frankfartmouth

Nintendo has always marched to their own beat. That's what has made them great, but it also sometimes alienates them when they're doing stuff that is completely confounding.

There are lots of reasons why people don't like Nintendo. Some people just don't like the whimsical nature of their games, some feel abandoned by them in the past several years because of their preoccupation with crappy motion controls and a willingness to greenlight cascades of shovelware to pour like a waterfall into the market, some people are just haters and want to see them fail just cuz. Lots of reasons.

One thing's for certain, though, Nintendo relies upon big, sweeping innovations. They're a feast or famine company, always swinging for the long ball. When they connect, I think they're the best gaming company out there. When they miss, it's pretty ugly (Virtual Boy, a lot of the Wii, the whole WiiU, all the fucking garbage peripherals for the NES). This yo-yo shit gets old, and a lot of gamers feel understandably jerked around by them, especially those of us who grew up with such a special connection to their games.

They need to figure a way to preserve their looseness and experimental bend but add a little predictability. The Wii was a very frustrating tease. Despite the fact that it had some of the best games of last generation to me (especially Galaxy), those games could have been on the Cube. With a controller. And now with the WiiU coming out limp, a lot of us out throwing our hands up.

I really hope they get it together, because I do not hate Nintendo at all. I very badly want them to stay around and stay healthy.

Fuck no.

If you follow the disease concept of addiction, which all the major governing medical bodies do, then just about anything can be addictive. The underlying problem is in the brain and its reward system; the manifestation--uncontrollable drug use, overeating, gambling, sex--is a symptom. As long as the addictive agent can produce a tolerance, which video games do in a sense, and can disrupt everyday life to a point of severe consequences, which video games certainly can, then it can be plugged into the criteria.

Besides all that, I can say with no doubt that I've had problems with video game addiction. I've struggled with addiction overall throughout my life, been in rehab, lots of drugs and alcohol. Crazy times have been had. I had to quit all that because of some health issues, and I subsequently developed a nasty habit of playing video games all the time and neglecting my wife and the such.

It follows you around and finds a way to get out. You have to deal with the underlying issues or you'll just keep finding ways to substitute. That's addiction. As long as something plays into the reward systems of the brain, it can be addicting. Video games certainly qualify.

I think it's the best game of the last generation, for what it's worth . Best one for my tastes, anyway. One of those games that feels new but rooted in old school mechanics, so it's familiar too. It's made every other RPG of the last generation look silly to me.

PC is the wife, but I have many concubines.

Some moronic game journalist actually tried to drum up a controversy around this? That's really sad. Any idiot can tell that Clueless Gamer is not meant to be taken seriously at all.

There's always going to be some inequality. The thing that concerns me about this is what it means for access, not necessarily that some people are rich and some people are poor; that's always been the case, and it likely always will be. Access to the system and upwards mobility are essential components of a healthy capitalist democracy. We're not quite there yet, but with more and more wealth consolidation for the rich, I'm scared that we'll get to a point where those things are going to be pretty much gone.

@hh said:

@development said:

@hh said:

@babychoochoo said:

i'm gonna second this, because they developed the weirdness of gameplay behavior into a fascinatingly detailed undead curse in an intriguing world, with me as the star and not some nolan whatever the fuck.

Except the part where you read the developer interview and Miyazaki and Co. pretty much say multiple times that most of the lore was derived from the art. In other words: they drew a dude; he looked cool; they made up a backstory to why he looked the way he did, and kept it ambiguous. Interesting? Definitely. Amazing story telling? No.

I'm sure I won't catch flack for this comment.

I don't know, i think most storytelling comes from random little things that are then furnished with characterization and plot. an exception would be something like the core idea of The Last of Us, which is truly inspired (and a one-off, not likely to be repeated), but in execution it's a very big ask to overlook how many people you kill during the unfolding of that story, whereas the souls games deal with that issue with true panache, equally inspired.

it's the end result that matters, i'm sure shakespeare doesn't have noble origins for half his stories, and half the time they came from things someone shouted in a pub.

Dark Souls tells its story in a way that only a game can, and so I'm going to give From the edge here. The Last of Us was amazing, but it was a traditional narrative with gameplay in between. I'm not knocking it, I love the game, but I'm more impressed by what From has done completely withing the confines of gameplay and setting. It's such a different experience.

I'm a big Nintendo fan too. They're probably my all-time favorite developer. But they've clearly been flying without a map for awhile. I don't agree at all that what they need to do is just keep cranking out classics. They've been cranking them out. That's part of the problem. They're tiring people out with these endless iterations of New Super Mario, etc. Yeah, no Metroid on the WiiU yet, but it hasn't been that long since the last one came out on the Wii. Back in the day, it always took a long time between major 1st party titles. How many true Mario games came out for the 64? One. That's it. 2 Zelda games. No Metroid. The system was good, though, because it had cool, innovative 3rd party stuff like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker, etc.

They need 3rd party support. They have to get off their addiction to their own franchises. As great as they are, they're beating that shit to death. They clearly have nothing else to go on in the console race. Handhelds will be fine for a while to come, but even that's likely going to be challenged soon.

Clementine from The Walking Dead and Ellie from The Last of Us come to mind right away because they're actually grounded, well-written characters with a real purpose in their stories, which isn't really the norm with female characters in most games.

I've always had a soft spot for Samus, though, probably because of the reveal at the end of the original Metroid. It sounds silly now, but it was actually pretty surprising at the time, and novel. But Samus is really more a cipher than a character anyway. She has some backstory and such, but she's really there more as a placeholder for the player to experience the game. I'm going to stick with the first two.