The Gamer's Quarter

[Ketch]

It seems to me that it is a game which is broad in the range of things it provides the player, but it doesn't get very deep in terms of strategy. The choices you make don't stack up on top of each other. Instead, they go alongside each other.

P.s before I get flamed, I am not saying that it isn't a "deep" game as it is certainly deeper than quite a lot of games in the way it allows you to approach missions with different tactics. But this is more a casE of tactics rather than deeper strategy.

DISCUSS

[Legal Step]

My main complaint was that they have to piecemeal give you every area, and there are no choices and consequences. It would be nice to stab one guy in the back in order to get back at the other, or just try to turn every block of every city into your gangs territory.

The variety is nice, but the depth is severely lacking.
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[OtakupunkX]

I stopped playing the game for the story after the gang turf war stuff ended. I agree with Legal Step about how you should be able to turn every city block into your gang's territory.

I think there's some depth in there (we even had a similar discussion about this in a thread around the beginning of the year, if I remember correctly), you just have to kind of make it yourself. GTA gives you this big open world, and, like the real world, reality is what you make it.

[kirkjerk]

Sort of like how "quanity is its own quality" I think the bredth of San Andreas becomes a kind of depth.

Some missions are constrained, but with a lot of them you get to select your general kind of arsenal, plus you can decide if your using cheat codes or eschewing them, and keeping your character as is, or bulking up his weapon skills, or otherwise using in game methods of increasing ability (there are a few missions where playing the fireman minigame enough to become fireproof yourself is a HUUUUUUGE help)

[Wilkes]

[Redeye]

Breadth vs. depth?

Well, OP sort of stated the obvious.

More change points would have been nice, including the possibility of guessing Smoke's game early on.

The way he ate chicken while others were in the car doing drive-by shooting.

His purchase of a house outside grove territory.

I would have just capped his ass then and there, but due to Designer Cheating it is not an option.

In the event smoke was "innocent", I would have just made him a martyr and started a gang war over his corpse.


You get to dress CJ, buff him up, improve his driving and gun skills, etc.
But you can't make him talk. (Yes he talks, but that's different.)

Putting in a politics subgame (perhaps with oratory/mob incitement minigames- possibly based on the dance minigame) would have been amazingly cool, but I don't know how feasible that would be.
Something like that would probably be outside the scope of a driving/shooter but ohhh...
how delicious.

How would one implement a collect the evidence/interpret the evidence system that doesn't just give away the answers?
Like if I want to find a traitor, just decide to shadow/stake out a person or place.
Unscripted- this would require a living world with dynamic scheduling.

Too complicated?
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Ketch]

[Harveyjames]

Also, why no kids in San Andreas. Come on Rockstar, just one school. Is that too much to ask?

[Redeye]

[dhex]

[Ketch]

[Redeye]

[dhex]

the great thing about fanatics is you don't have to pay them to be anything - they're very special snowflakes to begin with.

jack is what he is, and that is nuts. he's only noticed in these circles because of his focus on columbine and his ongoing obsession with the shareware levels of doom. not to toot my own horn (ta ta) but i've been a fan of jack thompson for quite some time now, back before he was cool. since 2 live crew, man. which is also the last time he was actually effective; he did get florida's lower courts to proceed with an obscenity case against the group. (that was later dropped)

oh jack where have you gone now? games? fucking games? can't even win a wrongful death suit. sure, he's bombastic - or used to be before he got boring - but people pay him far too much attention. he's not going to win a suit against a game maker for the violent behavior of anyone, at least not in america. he's just there to provide frission and help game journalists feel like they're writing about something important. so in that sense he's actually a great, great man. why does a site like gamepolitics even exist beyond jack thompson and a few other types, so plenty of teeth gnashing can be had over the dangers of requiring id to buy games or whatever horrible pit of inconsequentiality we're going to be tossed into.

game manufacturers and distributors will start paying bribes to politicians like any other corporation, or suffer the wrath of the legions of decency. not that it really has that much of a push - the only mention i've seen lately was in a hillary spot in ny state, and it wasn't a focus point. i think ultimately, people don't really care that much about rockstar beyond the initial shock of hooker murdering and the like. i don't even see how much wrath they could possibly spare beyond FTC investigations (those can get dicey).
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[dessgeega]

wait, so jack thompson's actually crazy? i thought he was just an opportunist.
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[dhex]

yes, he's actually crazy.

