Just saying, they seem to enjoy a lot of single player games that focus on grinding until you drop. At least in WoW there is back and forth with other people.
To be honest, I find pretty much most Western MMO's are a case of grinding. Singleplayer may be different, but honestly, I can't say I've seen as many Western singleplayer RPG's as Japanese RPG's to begin with.
Aren't there not-ugly examples of American robot desgin? I'm no huge anime fan, but I'd hate to think that Battletech's walking shoeboxes are representative of American giant robot design.
Not that I can think of any other examples.
I quite like them, the design looks much more industrial.
Aren't there not-ugly examples of American robot desgin? I'm no huge anime fan, but I'd hate to think that Battletech's walking shoeboxes are representative of American giant robot design.
Not that I can think of any other examples.
I can but they all openly admit to taking their initial inspiration from anime anyway which makes them a little useless for the purpose of this discussion.
Just saying, they seem to enjoy a lot of single player games that focus on grinding until you drop. At least in WoW there is back and forth with other people.
To be honest, I find pretty much most Western MMO's are a case of grinding. Singleplayer may be different, but honestly, I can't say I've seen as many Western singleplayer RPG's as Japanese RPG's to begin with.
But when you do get Western RPGs, you get things like Planescape: Torment and Knights of the Old Republic, which are amazing.
Aren't there not-ugly examples of American robot desgin? I'm no huge anime fan, but I'd hate to think that Battletech's walking shoeboxes are representative of American giant robot design.
Not that I can think of any other examples.
? The Mechwarrior mechs are awesome.
The raven is my personal favorite.
Bah. I've hated them ever since I saw the first not-jacked-from-Macross designs.
To be fair, recent years have seen better art representing them. Still, the whole concept is stupid to me. 100-ton bipeds as a viable military machine?
Not to totally derail. Are there any other examples of North American giant robots/mechs?
HERE is an interesting NPR Article/Program that talks about how the atomic bomb changed Japanese Culture. I think dropping "Fat Man & Little Boy" had more of an impact than we think...
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
HERE is an interesting NPR Article/Program that talks about how the atomic bomb changed Japanese Culture. I think dropping "Fat Man & Little Boy" had more of an impact than we think...
We ever thought nuking a country twice had a small impact? Who thought that?
First off, blah blah blah, Sonic games suck. Oh right, they still sell like hotcakes. The franchise must clearly be doomed.
Second, you're comparing Japanese PC gaming to American console gaming. Not exactly apples to oranges, but there are enough sweeping generalizations to be made about the American console vs American PC markets that jumping cross-culture is only going to exacerbate it.
Third, your stereotyping is skin deep at best. The Japanese tradition for fighters and inanely complex shmups absolutely dwarfs any twitch gaming the US can offer. The US has really only beaten them out in FPSes and (only very recently) action platformers. They just have a far broader range of games, so a variety of things float to the top rather than being saturated by the same thing over and over again.
Fourth, "dating sims are popular" is disingenuous at best. Yes, there are a shitload and all combined they are rather popular. Here's the thing... they're very cheap to make and their production time is very short. The US's most profitable video game subset is the same thing... cheap and quick... only instead of visual novels... we have Flash games.
The only v.novels that are really consistently popular anyway are the ones either by a select few companies (Key and Type-Moon for example) or the ultra-hybrids, which resemble something closer to Riviera than your "lol, you choose to take her to the beach and then you sex her," games which people seem to think comprise 99% of Japanese visual novels. Games like the Project GA series, or the Kogado SRPGs, or the Rance games wipe the floor with the overwhelming majority of the visual novels.
Where the popularity of the extensive and in depth story telling and characterization comes from is debatable at best. Personally, I think it's derived mostly from the very visually rich literary tradition which naturally flows into stuff like manga, or the pretty pictures with text of the visual novels and hybrids. Only relatively recently have the 'light novels' become more popular in Japanese culture, but they're still heavily illustrated compared to western stuff. The big difference though is that the writing for the V.Novels and hybrids tends to be abso-fucking-lutely amazing compared to almost anything the US has crapped out in the last decade. These are not the piddly little console RPGs, but stuff like Tsukihime, or Ever17, or ONE, that are riveting, complex, and have themes above and beyond "there's a monster trying to destroy the world, are you a bad enough dude to save it?"
