For one thing, I love a good story that unfolds at the proper pace. Planescape:Torment is my favourite game and that could not be replicated in a multiplayer context. There is no pressure and you can explore a game and its mechanics at your own pace.
I just started playing this for the first time today, after seeing it in everyone's top 10 lists for ages.
True story: until very recently I thought it was called Planetscape: Torment. I thought it was a sci-fi. I mean it has a blue man on the cover!
For one thing, I love a good story that unfolds at the proper pace. Planescape:Torment is my favourite game and that could not be replicated in a multiplayer context. There is no pressure and you can explore a game and its mechanics at your own pace.
I just started playing this for the first time today, after seeing it in everyone's top 10 lists for ages.
True story: until very recently I thought it was called Planetscape: Torment. I thought it was a sci-fi. I mean it has a blue man on the cover!
My advice is to grit your teeth on the game engine - its old IE and its clunky, but believe me the game rewards you in so many ways if you pay attention to the characters and play it thoughtfully. Make sure you explore properly too... there are a lot of amazing side stories to see.
For one thing, I love a good story that unfolds at the proper pace. Planescape:Torment is my favourite game and that could not be replicated in a multiplayer context. There is no pressure and you can explore a game and its mechanics at your own pace.
I just started playing this for the first time today, after seeing it in everyone's top 10 lists for ages.
True story: until very recently I thought it was called Planetscape: Torment. I thought it was a sci-fi. I mean it has a blue man on the cover!
1) The genre I tend to enjoy most is usually platforming or action/adventure-type games (not FPS), most of these simply don't have multiplayer, or if they do they're poorly implemented and shouldn't really have multiplayer anyways.
2) I like being able to play a game at my own leisure. I would hate having to set up "times" with friends to play games. This is more prevalent in games like WoW, but I've had friends that set up times for Halo 3 and COD4.
3) To expand on the first sentence of #2, the only time I have an actual gaming session where I don't take breaks is when I play Rock Band. A lot of the time I'm playing games, I might pause for a moment because I'm surfing this very forum. A perfect example is right now, Infamous is paused so I can respond to this topic.
4) I hate teamwork. The only games where I've gotten extensively into multiplayer are Halo 3 and COD4, and in both of those, I avoid team battle stuff. Other people are way better at the game than I am (because they spend a lot more time on it), and I'd rather be killed by those experienced players than be on their team because our team won with a score of 50, and it is split up as follows: 16, 15, 15, 4. Guess who the 4 is? It feels like an empty win, and is more discouraging than actually losing a match.
5) I don't like headsets. I'm pretty much all alone on this one, but I just think they're ridiculous. Yeah, I'm not going to argue the benefits because they are tenfold, but I just don't like the feeling of sitting in my room wearing a headset and effectively saying words at my television. I also don't like hearing other people's voices come through my television, which is why they are promptly muted.
6) I suck at video games. Pretty badly. I'm quick to catch on to some things, but while most people get much better with practice, I simply do not, and I will always get beaten. I reach my highest level and then I plateau. Good example is Guitar Hero. When the first one came out, it wasn't really that popular, but I was super-badass at it (compared to others back then). Rockin' Expert tracks, getting 5 stars on "Cowboys From Hell", seemed like I had finally found a game I kick ass at. Then GHII comes out, the series completely blows up in popularity, and a few months down the line (with still playing nearly every day), I realize that I pretty much sucked the whole time; there just wasn't a big enough pool of competitors.
7) I simply just straight-up don't enjoy multiplayer. There isn't a single game that exists where I don't prefer the single-player mode.
So, OP having the same problem with movies...you want them to have the unpredictability of the human mind? What's wrong with movies and books?
You're linking two unconnected sentences. I said that I don't get immersed in books or movies either, and I was wondering why and how people get immersed like that. I don't get immersed because I can't care about the characters... why should I? They're just creations. It bothers me, but I can't help it.
Is it not enough that video games have been designed by an unpredictable human mind? Even the first time playing Mario, when you see that guy zipping back and forth across the top of the screen dropping eggs, that's new, isn't it? You couldn't have predicted that guy was there. You are opposing the intelligent mind of the game designer as he throws up walls and roadblocks in your way.
Sometimes the placement of an enemy could surprise me, but generally the foe acts the same way after it goes boo and jumps through a sheet of glass. The majority of single-player game design just seems lazy... it's all the same shit with a different skin and I really wish I could just get over it and lose myself in them.
