Rabbids Go Home... Yeah!

[spiraldoor]

Forcing developers to use motion-sensing controls in every single game = recipe for fail

[Cairnie]

There are a huge number of studios which are better than Ubisoft. If Nintendo owned Rayman, that would be a fucking disaster. Nintendo's current consoles, the Wii and the DS, simply have no room for good games.

Yes it'll lose its European flair but really Nintendo [or more specifically, Intelligent Systems] would make a much better game on the DS than Ubisoft would. I mean look the first RRR on the DS plays like one of those shitty Disney games Ubi made for the PS1. As for the Wii I dunno since not every Nintendo game is that great, but for the most part they're usually more well programmed.

What we don't want is for any future Rayman game to be made by Crave. FUUUCK

[El Dango]

Ubisoft can still make good Rayman games. They just don't do it for some reason.

[spiraldoor]

Insomniac would be my first choice for a studio to develop Rayman games.

And they are not technically owned by Sony, therefore their games need not necessarily be PlayStation-exclusive, so don't flame me and/or call me a PS3 fanboy for saying this.

[Limely]

No use discussing that, there's no way Ubisoft could possibly sell a franchisé they pretty much founded themselves on. Rayman is to Ubisoft what Mickey Mouse was to Disney.

With all this Ubisoft-bashing, I just feel like saying this...

I don't think it's just Ubisoft that's been in a dump as concerns games. Pretty much the entire industry has been lacking in the last few years (with some exceptions here and there, of course). A majority of games seem to be shooters and war games and stuff like that... Or sequels and remakes of old hits (Mario Kart, Brawl, Nintendo is notoric for reusing old stuff over and over and rarely coming up with something new, which is a shame and why I disrespect this company a lot, because they have the money to take a chance once in a while) How good the "war games" have been I don't know, because shooting people and blowing up things doesn't really appeal to me. I might be narrow minded concerning these games, maybe they are a lot of fun, but I just don't feel like trying.

I think I got sidetracked there but what I wrote was too good to delete... now what was I talking about again. Uuuuuh oh yeah.

We've certainly seen a lot of pretty-looking games with huge, realistic environments and big, detailed worlds, fluidly animated, detailed characters and roofs that catch fire in such realistic manners that the fire even spreads according to the direction of the wind (srsly who gives a shit which way the fire spreads), though often they seem to lack something as important as fun. Something that draws you in. Personality. Originality. Something unique, something that makes you want to play over and over again that is not unlockable secrets dangling in front of you like a carrot, collectible items or a score system. They grow old quickly and it seems to be the same thing over and over again.

I don't know, but maybe it has something to do with new consoles. New, unexplored landscapes, new possibilites... Since the new consoles are considerably stronger than the old ones (not counting the Wii, which is a different chapter off its own entirely), it's natural that developers want to test the capability of these, and focus a lot on graphics and frame-rate and whatever, instead of gameplay and overall style, feel and atmosphere, which is important to me if I am to enjoy a game.
These kind of things move in waves, it's like fashion. I think we'll start seeing more games that focus less on graphics and power (and war? and super-realistic explosions) soon, as developers have had their time exploring these new "landscapes" now, and are more familiar with what is possible. Maybe it's already happening, after all, we consumers are like three or four years behind what is actually happening in the studios, we only see the finished products.

But to stay a bit on topic... fun party and family games like the Raving Rabbids won't ever go out of fashion, that's why I think we'll see a lot more rabbid-games in the future. Like it or not, but the biggest group of gamers are clueless kids that know little about art and originality, and the biggest group of buyers of games, are even more clueless parents overwhelmed by this industry, on the lookout for "healthy" entertainment for their kids.

That ended up a lot longer than planned. Maybe I should just stop posting altogether and stay with blogging from now on. @_@;

[CheatCat]

Maybe Rabbids Go Home is the final game in the Rabbids series? If not, what should the next Rabbids game be called? "Rabbits Go Back Again"? "The Return Of The rabbids"?

But if Rayman acts like a old man in RRR3 maybe Rayman is.. is... '_' No, horrible thought!

[spiraldoor]

I don't think it's just Ubisoft that's been in a dump as concerns games. Pretty much the entire industry has been lacking in the last few years (with some exceptions here and there, of course). A majority of games seem to be shooters and war games and stuff like that... Or sequels and remakes of old hits (Mario Kart, Brawl, Nintendo is notoric for reusing old stuff over and over and rarely coming up with something new, which is a shame and why I disrespect this company a lot, because they have the money to take a chance once in a while) How good the "war games" have been I don't know, because shooting people and blowing up things doesn't really appeal to me. I might be narrow minded concerning these games, maybe they are a lot of fun, but I just don't feel like trying.