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
Just saying, they seem to enjoy a lot of single player games that focus on grinding until you drop. At least in WoW there is back and forth with other people.
To be honest, I find pretty much most Western MMO's are a case of grinding. Singleplayer may be different, but honestly, I can't say I've seen as many Western singleplayer RPG's as Japanese RPG's to begin with.
But when you do get Western RPGs, you get things like Planescape: Torment and Knights of the Old Republic, which are amazing.
So amazing.
And no grinding.
Would you like me to list some of the non amazing ones, which are in far greater supply? :P
Although TBCH I guess I do agree that Japanese RPG's tend to have a combat mechanic that's more focussed around grinding, but realistically in both the games you mentioned (and in a lot of others), grinding is easily an option as well. I know I certainly did some grinding in KotoR. I also know that on my first playthrough of FFVII I didn't do any grinding at all.
Plus, western action RPG's like Diablo or Titan Quest are pretty much all about grinding.
I think it's disingenuous to say that Western RPG's don't have grinding in them. The number of man-hours you could put into grinding your character forward in Diablo II is obscene, and it's probably one of the most successful Western RPG's ever.
At least one factor in games is that when dealing with all things "future", America (maybe Western Civilization?) tends to imagine this dark and industrial type place where things aren't very happy. It's a trend that I'd imagine started with Star Wars (watched a huge documentary on the success of Star Wars and one of the biggest draws about it was the "dirty" universe that was more believable).
Japanese future seems to deal with a highly computerized society and things have a lot more "flare" so to speak in design. Above all, the future seems to be much much cleaner than the American versions.
I'm sure there's some exceptions to this though, just trying to throw an idea out there :P
Minimalism probably never caught on over there either since a lot of their art and promotional based stuff is often VERY "busy". I've seen some simple stuff too but its more the exception than the rule.
First off, blah blah blah, Sonic games suck. Oh right, they still sell like hotcakes. The franchise must clearly be doomed.
Sonic the Hedgehog for the PS3 and 360 did not sell like hotcakes.
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
edited September 2007
One thing I've noticed is (at face value) the Japanese don't seem to enjoy a lot of evolution in their RPGs. Blue Dragon, while a solid game, is apparently exactly the same random JRPG #2313 except prettier.
Aren't there not-ugly examples of American robot desgin? I'm no huge anime fan, but I'd hate to think that Battletech's walking shoeboxes are representative of American giant robot design.
Not that I can think of any other examples.
I quite like them, the design looks much more realistic
stuff like Tsukihime, or Ever17, or ONE, that are riveting, complex, and have themes above and beyond "there's a monster trying to destroy the world, are you a bad enough dude to save it?"
Tsukihime is indeed great.
The entirely gratuitous and pointless hentai aside.
HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF JAPANESE PLOTS ANDSTORIES NEGITIVALY
THE END OF NEO GENESIS EVANGLLION HAD ME IN TEARS
AND KAGOME OF THE FAMOUS "INUYASHA" SERIES OF ANIME(HMM, GOOD STORYTELLING THERE WHAT'S THIS IT WAS ALSO MADE INTO A GAME) FEELS LIKE A REAL PERSON I COULD TALK TO
IF KAGOME WANTED ME TO SHOOT MYSELF WITH A BULLET I WOULD DO IT
Aren't there not-ugly examples of American robot desgin? I'm no huge anime fan, but I'd hate to think that Battletech's walking shoeboxes are representative of American giant robot design.
Not that I can think of any other examples.
? The Mechwarrior mechs are awesome.
The raven is my personal favorite.
Bah. I've hated them ever since I saw the first not-jacked-from-Macross designs.
To be fair, recent years have seen better art representing them. Still, the whole concept is stupid to me. 100-ton bipeds as a viable military machine?
Not to totally derail. Are there any other examples of North American giant robots/mechs?
Heavy Gear is, I believe, Canadian if that counts but that's really heavily inspired by Armored Trooper VOTOMS. Not to the point of stealing mech designs though.
One thing I've noticed is (at face value) the Japanese don't seem to enjoy a lot of evolution in their RPGs. Blue Dragon, while a solid game, is apparently exactly the same random JRPG #2313 except prettier.
one retro style jrpg doesnt make this anything like true. i mean just look at the final fantasy series, or the huge amount of other jrpgs that come out all the time with off the wall play mechanics.
what youre saying is like saying "this beatles cover band i saw at the bar last night shows that no one in america likes evolution in their music!"