the whole thing with janet reno was comedy gold of sorts, until you notice just how relentless his craziness is. (of course, the world would have been a slightly better place had he succeeded; or at the very least, some odd religious folk out in waco, texas, might still be alive).

but accusing reno (back in the 1980s) of being in the pocket of the mafia and addicted to painkillers is the sort of stuff that can only consistently emerge from the deranged. the story being, iirc, the mafia was hooking her up with drugs and hookers; mr. thompson's long-running nemesis, the florida bar association, was of course involved in some way in the coverup.

circles within circles, jack. circles within circles.

now, of course, he has deflated into calling games murder simulators (which in one broad sense they are) and the lack of conspiratorial meanderings is one of only dozens of reasons to mourn this annoying but less crazy version of jack thompson.
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[Scratchmonkey]

Yeah, he's beautifully insane. He's also the best anti-games crusader that the game industry could have hoped for, since he's so wildly over-the-top that nobody reasonable will take him seriously, yet he has enough of a media footprint to essentially produce free "edgy" PR.

And as for San Andreas, I really want a return to the 2D overall mechanics in the sense that you should be able to do things like align yourself with the gang of your choice, start your own gang. off important "story" characters if you want to, etc. There's too many instances in these games where you can see the double-cross or whatever major plot point coming, only you can't do anything because you're locked into the roller-coaster ride of the plot, which I think ties into the constrained missions: you're not allowed to do certain things that you should be able to do because it would upset the carefully-balanced design.

Which seems to me to forget the roots of the series and one of the major selling points of the gameplay, that being that the player has the freedom to be as clever or as stupid as they want to be. Or: more sandbox, dammit.

[dessgeega]

i find that kind of sad.
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[dhex]

well, we all need hobbies. some folks' hobbies include being nuts.
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[OtakupunkX]

I used the whole Jack Thompson vs Janet Reno thing as an excuse to print the word "lesbian" in the school newspaper. That same issue also had a Propaganda section some kid put in at the last minute.

[DaleNixon]

So is the message here "more sand, less box"?

[OtakupunkX]

But not more sand then the box can hold. Thus, the whole thing becomes a careful balancing act.

[dark steve]

[OtakupunkX]

[Nana Komatsu]

This is a high school newspaper or a college one?

[OtakupunkX]

High school.

Which reminds me - at 17, I think I'm the youngest one here on the board.

[Lackey]

Lesbian is considered a bad word?
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dessgeega]

lesbians are scary creatures who lurk under your bed and seduce your girlfriend!

(and go bump in the night!)
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[Harveyjames]

I was talking to this girl at my old job and she was telling me about a short film she made called 'two girls kissing' which got into a bunch of gay film festivals. I said something 'my friend Petra made a lesbian film, it got into one of those film festivals too' and she sort of rolled her eyes. From this I got the impression that gay women don't like the word 'lesbian'.

But thinking about it it's more to do with 'my friend made a lesbian film too!' being a retarded response. It's like that guy in James Bond who says 'you have a brother? I have a brother!' but coupled with the terminology 'a lesbian film' to describe, you know, a film with lesbians in it.

me = doofus : (

[dessgeega]

the word "lesbian" isn't as bad as the phrase "gay woman".
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[Harveyjames]

See how I always find some way of putting my foot in it?

I could have said gays but it wouldn't have been specific enough to describe what I was talking about which is non-male gays who have vaginas. 'Gay women' is a pretty apt description of what I was talking about. Jeez. I'll just say dykes in future how does that sound.

I think a lot of my lesbian friends would do well to stop being so hypersensitive when it comes to language.

[helicopterp]

[Dracko]

It's Halloween, not your Last Days!

P.S. All of my gay friends call each other faggots and have no qualms insulting you as such even if you're straight. Because my gay friends are awesome.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dhex]

zog bless word filters.

illuminati illuminati illuminati illuminati whooo!

[insert joke about park slope here]
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[Dracko]

They are pretty awesome.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

[Mr. Mechanical]

It'd be even funnier if we filtered 'awesome' to show up as 'gay'.

example:

[Dracko]

Philosophies are born this way.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[OtakupunkX]

Did emo ever get filtered to Fugazi?

Edited - I'm guessing it didn't. Someone should fix this.

[Harveyjames]

You should have it filter to one the the Earthbound favorite things, like Rockin'.