And why are human opponents the only thing that matters? Aren't the maps boring for being predictable? The guns and their spawn points?
No. To create a completely random game would undermine the glory of the human mind's ability to strategize. The best part of playing a multiplayer FPS are the few times you seem to sync up with your enemy and you're one step ahead of him, simply because you have learned the set parts of the game so much. It's in that framework that the mind's imagination and flexibility is astounding.
What was fun about Shadow of the Colossus? The colossi behaved the same way each time you fought them. You'd stab them a while and they'd throw you off and you'd stab them again. Boring, right?
The game was pretty intensely boring, actually. I wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay, but something about the world, how uncompromisingly itself it was, sucked me right in. Like I said before, it didn't try to explain anything - it was just there, you could take it or leave it. And it wasn't simply LOOK AT DIS RAD WURLD, because it just had an amazingly subtle atmosphere to it. It wasn't in your face, it didn't seem like it was trying to go against the grain. That's a very hard thing to get a grasp on, and SoTC is one of the few examples where I've been able to lose myself in it and get emotionally invested in art. It was astounding, even if it was just a pretty simple game underneath it all.
I'm shocked this thread has reached page 5, and I'm glad some interesting discussion has come out of it. A few people didn't quite seem to get it, but that's fine. I don't think I'll be able to talk myself into appreciating what it is other people see in these worlds that seem so generic and dull to me, but maybe one day it'll click.
I think I enjoy SP the most because I am not a competitive gamer. The idea of "victory" over someone else in a video game means nothing to me. Your e-peen does not entice me in any way. There have only been two games that I played the multiplayer for and was totally immersed and emotionally involved in.
One was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The sound production values alone provided so much atmosphere it was hard not to get sucked in. That, and I only played objective maps with realistic damage (it didn't take much to kill you and there were no respawns). Cotdamn, those were good times.
The other, rather ironically, was vanilla WoW before I joined a guild or figured out the metagame. Ah, the good old days, when I was simply an adventurer questing in a magical land, and cared nothing for loots or achievements or raiding or dealing with a constant barrage of immersion-breaking chat that is always there to remind me I'm just playing a computer game.
I have been thinking about this issue while reading pages and pages of entertaining thought.
Faffel, i think that part of your problem is simply psychological, the way you perceive the value of things, or what you find worthwhile. On the other hand, it is possible that part of the reason that you don't like single player games may have something to do with your physical make up.
I personally enjoy both single-player and multi-player games, but depending on how much sleep i have had, what i've eaten, or how i am feeling, my desires will shift from single- to multi- player games.
One thing i have also noticed is that although i may enjoy many different games, i go through phases, times when i really really enjoy x or y, and then i will shift to some other genre.
Recently i have been having a blast playing tf2, but then i bought kings bounty, this led to some rather serious time investment into that, but then i got demigod for half off and had to try that.
i go in cycles of interest, the only difference in my example was that i shifted through those games over the period of about 3 days. I am getting married tomorrow and the stress seems to have drastically increased the speed of my cycling through games (heck, i spent more money on games in two days than i had in the last month).
moral of story, when getting married, prepare to act weird beforehand.
I value an immersive story and interesting characters. These are not found in multiplayer games. I want to play a game at my own pace, not the pace dictated by the obsessive multiplayer addicts going through every nook and cranny of every level, memorizing drops, etc. I don't want a hundred different annoying voices shouting a hundred different racial slurs into their crackling 5 dollar headsets.
I play single player games for the same reason people curl up with a good book or sit down and watch their favourite TV show. I want to get drawn into a different world with different characters. I sit down to play Uncharted because I want to hang out with Nathan Drake for a couple hours and go on a daring adventure. I pop in Mass Effect because I want to tool around with the different ways Commander Shepard saves the galaxy. I don't give a damn that xXxPuNkk420xXx got a headshot from halfway across the map.
And if I want some mindless fun and a bit of challenge? UT2k4 with bots. Great AI, fast paced action, and no loudmouthed douchetards cocking up the game.
The only time I give a damn about multiplayer is for something like Rock Band, and that's just so I can play it with my friends in the same room. I don't really get any enjoyment at all out of online multi.
So, OP having the same problem with movies...you want them to have the unpredictability of the human mind? What's wrong with movies and books?
You're linking two unconnected sentences. I said that I don't get immersed in books or movies either, and I was wondering why and how people get immersed like that. I don't get immersed because I can't care about the characters... why should I? They're just creations. It bothers me, but I can't help it.
