The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Gaming Turn-Ons
Rex Dart
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Games.
Some of us like them. But why?
Sure, the big stuff has all be covered: fun gameplay, engrossing atmosphere, appealing aesthetic, yada yada yada. Let's talk about the little stuff! As Hank Scorpio once said, "It's the little things that make up life."
Hence, this is a topic for the little stuff: gaming turn-ons, for want of a better term. To help keep the scope of this topic with-in reason, allow me to define what a gaming turn-on is:
- It's not something that would appear in a press release or on the back of a case (at least not today). If publishers are trying to use it to sell games, it's too big for this topic.
- It's something that appears across multiple series. "Hiding in a cardboard box" may be very enjoyable, but there's only one game series it occurs in, so I don't count it.
- It's not a genre.
Does that make sense? Then allow me to begin with one of my own.
Mashing a button repeatedly in order to do more damage/hits
Button mashing is almost universally reviled as the antithesis of what a good action game should be. But there is something incredibly satisfying about seeing my character repeatedly punch/headbutt/pummel/spank an opponent with each hit corresponding to a button press. Yes, these moves eventually hurt my thumb, but I don't care. God Hand and Yakuza both have some excellent examples of these moves. Also, some fighting game characters have supers like this. (For example, Yamazaki's Guillotine move from KOF, or [slightly less cool] Ken's Shinryuken.)
Please share yours!
Some of us like them. But why?
Sure, the big stuff has all be covered: fun gameplay, engrossing atmosphere, appealing aesthetic, yada yada yada. Let's talk about the little stuff! As Hank Scorpio once said, "It's the little things that make up life."
Hence, this is a topic for the little stuff: gaming turn-ons, for want of a better term. To help keep the scope of this topic with-in reason, allow me to define what a gaming turn-on is:
- It's not something that would appear in a press release or on the back of a case (at least not today). If publishers are trying to use it to sell games, it's too big for this topic.
- It's something that appears across multiple series. "Hiding in a cardboard box" may be very enjoyable, but there's only one game series it occurs in, so I don't count it.
- It's not a genre.
Does that make sense? Then allow me to begin with one of my own.
Mashing a button repeatedly in order to do more damage/hits
Button mashing is almost universally reviled as the antithesis of what a good action game should be. But there is something incredibly satisfying about seeing my character repeatedly punch/headbutt/pummel/spank an opponent with each hit corresponding to a button press. Yes, these moves eventually hurt my thumb, but I don't care. God Hand and Yakuza both have some excellent examples of these moves. Also, some fighting game characters have supers like this. (For example, Yamazaki's Guillotine move from KOF, or [slightly less cool] Ken's Shinryuken.)
Please share yours!
Rex Dart on
0
Posts
Games where people who get shot flitch and stuff really inproves the combat for me.
I meam King's Bounty has a little tick box which allows you to skip ALL the intro movies and get right to the menu. Indie adventure game Overclocked literally loads you right into your last savegame. More devs need to take a not of things like that. Especially the intro movie thing, every game has like 6 or 7 of them loaded at the front now, it's ridiculous even when you are allowed to press a button to skip each one individually. I've seen the logo for your 3rd party middleware solution ONCE, that is enough.
Lots of little things like that. Needless repetition and grinding that doesn't add to the gameplay "fun" that you're supposed to be having. Games that force you to wander great distances between points of main gameplay or story points (unless exploration is part of the point of the game itself, no, this isn't fun, even if you put a tonne of grinding in there). Fast travel is much preferred in those situations.
Unskippable cutscenes goes without saying. As do in-game loading corridors and elevators that take a set amount of time even though the game itself will have loaded up ages ago (Mass Effect's elevators. Gears of War's "walky-talky" bits) Batman Arkham Asylum only kept you in the area as long as it took to load, then the door opened.
In general, gaming takes long enough as it is. If the activity you're putting in isn't a fun part of the game (or story depending on genre) and just pads length between the fun bits, then you really ought to ask yourself why it's there. Mass Effect 2 was really good in this regard, it did so much to keep things flowing, about the only thing that slowed it down for me was the mineral hunting (that minigame really could have stood to have been shorter in general).
It's trite, but I've come to realise over the years that a lot of my favourite games are also ones that you could effectively speedrun. Not always the case, but I understand why, it's because they generally have minimal crap between the gameplay bits. So I basically like games that keep the flow going and don't try to disrupt it with tedium. You can take things down a notch, vary things (gameplay can't exist on a "high" note of activity at all times, that just wears the player out. Things need to ebb and flow), but if you can trim the fat, that's probably most of what makes a good game right there.
You know, the style that Resident Evil sort of brought into focus when it was the original series on the Playstation? I love tank controls because they take a certain finesse to master. People surely remember the Hunk (and Tofu) bonus games lobbed in with Resident Evil 2, and I gotta say your ability to master the tank controls is probably more important than your ability to conserve ammo. Ivy's could be downed with an entire handgun clip, but damn, swerving between six zombies and not a single one touching you? That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Yeah despite all the hate tank controls get, I don't mind them. They're just a different control scheme that works in a different context. I mean RE2 and RE4 are my two favourite games in the series, but I'm still not sure which I prefer. They're two completely different styles of game so I can't really compare them.
