Topic: Project Cafe & Pre-E3 HYPE Thread

[BlackNMild2k1]

they needed a HDD to install the OS and run the games.

[Louieturkey]

they needed a HDD to install the OS and run the games.

That was my thought as well.

[Adrock]

One thing I've noticed is that the REALLY long running videogame series are generally Japanese.  So maybe we're just tired of playing Mario and Final Fantasy games like we've been doing for over 20 years.  Yeah Activision will milk the **** out of Guitar Hero to the point that it becomes annoying, but then they just cut it off like that when it no longer was popular.  The big Western franchises right now are not that old.  We're not still playing Impossible Mission.  We seem to get something milked pretty hard but for a short period of time.  So while Nintendo is giving us one Mario platformer on the Gamecube, Naughty Dog released an entire TRILOGY of Jak and Daxter games on the PS2.  It seemed like overkill to me to have three games in one generation.  But we don't see Naughty Dog making Jak games right now.  They're making Uncharted games.  They milked one franchise and have now started another.

That's not really true. Naughty Dog may not be making Jak games anymore, but Sony still releases Jak games despite the story pretty much wrapping up in Jak 3. The Lost Frontier is effectively Jak 4. God of War is 6 years old and has 6 games (the mobile phone game is canon), despite it being touted as a trilogy. Sony is planning on God of War 4 even though Kratos killed everyone except Aphrodite. Kratos, additionally, has appeared in 2 fighting games and Hot Shots Golf and a few others. Point being, I'm not convinced the age or whoring out of a particular series is a contributing factor to the decline of Japanese titles. If series like Jak and GoW were around since the 80s and were popular enough to catch on, they'd still be mainstays today. Truth is, most of those series owe a lot to those longstanding series. If something is popular enough, the IP owners are going to keep selling it. As long as they do right by those series and the quality is high, I don't see any issues.

I think the problem with the Japanese gaming industry is a reliance on old ways of thinking and stale ideas. For example, Lost Odyssey. It's basically Final Fantasy. Problem is, if you're going to play a game like Final Fantasy, why wouldn't you just play Final Fantasy? It seems Mistwalker learned from that and made The Last Story which, from everything I've read, strays far from the FF formula. Maybe that's Nintendo's influence. Nintendo has stayed in the game because they at least try to innovate even if some of their games have become predictable at times. There's no denying that the quality remains high. Even a bad Metroid game like Other M is still pretty good. If Japanese developers are just going to copy popular trends of the old guard, the old guard is also going to perform better because of things like nostalgia. Western game development advanced because they started thinking outside the box; they kept innovating. Naughty Dog didn't just make "American Zelda," they made Jak and Daxter. I think the influence is there, but they went their own way.

[broodwars]

I think the problem with the Japanese gaming industry is a reliance on old ways of thinking and stale ideas. For example, Lost Odyssey. It's basically Final Fantasy. Problem is, if you're going to play a game like Final Fantasy, why wouldn't you just play Final Fantasy? It seems Mistwalker learned from that and made The Last Story which, from everything I've read, strays far from the FF formula. Maybe that's Nintendo's influence. Nintendo has stayed in the game because they at least try to innovate even if some of their games have become predictable at times. There's no denying that the quality remains high. Even a bad Metroid game like Other M is still pretty good. If Japanese developers are just going to copy popular trends of the old guard, the old guard is also going to perform better because of things like nostalgia. Western game development advanced because they started thinking outside the box; they kept innovating. Naughty Dog didn't just make "American Zelda," they made Jak and Daxter. I think the influence is there, but they went their own way.

That sounds about right to me as well, and you can really see it in the JRPG genre where the formula (outside of a few notable exceptions, mostly Atlus games like the Persona series) hasn't really changed since the Playstation era (if not earlier).  Sure, the games may get flashier and the stories more convoluted, but at the end of the day they're not all that different from what you saw even as far back as the NES and SNES eras.  And when a company dares to try to do something different (as we saw in FF XIII and the early concepts of Dragon Quest IX), most of the time they get reamed in nostalgia-focused Japan.

