What games are you currently playing?

[Snagglebee]

I used to play FSX all the time. I still do now and again.

Too bad Gamespy was shut down.

But one's can connect over Hamachie.

Back in those days, where Multiplayer was possible over GameSpy I used to participate as "CPTA320" in those Landing Competitions hosted my Airforceproud95.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zO9vZBnXZQ - Here I am #7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0i6N03H6H4 - RIP Gamespy

[GNineify]

Tried to play SimCity 2000 on ZSNES. But it's pretty painful to control with a PC. If only it was possible to use the mouse.

[Shrooblord]

I've been playing Brawl too, if anyone wants to have a go at it with me, send your Brawl code.

I'll see if I can remember.
I'd like a match or two.

[Rayfist]

So lately I've been playing Crash Twinsanity. Honestly not much disappointments, I beat it 100% and I think it is the best Crash game not made by Naughty Dog.
There is only one MAJOR flaw killing a LOT of the game experience for me: All the scrapped material. Thanks to the internet and resources it seems that possibly like 50% of the game was completely scrapped and never made it into the final product. Not sure why a lot of this was dumped, it seemed like it was going to have better story elements, a cool warp room, and you could play as Coco, and of course much more. Just knowing all the scrapped material kind of left me in sadness. Twinsanity though I should say even being fun did have little flaws, most of them consisted of out of bounds glitches, but they weren't too noticeable. Oh yes another problem of course: The game was WAY too short, of course this is because of all the scraps, we could have had a much longer game. Oh well, good game, but far too short. I'd maybe rate a 7.5/10.

[Master]

Indeed, Rayfist, Twinsanity is a brilliant post-ND game, it's sad to think that it could've been so much more, in some ways, Twinsanity is the Rayman 3 of the franchise, it does things so well, and could very well be the best, but is cut short due to some setbacks.

[Rayfist]

Right-o. But it just makes me wonder whose responsible for scrapping all the ideas. Some people say it's Sierra, some say it's Universal, but I'm not sure. The game looked like it TRULY had a lot more potential, and a big percentage of it went to waste sadly. Ugh stuff like that just honestly disappoints me, seeing so much great things cut from the game.

[Master]

Doesn't Cortex mention something about running out of time and how they were meant to have had two dimensions?
Guess they could've just been a victim to plain ol' time itself.
But I agree completely, as fun as Twinsanity is, it's sad that it could have been so much more, and that we aren't capable of experiencing it.

[Rayfist]

Doesn't Cortex mention something about running out of time and how they were meant to have had two dimensions?

I believe so! There is also all the storyboard footage for a lot of the scrapped cutscenes in the game on youtube.

As for other Crash games not made by Naughty Dog, I found Wrath of Cortex to be mediocre, it was a bit bland at times I felt- it still PLAYED like a Crash game pretty well, but a lot of the levels like I said felt dull and empty. But it was still okay. The last good Crash game for me is probably Tag Team Racing which is also mediocre in my opinion.

[Master]

I have only dabbled in the original Crash racing game on PS1, so I can't really comment on that.
I will say though, WoC, for a first-time post-ND game, t'wasn't too bad, the loading screens were very annoying, and the it does seem the devs played it safe, WoC does feel a lot like Warped, right down to the theme tune. But, for all its flaws, it isn't too bad, not too bad at all.

[Adsolution]

This I think is a phenomenal article on gaming:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-t ... deo-games/

Essentially, I think it describes reality to a tee. It gives an insightful approach to those God-damn ridiculous arguments about games nowadays supposedly being 'less magical' than they were a decade or two ago. I, and this article, think that there's hardly a difference, it's just trends shifting around, just like they always have with anything. Personally, the clothing style of the 1930's through the 60's and the music of the 90's appeals to me the most, but that's just my preference.

The only thing in this article I would care to disagree with is where it claims that no one has time for video games in general when they work anymore. I myself barely have time to do anything with a pencil but draw letters on a worksheet, but if a game comes out that I really do want to play through, then I'll do it over a long span of time, all thanks to our latest games autosaving every five minutes. The boons who criticise auto/quicksaving are most definitely boons, however, they don't understand what a boon it really is- the latter boon being the other kind of boon.

[Rayfist]

Interesting. While I will agree with most of the stuff in this article, I still prefer old games. But I can easily admit, it's mostly because of nostalgia. Yep, nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I'm not saying we lost the atmosphere most of our games had, but for me it's just nostalgia in this case.

[GNineify]

Nostalgia is not really my excuse. It's pretty clear that old games have better designs and imagination. I'm kind of thinking that the rise of indie games will be a good thing, because I've read discussions where some people wanted a PS1-PS2 esque feel to their games. The indie industry has always loved nostalgic stuff, so I'm hoping to see PS1-PS2 kind of games and graphics from them when they get a little more money.

[Rayfist]

Nostalgia is not really my excuse. It's pretty clear that old games have better designs and imagination. I'm kind of thinking that the rise of indie games will be a good thing, because I've read discussions where some people wanted a PS1-PS2 esque feel to their games. The indie industry has always loved nostalgic stuff, so I'm hoping to see PS1-PS2 kind of games and graphics from them when they get a little more money.

This. Pretty well explained. I'm looking forward towards the future of indie games.

[JamesDNaux]

I tried to learn programming so I could give a go at making an indie game, damned stuff is too complicated. I have plenty of ideas for good classic platformer styled games, but I'm just an artist/idea guy. I still hope I can find some like-minded people so we could one day make a game, making an indie game is the first step to making it into the industry. Nintendo seems to be more open to new people as well it seems.

[Adsolution]

It's pretty clear that old games have better designs and imagination.

