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Big Effen Playgrounds

 
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player 2
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 10:52 am    Post subject: Big Effen Playgrounds Reply with quote

One of the key differences between videogames and cinema is that in cinema there is never an option of what you want to look at, and in games there is always an option of what you want to see. Otherwise, you know, it's not a game.

But lately I've played a lot of games that feel like enclosed little boxes. Not many games feel big and open and huge. And games that are big and open and huge are very shallow experiences where everything is just how it is. It doesn't matter if you want to look at something up close in GTA. If it does, I've never found a use for it.

Right now I'm thinking of a few games: Mario 64, Outrun 2, Shadow of the Colossus? Each game is close to what I want, but not exactly. OR2 is maybe the closest of the games to what I want, but it's also the most obvious offender what with it being on a track and having a time limit. Shadow goes the opposite direction being completely free, but feeling limited by just how limited Wander is. Mario strikes a balance between the two, but I've already played that game to death.

Hmm...
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Fred
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mario 64 really was one of the best games for that sort of thing! I can't think of any other platformers that did the large-world thing that well. I've been trying to find a game like this myself lately, so I understand where you're coming from.

If you can stand jRPGs, Dragon Quest VIII did a good job of providing a huge playground to explore, so much so that advancing the plot became something of a hassle, really. Okami was rather the same way--"hey, here's mythohistoric Japan! Go out and play, but be back here by eight to fight this boss, okay?" But it was a beautiful and utterly engrossing mythohistoric Japan.

Legend of Mana had a unique system of doing this too, where even though the areas were all pretty much fixed internally, the world map starts out blank until you unlock and place new areas; the order and positions in which you place them--or not--determines which activities become available and which of the big cast of supporting characters you could get involved with--or not--while you go about the business of saving the world--or not. Ultimately the world system wound up not providing you with that many choices for plot and character development, but it provided a method of presentation that's really grown on me over time. I've been waiting for a game that builds on this flexible-world concept, but I haven't found one yet.

We might also talk about Star Command/Control/whatever, if that's not too cliche. There's a WWW-based game out there (I think) called Galactic Traders that captures sort of the same spirit of exploration, but replaces the action aspect with a political angle of facing off against other actual human beings. You start on Earth with a space freighter, and a rough star map of the galaxy; it's your job to go out, make money and hopefully stake out more turf than the other players. It's great fun if you can get together a group of casual players who just want to have fun with it, a sort of interplanetary form of Risk where you have to make up your own map of the board as it goes along. But all the public servers are dominated by hardcore math-heads who have optimized their play to the point where it takes months to get to the level of surviving, let alone competing.

There are some ideas, anyway. I hope that's sort of what you've been looking for.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

morrowind.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ultima Underworlds I and II.
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player 2
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Do Morrowind or the Ultima Underworlds games have interesting ways to travel? What I have always liked about Mario 64 is that there are interesting ways of getting from place to place. You can walk up stuff, you can triple jump to leap over obstacles, you can walljump, crawl, etc. I'm not a big fan of "cast Haste spell" and having "+25% Run/Walk". It just sems so... gamey and blah.

I'm the kind of guy who liked rolling around a lot in Zelda just because it was something to do. Well, until I had to hear Link's voice everytime. Making Wander kick Aggro to go faster, well, yea I did that too.
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Harveyjames
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 04, 2007 7:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is it wrong that I like Link's voice? I think the voice actor is perfectly cast. I like it when he shouts 'hey' at Aryll in Wind Waker, and I like his 'hup!', his 'shee-YAH!' and his 'AH-d-d-d-d-d-d!'s.

Tetra's Trackers is a joy. It's a Zelda game with full voice, people!

Mario 64 would blow me away with the unexpected ways in which areas linked into one another, like the Metal Cap Switch secret area spitting you out of the waterfall in the castle grounds, and the Dire, Dire Docks leading back to the ocean at the start of the game. It felt so coherent, you really got a sense that this was a real place that existed somewhere. Secret areas genuinely felt secret and exciting, like the game had swallowed you and you were creeping around in its belly. That's a feeling few games are able to provoke.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Do Morrowind or the Ultima Underworlds games have interesting ways to travel?


morrowind? not really, outside of the giant strider thingies that take you from city to city.

ultimas? it varies, but includes, horses, ships, flying carpets, moongates, recall spells, etc.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does riding a horse feel like walking except faster? I really am interested in really varied ways of travel, not just sprite swaps and faster max speeds.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex wrote:
morrowind? not really, outside of the giant strider thingies that take you from city to city.

Well, this isn't true! Not exactly. The strider things just warp you to all their "travel points" you don't actually ride in them unfortunatly.