That doesn't sound like something we can help you with.
It could also well be a generational thing. I've noticed that a much greater percentage of younger, modern gamers are far more into multiplayer, where my old ass from the 2600/NES days still thinks of multiplayer as a bonus mode. Yep, I liked Halo for the singleplayer campaign. We few. We noble few.
So, OP having the same problem with movies...you want them to have the unpredictability of the human mind? What's wrong with movies and books?
You're linking two unconnected sentences. I said that I don't get immersed in books or movies either, and I was wondering why and how people get immersed like that. I don't get immersed because I can't care about the characters... why should I? They're just creations. It bothers me, but I can't help it.
That doesn't sound like something we can help you with.
Yeah that does sound like you have some more deep seated problems.
So, OP having the same problem with movies...you want them to have the unpredictability of the human mind? What's wrong with movies and books?
You're linking two unconnected sentences. I said that I don't get immersed in books or movies either, and I was wondering why and how people get immersed like that. I don't get immersed because I can't care about the characters... why should I? They're just creations. It bothers me, but I can't help it.
That doesn't sound like something we can help you with.
So, OP having the same problem with movies...you want them to have the unpredictability of the human mind? What's wrong with movies and books?
You're linking two unconnected sentences. I said that I don't get immersed in books or movies either, and I was wondering why and how people get immersed like that. I don't get immersed because I can't care about the characters... why should I? They're just creations. It bothers me, but I can't help it.
That doesn't sound like something we can help you with.
That doesn't make the fact that I'm curious go away, though. I found a large chunk of the responses here pretty interesting and at least relatively insightful. I got what I wanted, it was good.
I play single player games because I enjoy challenging myself to do constantly better.
In Guitar Hero, trying to go for the next 5 star or 100%.
In Burnout 3, trying to get the next, harder gold star.
In Iji (an independent game like old school Duke Nukem), trying to learn how to kill enemies more effectively.
All these games are really about patterns and challenging myself to gain mastery over patterns. In the case of guitar hero it's training myself to be able to play the pattern, in Burnout 3 it's avoiding traffic and making perfect turns, in a side scrolling shooter it's about figuring out how to kill enemies without them hurting you.
I like patterns.
Playing with randoms, especially in Guitar Hero, has never been that fulfilling. Either I find someone who is significantly worse, in which case my victory is a foregone conclusion and I am bored, or I find someone significantly better in which case my loss is a foregone conclusion and I am bored. In the rare case that I find someone of similar difficulty, it is awesome, but this is so rare that playing multiplayer online is, for the most part, just not worth the effort. (Local multiplayer is different of course. It's always fun just due to the social interaction of having the person in the same room.)
It's true that humans are not patterns and thus there's more variety to beat, but it's much harder to measure your progress quantifiably against humans, which is something I enjoy.
The only multiplayer I do is in MMORPGs and even then, I solo. What really stinks now is that people expect you to have voice chat. The last thing I need while playing Lord of the Rings Online is to hear the voice of some skeezoid blasting me for not using a buff at the right time. I want to be immersed in the game for the tiny amount of time I have, playing with other people brings me back to the real zone where I have a wife, bills, work, bills, and a wife. I don't need lil' Adolf barfing his commands at me for an hour after a day at the office where big Adolf shits on my desk and says we should be thankful to have a job in such a rough economy. Yeah, I have one friend on my friend's list on xbox live...I wonder why?
Honestly for a while I could ask the same thing of people regarding multiplayer games. Why do you play multiplayer games? I would ask because for a while I really just couldn't get into them. I felt like I wasn't going anywhere in the gaming world, I wasn't accomplishing anything, I wasn't progressing, wasn't seeing anything new, nothing was happening. Those are the reasons I like single player games. With a few exceptions (goddamn Warhawk), I'm never really able to play a multiplayer game for that long. I always get bored and go back to a single player experience.
Now I try and stay away from a lot of multiplayer, because after a bit I get way too competitive. Warhawk was one of the most fun games I've played in a long time, but I just started to become completely OCD about my KD :R, and it just started becoming not fun at all. That and my girlfriend gets pissed at me if I even swear once at my television, and multiplayer games tend to make me do that at least once or twice a round.
The other reason I go back to single player games is because I like to relax when I play games. With a multiplayer one I can't pause at any second and surf the net for a while or go get myself a snack or anything at all. I have to be completely glued to my TV, and I just don't like that.
