The Gamer's Quarter

[Dracko]

Steve Meretzky on "The Most Perfect Game".

Can you guess what it is?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Cycle]

If it is what I think it is, he can go fuck himself!
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[Worm]

EDIT: This was a reply to the apparently year old thread.

So ... like absurd.org, right?

I have a friend who makes IFgames and is very involved in them. So he can usually drop me a line on some old good ones. I remember for his one game he blogged as the main character for awhile to stir up interest.

I don't think Web 2.0 super hyping is needing, but just for them to be immediately interesting. Like narcolepsy.
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Exit stage left, exit stage right, there is no place to run, all the fuses in the exit signs have been BURNT OUT

[dessgeega]

everybody knows you hate portal, cycle.

and nobody cares.
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[Worm]

I mean Portal was great. But it takes someone who is seriously disconnected to think it's the only drop of rain in the desert.
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Exit stage left, exit stage right, there is no place to run, all the fuses in the exit signs have been BURNT OUT

[dhex]

will wispy mustaches ever stop trembling over the weighted companion cube?

i think not.

no i mean by this point portal is so overrated it's the [insert overrated thing] of games. i'm pretty sure we're going to see miracle cancer cures attributed to it's healing light; "i had an eight pound tumor but the weighted companion cube saved me!"

though it does establish the proper formula:

1) quirky narrator
2) cute song
3) loney and twee in a cement mixer
4) merchandising opportunities

(this is also the formula to make romantic comedies but don't tell anyone; julia roberts is hell on indie cred)
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[Harveyjames]

BACKLASHEZ

I don't think it's fair to be unduly harsh on something just because everyone else likes it so much. Except when I was 7 and I used to hate Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, just because everyone else liked it. That was fine. It's not fine with Portal, though. I think we should celebrate what it does well.

Seriously if a game is as well-written as a Julia Roberts movie that's a serious step up from nearly all other games, which are about as well-written as a film starring the Honky-Tonk Man.

[Harveyjames]

This is what came up when I google image searched for The Honky-Tonk Man.

[dhex]

portal told a cute story. but i honestly fail to see the second coming of jesus bit that everyone else does.
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[Shapermc]

Cute story with clever and humorous writing that never takes you out of the game or makes you stop to watch a cut-scene. That's better than most games have going for them for story telling. The second coming of christ? no. sorry. But it's very rare to have all of those together in one package that also includes very original gameplay and puzzle solving. If you were to put together a list of all the things that portal does really well, most games that are also very good only come up with like 70% of the same things in those lists.
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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!"

[dessgeega]

yes, if steve meretzky thinks portal is far and away the most revelatory thing being done in videogames, he should probably be playing more . . . interactive fiction. (hey, maybe if he followed independent / student games he'd have played narbacular drop!) but that doesn't change the fact that what portal does, it does well, and it's refreshing compared to the usual gun-bugger games the industry has to offer. i think worship and hatred are equally unwarranted.
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[Harveyjames]

I've not played it, but I really want to. I think the main thing that's bowled people over is probably Chet and Eric's writing. I'm really glad those guys landed on their feet.

[dhex]

it's worth playing, and i don't care for puzzle games.

but it is mostly a puzzle game.
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[Cycle]

and pretty medicore one at that.
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[dhex]

maybe that's why i got through it.

i tend to really, really, really, really hate puzzles, riddles, etc in games. hate them like forced stealth sections hate them. hate them like "final battle changes all the mechanics you've been learning for the past three weeks" hate them. like unskippable cutscenes hate them.

i may be a bit dull, however.
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[Harveyjames]

Yeah it sounds like you hate a lot of things, pops.

[dhex]

and don't even get me started on nintendogs.

get off my lawn!
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[Cycle]

also i bet i could also write some nice dailouge if i had like over a year to write a page.

only about three good lines, too.
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[Dracko]

His other claims are appropriate, though! And many puzzle games are infuriating because poorly designed. Portal doesn't try to be a nuisance, and what I respect it for is just the whole package working. You can jump in, jump out, and spend an evening with it. Just like a good film or novella.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Cycle]

I think Portal didn't have the balls to challenge the player. It wanted to show off the snappy writing too much, and not alienate the dafter players, which feels like a total cop out to me who wanted to be challanged.

That, and I think the Portal mechanic actually isn't deep enough to expand into new and interesting situations. I had enough of the same five puzzles before the end of the game. It actually became repetitive.

The finale was also stupid and fourth wall breaking. The lab was believable, but come on, it was a bit retarded having all these decaying back rooms that just happened to have an exit via a portal somewhere. Also; a pointless room full of pistons. What? Was the same guy who designed Mars Space Station Monster Closets behind this place?

The final boss fight was also very gamey and stupid too, but hey, who cares because snappy writing, amirite.

I COULD GO ON, REALLY.
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[Worm]

Cycle, that's precisely why there are games like DROD!

Portal is a pretty good puzzle engine, but the reason it wasn't taken far when it was Narbacular Drop is because there are only so many tricks or ways of challenging the player. Hopefully the fan community proves me wrong, but I really don't think the custom maps for Portal are going anywhere. There is a retarded amount of challenge in the least steps/least time stages, I don't think it's a meaningful challenge but it's still a challenge.

