gettin fagtits

still a bit funny.

fuck, I LOLed at that. at work.

You’ve have the wrong impression of me. There are a lot of things I love. I love games, particularly shooters 1st or 3rd person, but what I do dislike intensely are people who take games too seriously. That’s why I dislike groups of friends/clans in ranked matches. They take the fun out of it by taking it too damn serious. That’s all I was saying above. For instance, whenever you play Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and you see a bunch of guys in a ranked match on the same team all with the same three initials in their prefix. You’re generally in for a shit match. The same thing happens in so many other games I’ve played. To my mind, player matches are for playing with your friends. Ranked matches are for proving yourself as an individual. And that may well entail how well you work with other people on a game like Gears of War. It’s also a good way of meeting NEW people.

Games for me are to be played for fun, not for winning as the sole purpose of the game. I leave that to the dickheads who feel they’ve got something to prove to the world by doing so.

If someone doesn’t respond with a mike, then you can usually kick them although I’m uneasy about the ethics of this as not having a mike doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be a bad team player.

I never said that I dislike cutesy games. I dislike cutesy gameplay. That’s Guitar Hero in a nutshell. If it had more realistic graphics and a bit more depth to the gameplay, I would probably be more inclined to play it.

I love all kinds of music, but egotistical and self-indulgent music I dislike. Hotel California falls into that category. As does most jazz music. Anything that prizes technique over substance.

I’m always amazed on these forums that you get branded a hater whenever you speak out against something. Is it no longer possible to speak your mind or do we all have to just go along with the crowd now? I never at any point said that anyone else had to agree with me. I’m merely passing an opinion. Take it or leave it.

Okay. So you’d rather play with a bunch of fuckheads in Rainbow who run around with a FAMAS and take all of the tactical aspect out of multiplayer over a group of disciplined guys who play in the spirit of the game?

It’s possible to be in a clan and not make it your life, you know. In fact, most of the clans I’ve played with in any game, including the ones I’ve been in, have been normal people who are trying to make a game more fun. When something like GRAW is designed with teamwork in mind, and everyone in matchmaking is out to rank up instead of support other people, it makes the game tired and frustrating. When you have teamwork and communication going on, it’s a beautiful thing. If you’re playing ranked matches with a team of people you don’t know, how can you be expected to serve a team? If you’re out to see how good YOU are, then play deathmatch, Lone Wolf, etc. If you want to see how well you can work in a TEAM setting, then you sure as hell had better play with people you know how to work together with. As far as I can see, developers made player matches for casual players, and ranked for serious ones, and that’s the end of the difference. If ranked were meant to see how well a single person could perform, the only thing present would be one-on-one tournament shit and free-for-alls.

Also, I’m not sure what’s cutesy about Guitar Hero’s gameplay, seeing as it’s just pressing buttons to rock songs you grew up with. My major objection is that you appear to think anything with cutesy graphics has cutesy gameplay and apparently dismiss it. I’ve responded to it before, but I’ll say it again, that’s what’s destroying great game companies and causing shit like “Conflict: Denied Ops” to be produced for the junkies that don’t want to touch anything without blood splatter and explosions in it.

Anyways, concerning the news topic: as much as I may sigh a resounding “meh” in relation to Gears 1, Cliffy B is the man, and I trust him and the rest of Epic to put out great stuff.

It IS perfectly possible to play as a good team with people you don’t know. That for me is one of greatest strengths of XBox Live in that it brings people together from different countries and backgrounds and gets them to work together towards a particular objective. Especially so in Ranked matches. It deliberately forces you that you can’t invite friends to Ranked matches for that very reason. That is why I find it saddening to see Party/Clan support creeping into Ranked matches. Because what inevitably happens is that you get a well trained team playing against people who haven’t played before together and who are trying to work together, but inevitably are going to fail because the other team will destroy them based on their map knowledge or out and out unsporting conduct. And based on experience that’s what happens more often than not on XBox Live. I’m not against the idea of party play per se, it’s just that in my experience of playing XBox Live it makes the online gameplay experience unbalanced and hence less fun. The best fun matches I’ve had were when the teams were equally as good as each other and you get off on the tension that creates when you’re neck and neck. I take no pleasure from beating some team senseless 50 to nil. However, sadly there are some people who do. You missed the point of my previous post. I’ll reiterate. Ranked is for proving how good you are on a singular basis, but that may involve how well you work in a TEAM of people doing the same thing. Notice the highlighted word there. One on one and free-for-all is not what I’m talking about. You need to be able to prove how well you can work with people you don’t know without relying on your buddies/clan members. That’s what Ranked is about and hence why you’re not allowed to invite friends. And THAT is why it should remain so. The principle is sound.