Radikal_Dreamer on
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NoneoftheaboveJust a conforming non-conformist.Twilight ZoneRegistered Userregular
edited May 2009
I enjoy single player games primarilly for their gameplay, then for the art style or graphics. For the last reason I'll simply play a game skipping all the above criteria if I just like the story. Those elements are quite often shuffled around in importance for me.
But here is a thing that puzzles me; Some people prefer to take in the experience of a game, movie or book only once, even if they enjoyed it. Maybe this is a "higher being" type of person who realizes there is only so much you can do in a lifetime that it would be taking time away from a new discovery to bother with the old? In any case, favorite games, books or movies of mine can be compared to an art collection to be kept around for whenever the mood strikes.
The other, is atmosphere/story/characters. Some multiplayer games can nail the atmosphere really well, but I'm constantly finding single player games with really cool mechanics, art, atmosphere, personalities, that I keep saying "I wish they'd do something like this in an online multiplayer game." Perfect example, Shadow of the Colossus. I'd really love a co-op oriented game that's based around the idea of bringing down these massive monstrosities. Basically, each map would be a team of players against some boss, and there'd have to be some randomized circumstances to mix up the game a bit every time, so players won't master each boss too quickly. Even when I complete one of these types of games, and I never touch it again, it still remains a great memory.
Off-topic, I know... but it sounds like Lost Planet 2 might float your boat. I know I'm looking forward to it.
But here is a thing that puzzles me; Some people prefer to take in the experience of a game, movie or book only once, even if they enjoyed it. Maybe this is a "higher being" type of person who realizes there is only so much you can do in a lifetime that it would be taking time away from a new discovery to bother with the old? In any case, favorite games, books or movies of mine can be compared to an art collection to be kept around for whenever the mood strikes.
Up until the last 2 years or so I had never really replayed any game. I've never re-read a book I've read, either, and I really don't watch movies many times over, either. My problem is that there's just so much out there that I think "Sure, I can go replay that game, but that's just taking away time where I could play this new game here." With gaming that was also because I mainly played 50 hour RPGs. Now that I've gone to shorter games I've been able to replay a few of them (some of them as much as like 4 or 5 times now). With books I've just got so much I want to read eventually that I'd rather just pick up another new book, and that's really the same with movies.
I think the OP's problem is that he sees videogames as sports.
Because I don't care about winning or losing and enjoy the experience when I find the rare case of singleplayer enjoyment? The only reason time I care about competition is if I'm wasting through my opponents - it's not fun for either party when you roll a bunch of new/poor players.
Because you seem to view games as being inherently about competing against other players, rather than directly about the gameplay, story or other things.
You can love playing soccer and not care about winning or losing too.
There's nothing wrong with that perspective, but it doesn't cover the whole spectrum of what a game can be.
EDIT: You specifically singled out patterns as inferior to real players. That sounds to me like someone thinking about sports game (where I use "sport" loosely to refer to directly competitive games like FPSes or actual sports games) AI.
Never really thought about why I love SP games. I guess it's for the reasons mentioned in the OP: story and experience. There's also that rare game that's genuinely funny. I'm playing through Chrono Trigger DS now, and though I can't vouch for the original localization at least this version has an impeccable sense of humor.
MP games are only funny to the people who choose to drop games I guess.
This thread is stupid, and I say that not as a knee jerk reaction but with the understanding that many in here don't understand why their opinion may not be the only one possible.
Still, to answer the OP, I play single player games because I'm not terribly competitive by nature, I don't need to prove myself better than others on a constant basis, and to be frank I don't have the time to play most multiplayer games to the level where I'd be giving competitive players the good time that (according to you) they'd want from me. I also won't play in ways that I find annoying or unsportsmanlike, which in turn just annoys me when others do anyway (spawn camping, looking at each other's screen in local multi, playing as the same character repeatedly in a fighting game trying to goad me into always playing my main).
Basically, I don't play games to make others happy. I play them to make me happy. And after going to classes all day where I'm graded on a curve and will end up in a profession aptly called "adversarial", I have no desire whatsoever to get tk'ed and teabagged by teenagers.
Because you seem to view games as being inherently about competing against other players, rather than directly about the gameplay, story or other things.
You can love playing soccer and not care about winning or losing too.
There's nothing wrong with that perspective, but it doesn't cover the whole spectrum of what a game can be.
