The Gamer's Quarter

[Lockeownzj00]

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I'm sure there are points of contention on this list, but I thought it an interesting idea to kick around. I've played most of the games on the list and have to say I agree at the very least partially for most of their 'rankings.' I'm also getting an intense urge to replay some games I haven't seen in a while...and purchase others which I have yet to lay my hands on.

sidenote: i hate playing series out of order not only for story cohesion, but so i can observe the evolution of the art. but system shock just refuses to work no matter what i do. i can get close, but unless i figure it out...how much will i lose by just skipping ahead to 2?

[Dracko]

I'm still trying to get System Shock to work myself, but I've played System Shock 2, for all its flaws, a number of times. The story is self-consistent and any links to the previous game are clearly expanded upon, so don't worry.

And yeah, I agree with the mentions on the list (Save The Legend of Zelda II, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VII, Baldur's Gate 2 and Starcraft), but not necessarily the order, or even the reasonings brought up.

I have no idea how they can justify Deus Ex as the first position. It may have a huge, intriguing, story, but the presentation was pretty awful, its development dubious and the surrounding gameplay underwhelming. But then again, I'm assuming they really didn't stick to developments in actual story-telling in this budding medium, and got swept away by the stories themselves.

I also need to play A Mind Forever Voyaging.

P.S. Where the Hell is the Thief series? They did everything better than System Shock 2, in any case. I really want to play the first one because I'm told the impression of actually facing a nemesis from beginning to end is felt, a sentiment mitigated in its sequel with all the bizarre missions assigned to you which essentially boiled down to fixing elevators and finding eggs, with clear objectives.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Harveyjames]

I started playing A Mind Forever Voyaging, but I didn't get so far. Whoever programmed it really had a tin ear for dialogue.

[Cycle]

Deus Ex # 1! Alright!

System Shock was also good, and I liked the story in the second (kinda). It's a good thing Marathon is on there or I'd have to shoot someone, but I think it should be more than an Honorable Mention. Actually I feel the same for most Honorable Mentions.

I tried playing Grim Fandago a couple months ago, but found it incredibly boring. Maybe I should get a walkthrough and play through it just for the story, because the puzzles were about as interesting as a doorknob.

Starcraft totally bored me, too. I played through the human campaign and didn't bother with any of the others.

I always thought the original Half-Life was pretty over-rated.

Actually, this list kinda sucks apart from the number one spot.

[Dracko]

Half-Life is hardly over-rated considering the steps it takes at full integration of the plot. The nature of said plot is irrelevant for judging a game on its story-telling achievement. Deus Ex falls short on that because the actions you take, the shifts in dialogue, have such miniscule, anecdotal consequences that your playthrough does nothing to make you feel a genuine key in the story. You're left out of the loop, you really aren't allowed to take any form of decisions until the end, by which stage it seems like the developers remembered their conceit and tossed them in at the last minute. And the gameplay was half-arsed in the first place.

I mean, what if I had wanted to stay at UNATCO? What if saving Paul was of real consequence? What about the big picture I'm supposed to play a part of?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[wourme]

I got Deus Ex for PS2 a while back because I had heard it had a good story and it was dirt cheap, but I wasn't able to get anywhere in it. I think it's because I'm so unused to that type of game. I was worthless in the gun fights, and I somehow fell to my death while trying to climb down a ladder. I had to really concentrate on the controller to do anything, and that's not a sign of a good game for me. Plus a game focused on running around shooting people automatically loses some points with me--can you get any more generic than that?

Interesting to see so many FPS games on the list. Maybe I should try a few more of them--I've always kind of seen them as a fun and original gimmick that could have ended with Doom 2 rather than a real genre. And if they are a genre, they could have at least had the courtesy not to steal the name "shooter" so that I have to explain what I mean when I use the term.

If I made a list like this, it would include Crystalis, Dragon Quest, Silent Hill, Shadow of Destiny, and maybe ICO--it can be hard to separate games with revolutionary storytelling from those that came after and did a similar thing much better.

[Dracko]

If you want to give an FPS game a go, I'd say start off with the Marathon series, then try out Half-Life 2.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

STRIDER.

i guess you can consider my article in the upcoming issue a response to this one, even though i wrote it before i read this.
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[dessgeega]

also where's prince of persia?

hell, karateka.
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[Dracko]

Shit, you're right three times over. I'm ashamed I didn't the Mechner games didn't immediately spring to mind.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

confession: marathon < system shock.

or even ultima underworlds 1, another game nobody played.
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[dessgeega]

also, planescape didn't impress me much when i played it.
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[Lockeownzj00]

[wourme]

[dessgeega]

[Cycle]

Half-Life 1 bugged me because it didn't have much more of a plot than DooM (which would be ok if it wasn't for so many people claiming it has an amazing story, when it was really the presentation), the story-telling tricks they DID use felt cheap, but worst is that too many places felt way too scripted and required trial and error which completely ruined the immersion for me, not too mention just making the game extremely tedious. Also, Xen. Hell, Duke 3D immersed me in its world better and its scripted sequences were pretty much just blowing shit up when you walk near them.