Aren't there not-ugly examples of American robot desgin? I'm no huge anime fan, but I'd hate to think that Battletech's walking shoeboxes are representative of American giant robot design.
Not that I can think of any other examples.
I quite like them, the design looks much more realistic
Fixed.
If you ignore physics, yes. Battletech plays at being "real military looking" while being just as over-the-top as something like Gundam.
It would be stupid to use either in any sort of military setting, except that anime mechs tend to have super-science or "magical" interfaces with drivers, and thus explain away the realities of how retarded a giant bipedal tank is. Battletech looks ugly in pretending to be more hard sci-fi, but still doesn't make any damn sense. I guess that's the problem I've had with it.
Give me almost-logical power armor or magical super-mechs that jump and karate chop, or even giant city-sized walking temples made by insane tech-priests. But a 100-ton modern tank with legs? Whatever.
edit: Yeah, Heavy Gear is kind of a hybrid of anime design with Western engineering (all based on VOTOMS). They're also closer to power armor than anything else. Gears wouldn't look like that without anime influence, so I wouldn't say they're North American design.
I see a lot of Japanese gamers have some bizarre love for heavy duty grinding in games.
What the hell is WoW then?
Umm, a very non-grindy MMO?
Seriously, when people call WoW a "grindfest" I just want to smack them. You don't know what a "grindfest" is. Go play EverQuest in 1999 and come tell me that WoW is a grindfest. WoW couldn't make it easier for you to gain levels if they just gave you EXP for every second you were logged in.
Some of the collection quests are grindy in nature, I'll grant that, but nowhere near as grindastical as something like FFXI or EQ circa '99.
I see a lot of Japanese gamers have some bizarre love for heavy duty grinding in games.
What the hell is WoW then?
Umm, a very non-grindy MMO?
Seriously, when people call WoW a "grindfest" I just want to smack them. You don't know what a "grindfest" is. Go play EverQuest in 1999 and come tell me that WoW is a grindfest. WoW couldn't make it easier for you to gain levels if they just gave you EXP for every second you were logged in.
Some of the collection quests are grindy in nature, I'll grant that, but nowhere near as grindastical as something like FFXI or EQ circa '99.
Its a grindfest. There is no game other than grinding.
I see a lot of Japanese gamers have some bizarre love for heavy duty grinding in games.
What the hell is WoW then?
Umm, a very non-grindy MMO?
Seriously, when people call WoW a "grindfest" I just want to smack them. You don't know what a "grindfest" is. Go play EverQuest in 1999 and come tell me that WoW is a grindfest. WoW couldn't make it easier for you to gain levels if they just gave you EXP for every second you were logged in.
Some of the collection quests are grindy in nature, I'll grant that, but nowhere near as grindastical as something like FFXI or EQ circa '99.
Its a grindfest. There is no game other than grinding.
I see a lot of Japanese gamers have some bizarre love for heavy duty grinding in games.
What the hell is WoW then?
Umm, a very non-grindy MMO?
Seriously, when people call WoW a "grindfest" I just want to smack them. You don't know what a "grindfest" is. Go play EverQuest in 1999 and come tell me that WoW is a grindfest. WoW couldn't make it easier for you to gain levels if they just gave you EXP for every second you were logged in.
Some of the collection quests are grindy in nature, I'll grant that, but nowhere near as grindastical as something like FFXI or EQ circa '99.
Its a grindfest. There is no game other than grinding.
I see a lot of Japanese gamers have some bizarre love for heavy duty grinding in games.
What the hell is WoW then?
Umm, a very non-grindy MMO?
Seriously, when people call WoW a "grindfest" I just want to smack them. You don't know what a "grindfest" is. Go play EverQuest in 1999 and come tell me that WoW is a grindfest. WoW couldn't make it easier for you to gain levels if they just gave you EXP for every second you were logged in.
Some of the collection quests are grindy in nature, I'll grant that, but nowhere near as grindastical as something like FFXI or EQ circa '99.
Its a grindfest. There is no game other than grinding.
No, there's crafting, socialization, some story elements, and a bunch of other shit. You might as well call every RPG a grindfest then.