EDIT: You specifically singled out patterns as inferior to real players. That sounds to me like someone thinking about sports game (where I use "sport" loosely to refer to directly competitive games like FPSes or actual sports games) AI.
It's less that I think they're superior, and more that I favor a dynamic environment. Players try and do crazy things that AI never does and you can never be quite sure how they will react, due to an unlimited number of circumstances. But the single-player game also limits that, because the majority of people, I imagine, don't want a a single random bad-guy organizing ten other bad guys to flank you when you least expect it.
Basically, I don't play games to make others happy. I play them to make me happy. And after going to classes all day where I'm graded on a curve and will end up in a profession aptly called "adversarial", I have no desire whatsoever to get tk'ed and teabagged by teenagers.
I guess this is a valid opinion, but for myself, I find it extremely challenging to really get angry at someone because of what comes out of their mouth and when I'm online it matters even less to me. The world is full of people and I won't like most of them - the same is true for the internet. Just gotta put up with it. You get the same thing in anything where two or more people are competing. Which, I guess, is what multiplayer gaming ultimately is, if you really want to get down to it. I guess I like to have something hanging on the line, even if it just 5 seconds of self-satisfaction over getting a triple kill rocket against unmatched odds that were forced on me.
I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Colossus so much is because it was relaxing - but I don't really find the high-intensity action that singleplayer games shove in your face at every turn relaxing. I guess that's the rub for me. The majority of games that are released would work fine as a multiplayer title, and having AI opponents, to me, seems like it's just like they said "here, have a gun and have these bad guys". It seems kind of lazy, despite all of the work that went into the systems that let the game be what it is. If you're going to make a singleplayer experience, why not create an experience instead of a thrill-ride?
EDIT: The large amount of responses did get me thinking, though. I can see why single-player games could be fun fun and all the talk at least gives me new things to keep an eye out for, which gives me a reason to play the games. I find that perception is a huge part of entertainment, which is why I wrote the OP in the first place.
I enjoy single player games because usually my gaming time is MY gaming time. I just want to relax on my own, chill out and play something. There's more of a feeling of progression (for me) in Single Player, multiplayer games tend (and I know there are exceptions) not to have an ongoing plot, it's usually just constant battling against/with each other.
That's not really what I'm after in my games.
I also don't really like playing against random people, it feels little to know different to me than fighting against the AI. Except they're usually considerably better than me and insult me more when I die. I do enjoy the odd co-op game though, Crackdown was easily one of the best games I've played in YEARS and I played the entire thing through with a friend and LOVED it. Gears of War I couldn't get in to on my own but loved coop.
But largely I buy games for their single player, not multi. I was hesitant and dubious enough when it was announced Uncharted 2 had multiplayer.
So I can be left on my own to let my imagination run away with itself.
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
*Games with an interesting plot/world (final fantasy/zeno clash)
*Sense of acomplishment after completing a game is greater than that of winning a round... or 50 (4 hours on Portal vs 4 hours on TF2)
*Experiences that aren't just about shooting (maybe there are other multiplayer games but my top 3 are all fps)
*When AI is better than humans and you are quite good
*Not feeling competitive
*Pausing whenever
*No pressure when you just want to mess about or explore in the game (little big planet)
*With racing games I usually only play lap trials because i think its a lot of fun trying to get the perfect line through each corner. (wipeout/gran turismo)
Having said all that, of the time which I spend on video games the majority is dedicated to multiplayer. I think that is just because of 3 things:
1- Familiarity - sometimes learning a new game's world and mechanics is tiring and when you've had a long day you just want to pyro it up
2- The company of other players over the microphone (partly why i play tf2 more than ut3 and cod4, i dont just want to hear "gg" after half an hour of play
3- Satisfaction of winning each kill is more than vs AI
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True story: until very recently I thought it was called Planetscape: Torment. I thought it was a sci-fi. I mean it has a blue man on the cover!
My advice is to grit your teeth on the game engine - its old IE and its clunky, but believe me the game rewards you in so many ways if you pay attention to the characters and play it thoughtfully. Make sure you explore properly too... there are a lot of amazing side stories to see.
Fuck. Left 4 Dead was a godsend.
Is it because you thought it was this?
I always confuse the two.
It's...it's not?
Mind = blown.
XBL |Steam | PSN | last.fm
Apparently we are the majority. The [strike]moral[/strike] illiterate majority.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
That's rarely possible with douchebag friends making comments throughout the whole thing.