You seem to think I don’t like tactical gameplay. I do. I love Gears. I love Team Leader in Rainbow Six which is TOTALLY tactical in the same sense as Gears.

I’m sorry, but I like depth to my gameplay and being an adult, my preference is to see adult content. That doesn’t mean I can’t play a kids game. For instance, Lego Star Wars is an out and out kids game, but it has plenty of depth and variation to it’s gameplay and a great sense of humour. Heaps of fun to play. Viva Pinata is an awesome game. Great for kids and adults alike as it has a great variable gameplay mechanic that allows everyone to enjoy it at their own pace.

The gameplay in Guitar Hero has no depth to it whatsoever for an adult player. It’s just too simplistic for me. That’s just my opinion. I don’t know why that seems to have riled you so much. It must be because I’m labelling it a kids game. Based on the gameplay alone, it absolutely is. Coupled with the cutesy graphics, it adds to hypothesis. Add the gimmicky guitar controller to the mix and hey presto you’ve got a kids game with timed button bashing as the primary gameplay concept. I would much rather play something with more depth to the gameplay than that. There are plenty of other games with cutesy graphics that have depth to the gameplay AND cutesy graphics that I would play before Guitar Hero.

But if YOU like it, go ahead, knock yourself out. It makes no difference to me. I’m just not interested in childish gameplay of that nature. Forgive me for being entitled to my opinion. I like bloodsplatter and explosions as much as the next guy (you say that like it’s a bad thing ;-)), but that’s not ALL I like. As long as a game can provide an appropriate level of varied gameplay with some depth, then I’ll play it. If it contains adult content, then all the better. To my mind, XBox 360 is a console whose core market is hard core gamers whether MS like it or not. Games like Guitar Hero for me are more marginal. That’s the kind of thing I would expect on a Nintendo machine.

Now more related to topic: Gears 2 will be just as awesome as Gears 1. Can’t wait! But I shall reserve my judgement on the multiplayer aspect until it arrives.

So you beat GH3 on expert? Nice work. Or did you get bored? The gameplay there is hard and deep (which is apparently how you like it).

Personally, I love kicking the crap out of kids with my buddies(clan?) in FPS’s. Winning 50-nil sounds like fun to me. If something is fun, it makes me laugh. Which pwning never ceases to do.

Now if you’re trying to say that you enjoy the sport of a good match, I understand what you’re saying. And agree. But to say that really good people should be prevented from playing together and using team tactics … not only is that newbspeak, but 100% against the point.

Dictionary:
TEAM DEAMATCH - N - A gametype in which players use squad tactics to get more kills than the other, team, in an allotted time frame. Typically to a set number of kills.

Play free for all if you’re sick of getting owned by parties. Or, better yet, find some people you meet online who are good, add them to your frineds list, and start playing with them whenever you can. Maybe you could (eww) form your own clan from the people you meet.

And I miss augustbot, his arguements were intelligent. KidOuthouse/this chump — not in the same category.

How often have you played ranked and actually had a full team of people that communicated? Maybe I’m just ridiculously unlucky in that the only times I’ve ever found a group of people willing to work together were one instance, with a group of Brits in Gears, and another in GRAW, where only about 3/4 of the people actually worked together. It is possible to find a good team of strangers in ranked, but extremely unlikely, especially in something like Gears, where every 13 year old in the world (who shouldn’t be playing, but is) is out for personal glory, and complains to no end when someone takes the weapon they had dibs on. Maybe it’s just Americans, but when I play ranked, I only get frustrated at everyone “looking out for number one” in a team game just because they care so much about a number next to their damn name.

I saw “N0 N33D’s” post, but there are people like that in all gametypes, particularly in player matches, where they can’t be penalized for fucking around just because it isn’t so “serious”. You make a fine point in having three game modes (although these already exist in Halo 3 and COD4, as mentioned), but that’s unlikely to happen, and so you’ll have to work within my perfectly legitimate point that ranked matches are nothing but more serious than player (and only because of the rank). If you can’t cope with playing against a team of well-organized people in a team game, then get better or just stop playing. It’s like you’re complaining about playing a professional sport against a professional team with a group of guys you got through personal ads in the paper. Go play on the company softball team if it’s too hard.