I think the game has wonderful presentation, execution, and writing. The puzzle aspects are very clever and hopefully can be taken to higher levels by a fan community. However, it doesn't allow for the crunchy logic puzzles you'll find in many other games. ... and expecting that in any game that wants to be popular is just nuts.
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Exit stage left, exit stage right, there is no place to run, all the fuses in the exit signs have been BURNT OUT

[boojiboy7]

[Scratchmonkey]

I find the whole concept of "puzzles" outside of abstract, explicitly puzzle-y puzzle games to be pretty annoying, mainly because they're always ridiculously contrived* (which means I pretty much cannot replay any of the Zeldas even if I start them up in a nostalgia kick (aside from the first one, which is fairly sandbox-y, really) without putting down the controller and walking away in the middle of one of the block-pushing sections).

Portal gets a pass because it's just abstract enough, plus it's short, fairly humorous and easy enough for daft people like me to muddle through it in a couple of hours. And then it's over! No muss, no fuss.

* - Because they nearly always rely on having some thing that you should, in all honesty, expect to be able to do, only you can't, because that would mean that you wouldn't have to solve the puzzle. I really have come to appreciate games that reward you for being a clever dick.

[Cycle]

The last level of Portal was about as contrived as you can get!

In fact, I'd probably have enjoyed it more if I never played that bit. I was acceptable up to that point.
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[Harveyjames]

[Cycle]

ok, you provide my funding!

let's do this!
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[Harveyjames]

Well, technically, someone has to give you a job writing for a games company first. Chet and Erik who wrote Portal started out writing on the internet for free and were so good they were snapped up by Valve! So you've got everything you need to get started already. Better get cracking!

[Cycle]

Hey buddy, you wanted to see my work, so YOU'RE paying.

Or my time will be extended to ten years or whenever these clowns first started writing on the intertron!
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[Harveyjames]

Speaking of clowns, how about you just go and see if there's a videogame company in the only town you will ever get work, CLOWNTOWN

[Cycle]

POPULATION: YOU
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[Harveyjames]

THAT'S WHAT I SAID

[Cycle]

I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I

harvey stop spamming these intelligent threads!
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[Harveyjames]

What! Cycle you've gone too far, as usual.

[dessgeega]

[dessgeega]

well, i went ahead and did it. see where your NERD RAGE got us, cycle?
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[Harveyjames]

NERD

[dhex]

making your game an hour or two is a definite way around the issue of pacing.

though i think hl2 in particular is perfectly paced so quid pro quo or something latin like that.
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[klikbeep]

Oh, god.

[daphaknee]

yeah i really think everyone likes portal becuase it was short and everyone beat it and people dont really beat games anymore they just play them for two hours and then write about the games
but everyone beat portal because its so short!

i just hope now since everyone is shitting companion cubes that
a. people make shorter games
b. people make shorter FUNNIER games there arent enough games that are outright funny
i mean the only game that is short and funny are the new sam and maxs

man i think i just want every game to be sam and max

[Harveyjames]

I sort of thought there was too much story in half-life 1. To me the most satisfying thing in the game was being rewarded for keeping security guards alive by having them open up rooms full of weapons for you, in the early parts of black mesa, and that part is over with way too quickly. Then again, I guess it's sort of 'modular' in a way, in that the sections with the military play very differently to the sections I talked about. Ditto the Xen section and all that teleport malarky that precedes it. So in conclusion I guess I'm saying gameplay mechanics that are touched upon and then discarded before they've been allowed to be explored fully are nothing new to Valve software.

[daphaknee]

i stopped playing half life 1 when they wanted me to kick stupid boxes stupid centemeters and then jump on them to grab some stupid ladder

that 2d portal flash game on newgrounds wasnt so bad

and yeah the reason portal was on my top games of 2007 list was because 2007 was a pretty mediocre year for videogames

2008 is already doing better

[Mr Mustache]

It was mentioned in another thread, that what makes Portal important is that it's a proof of concept for commercial short form games. I don't understand how that could be a bad thing.
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Straight up

[Winged Assassins (1984)]

I never felt any attachment to my companion cube and I really can't see why people do have such attachments. By the end of that section I just wished that I had a gravity gun so I could shoot it into the oven quicker than walking over and dropping it in. As for the rest of Portal, it became one of those games that I played through twice then couldn't give a rat's arse anymore.
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[Shapermc]

Yeah, I'm really about to do the point-counterpoint thing with Cycle here.

[Worm]

You don't fault a theme park for not being a cathedral.

The reason Halflife 2 couldn't be Serious Sam and the reason Portal couldn't be DROD are numerous and obvious. However those two games were fun, unless every game you play needs to convince you you're hardcore.

[dhex]

more short, punchy games would be a good thing.

imagine a survival horror narrative that lasted two or three hours.
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[Dracko]

Funny you should mention that, as I nightmared one up about two nights ago and everyone I've talked to about it said I should make a design document out, which I'm endeavouring to do. I'll see if I can type up an IF piece around it too to give people an idea.

Oh, and you should still give Modern Combat a look in that regard, too, dhex. Shouldn't take one more than 5 hours or so.

I do strongly agree that Half-Life² has the best pacing of the series so far, ironically enough in light of the episodes scheme.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Cycle]

I was gonna post something else here, but then I decided life was short enough as it is.

Dracko! I also had a nightmare recently (well, more of a dream than a nightmare) that I want to turn into a game.
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[dhex]

i don't have a console and don't play games online so battlefield 2 is out of bounds.

they made a single player for it or something?
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[Cycle]

I think maybe he's talking about the latest CoD? Modern Warfare?
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