1) The genre I tend to enjoy most is usually platforming or action/adventure-type games (not FPS), most of these simply don't have multiplayer, or if they do they're poorly implemented and shouldn't really have multiplayer anyways.
2) I like being able to play a game at my own leisure. I would hate having to set up "times" with friends to play games. This is more prevalent in games like WoW, but I've had friends that set up times for Halo 3 and COD4.
3) To expand on the first sentence of #2, the only time I have an actual gaming session where I don't take breaks is when I play Rock Band. A lot of the time I'm playing games, I might pause for a moment because I'm surfing this very forum. A perfect example is right now, Infamous is paused so I can respond to this topic.
4) I hate teamwork. The only games where I've gotten extensively into multiplayer are Halo 3 and COD4, and in both of those, I avoid team battle stuff. Other people are way better at the game than I am (because they spend a lot more time on it), and I'd rather be killed by those experienced players than be on their team because our team won with a score of 50, and it is split up as follows: 16, 15, 15, 4. Guess who the 4 is? It feels like an empty win, and is more discouraging than actually losing a match.
5) I don't like headsets. I'm pretty much all alone on this one, but I just think they're ridiculous. Yeah, I'm not going to argue the benefits because they are tenfold, but I just don't like the feeling of sitting in my room wearing a headset and effectively saying words at my television. I also don't like hearing other people's voices come through my television, which is why they are promptly muted.
6) I suck at video games. Pretty badly. I'm quick to catch on to some things, but while most people get much better with practice, I simply do not, and I will always get beaten. I reach my highest level and then I plateau. Good example is Guitar Hero. When the first one came out, it wasn't really that popular, but I was super-badass at it (compared to others back then). Rockin' Expert tracks, getting 5 stars on "Cowboys From Hell", seemed like I had finally found a game I kick ass at. Then GHII comes out, the series completely blows up in popularity, and a few months down the line (with still playing nearly every day), I realize that I pretty much sucked the whole time; there just wasn't a big enough pool of competitors.
7) I simply just straight-up don't enjoy multiplayer. There isn't a single game that exists where I don't prefer the single-player mode.
You're linking two unconnected sentences. I said that I don't get immersed in books or movies either, and I was wondering why and how people get immersed like that. I don't get immersed because I can't care about the characters... why should I? They're just creations. It bothers me, but I can't help it.
Sometimes the placement of an enemy could surprise me, but generally the foe acts the same way after it goes boo and jumps through a sheet of glass. The majority of single-player game design just seems lazy... it's all the same shit with a different skin and I really wish I could just get over it and lose myself in them.
No. To create a completely random game would undermine the glory of the human mind's ability to strategize. The best part of playing a multiplayer FPS are the few times you seem to sync up with your enemy and you're one step ahead of him, simply because you have learned the set parts of the game so much. It's in that framework that the mind's imagination and flexibility is astounding.
The game was pretty intensely boring, actually. I wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay, but something about the world, how uncompromisingly itself it was, sucked me right in. Like I said before, it didn't try to explain anything - it was just there, you could take it or leave it. And it wasn't simply LOOK AT DIS RAD WURLD, because it just had an amazingly subtle atmosphere to it. It wasn't in your face, it didn't seem like it was trying to go against the grain. That's a very hard thing to get a grasp on, and SoTC is one of the few examples where I've been able to lose myself in it and get emotionally invested in art. It was astounding, even if it was just a pretty simple game underneath it all.
I'm shocked this thread has reached page 5, and I'm glad some interesting discussion has come out of it. A few people didn't quite seem to get it, but that's fine. I don't think I'll be able to talk myself into appreciating what it is other people see in these worlds that seem so generic and dull to me, but maybe one day it'll click.
One was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The sound production values alone provided so much atmosphere it was hard not to get sucked in. That, and I only played objective maps with realistic damage (it didn't take much to kill you and there were no respawns). Cotdamn, those were good times.
The other, rather ironically, was vanilla WoW before I joined a guild or figured out the metagame. Ah, the good old days, when I was simply an adventurer questing in a magical land, and cared nothing for loots or achievements or raiding or dealing with a constant barrage of immersion-breaking chat that is always there to remind me I'm just playing a computer game.
Anything similar to that on PS3, I wonder? Or coming?
Faffel, i think that part of your problem is simply psychological, the way you perceive the value of things, or what you find worthwhile. On the other hand, it is possible that part of the reason that you don't like single player games may have something to do with your physical make up.