WoW is not a "grindfest," which traditionally means that leveling up takes an obsessive and excessive long time. Which it doesn't. Therefore it's not a grindfest. QED.
For the record, I don't play WoW or any other MMORPG anymore. You can trash them all you want, I couldn't give a shit, but I think people lack proper perspective. WoW is only slightly more difficult to gain experience in than, say, Diablo 2.
Hell, I would call Final Fantasy VII a grindfest way before WoW.
stuff like Tsukihime, or Ever17, or ONE, that are riveting, complex, and have themes above and beyond "there's a monster trying to destroy the world, are you a bad enough dude to save it?"
Tsukihime is indeed great.
The entirely gratuitous and pointless hentai aside.
When a hentai game is popular enough, it tends to get rereleased with all the hentai cut out. :P
Well, in Tsukihime's case, it spawned a fighting game and then forced the amateur group to become an official business, but the theory's the same.
Japanese people seem to like "nongames" much more. While Brain Age sold really well in America, I don't the the sequel sold well. I also can't imagine a company releasing a household chores planner, a "game" that teaches you about wine, and a history lesson on the DS in America.
No, there's crafting, socialization, some story elements, and a bunch of other shit. You might as well call every RPG a grindfest then.
WoW is not a "grindfest," which traditionally means that leveling up takes an obsessive and excessive long time. Which it doesn't. Therefore it's not a grindfest. QED.
Good RPGs do not have grinding because levels are just a carry over from the pen and paper games. In a well done RPG, such as Bloodlines, there is zero grinding.
MMORPGs are about two things: grinding and being a graphical chat program. The latter is probably why its so damn hard to quit, you miss the social aspect. You are right that its there, but I really wouldn't consider sitting around the hub and chatting with people as "gameplay".
And if the old PvP honour grind wasn't "obsessive" and "excessive", I don't know what is.
No, there's crafting, socialization, some story elements, and a bunch of other shit. You might as well call every RPG a grindfest then.
WoW is not a "grindfest," which traditionally means that leveling up takes an obsessive and excessive long time. Which it doesn't. Therefore it's not a grindfest. QED.
Good RPGs do not have grinding because levels are just a carry over from the pen and paper games. In a well done RPG, such as Bloodlines, there is zero grinding.
MMORPGs are about two things: grinding and being a graphical chat program. The latter is probably why its so damn hard to quit, you miss the social aspect. You are right that its there, but I really wouldn't consider sitting around the hub and chatting with people as "gameplay".
And if the old PvP honour grind wasn't "obsessive" and "excessive", I don't know what is.
Which is one aspect of the game. A majority of the people I know completely ignore PvP in favor of PvE. And PvE isn't a grind at all. That's all I'm saying.
You're saying "all it is is a grindfest" and I disagree.
And I disagree that "good RPGs do not have grinding." Some good RPGs have the occasional flaw. An RPG that just grants you EXP whenever you need it feels way too linear to me. I'd say a good RPG doesn't scale your character's progress 1:1 with his need. There should be some imbalance in the game otherwise it's a boring RPG.
No, there's crafting, socialization, some story elements, and a bunch of other shit. You might as well call every RPG a grindfest then.
WoW is not a "grindfest," which traditionally means that leveling up takes an obsessive and excessive long time. Which it doesn't. Therefore it's not a grindfest. QED.
Good RPGs do not have grinding because levels are just a carry over from the pen and paper games. In a well done RPG, such as Bloodlines, there is zero grinding.
MMORPGs are about two things: grinding and being a graphical chat program. The latter is probably why its so damn hard to quit, you miss the social aspect. You are right that its there, but I really wouldn't consider sitting around the hub and chatting with people as "gameplay".
And if the old PvP honour grind wasn't "obsessive" and "excessive", I don't know what is.
Which is one aspect of the game. A majority of the people I know completely ignore PvP in favor of PvE. And PvE isn't a grind at all. That's all I'm saying.
You're saying "all it is is a grindfest" and I disagree.
And I disagree that "good RPGs do not have grinding." Some good RPGs have the occasional flaw. An RPG that just grants you EXP whenever you need it feels way too linear to me. I'd say a good RPG doesn't scale your character's progress 1:1 with his need. There should be some imbalance in the game otherwise it's a boring RPG.
