The Gamer's Quarter

[dhex]

"dumbed down"

it's almost never actually used to describe making something more stupid, but rather "simplified" coupled with "people who like this game are dumb. "stripped of depth" would be far more accurate and less ad hominem-y. which i know misses the point, but still.

there was another one but i forgot.
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[Shapermc]

"[AAA Game Title] Killer"

It's not actually describing anything. This is just PR Speak. Quit it!
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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!"

[ryan]

Descent! The DOOM killer!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Nana Komatsu]

"The next level"
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[extrabastardformula]

Thrill ride!

[dessgeega]

the word "insane".

i'm looking at you, ign.
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[Nana Komatsu]

Is it too soon to say "HD era"?
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

[SuperWes]

[captaincabinets]

for me, "eye candy". It has a vague definition, sure, but even with context I can never tell whether it's complimentary or a put down.

Plus it goes straight to my eye-thighs.
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Why am I being boiled into a bright red lobster by this little kid?

[extrabastardformula]

[Shapermc]

Well, since the PS3 has officially been launched in every country, the next-gen is the current gen.

The next-gen is dead, long live the next-gen!
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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!"

[Tablesaw]

"Fanboy" only useful in ad-hominem/straw-man situations.
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It's the saw of the table!

[Swimmy]

"Fun."

Not to be pretentious, it doesn't need banned entirely. It's just that if you can't explain what makes a game fun to you, you don't need to be writing about videogames.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[extrabastardformula]

Comparison to rare game the journalist and most readers have never played.

"It's good but it's no Radiant Silvergun" frx

[Pijaibros]

"Blast processing"

this phrase started many fights in the schoolyard when none of us little brats didn't even know what it really was in the first place.

We just knew the Genesis had it and the SNES didn't.

[dessgeega]

[Mister Toups]

[helicopterp]

I think that both phrases "with flying colors" (ubiquitous) and "succeeds flying-colorfully" (Tim Rogers, Gears of War review) should go into retirement or hibernation.

I read a lot on Action Button this morning. I agree with a lot of the content, but find most of the writing unbearable. Branching out away from the miserably written, vague, ejaculatory IGN style is great and all, but was pompous tedium steeped in a cynical view of all pop culture really the way to do it?
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

yeah. i actually make a point of avoiding using the word "fun" to describe games (regardless of whether i actually consider them to be fun or not) because it's so ambiguous and doesn't really tell anything about the game.
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[aerisdead]

fun games are fun.
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aerisdead

[TOLLMASTER]

"Too hard/too easy" --This is a totally useless description 99% of the time. I don't think it's too much to ask for game reviewers and megaton sites to post videos of them playing on the game's highest difficulty before declaring it too hard or too easy--we need something to compare their statement with. If they think God Hand is too hard, then there should be a video of them playing the game by trying to mash the square button and flailing about wildly.

"Replay value" --I'm not sure what this means, anymore: that the game would be fun if you played it again, or there is extra content available for playing the game again, or there is extra content available "post-game" after the credits roll, or the game's events are somewhat randomly generated and thus each game is different, or...what, you know? Saying a game has a lot of replay value doesn't tell you much. The replay value term meaning of Nethack is different from the replay value term meaning of Chrono Trigger is different from the replay value term meaning of Dragon Quarter is different from the replay value term meaning of Master of Orion 2 is different from the replay value term meaning of Gungrave: Overdose.

[dhex]

fun bun can't be undone.

how about "mindblowing" ?

all you're basically saying is "holy shit i smoke a lot of weed and hang out in my underwear." (because you see the same terms in reviews of stoner rock albums).

see also: "bong-rattling bass"
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[Shapermc]

[dhex]

yeah, i see that.

on the other hand--just kidding.

it's difficult because some games are just plain fun (katamari) while others are enjoyable for more masochistic reasons (tile crawl).
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[SuperWes]

[Shapermc]

[SuperWes]

[Swimmy]

[Tablesaw]

[helicopterp]

[dhex]

[Shapermc]

[Tablesaw]

[SuperWes]

[dhex]

[Tablesaw]

[Shapermc]

I thought killer7 was very fun ;_;
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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!"

[dhex]

[SuperWes]

[dessgeega]

if this is still open, i'd like to nominate "old school" and "hardcore".
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[Crazy Bacon Lips]

Seconded, and nominating "gameplay," and "_____ on steroids."

[SuperWes]

[dhex]

[Crazy Bacon Lips]

[dhex]

maybe gameplay means = the sum total of my physical interactions with the game?

or just "i had a really cool time, yo."
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[Scratchmonkey]

Funnily enough, I often use "gameplay" in the context of my work, which is, uh, working on games.

For sports games, the context becomes a bit easier to deal with -- "gameplay" here means when you're actually playing a simulated game of basketball/hockey/football/etc., as opposed to various options, features, modes, etc. This separation makes sense for us for two reasons:

1. It takes different skills to test gameplay vs. the rest of the game. Front-end and standards testing involves a great deal of attention to detail and persistence, whereas gameplay testing requires the tester to have a high level of knowledge about the sport being simulated and an ability to leverage this knowledge through our bug database in order to write effective, efficient bugs.
2. The programmers who deal with what happens "in-game" are typically different than the programmers who handle creating menus, writing network code, putting the music in the game, etc. So it makes sense to categorize our bugs and mailing lists along these lines.

I can see the issue in the context of playing games as opposed to developing them, mainly because the stuff that isn't "in-game" isn't nearly as important to the people playing the game as it is to the people who are making it.

[SuperWes]

[Scratchmonkey]

I like to use the phrase "the emergent narrative of the gameplay"; that's mainly because it contains three words that make people's heads explode in semantic rage. It would be better put just saying that the real story of a game is the series of actions during a single game session; that just isn't as provacative though.

[dessgeega]

how did we miss "revolutionary"?
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