I think that just might actually be because you're a girl. Girls generally don't like shooters. I do play them sometimes, and yes, they are a lot of fun. Obviously not all of them are that much fun, but some are quite excellent. For example, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was voted in a GAME poll as the Greatest PC game of all time, Greatest PS3 game of all time, Greatest Xbox 360 game of all time, and overall Greatest Game of All Time. Just goes to show how far off IGN are, with their Super Mario Bros 1 being the greatest game ever. According to the gaming population, that's utter bullshit.

We've certainly seen a lot of pretty-looking games with huge, realistic environments and big, detailed worlds, fluidly animated, detailed characters and roofs that catch fire in such realistic manners that the fire even spreads according to the direction of the wind (srsly who gives a shit which way the fire spreads), though often they seem to lack something as important as fun. Something that draws you in. Personality. Originality. Something unique, something that makes you want to play over and over again that is not unlockable secrets dangling in front of you like a carrot, collectible items or a score system. They grow old quickly and it seems to be the same thing over and over again

About your Gameplay vs Everything Else hypothesis, I don't really think that's accurate. If games have better graphics, does that not add to their personality? Better graphics means more detailed environments and characters and stuff. Fire that goes indifferent directions according to the wind could be a key gameplay mechanic, you know. This is Far Cry 2 we're talking about, isn't it? Anyway, I just don't see why orsum graphics would have a detrimental effect on style, feel and atmosphere.

[/rant]

[Cairnie]

Clueless parents are by far the biggest players in the industry game. Go to any game store and you're bound to find a 30-something year old woman picking up a dangerously girly game like High School Musical and saying "Oh I think my 4 year old daughter will like this". Why the minimum age for games is 3 years though is beyond me, I know some 3 year olds develop well but most of the ones I know can't put a wood shape through the right hole, let alone handle a controller.

Oh so you're sexist now Spiraldoor? I think you'll find that a LOT of female gamers play shooters, it's all a matter of taste.

[spiraldoor]

Clueless parents are by far the biggest players in the industry game. Go to any game store and you're bound to find a 30-something year old woman picking up a dangerously girly game like High School Musical and saying "Oh I think my 4 year old daughter will like this". Why the minimum age for games is 3 years though is beyond me, I know some 3 year olds develop well but most of the ones I know can't put a wood shape through the right hole, let alone handle a controller.

I think that it's meant to mean the content of the game is unsuitable, not the gameplay itself. So three-year-olds aren't meant to be able to see the games being played.

Oh so you're sexist now Spiraldoor?

Sexism = discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of the opposite sex

I think you'll find that a LOT of female gamers play shooters, it's all a matter of taste.

Cool, but I've never heard of one...

[Cairnie]

It can also apply to saying that a girl doesn't like shooters just because she's a girl. If a girl would rather play Cooking Mama than Call of Duty, than it's up to her, and vice versa.

[stan423321]

I'm male and I don't like shooters. But I have to agree Serious Sam II developers were kinda humorous... but me playing a shooter? With my shaking hands? I wouldn't be able to hit even Eiffel Tower from... 30m distance!

[Limely]

I think that just might actually be because you're a girl. Girls generally don't like shooters. I do play them sometimes, and yes, they are a lot of fun. Obviously not all of them are that much fun, but some are quite excellent. For example, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was voted in a GAME poll as the Greatest PC game of all time, Greatest PS3 game of all time, Greatest Xbox 360 game of all time, and overall Greatest Game of All Time. Just goes to show how far off IGN are, with their Super Mario Bros 1 being the greatest game ever. According to the gaming population, that's utter bullshit.

Actually I'm not going to deny that this might very well be the reason. There is no denying that, in average, there's a lot of differences between women and men, though obviously there are variances that won't follow the norm in both genders.

However, I'm the kind that prefer heavily stylized games with a lot of emphasiz put on environment, exploration and design, like Psychonauts, Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil... A lot of shooters or war games seem to aim to be as realistic as possible, and this doesn't appeal to me.

