OhdK2

yes. but i demand a lot from myself so it's more of a side effect

@laserbolts said:

Hi giantbomb. I know there are a few of you out there that are depressed or bummed out by your day to day life but remember that if you are in good health to remain positive. There are some people that are going through alot rougher times than most of us. Just be happy if you are in good health and able to live your life the way you want to. Believe me I have been through some rough times mentally but if you want to, you can get through anything. It is great to be free and alive am I right? Life is a beautiful thing.

man eff these guys. thanks for posting. if ppl are too miserable to believe that others can't be happy without drugs, fuck 'em.

I think what the OP meant was more that the game puts things in perspective. I was also kind of unsettled by the game, even though I've "read the news" and "gotten a clue" like some less-than-polite posters mentioned.

It wasn't so much any single bit of violence as much as the sustained culture of aggression, violence, sex, and drugs that these people live in. Always a hair's-breadth away from death, everyone living real close to the edge of life, just fucking and juicing and violence.

It was just like Cicade de Deus. If that didn't bother your middle-class ass, then I think you might have lost your sense of proportion.

@zels said:

- Having to watch unlikeable, annoying characters in drawn-out cutscenes

I totally agree with you, and that's why I couldn't get through Red Dead Redemption (that stupid racist professor just annoyed the hell out of me after a while)

but I think the difference is that Max Payne himself will be kinda likeable, as opposed to Marston or Niko. I guess it depends on your taste though.

Surprised at how ambivalent everybody is -- I thought the trailers and the game look fantastic.

Everyone talks about how gritty and noiry the old games were, but to the tell the truth they were rather goofy at the core. The script? The guys in the graphic novel cutscenes? (at least in MP1). They (Remedy) were messing around and having a good time. Max himself cracked deadpan jokes every couple of minutes. (and remember the "stuck in a videogame" moment?)

The new one is actually what looks rather serious--a man with serious problems, with a chance at redemption, made to care about something. I think it will actually be a rather affecting story, given what I've seen. We'll see what took him to the bottom, and we'll see him try and fight his way to life again.

As for the gunplay, it looks real sharp and more fluid than the old games. The options that the OP complained about add tactical elements, as far as it seems, though of course that is a matter of opinion.

Don't know why everyone is so fussed to be honest. Given Rockstar's history, I would've worried that the gameplay would be sort of loose and dissatisfying (they were always better at making worlds over gameplay), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Day 1 for me.

older games tend to have longer single player campaigns. i remember when max payne came out a lot of reviewers complained that the 10 hr campaign was on the short side.

deus ex lasted me a good long time, dunno if that counts.

The only game. The game of thrones.

Or you know, spittin' game at the biddies

know what you mean. i thought it was good fun, and i loved 2, but it just felt like it was trying so hard to be more of the same.. and the shooting got really frustrating after a while

@Brodehouse: It doesn't have to be for every single person; I certainly did not mean it that way. I am fully aware of how infeasible that is. However I believe stories need to be at least slightly more interactive on a larger scale.

My first blog post, so please excuse if it meanders. It may not be the most cogent argument but I hope it will stimulate some debate.

Movie-Games

Mass Effect 3 defines itself on choice. The entire series, in fact, has predicated its sell on how your choices have tangible impact. Characters appear or don't; entire chunks of content may be locked or revealed depending on your actions.

For the most part, it seems, the series has delivered. Yet the tragedy is, at least in my humble opinion, is that the series still doesn't REALLY give you choice. It is still, in the end, a movie-game.

What do I mean by that?

if you would indulge me, I have a theory that big-budget triple-A gaming has diverged these days, following two distinct but entirely commercial paths.

First is the movie-game. Often aping its stylings, camera angles, and cutscenes from the art of film, these games are rush EXPERIENCES, boiling down in its deepest essence to "press A to proceed" encounters. The single-player components of Call of Duty, Uncharted--most action games in fact, lie on this path. I have nothing against these games. They are fun. I like them.

The second are playground games. This is Skyrim. This is Red Dead Redemption. World of Warcraft. Games where, despite a thin veneer of story, ultimately define themselves by letting you muck around in a giant sandbox. If not, the story still adheres to the movie-game format: set-pieces or storylines that play out in a preset predetermined manner. And that's where it messes up for me, because I think this isn't truly choice. I would like something more.

Cloud Computing and Content "Chunks"

There's a second part to this argument, and that's about how companies monetize their product. In this day and age of cloud distribution, where updates are delivered seamlessly through content platforms such as Steam or Xbox Live, there is no need for either producers or gamers to adhere to the expensive (and occasionally inhibiting) $60-a-pop system.

Valve, for example, is experimenting with precisely that. I have to think that Gabe Newell must be semi-prescient when he directed Valve to develop Source. A modular, iterative engine linked with Steam, able to deliver pieces of content as they arrive.

My ultimate point is that games don't HAVE to be presented in long-gestating chunks, where everything is decided but split along various discrete choices. We're reaching the point where content is becoming more continuous, and where we can pay for things as they come along, not in giant packages.

The interesting part comes here: the developers can use this too.

This is precisely where The Old Republic missed the mark, I think. They created a story-driven MMO, but that story was the same for everyone in the same class. And at least with the class I played, Jedi Sentinel, the story wasn't very good at all. It felt completely disconnected from the world I was supposed to inhabit--so much so, that it didn't even really feel like a world at all. Yet why did they bother with this, when they could have instead come up with something a lot more interactive and interesting?

This is a time when gamers feel more linked to their product than ever. The backlash against the Mass Effect 3 ending shows precisely that. We CARE about OUR games, OUR stories. By enabling us with Choice, game companies have essentially surrendered the concept of game ownership to the player.

In Conclusion

The time has come (the walrus said) for true innovation. Let's have a game where our choices truly make an impact, where they respond dynamically to what we really do. Pit the players against the developer, and challenge those developers to react in ways that truly define our own epic narratives. Change the payment system so we don't have $60 and $15 increments just to access large chunks of content. Allow for more communication, more context, more customization.

I am aware that games like EVE online (and, from what I have read, the upcoming Guild Wars II) have attempted something along these lines. Yet I feel EVE, at least, has still missed the mark. By leaving the players in a world and saying, "go to it!" developers have nixed stories from those who want to see it woven around us. And while it might seem an impossible dream, I would like a game where the story isn't ending isn't picked for me, like Mass Effect or the Old Republic, or any movie-game; nor a game where there is no ending at all, like EVE. I want a story with an ending I can help write along.

Mass Effect offers choice. But it's just ticking off A or B on a multiple choice grid, and if you wanted you could go on youtube and see ALL the endings. And in the end, it all boils down to nudging the story along in particular ways.

I guess we could all choose to ignore that. But that'd be kind of lame, don't you think?