On the note of controls, games that have a sense of weight and heft to the proceedings. Gears did that quite well I felt, as did Dead Space. Well, apart from the bouncy hyper-physics some objects had anyway. You felt as if the character was interacting with their environment and surroundings.
When I slam my foot or sword into someone's head, I want to KNOW I've hurt them. And if the sound is right, then I'm quite happy. If I punch a guy in the face, I like hearing a good crunching noise as it lands.
Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage Split-Leg Punch attack was an EXCELLENT example of doing it right.
Like how easy it is to damage yourself (or create a chain of unintended consequences) in Worms. Or how easy it is to knock your buddy into the pit in New Super Mario Bros. Or even playing Demoman and having a pipebomb roll back into you at a funny angle.
Having your intent turn back on you and create an unexpected result is really one of the coolest things that interactive arts can do.
Always a good feature. Its the developers saying "Thank you for playing our game, here go make that difficulty you just beat a playground. Enjoy." And I do.
Tying this back into the RE love. Having a choice of different characters with slight benefits/weaknesses without being tremendously different.
The first time I was being suppressed in ArmA2 I was shitting my pants from the sound of bullets cracking inches overhead while mortars are landing all around.
Oh man, playing Black and White II. I was trying to be peaceful, but the Japanese kept stationing troops just outside my city gates. "I'll show them!"
Tried to trow a boulder over the wall and onto the Japanese...yeah, tore down my own gate.. and the Japanese swarmed the city...
My bad
Prettty sprites/2D games (the DS is my favorite current gaming system for this very reason).
Enslaving giant, ferocious beasts to do your bidding (Pokemon etc.).
I second this. It should be standard that after you've gone through all the intros once, the game should automatically load your last game and auto-pause. I'd love to be able to load my disc, go take a piss, grab a snack, and have my game ready to play when I got back.
I would buy Dungeon Keeper 3 so hard that the money would form into a fist and punch Peter Molyneux in the face.
Another thing I like is a very polished presentation. Take for example Tetris Attack on the SNES. I love how there are tons of little visual effects happening as you move blocks or blow them up, to have little fanfares play when you do combos, to have the pitch of the block breaking sound increase with each new explosion in a long combo, the enemies reaction on-screen, etc. I also like when they do that in menus. Compare TMNT Smash-Up to the new Prince of Persia game. Both games are made by Ubisoft, but doesn't PoP feel more like good work from the devs as soon as you start the game? The menu navigation is sublime and inspired. Smash-Up's menus look like the most basic thing you could shit from Photoshop.
Hockey Johnson is right, too. I love when games have enough freedom in their gameplay and mechanics to allow unexpected actions/events/twists, or effects that weren't predictable but happened because of a physics engine. In Wii Sports Resorts, as we were playing Disc Golf, I once threw the disc with way too much spin to the right rather than forward to the green, so the disc hit a tree but since it was still completely horizontal, it bounced a made a second arc, making it glide towards the green and onto it. It was glorious.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
If there was a mod for civ 4 that made it just generate new world tiles so there was always more world to explore and the map was essentially infinite in size I would play the hell out of it.
I would love a Red Faction/GTA mash-up so hard. I grow tired of only being able to destroy cities on other planets or in other countries.
Being able to turn off in-game achievement tracker notifications.
There is nothing that puts me in the mood for a game more than the music accompanying the scene.
Indeed. This kills the immersion for me. You're in the last temple of some game, about to go shoot the head off that bastard who betrayed you 4 chapters ago or whatever, and he sends his elite squad to kill you. You promptly run behind cover as dramatic music throws you in the hardest fight of the game yet. You get off from cover, kill one of the guards who was getting dangerously close to you, POOT *ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED - KILLED 200 BADDIES IN NORMAL MODE*.......... what?
I was trying to think of something more personal when I hopped over to the Halo: Reach thread and then it hit me - whenever there is discussion about an upcoming game with co-op I always wish (but rarely get) to see some facts or speculation on what characters or player-models players two through four (or sixteen, ghost recon!) will play as.
The absolute worst is when you simply play as a clone of the main character. Palatte swaps are the next step up. After this in no particular order are unique characters - whether they be integrated into the storyline or not - and customized avatars.
Halo 2 for instance had the second player represented by a second identical master chief. This particular problem is augmented in games with more than two players, as I really like knowing who I'm looking at at a glance.
Halo 3 had the second player play as the arbiter and even changed cutscenes and dialogue from the single player experience to explain his prescence when in the single player game he and the chief may have split up. In addition to this the third and fourth player played as a combat and assault style elite who were not present in the cutscenes but had unique appearances.
There's been speculation that Halo: Reach will have 6 player co-op due to the number of characters in Noble squad, however there is increased armour customization and talk of the player's character spanning single player, co-op and multiplayer. As well as this I recall reading about a segment where the player was following the character Jun along a cliff - no mention of the other squad members. Due to these factors I'm beginning to think that additional players may play as their own customized spartans (and probably not be recognised by story elements). However I haven't seen any mention of this as obviously most people don't spend as much time thinking about co-op player models as I do.