About your Gameplay vs Everything Else hypothesis, I don't really think that's accurate. If games have better graphics, does that not add to their personality? Better graphics means more detailed environments and characters and stuff. Fire that goes indifferent directions according to the wind could be a key gameplay mechanic, you know. This is Far Cry 2 we're talking about, isn't it? Anyway, I just don't see why orsum graphics would have a detrimental effect on style, feel and atmosphere.
[/rant]

It's more a "new tools we don't know and need to explore kills gameplay and athmosphere"-hypothesis, I think. I might not be expressing myself clearly, am writing these posts in a hurry while packing my stuff for traveling to the Norwegian National Championship for janissary orchestras (don't ask, because I have no idea how I ended up there).
I don't think graphics need to equal personality. More detailed environments and characters, more fluid animation and whatnot, sure, but a game doesn't automatically become unique because every single leaf in a tree is rendered and they all billow as the wind blows.
When you can only make so advanced characters, effects and props because of the hardware limitations, you have to look into ways to stylize it to make something with the feeling you want. That's where the real creative process came in. Not so many years ago, they had to be creative about it, and made a lot of stylized games simply because games that tried to make characters or what not look realistic, looked downright horrible.
Nowadays, making settings that seem realistic is no problem. Everyone is doing it, and that takes away from its personality. And it's not very stylish. Can be, but they don't seem to, yet. Or at least they aren't very special.

I give in on the fire that spread according to the wind-thing. I am indeed talking about Far Cry 2, yeah, and I reckon the gameplay possibilites are many for this... The main point was excessively realistic games, though.

Gosh I have clothes to pack @_@;

[Lijik]

Oh so you're sexist now Spiraldoor?

Honestly I've just been reading all of spiraldoor's posts in this thread as if they were jokes because most of them are borderline inept.

[foultzboyz]

Call of Duty 4 is far from the best game ever. It's incredible that it somehow got those awards--that's the insane part.

Serious Sam II...meh. If I were new to the series, it'd be amazing to me as well, though as a veteran, I find it didn't act as a serious shooter. The first two played like real shooters with the hilarious humor not disrupting the excellent gameplay, though the first two had a very delicate formula for success and "II" messed with it way too much. The Serious Engine 2 is incredible though, though since the battles are much smaller in the game you can't see it's full potential. "II" wasn't bad, mostly disappointing, though "3"'s coming out and I'm excited to see what they do and for the engine.

And finally, another Rabbids game I see...well, I've given up on those developers. Until Ancel is able to return and start producing the series again, I'm convinced that this team is much, much too cheap to ever make a real action-adventure game without someone pushing them. Tell me when Ancel's back on the Rayman series--until then, I'm looking at Rayman 3 being the last real Rayman console game to ever come out. That team is absolutely disgraceful.

[Holy Crap]

[Just goes to show how far off IGN are, with their Super Mario Bros 1 being the greatest game ever. According to the gaming population, that's utter bullshit.

Well, most lists I've seen of, say for example "Greatest Game Ever" or whatever usually consider the game relative to other games of its time. The First Super Mario bros was probably an amazing game considering it was in the NES era, whereas COD4 compared to other games today doesn't really stand out so much.

Also, I'd like to mention that most shooter games don't attract me all that much either, they really need something more to it. I love the Ratchet and Clank series, but Halo...meh.

And Foultz, I agree with taht last paragraph.

[L.M. Murphy]

I know I'm tired of Rabbids, but I don't know if they would consider another true game, after they showed Rayman to be a TOTAL WUSS in TV Party.

[Fat_Mario]

I don't like shooters, because there are too many of them. Where are platformer games? Only Ratchet and Clank and Crash series rescue platformer games, but there are only... 4-6 games.

[Rulez]

...what? R&C has lotsa games, while Crash has... not including the racing ones, he has like 10 games!

[stan423321]

Serious Sam II...meh. If I were new to the series, it'd be amazing to me as well, though as a veteran, I find it didn't act as a serious shooter. The first two played like real shooters with the hilarious humor not disrupting the excellent gameplay, though the first two had a very delicate formula for success and "II" messed with it way too much. The Serious Engine 2 is incredible though, though since the battles are much smaller in the game you can't see it's full potential. "II" wasn't bad, mostly disappointing, though "3"'s coming out and I'm excited to see what they do and for the engine.

Hoping they wouldn't make it too similar to typical shooter in case of humour...

[spiraldoor]

However, I'm the kind that prefer heavily stylized games with a lot of emphasiz put on environment, exploration and design, like Psychonauts, Rayman and Beyond Good and Evil... A lot of shooters or war games seem to aim to be as realistic as possible, and this doesn't appeal to me.

That's just the WWII ones, really. Most non-WWII shooters aren't particularly realistic, and feature aliens and high-tech weapons and such.

I don't like shooters, because there are too many of them. Where are platformer games? Only Ratchet and Clank and Crash series rescue platformer games, but there are only... 4-6 games.

What do you mean by "rescue"?

Oh so you're sexist now Spiraldoor?

Honestly I've just been reading all of spiraldoor's posts in this thread as if they were jokes because most of them are borderline inept.

Are you insulting me?