The best part about morrowind is that you can increase your running speed so you start to travel more quickly. Outside of that you can also use levitation spells and create spells of long jumping. So it becomes interesting to travel in basically the same way, but from a different perspective. You can also swim.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Man, it was hilarious when that guy just fell out of the sky and died in front of you in Morrowind, and you find a bunch of long/high jumping spells on him.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
Man, it was hilarious when that guy just fell out of the sky and died in front of you in Morrowind, and you find a bunch of long/high jumping spells on him.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was referring to. I mean, I spent a lot of tries to use those spells and fall into a pile of pillows (pillow thieving is good times).
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 10:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Does riding a horse feel like walking except faster?


well, terrain matters in different ultimas, both in terms of how fast you go and how much time passes as well as in who can catch you. horse riding, if you're injured (V comes to mind most heavily) is the difference between life and death. but since all of the early ultimas are top-down experiences, it doesn't change the landscape particularly.

horse riding was very enjoyable in daggerfall. and yet, kinda lame in oblivion. probably because daggerfall had little else going for it in the landscape department (more noctis than anything else) beyond being random, alien and weird. (man i wish i ran better under dosbox)
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Flying in Morrowind is pretty sweet, it takes you a while to get to the point where you get the items to make it a viable form of transport though.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

player 2 wrote:
Do Morrowind or the Ultima Underworlds games have interesting ways to travel? What I have always liked about Mario 64 is that there are interesting ways of getting from place to place.

The Ultima Underworlds were the pre-Doom first-person spinoffs of the series, and since you spend the whole game trapped in an underground empire. As such, there's not the sheer variety of options of getting around as there are in Mario 64, but the game world itself is larger and getting lost leads to more surprising results. Most of the time your exploration options are limited to hoofing it into the dark unknown or jumping into a river and swimming downstream, but later on you'll run into things like teleport spells, moonstones (portable teleporters, as it were) and the like. The greatest thing about the game is that it makes exploration worthwhile. You spend five minutes swimming down a stream and find a new cave in the wall with some bones and a broken helmet at the entrance, you know there's going to be a) some item or treasure that makes the trip worth your while and b) some possibly powerful monster guarding it. Other times, you'll wander around down a new passageway you've discovered and find that it's a back door into one of the Underworld's enclaves of civilization, a nice shortcut. Unlike games frequently touted as being all about the exploration--for example, Metroid--the act of exploring here never feels forced and always leaves you with a sense of wonder as to what you'll find next. Not only that, but the game--without any specific cues whatsoever--always manages to let you know when you're in the middle of discovering something new as opposed to something you're 'supposed' to find.
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Harveyjames
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That sounds great, but I've always shied away from the Ultima games because I assume they're 'landlord-a-flagon-of-your-finest-ale' charmless and dorky.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

they're pretty dorky, but charmless? nay, lad, nay.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, I'll try that out. Which is the best of the Ultima Underworld series?
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 6:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
Cycle wrote:
Man, it was hilarious when that guy just fell out of the sky and died in front of you in Morrowind, and you find a bunch of long/high jumping spells on him.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was referring to. I mean, I spent a lot of tries to use those spells and fall into a pile of pillows (pillow thieving is good times).


Until I actually mastered that kind of crap (ie, until I could survive the fall), I used those boots of speed a whole lot. You know, the ones that blind you? That was pretty cool too. OH SHIT I HOPE I DON'T WALK INTO SOMETHING UNPLEASENT.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's part of the fun though.
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, that was what I was saying!
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Harveyjames wrote:
That sounds great, but I've always shied away from the Ultima games because I assume they're 'landlord-a-flagon-of-your-finest-ale' charmless and dorky.

The main Ultima series, yes. However, the two Underworlds are spin-offs that don't get too bogged down in all the Ren Faire trappings of the series proper. I'd liken the Underworld games to Morrowind in terms of ye olde phantasy gimmicks--immersive, but not farcical. As far as which is the best, they're both awesome games. I think to really appreciate them to the fullest, you should play Underworld I: The Stygian Abyss followed by Underworld II: Labrynth of Worlds (That might be wrong; it's labrynth of something though). It's one of those series where the gameplay doesn't change drastically between installments, but the changes that do occur in the second game are welcome improvements that you have to play the first to appreciate. If that makes sense.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 12:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

big elfen playground.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

the early ultimas are definitely dorky but they're also self-aware in a way that's almost irritating.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
big elfen playground.

That makes the game seem really small Sad
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cycle wrote:
Shapermc wrote:
Cycle wrote:
Man, it was hilarious when that guy just fell out of the sky and died in front of you in Morrowind, and you find a bunch of long/high jumping spells on him.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was referring to. I mean, I spent a lot of tries to use those spells and fall into a pile of pillows (pillow thieving is good times).


Until I actually mastered that kind of crap (ie, until I could survive the fall), I used those boots of speed a whole lot. You know, the ones that blind you? That was pretty cool too. OH SHIT I HOPE I DON'T WALK INTO SOMETHING UNPLEASENT.


Just play a Breton.

That way you can still see, mostly.

Grab that armor from the sanitarium to totally negate the blindness.

Too bad that the Atronach sign doesn't let you recharge from the boots.

Tres Munchkin! (I still love combining Atronach with Breton, then play a fighter.)

Morrowind has been my favorite playground so far.
Too bad it is so dead. (AI wise)

Perhaps with a few dozen mods running...
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I really thought Crackdown might satisfy the original poster's interest.
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

you can't look at things up close in crackdown, though. the buildings, though they look like buildings, may as well be boxes. you can't explore them. they're full of doors that lead into tiny, dark, bricked-up rooms. this is fine for the game, which is really more about the sky than the ground, but i'm not sure it's what 2UP is looking for.
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 8:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okami is enormous and a lot of fun to explore.

It's not much of a playground. You can't do anything to the world other than run around it. Among adventure/exploration games, though, it has an unparalleled sense of altitude.
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