One competitive FPS that did something like this was the half-life mod 'Existence' - it was an 18 player game with 9 unique characters per team and there could only be one of each, Left 4 Dead style. I really liked that feature even when I got stuck with one of my less preferred characters. I think it has to do with being able to read who an enemy as well as a teammate is at a glance even in a game where you don't see enemy names.
So yes I guess I do have a strange little gaming turn on.
Like, take for example God-Hand, Ikaruga, Viewtiful Joe and the Megaman Zero Games, which you could say they have above average difficulty; the first time you try the game, there is a high chance it kicks your ass.
And still, a couple of play sessions or playthroughs, and you are able to play/juggle/destroy everything in your way once the game "clicks" on you, you understand the gameplay now, or you figured out the controls, I don't know, but it's really nice to play a game which kicked your ass at the beginning and say "It really not that bad, hey, I could even play on a HARDER difficulty."
Yes. All of this.
I was really disappointed with the way ODST handled the co-op, especially after Halo 3 had done right with including unique characters (though I would've loved if they had been, at the very least, introduced). The way that everybody was the same ODST rookie while dropping in was poop. If the character is just going to be a mute cipher, at least give each player their own.
A good boss fight turns me on and gives me a sense of satisfaction after defeating them.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Really.
And simple, but clean 2D graphics and sprites.
I appreciate the advancement of graphics, I love playing Ghostbusters and having the character models actually look right, but I like using my imagination to "finish" the graphics.
Unless its First person.
I've got a bad case of lovin' you.
It's quite easy to do, really. Even Crysis, with its hilariously bad writing, manages to avoid it.
Being able to raise and lower your landing gear in any game featuring an aircraft of some sort.
Also, "multiple approaches" in gameplay design. Not necessarily open-world (actually, that tends to disappoint me), but affording multiple ways for a mission to be accomplished. The Hitman games are a good example of this.
I imagine Russians and Eastern Europe has less tolerance for that than the "West" does these days.
They are open-world, but this made me think of the most memorable missing in GTA IV for me. It's a simple run-of-the-mill "kill this dude" mission, and they lead you to the building he's in and tell you to storm it taking out his thugs along the way, but if you've been exploring the city you realize that you can climb up a nearby crane and get off a clean sniper shot ending the mission successfully, cleanly, and with (presumably) all the thugs thinking "Oh holy shit, who is after us, and how did they get the boss!?"
I'm kinda finicky about NG+ in games. It's good, but how good it is varies. Just about all the Metroidvania games are kinda "feh" with their NG+ modes because they've all generally been easy (Order of Ecclesia is exception to this, because of how the difficulty scaled). Games that offer the NG+ while also offering a harder difficulty are pretty great.
As for other turn-ons / turn-offs, I'm hyper-sensitive to music in games. I know a lot of people mute the music or audio completely when they can, and that's fine by me, but in the short period I did that years ago I exhausted the attraction of all the music I owned at the time. I got sick of The Postal Service and such just because all of that stuff was eventually looping as I played WoW or whatever. So now I just stick with the music in games. I hate when soundtracks are limited and you hear certain songs over and over again for a lengthy period of time. This actually gets less frustrating as a point the further back in console tech you go. If I'm listening to the beeps and boops of Double Dragon over and over, it's fine by me because it's fuckin' beeps and boops and takes me back.
Floaty controls piss me off. See: Super Mario Bros. (the first one / All-Stars)
Maybe. Most of the guys (in fact, probably about 80%) I play Arma 2 with are Russian (or rather, speak Russian). The end result is pretty hilarious much of the time, especially when people suggest playing the pre-made missions. "Hey guys, let's go kill some Ruskie bastards!" followed by canned laughter.
Mostly, I like games not to rely on the "These people are evilly evillly evilllll!" crutch. It's the same reason I don't, personally, watch 24.
The GTA games, for their problems, are actually pretty good examples of this, since there's almost always two ways to do kill someone: get out on foot and shoot them (usually boring) or drive over them (more eventful).
It was less true for the most recent game, but Hitman 2 and 3 literally had three or four ways to complete each mission, if not more, from the unfairly easy to the ridiculously over-the-top and roundabout.
Also, (I apologize for using images when jailed, dear god, you have to click a couple times)
Yeah, I'm with you on the overdone evil bit. What I was suggesting is that they are just as equally, if not more so, tired of their own propaganda from the same period. I mean, the Soviet Union had some pretty famous propaganda of their own, and I imagine their Cold War stuff was just as fear mongering as ours was. That's the whole purpose of that stuff anyway, and it always seems to follow the same course; "See these scary fuckers? Are you shitting your pants? Now watch this. Wasn't their behavior atrocious? Don't you hate them? Now KILL THEM ALL, we must protect our way of life!" I suggest that you would laugh just as hard if the Russians you play with said something like, "Lets kill some Yankee Capitalist Pig-Dogs."
Which is another reason I prefer the grognard end of the spectrum when it comes to real world combat in games. The vast majority of them avoid moral distinctions between forces, and instead focus on the battlefield, equipment, training, morale, logistics etc. Don't force feed me shallow moralizations.