Deus Ex appealed to me more because although most options are pretty clear, I could still approach situations as I please and not worry about what the designer expected me to do. Feeling out of the loop was also part of the appeal to me, as it gave the impression that there were bigger things out there than me, a recurring theme in the game. And as for saving Paul, I think just saving him was enough. When I first failed to save him and I found his dead body, I stared at it for a few moments in sadness. Once I played again and managed to save him, I was just happy that I could save my own brother from death. I didn't think anything else was required and it's these small things that you can change that really made the game for me.

Wanting to stick with an UNATCO is a common problem brought up, it bothered me too even though I thought it was important for them to constrain the story in some places to keep it from falling apart. It's one of the things they tried to fix in the sequel that they got wrong in the first game. They missed the mark in a few other places, but overall I think they handled it all very well.

Half-Life 1 has one of the best introduction sequences though.

System Shock did some things better than Marathon, somethings it didn't, but to be honest I don't think they can really be compared, anyway. I really wish the original System Shock was remade with an interface that didn't suck

[dhex]

yeah, that's a legacy from underwor.d

i still remember racing to find that little holed up crewmember who had been contacting you in ss1 only to get there and find a giant robot fucker had burst through the wall and dismembered the shit out of them.

"if only i'd moved faster..."
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[Mister Toups]

Zelda II is certainly an interesting choice, and though I agree with their reasoning I have to wonder if there weren't any games that came before it which did the same thing.
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where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[Lockeownzj00]

[Ketch]

Now what I want to see is a game like A Mind Forever Voyaging, but which tells its story by combining elements of games like Half-Life 2, Bully and Shadow of Destiny and Beyond Good & Evil.

Okay,.I don't know what the 'story' was about in AMFV but you could do an awesome game which would be about documenting a country's decline into dictatorship , strict control, poverty (for the many) and despair.

It would show a town being ground under the boot of dictatorship, foremost in its tools would be a) visual representation- it would be structured in timezones with each timezone being a 'level' so that when you revisit the same city in the five years later timezone, you see that the affluence of the 80s (Vice City- IE. Nightclubs, neon lights, fancy cars) has been replaced with a harsh work ethic (Liberty City- only government organised rallies are allowed for entertainment, the city is portrayed in a greyer pallette of colours) before becoming a town which is truly divided between haves and have nots, with the rich living in Mansions while the rest live in slums, b) gameplay. this would borrow from Bully/ GTA /Hitman? and give the authorities many 'rules' that they can pick you up on when you break them -- ie. curfew, littering, speaking to other people in public. And later in the game they can just beat on you if they feel like it.

Darn, I'd love to see this. This would be inspiring.

[dessgeega]

[dizzyjosh]

[Shapermc]

Anyways, this is a very weird list. It ranges from me completly agreeing with half of it, and in totall disagreement with the other half.

How odd.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Cycle]

[Harveyjames]

I actually wrote a response in defence of Half-Life a few days ago, that I deleted because I ultimately decided I was saying a lot of nothing you didn't already know. But I saved it for some reason, so against my better judgement here it is!

[Cycle]

I found your post interesting! I'm still not convinced (and I doubt I ever will be, so it's no big deal), but I still found some of your points interesting.

It's also made me realise I should have made my original post much longer because people seem to be assuming alot about the way I look at things and that makes me sad I know plot complexity is hardly the only measure of a good story!

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, I thought as much after I wrote it! I realised that I'd started by assuming you were dumb and then wrote 10,000 words based on that assumption. That's why I didn't want to post it, because I thought 'actually, he probably knows all of this, what the hell am I thinking'.

Really I just like writing words.

[Neal]

I'm really glad Grim Fandango is on the list, even though it isn't a surprise or anything, it's the only game to ever have any real personal relevance for me.
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........