I personally enjoy both single-player and multi-player games, but depending on how much sleep i have had, what i've eaten, or how i am feeling, my desires will shift from single- to multi- player games.
One thing i have also noticed is that although i may enjoy many different games, i go through phases, times when i really really enjoy x or y, and then i will shift to some other genre.
Recently i have been having a blast playing tf2, but then i bought kings bounty, this led to some rather serious time investment into that, but then i got demigod for half off and had to try that.
i go in cycles of interest, the only difference in my example was that i shifted through those games over the period of about 3 days. I am getting married tomorrow and the stress seems to have drastically increased the speed of my cycling through games (heck, i spent more money on games in two days than i had in the last month).
moral of story, when getting married, prepare to act weird beforehand.
I play single player games for the same reason people curl up with a good book or sit down and watch their favourite TV show. I want to get drawn into a different world with different characters. I sit down to play Uncharted because I want to hang out with Nathan Drake for a couple hours and go on a daring adventure. I pop in Mass Effect because I want to tool around with the different ways Commander Shepard saves the galaxy. I don't give a damn that xXxPuNkk420xXx got a headshot from halfway across the map.
And if I want some mindless fun and a bit of challenge? UT2k4 with bots. Great AI, fast paced action, and no loudmouthed douchetards cocking up the game.
The only time I give a damn about multiplayer is for something like Rock Band, and that's just so I can play it with my friends in the same room. I don't really get any enjoyment at all out of online multi.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
That doesn't sound like something we can help you with.
If this doesn't make you weep, nothing will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrLAHBgziv4
That doesn't make the fact that I'm curious go away, though. I found a large chunk of the responses here pretty interesting and at least relatively insightful. I got what I wanted, it was good.
Because if you're talking about appreciating the music and you searched for "Ric Flair theme" to find it, I just...man.
In Guitar Hero, trying to go for the next 5 star or 100%.
In Burnout 3, trying to get the next, harder gold star.
In Iji (an independent game like old school Duke Nukem), trying to learn how to kill enemies more effectively.
All these games are really about patterns and challenging myself to gain mastery over patterns. In the case of guitar hero it's training myself to be able to play the pattern, in Burnout 3 it's avoiding traffic and making perfect turns, in a side scrolling shooter it's about figuring out how to kill enemies without them hurting you.
I like patterns.
Playing with randoms, especially in Guitar Hero, has never been that fulfilling. Either I find someone who is significantly worse, in which case my victory is a foregone conclusion and I am bored, or I find someone significantly better in which case my loss is a foregone conclusion and I am bored. In the rare case that I find someone of similar difficulty, it is awesome, but this is so rare that playing multiplayer online is, for the most part, just not worth the effort. (Local multiplayer is different of course. It's always fun just due to the social interaction of having the person in the same room.)
It's true that humans are not patterns and thus there's more variety to beat, but it's much harder to measure your progress quantifiably against humans, which is something I enjoy.
Now I try and stay away from a lot of multiplayer, because after a bit I get way too competitive. Warhawk was one of the most fun games I've played in a long time, but I just started to become completely OCD about my KD :R, and it just started becoming not fun at all. That and my girlfriend gets pissed at me if I even swear once at my television, and multiplayer games tend to make me do that at least once or twice a round.
The other reason I go back to single player games is because I like to relax when I play games. With a multiplayer one I can't pause at any second and surf the net for a while or go get myself a snack or anything at all. I have to be completely glued to my TV, and I just don't like that.
But here is a thing that puzzles me; Some people prefer to take in the experience of a game, movie or book only once, even if they enjoyed it. Maybe this is a "higher being" type of person who realizes there is only so much you can do in a lifetime that it would be taking time away from a new discovery to bother with the old? In any case, favorite games, books or movies of mine can be compared to an art collection to be kept around for whenever the mood strikes.
Off-topic, I know... but it sounds like Lost Planet 2 might float your boat. I know I'm looking forward to it.
Up until the last 2 years or so I had never really replayed any game. I've never re-read a book I've read, either, and I really don't watch movies many times over, either. My problem is that there's just so much out there that I think "Sure, I can go replay that game, but that's just taking away time where I could play this new game here." With gaming that was also because I mainly played 50 hour RPGs. Now that I've gone to shorter games I've been able to replay a few of them (some of them as much as like 4 or 5 times now). With books I've just got so much I want to read eventually that I'd rather just pick up another new book, and that's really the same with movies.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Because I don't care about winning or losing and enjoy the experience when I find the rare case of singleplayer enjoyment? The only reason time I care about competition is if I'm wasting through my opponents - it's not fun for either party when you roll a bunch of new/poor players.