Well, I should have put in some qualifiers there, true. Bloodlines is an unusual example, most RPGs have a bit of it, but no where near the amount that an MMO has.
Once I realised that I hated grinding in wow, I was pretty much limited to pvp/arena only. And there isn't much variation there. Also, my character was always broke.
And really, I don't even think WoW is a bad game. I just played it too much and realised I hated what the main focus was.
Japanese games and art don't go in for OMFGREALISM in the same way that America's does.
Why?
Japanese gaming culture came from arcades, whereas (IMO) American gaming culture came from the PC. You'll always be able to find examples that disprove the rule, of course, but that's my take. Playing arcade games has always been more socially acceptable in Japan than in America. Hell, we don't even put arcade games (for kids) anwhere near our slots (gambling for adults), which goes to show you how segmented our market is. Arcade games prize the same things as slot machines -- a succinct, addicting experience with pop colors and a 'test your skill' element. The PC experience is all about a deep, customizable, 'realistic' game.
Blah blah blah, I know that's way too broad, but it's how I think of the differences. You can still see the difference between Splinter Cell and Metal Gear. Metal Gear has more colors, more 'representative' icons (the famous !), more things that break the 4th wall. Splinter Cell goes for hollywood realism in game form.
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No, there's crafting, socialization, some story elements, and a bunch of other shit. You might as well call every RPG a grindfest then.
WoW is not a "grindfest," which traditionally means that leveling up takes an obsessive and excessive long time. Which it doesn't. Therefore it's not a grindfest. QED.
Good RPGs do not have grinding because levels are just a carry over from the pen and paper games. In a well done RPG, such as Bloodlines, there is zero grinding.
MMORPGs are about two things: grinding and being a graphical chat program. The latter is probably why its so damn hard to quit, you miss the social aspect. You are right that its there, but I really wouldn't consider sitting around the hub and chatting with people as "gameplay".
And if the old PvP honour grind wasn't "obsessive" and "excessive", I don't know what is.
Which is one aspect of the game. A majority of the people I know completely ignore PvP in favor of PvE. And PvE isn't a grind at all. That's all I'm saying.
You're saying "all it is is a grindfest" and I disagree.
And I disagree that "good RPGs do not have grinding." Some good RPGs have the occasional flaw. An RPG that just grants you EXP whenever you need it feels way too linear to me. I'd say a good RPG doesn't scale your character's progress 1:1 with his need. There should be some imbalance in the game otherwise it's a boring RPG.
Well, I should have put in some qualifiers there, true. Bloodlines is an unusual example, most RPGs have a bit of it, but no where near the amount that an MMO has.
Once I realised that I hated grinding in wow, I was pretty much limited to pvp/arena only. And there isn't much variation there. Also, my character was always broke.
And really, I don't even think WoW is a bad game. I just played it too much and realized I hated what the main focus was.
Blood Lines had the ultimate ideal character building for it, I think. You got experience points for completing quests and only completing quests, and you spent those experience points on new powers. You wanted to complete the quests, because by doing so you could add get more abilities. No grind at all.
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To be honest, I find pretty much most Western MMO's are a case of grinding. Singleplayer may be different, but honestly, I can't say I've seen as many Western singleplayer RPG's as Japanese RPG's to begin with.
I quite like them, the design looks much more industrial.
The Japanese love those, especially if they are the last of their kind.
But when you do get Western RPGs, you get things like Planescape: Torment and Knights of the Old Republic, which are amazing.
So amazing.
And no grinding.
Bah. I've hated them ever since I saw the first not-jacked-from-Macross designs.
To be fair, recent years have seen better art representing them. Still, the whole concept is stupid to me. 100-ton bipeds as a viable military machine?
Not to totally derail. Are there any other examples of North American giant robots/mechs?
We ever thought nuking a country twice had a small impact? Who thought that?
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FFXI is to Japan what Wow is to America. One is a grind quest, the other can be solo'd rather well until certain points.
Also, our mechs may suck but our jet fighters kick their asses. And they're real and now. Ha!
Second, you're comparing Japanese PC gaming to American console gaming. Not exactly apples to oranges, but there are enough sweeping generalizations to be made about the American console vs American PC markets that jumping cross-culture is only going to exacerbate it.