[dessgeega]

so i think harvey james harvey is pretty much right. i wish i could trot out my essay on story versus narrative, but we havn't published it yet! instead i'll refer to the old statement that there are only seven or so stories and it is the telling that we judge.

let's talk about marathon's story as a series of interwoven and often nonlinear interstitial cards for bonus points!
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[OtakupunkX]

[Dracko]

That aspect of Marathon is one of its major selling points, but also its pitfall. The story the series tell works in vignettes. You, as play, follow the Kill All Aliens plotline while computer terminals around the world inform you of the ongoing battles between three self-conscious AIs. There's two stories at stake here, and it more than often feels like they're too disconnected and unrelated as a result of how they're told. I suppose that's a good thing when taken analytically, for the story's sake, but in-game, it feels off. Thankfully, the gameplay itself is up to it, so it's overseeable, though not forgettable.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Laco]

Very nice explanation Harveyjames! Those are my feelings about Half-Life almost exactly. Now I'll have a nice little summary to point my friend to in our neverending Deus Ex vs Half-Life argument. (It doesn't help that he refuses to even pronounce the name of his choice properly..)

[OtakupunkX]

I don't think very many people can pronounce Deus Ex correctly and, even if they do, it's a never ending arguement as to who is right with the pronunciation.

[dessgeega]

isn't it "day-ooss ecks"?
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[Harveyjames]

[dessgeega]

isn't there a leather enthusiast in the nightclub section? explain to me how that could be wrong.
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[Harveyjames]

I don't remember that, I just remember the awful stilted dialogue, and the lighting that looked as if the level designers had never seen the inside of a nightclub in their lives. On the one hand you have these awkwardly dancing girls saying 'uhh... yeah, move your hips' to each other, and then not 10 feet away there are two guys sat at a table having a very dry and wordy conversation about politics, seemingly oblivious to the pounding pounding techno music. Those guys never take a break. Just once I would have liked to have seen them to shut about the relationship between patriachal society and monethestic religion for one second and get their butts on the dancefloor. It would have done them some good.

Of course, there's doesn't need to be anything like that in Half-Life, because all the characters in the game are people dealing with the same crisis situation. Deus Ex is a little more ambitious, in that we're quite often shown people just going about their everyday lives, but it doesn't convince.

[Laco]

[dhex]

[Harveyjames]

[dessgeega]

[Cycle]

Yeah, the night club scene was pretty stupid. How the hell did I even end up talking to the bartender about politics? It felt pretty bizzare.

They kinda made up for it for featuring that secret ending where half the cast of the game funk it up on the dance floor.

[Lockeownzj00]

[Harveyjames]

I don't mind that there aren't 90 people. It's just that the ones that are there are saying 'uh. move your hips.'

I went to GameFAQS and found the game script and on paper, the scene in question is not as bad as I remembered. I can easily imagine this as one of those awkward shouted conversations you have in clubs.

[Dracko]

I pretty much agree with Harvey. The gameplay wasn't as solid as it should have been and yoru actions were undermined by the requirements of the story, making them trivial.

It's still brilliant on many levels, but not as a gameplay experience. An atmospheric one, yes, though when irks in the gameplay come along, they can over-ride it. Better design and enemy placement as well as behaviour patterns may have helped in this.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Harveyjames]

I'm in 'defending Deus EX for the sake of balance' mode. I found Old Man Murray's hilarious Deus Ex walkthrough:

http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/84.html

It's easy to forget, but before Deus Ex, you just couldn't do the sort of thing they do in this walkthrough. Revelatory!

[Cycle]

I never forgot!

Your previous post reminds me of an essay one of my co-workers wrote. He complained about playing Bloodlines and the character not getting tired from rocking out on the dance floor, and how people don't step back when you get right up in your face. I guess I can suspend belief easier than you guys, even if it is rather over-the-top in some places. It's not like the entire game is as silly as the night club scene though. And how do you know Spector wrote that part!

Then again, I was dissapointed when playing Half-Life 2 after I threw a glass bottle at some chicks head, hoping she would bleed, fall to the ground and start sobbing and then a Columbine or whatever soldier would come along, start laughing and give me a high five. She just turned around and asked me to knock it off

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, 'knock it off' is about the biggest reaction you're going to get out of them.

My Dad got angry at me when I played Half-Life 2 on his Xbox because I just ran around the train station causing mischief instead of behaving 'in character'. That's just how you have to play these games, though-- you probe all the cracks and find out where the boundaries are in terms of the behaviour you're able to get away with. It's only fair the developers that you try to fully explore the possibilities of this world they've put so much time into.

I don't know if my playing method is more cerebral or his is, though. If you imagine it being like us being kids who are both given GI Joes, I would be the one checking to see how many points of articulation it has while my dad waste no time in sending it on missions to fight Skeletor and making machine-gun noises with his mouth. On the other hand, my Dad's play style would have something to do with the way the toy was intended to be played with, whereas it's safe to say that within 20 minutes I would have put GI Joe up my butt. Horses for courses I suppose.

[Cycle]

Yeah, I remember telling some people about some of the screwing around I did in the first area, and someone actually called me a dick. They meant it, too.

[Lackey]

Generally I play in character if I'm showing a game to other people and screw around on my own time. Seems reasonable!
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