s shocking in itself. It\u2019s more like we\u2019re basically doing the same shit that casinos and pachinko machines are doing for decades.<\/p>\n

This is not good. It\u2019s a sign that we\u2019re totally in the mainstream though. But fuck, I don\u2019t want computer games to go this way. I mean, not THAT much. And when I see EA rushing for this business<\/a> instead of doing costly AAA, it\u2019s not a good sign (they said that they would invest on quality and innovation; no more the case I guess).<\/p>\n

I hope you guys at Project Horseshoe<\/a> found some hope. Please share it!<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fell. Steam got me. Steam is awesome (I don\u2019t get that people are afraid of this platform while they use iTunes and don\u2019t see the problem with it). With the release of Left 4 Dead 2, I ended up playing the games I bought and didn\u2019t play like Half Life Episode One and Two. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}