Third, your stereotyping is skin deep at best. The Japanese tradition for fighters and inanely complex shmups absolutely dwarfs any twitch gaming the US can offer. The US has really only beaten them out in FPSes and (only very recently) action platformers. They just have a far broader range of games, so a variety of things float to the top rather than being saturated by the same thing over and over again.
Fourth, "dating sims are popular" is disingenuous at best. Yes, there are a shitload and all combined they are rather popular. Here's the thing... they're very cheap to make and their production time is very short. The US's most profitable video game subset is the same thing... cheap and quick... only instead of visual novels... we have Flash games.
The only v.novels that are really consistently popular anyway are the ones either by a select few companies (Key and Type-Moon for example) or the ultra-hybrids, which resemble something closer to Riviera than your "lol, you choose to take her to the beach and then you sex her," games which people seem to think comprise 99% of Japanese visual novels. Games like the Project GA series, or the Kogado SRPGs, or the Rance games wipe the floor with the overwhelming majority of the visual novels.
Where the popularity of the extensive and in depth story telling and characterization comes from is debatable at best. Personally, I think it's derived mostly from the very visually rich literary tradition which naturally flows into stuff like manga, or the pretty pictures with text of the visual novels and hybrids. Only relatively recently have the 'light novels' become more popular in Japanese culture, but they're still heavily illustrated compared to western stuff. The big difference though is that the writing for the V.Novels and hybrids tends to be abso-fucking-lutely amazing compared to almost anything the US has crapped out in the last decade. These are not the piddly little console RPGs, but stuff like Tsukihime, or Ever17, or ONE, that are riveting, complex, and have themes above and beyond "there's a monster trying to destroy the world, are you a bad enough dude to save it?"
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Would you like me to list some of the non amazing ones, which are in far greater supply? :P
Although TBCH I guess I do agree that Japanese RPG's tend to have a combat mechanic that's more focussed around grinding, but realistically in both the games you mentioned (and in a lot of others), grinding is easily an option as well. I know I certainly did some grinding in KotoR. I also know that on my first playthrough of FFVII I didn't do any grinding at all.
Plus, western action RPG's like Diablo or Titan Quest are pretty much all about grinding.
I think it's disingenuous to say that Western RPG's don't have grinding in them. The number of man-hours you could put into grinding your character forward in Diablo II is obscene, and it's probably one of the most successful Western RPG's ever.
At least one factor in games is that when dealing with all things "future", America (maybe Western Civilization?) tends to imagine this dark and industrial type place where things aren't very happy. It's a trend that I'd imagine started with Star Wars (watched a huge documentary on the success of Star Wars and one of the biggest draws about it was the "dirty" universe that was more believable).
Japanese future seems to deal with a highly computerized society and things have a lot more "flare" so to speak in design. Above all, the future seems to be much much cleaner than the American versions.
I'm sure there's some exceptions to this though, just trying to throw an idea out there :P
Minimalism probably never caught on over there either since a lot of their art and promotional based stuff is often VERY "busy". I've seen some simple stuff too but its more the exception than the rule.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Fixed.
Americans love bio-tech upgrades.
Japs walk like this.....
Yanks walk like this.....
OMG LOLZ!
The entirely gratuitous and pointless hentai aside.
THE END OF NEO GENESIS EVANGLLION HAD ME IN TEARS
AND KAGOME OF THE FAMOUS "INUYASHA" SERIES OF ANIME(HMM, GOOD STORYTELLING THERE WHAT'S THIS IT WAS ALSO MADE INTO A GAME) FEELS LIKE A REAL PERSON I COULD TALK TO
IF KAGOME WANTED ME TO SHOOT MYSELF WITH A BULLET I WOULD DO IT
Heavy Gear is, I believe, Canadian if that counts but that's really heavily inspired by Armored Trooper VOTOMS. Not to the point of stealing mech designs though.
one retro style jrpg doesnt make this anything like true. i mean just look at the final fantasy series, or the huge amount of other jrpgs that come out all the time with off the wall play mechanics.
what youre saying is like saying "this beatles cover band i saw at the bar last night shows that no one in america likes evolution in their music!"
EDIT: Oh wow, I was slow. Good fingers suttbecks.
If you ignore physics, yes. Battletech plays at being "real military looking" while being just as over-the-top as something like Gundam.