You can love playing soccer and not care about winning or losing too.
There's nothing wrong with that perspective, but it doesn't cover the whole spectrum of what a game can be.
EDIT: You specifically singled out patterns as inferior to real players. That sounds to me like someone thinking about sports game (where I use "sport" loosely to refer to directly competitive games like FPSes or actual sports games) AI.
Super puzzle fighters?
Puyo puyo?
edit: if by puzzle you mean matching stuff up. :P
MP games are only funny to the people who choose to drop games I guess.
Still, to answer the OP, I play single player games because I'm not terribly competitive by nature, I don't need to prove myself better than others on a constant basis, and to be frank I don't have the time to play most multiplayer games to the level where I'd be giving competitive players the good time that (according to you) they'd want from me. I also won't play in ways that I find annoying or unsportsmanlike, which in turn just annoys me when others do anyway (spawn camping, looking at each other's screen in local multi, playing as the same character repeatedly in a fighting game trying to goad me into always playing my main).
Basically, I don't play games to make others happy. I play them to make me happy. And after going to classes all day where I'm graded on a curve and will end up in a profession aptly called "adversarial", I have no desire whatsoever to get tk'ed and teabagged by teenagers.
It's less that I think they're superior, and more that I favor a dynamic environment. Players try and do crazy things that AI never does and you can never be quite sure how they will react, due to an unlimited number of circumstances. But the single-player game also limits that, because the majority of people, I imagine, don't want a a single random bad-guy organizing ten other bad guys to flank you when you least expect it.
I guess this is a valid opinion, but for myself, I find it extremely challenging to really get angry at someone because of what comes out of their mouth and when I'm online it matters even less to me. The world is full of people and I won't like most of them - the same is true for the internet. Just gotta put up with it. You get the same thing in anything where two or more people are competing. Which, I guess, is what multiplayer gaming ultimately is, if you really want to get down to it. I guess I like to have something hanging on the line, even if it just 5 seconds of self-satisfaction over getting a triple kill rocket against unmatched odds that were forced on me.
I think one of the reasons I enjoyed Colossus so much is because it was relaxing - but I don't really find the high-intensity action that singleplayer games shove in your face at every turn relaxing. I guess that's the rub for me. The majority of games that are released would work fine as a multiplayer title, and having AI opponents, to me, seems like it's just like they said "here, have a gun and have these bad guys". It seems kind of lazy, despite all of the work that went into the systems that let the game be what it is. If you're going to make a singleplayer experience, why not create an experience instead of a thrill-ride?
EDIT: The large amount of responses did get me thinking, though. I can see why single-player games could be fun fun and all the talk at least gives me new things to keep an eye out for, which gives me a reason to play the games. I find that perception is a huge part of entertainment, which is why I wrote the OP in the first place.
That's not really what I'm after in my games.
I also don't really like playing against random people, it feels little to know different to me than fighting against the AI. Except they're usually considerably better than me and insult me more when I die. I do enjoy the odd co-op game though, Crackdown was easily one of the best games I've played in YEARS and I played the entire thing through with a friend and LOVED it. Gears of War I couldn't get in to on my own but loved coop.
But largely I buy games for their single player, not multi. I was hesitant and dubious enough when it was announced Uncharted 2 had multiplayer.
Maybe I'm just miserable and unsociable.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
When the AI does it, it does so with good reason.
*Sense of acomplishment after completing a game is greater than that of winning a round... or 50 (4 hours on Portal vs 4 hours on TF2)
*Experiences that aren't just about shooting (maybe there are other multiplayer games but my top 3 are all fps)
*When AI is better than humans and you are quite good
*Not feeling competitive
*Pausing whenever
*No pressure when you just want to mess about or explore in the game (little big planet)
*With racing games I usually only play lap trials because i think its a lot of fun trying to get the perfect line through each corner. (wipeout/gran turismo)
Having said all that, of the time which I spend on video games the majority is dedicated to multiplayer. I think that is just because of 3 things:
1- Familiarity - sometimes learning a new game's world and mechanics is tiring and when you've had a long day you just want to pyro it up
2- The company of other players over the microphone (partly why i play tf2 more than ut3 and cod4, i dont just want to hear "gg" after half an hour of play
3- Satisfaction of winning each kill is more than vs AI