I disagree from virtually the ground up. Imagination encapsulates anything in general really, not whether or not a game includes cartoon/fantastical elements. A lot of games today have better, more developed stories than anything in the past. Even some incredible mainstreams like Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or heck, even Halo especially, have wonderful stories and an astounding amount of imagination/creativity driving them, and don't think for one moment that they don't. The Legend of Zelda is still around, Mario is still around, Ratchet and Clank are still around, Rayman is still around, so many of these things still exist if you aren't satisfied with the general shift in trend toward more realistic settings. Why did this shift happen? Because technology allowed for it to be so; it's not like the world has suddenly become devoid of creativity, God damn. I'm sure that in a decade or two, long after we've achieved nearly indistinguishable photorealism that the genres will begin to balance out a bit more.

In regards to indie games, when I look around at them, only about five percent seem to even come close to realising the ambition and imagination of a good company-produced game, and only about one percent actually seem to surpass it. The indie market is just as full of shit (if not more so) than the AAA industry.

[technology4617]

It's pretty clear that old games have better designs and imagination.

I disagree from virtually the ground up. Imagination encapsulates anything in general really, not whether or not a game includes cartoon/fantastical elements. A lot of games today have better, more developed stories than anything in the past. Even some incredible mainstreams like Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or heck, even Halo especially, have wonderful stories and an astounding amount of imagination/creativity driving them, and don't think for one moment that they don't. The Legend of Zelda is still around, Mario is still around, Ratchet and Clank are still around, Rayman is still around, so many of these things still exist if you aren't satisfied with the general shift in trend toward more realistic settings. Why did this shift happen? Because technology allowed for it to be so; it's not like the world has suddenly become devoid of creativity, God damn. I'm sure that in a decade or two, long after we've achieved nearly indistinguishable photorealism that the genres will begin to balance out a bit more.

In regards to indie games, when I look around at them, only about five percent seem to even come close to realising the ambition and imagination of a good company-produced game, and only about one percent actually seem to surpass it. The indie market is just as full of shit (if not more so) than the AAA industry.

Couldn't agree more. I especially think that the Walking Dead game has one of the most excellent stories and character development I have seen in a game thus far and that only came out last year! However, I do think that some older games have better stories than some newer games (e.g. Silent Hill vs. Slender), but that just refers to the quality of the game, rather than its age (unless we're talking about the majority of mainstream multiplayer games, of course).

[Keane]

While I am not against realism in games, I don't think it lives up to older games. Nintendo has more appeal to me. Not so much for the visuals or story, but for the gameplay. I'm not gonna be a wanker and go on a long rant about the FPS genre, for I like the genre, but I do think that it has come to the point where the mention of realistic games will immediately make you think of shooters. Why? Because that's what 90% of them are. There's a bunch of games out there that have tried some things here and there with the genre, but in the end every shooter is about simply killing your enemies. We've been seeing this concept since fucking Contra, and yet as limited as that game was, it seems to do a lot more with gameplay then some modern shooters. Lost my interest in them, and a good story doesn't really make up for that. It's like some games are just based around running from one cutscene to the next one sometimes. While I think Metal Gear is a great series, I really don't want to sit through five minute cutscenes of people having a conversation when I go for a second spin at the game. Probably the best example of a game where story ruins things is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Gameplay wise it's one of the best shooters I own, but fuck, the story just takes away the experience. It's interesting and all, but when I play a game the last thing I wanna do is have to read long paragraphs of text and then end up watching cutscenes five minutes later. This is why I like Half-Life.

Of course, there are non-shooters. Assasin's Creed was great (Was meaning the first two games). I would like to see more games trying to be creative in that way. Maybe I'm just not the kind of person for the games that people praise today, but seriously people, a lot of us might have bought our PlayStation 2's purely for playing our DVD's, but I'm pretty sure we wanted to play games on our PS3's, not movies. The stories that games tell are indeed made by creative minds, but as someone who has played games that are what games were originally intended to be, only few grab my attention. I have much more fun getting out my MSX (Believe it or not, but I actually own one) and play Life Force.

Undecided on indie games. I don't consider them better, but it is the section on Steam I visit most.

[sergiomonty]

Nostalgia is not really my excuse. It's pretty clear that old games have better designs and imagination. I'm kind of thinking that the rise of indie games will be a good thing, because I've read discussions where some people wanted a PS1-PS2 esque feel to their games. The indie industry has always loved nostalgic stuff, so I'm hoping to see PS1-PS2 kind of games and graphics from them when they get a little more money.

This. Pretty well explained. I'm looking forward towards the future of indie games.

I don't really find that argument strong enough. Although I appreciate indie games, let's face it, a lot of them suck. Some are incredibly epic, but for every excellent indie game, there are hundreds of shovelware. Also, isn't being a nostalgia based-videogame designer non-creative? It's just copying things from the past and taking approach of them to give a "retro feel". I love the project Shovel Knight, for example, but you can't deny that the game is not creative in any sense, it's just Megaman-meets-Ducktales. What about Cave Story? it's just an upgrade system-based shooter that plays similar to Megaman and Contra, but happens to have a good plot and interesting characters.

Super Mario Galaxy was the big fucking deal. And it kicks the shit out of the original Super Mario Bros. in terms of creativity and imagination... and it's not an indie game.

In the other hand, Megaman X has a better plot than, let's say... Angry Birds.

It's just matter of the quality of the game, not the era in which it was created.

[Adsolution]

Very well said Sergio! I couldn't agree more.

[Haruka]

I also agree with Sergio. You remind me that I tried out the Cave Story's demo, but I didn't find it quite special.