I never said (or even inferred) that you didn’t like tactical gameplay. I said that if you -want- tactical gameplay, then your best bet is to play with friends or a clan, because that’s where the tactics really lie.

In fact, I do not own Guitar Hero, and have only played it about twice (although I can see the reason for some of the obsession). My problem is that you 1.) label anything “simplistic” as “childish” (although I’m not sure how Call of Duty couldn’t be labeled simplistic in this way, because all one ever does is run around and press the trigger or shoulder buttons; as well, I was playing Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest when I was in pre-school, and that’s fifty times more complicated, so “childish” doesn’t seem to mean much), and 2.) you appear to assume anything with “childish” graphics is such a game. Have you ever played a Banjo Kazooie game in your life? Have you ever played any of Nintendo’s core lineup of games? I know you haven’t (or haven’t given them a passing chance, at most), because if you had, you wouldn’t cater to such ignorant ideas. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, this is the attitude that is RELEGATING Nintendo to the “children’s” console. You’re not as bad as many out there, but this is what causes the ideas that the 360 is the “hardcore” console to stick around (Shrek is totally hardcore, right?). It’s just as much of a family console as the Nintendo.

If more “adult” games like Red Steel were produced (and less mediocre), then this wouldn’t be so. However, because every testosterone-filled fifteen-year-old thinks anything like Pikmin (again, more complicated than Call of Duty and Viva Pinata both) is “kiddie shit” just because of the graphics (and lack of blood splatter and explosions, which although “adult” by your terms, actually comprise most of the mindless action films in the world and are in fact BAD for the general population because of desensitization to violence; it actually seems a lot more adolescent than adult) and they propagate this idea, the developers are forced to cater to it, or even succumb to it (see: Bioware).

When I play a game, I want it to be fun. I don’t give a shit what the graphics are like, or how simple the concept is; if it’s fun, then I want to play it. Admit it: as great as the story in GTA IV is, you enjoy letting loose and just blowing shit up and driving off of jumps, right? Not exactly complicated stuff, there.

you bring up Bioware for making mass effect,which has blood spatter and explosions but don’t forget that they are making a sonic RPG for the DS.

I bring up Bioware because they said a serious game could never be made on the Wii.

Each to their own, I say.

To me GH is childish gameplay. For me, it lacks depth. Does it suddenly involve you in the story/characters/strategy/logic of the game on Hard? Didn’t realise that it suddenly gained some depth just by playing it on Hard. Here was me thinking it was just mindless button matching whilst listening to equally mindless guitar solos. How wrong could I be?

Let me get this quite straight: I at no point said that blood/explosions make great gameplay. I at no point said that childish graphics equals childish gameplay. I at no point stated that cartoonish graphics equals childish game.

Take games like Metal Gear Solid, that was a ground breaking game because of it’s involved storyline and varied gameplay and sheer inventiveness. BioShock had a great story/twist and wonderful graphical design and was a lot of fun to play.

GTA has always been ground breaking (IV less so that the others admittedly). I have always loved the GTA series. Not because of driving around mowing down innocent civilians (although that was in there), not because of the swearing, not because of the blood and explosions, but because it offered something other games could only copy since. Freedom. Freedom to exist in a free-roaming environment and you the player choose your destiny. Whether that’s doing some taxi fares, doing an assassination, following some guy who’s cheating on his wife and taking a picture as proof, doing a race, exploring to find hidden packages, or just driving around looking at the satirical adverts and shop fronts. No game to my mind has yet matched GTA for it’s depth and variety of gameplay. Mass Effect tries to do this to an extent although the conversation element becomes really tiring after a while. Oblivion was an awesome game for the same reason, varied and engaging gameplay that gets you involved in the story and characters and makes you care for what’s going on and gives you incentive to play more to find out how it all turns out.

I occassionally play Boom Boom Rocket with my kids for fun. But let me tell you, no amount of “classic” rock songs, or whatever kind of graphics you throw at this game are going to take away from the fact that it’s Boom Boom Rocket with some rock songs thrown in. If you can perhaps explain how this gains depth on any difficulty, I’d be interested to know. But I still ain’t gonna play it again. Its simplistic, childish level of gameplay simply does not interest me. I can’t make that any clearer and I can’t see that any amount of forum diatribe is going to convince me otherwise so I would stop wasting your breath and accept that, believe it or not, other people can have different opinions from yourselves. Now there’s a novelty.