It would be stupid to use either in any sort of military setting, except that anime mechs tend to have super-science or "magical" interfaces with drivers, and thus explain away the realities of how retarded a giant bipedal tank is. Battletech looks ugly in pretending to be more hard sci-fi, but still doesn't make any damn sense. I guess that's the problem I've had with it.
Give me almost-logical power armor or magical super-mechs that jump and karate chop, or even giant city-sized walking temples made by insane tech-priests. But a 100-ton modern tank with legs? Whatever.
edit: Yeah, Heavy Gear is kind of a hybrid of anime design with Western engineering (all based on VOTOMS). They're also closer to power armor than anything else. Gears wouldn't look like that without anime influence, so I wouldn't say they're North American design.
Umm, a very non-grindy MMO?
Seriously, when people call WoW a "grindfest" I just want to smack them. You don't know what a "grindfest" is. Go play EverQuest in 1999 and come tell me that WoW is a grindfest. WoW couldn't make it easier for you to gain levels if they just gave you EXP for every second you were logged in.
Some of the collection quests are grindy in nature, I'll grant that, but nowhere near as grindastical as something like FFXI or EQ circa '99.
Its a grindfest. There is no game other than grinding.
Sure there is.
I hear there's crafting.
Crafting against a grindstone! Hiiiiyoooo!
No, there's crafting, socialization, some story elements, and a bunch of other shit. You might as well call every RPG a grindfest then.
WoW is not a "grindfest," which traditionally means that leveling up takes an obsessive and excessive long time. Which it doesn't. Therefore it's not a grindfest. QED.
For the record, I don't play WoW or any other MMORPG anymore. You can trash them all you want, I couldn't give a shit, but I think people lack proper perspective. WoW is only slightly more difficult to gain experience in than, say, Diablo 2.
Hell, I would call Final Fantasy VII a grindfest way before WoW.
When a hentai game is popular enough, it tends to get rereleased with all the hentai cut out. :P
Well, in Tsukihime's case, it spawned a fighting game and then forced the amateur group to become an official business, but the theory's the same.
Good RPGs do not have grinding because levels are just a carry over from the pen and paper games. In a well done RPG, such as Bloodlines, there is zero grinding.
MMORPGs are about two things: grinding and being a graphical chat program. The latter is probably why its so damn hard to quit, you miss the social aspect. You are right that its there, but I really wouldn't consider sitting around the hub and chatting with people as "gameplay".
And if the old PvP honour grind wasn't "obsessive" and "excessive", I don't know what is.
Which is one aspect of the game. A majority of the people I know completely ignore PvP in favor of PvE. And PvE isn't a grind at all. That's all I'm saying.
You're saying "all it is is a grindfest" and I disagree.
And I disagree that "good RPGs do not have grinding." Some good RPGs have the occasional flaw. An RPG that just grants you EXP whenever you need it feels way too linear to me. I'd say a good RPG doesn't scale your character's progress 1:1 with his need. There should be some imbalance in the game otherwise it's a boring RPG.
Well, I should have put in some qualifiers there, true. Bloodlines is an unusual example, most RPGs have a bit of it, but no where near the amount that an MMO has.
Once I realised that I hated grinding in wow, I was pretty much limited to pvp/arena only. And there isn't much variation there. Also, my character was always broke.
And really, I don't even think WoW is a bad game. I just played it too much and realised I hated what the main focus was.
Why?
Japanese gaming culture came from arcades, whereas (IMO) American gaming culture came from the PC. You'll always be able to find examples that disprove the rule, of course, but that's my take. Playing arcade games has always been more socially acceptable in Japan than in America. Hell, we don't even put arcade games (for kids) anwhere near our slots (gambling for adults), which goes to show you how segmented our market is. Arcade games prize the same things as slot machines -- a succinct, addicting experience with pop colors and a 'test your skill' element. The PC experience is all about a deep, customizable, 'realistic' game.
Blah blah blah, I know that's way too broad, but it's how I think of the differences. You can still see the difference between Splinter Cell and Metal Gear. Metal Gear has more colors, more 'representative' icons (the famous !), more things that break the 4th wall. Splinter Cell goes for hollywood realism in game form.
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Blood Lines had the ultimate ideal character building for it, I think. You got experience points for completing quests and only completing quests, and you spent those experience points on new powers. You wanted to complete the quests, because by doing so you could add get more abilities. No grind at all.