Like I said before, if you like it, go ahead. Knock yourself out, but don’t waste time trying to convince me why I should be playing it too.

Each to their own.

And as a fellow Scotsman once said, “Here endeth the lesson”.

Good job ignoring pretty much all of my post, there.

“Let me get this quite straight: I at no point said that blood/explosions make great gameplay. I at no point said that childish graphics equals childish gameplay. I at no point stated that cartoonish graphics equals childish game.”

1.) No, you called it “adult content,” which I responded to.

2 and 3 are pretty much the same thing) But you have no problem dismissing the Wii as a childish (”marginal,” going by your logic that games define a console) console, or Banjo Kazooie as a childish game. Apparently, only the children’s games you have been forced to play with your own children are the ones that have any depth.

Games like Guitar Hero gain depth on higher difficulty because they actually require a higher cognitive ability (extreme being the most… well, extreme) than the lower difficulties. They’re like gigantic, very fast puzzles that require the player to have very fast reaction times, excellent coordination, and ridiculous memorization skills. Try playing the hardest difficulty on a song you’ve never practiced, and you’ll get your ass handed to you. As much as many musicians hate to admit it, there are times where Guitar Hero is in fact more difficult to play than the instrument itself, and this is something I can vouch for. It moves from just playing general representations of the notes to playing pretty much everything in the song. If you think that this doesn’t require any kind of higher brain function than what GTA IV can be broken down to (move, aim, shoot, Y button to jack car, drive, Y button to get out, mission end… I love GTA IV, but really, look at how many games have copied it and failed miserably, just because they didn’t have the story to back it up), then you’re just in denial.

Not sure what’s mindless about guitar solos, either, but I suppose that’s just another opinion formed on ignorance.

Well-informed opinions are fine. Opinions formed on ignorance, however, are, as you would say, “childish pish”. And that’s all I see here, for the most part. I’m not saying you have to like every game ever made; I’m saying you need to give far more credit to “childish” games than you so apparently refuse to do. If you don’t want to, fine, but that’s just being bull-headed. You’re almost as bad as the people who just outright claim that video games are for children.

Call me an idealist, perhaps, but I still believe there is a requirement to play online with people you don’t know (yet!).

Admittedly, you get some kids (thankfully not that many) and you get assholes (sadly way TOO many), but there ARE people out there who like playing a game because it is fun, NOT because of who they can pwn and what they think they need to prove to the world by winning 50-nil. Sadly, I have to say, it is mostly Americans who exhibit this kind of behaviour. America is a great nation, but brought down globally by it’s inherent mentality regarding the rest of the world and how it has to be best at everything (which they aren’t, of course, everyone else know that, but try telling them!). I apologise to the few good Americans who play on XBox Live, but you know the kind of guys I’m talking about here.

What that proves to me is that you’re perfectly willing to totally annhilate another team and have a right good belly laugh at the expense of the fun of others. That to me is simply not on. Very, very uncool. If you look at the Submit Player Review, there is an option for “Unsporting Conduct”. This is precisely what this behaviour is. Unbalanced teams, spawn camping and the like. That’s why I would want to play Ranked without party play as it acts as a deterrent to precisely this form of jeuvenile behaviour. If I want to play with a team, then I will, but at least, with Ranked Party Play as described in point 3 above, I would be up against a team who are doing the same thing and therefore it is fair and balanced. If you then lose, it is down to how you played, not because some assholes forced it upon you. Point 2 prevents individuals playing with well formed teams which is what standard Party Play tends to create.

I can understand the unsporting aspect of that; however, what if it’s just a group of really good players playing a bunch of unorganized randoms? They have no reason to take it easy on the other team just because they can’t get things together.

In Gears, you pretty much have to stick together anyway. It is possible use flanking techniques, but you’re more likely to win if you stick together. Unless you’ve got BoomShot/Sniper/Hammer of Dawn noobs in the game, of course, in which case the sense of health competition goes out of the window. And the fun disappears, strangely enough…

You’re complaining about weapons purposely included in the game by developers?

Those players wouldn’t be a problem if it were two clans playing. =P