[Mop it up]

Given the vast droughts on the N64 and long delays for especially Rare software, can we really say that Rare in their prime could actually handle multiple projects at once?   

They may have delayed a few titles, but Rare still released 11 games in 5 years on the Nintendo 64, most of which were of high quality. How many other single developers can stake that claim?

That sounds about right to me as well, and you can really see it in the JRPG genre where the formula (outside of a few notable exceptions, mostly Atlus games like the Persona series) hasn't really changed since the Playstation era (if not earlier).  Sure, the games may get flashier and the stories more convoluted, but at the end of the day they're not all that different from what you saw even as far back as the NES and SNES eras.

I think this argument oversimplifies things. It can be applied to any genre and you'd get the same result: it's essentially the same game as it was however many years ago. Take FPS games for example. If you strip away the flashiness and stories of modern shooters, those games would be essentially no different than Doom. It's the little details that make a game, so if you take this and that and all these things away, then of course it's going to be the same at its core. All modern games are like that.

[broodwars]

I think this argument oversimplifies things. It can be applied to any genre and you'd get the same result: it's essentially the same game as it was however many years ago. Take FPS games for example. If you strip away the flashiness and stories of modern shooters, those games would be essentially no different than Doom. It's the little details that make a game, so if you take this and that and all these things away, then of course it's going to be the same at its core. All modern games are like that.

I'd have to disagree with you on that.  Take an FPS like Bioshock for instance: just focusing on the gameplay, it's a lot more advanced than we had in something like Doom.  For one thing, while you can shoot your way through mobs of enemies, the game encourages the player to experiment with alternative solutions. 

You can...
- hack security bots and sic them on your foes
- hit one Splicer with a plasmid near a security camera to send waves of bots at them
- hypnotize a Big Daddy and use him as a walking tank and shield
- lure the Splicers into a pool of water and shock the water to electrocute them all
- hack a nearby turret
- hack a nearby first aid station, and hurt the enemies enough so they flee and kill themselves using the hacked first aid station.

And those are just some of the strategies at your disposal, all of which the game encourages you to try and find your own style with.  And none of them are invalid.  That's way more complex from a gameplay perspective than we had with Doom.  The genre has evolved.

"Alright", you say, "you've named one FPS.  Can you name another that's notably different?"  Sure I can!  How about Bulletstorm, a game that's very simple in concept but constantly encourages you to use your environment and combinations of your weapons (all of which have secondary functions that work radically differently) against your enemies in increasingly creative ways?  The more inventive you are and the more frequently you change how you play the game, the more points the game gives you to spend on more weapons and ammo.  Simply stripping the game down to its base mechanics, that's much more involved an experience than Doom.

Alright, let's look at a game series that's seen much more mainstream success in the Battlefield: Bad Company series. OK, you march from set-piece to set-piece shooting dudes with guns.  That is pretty similar, until you start factoring in sections where you pilot a vehicle.  And on top of being a cover-based shooter, your cover is unreliable because any explosive can usually blow it to bits so you constantly have to shift your cover and think about your environment. Do I shoot these guys from this window, or maybe do I climb up these stairs in this house and use my rocket launcher to blow a hole in the next building over so I can leap in there and flank those goons?

Point is, the FPS genre has seen more experimentation and evolution than it's probably given credit for, just from a gameplay perspective (let alone an AI perspective, which is a lot more complex than it was in the Doom days).  I don't think it's a valid comparison to the stagnation of the JRPG.

[Mop it up]

RPGs have come a long way too, with a lot more customization, varying battle systems requiring different strategies, more complex and engaging environments to explore, etc. Also, story and presentation have always been one of the focal points of RPGs, so you can't strip those away and allow FPSs by comparison to keep everything you mentioned. If I were more familiar with RPGs then I would point to specific games, but they aren't really my thing.

In the end, it all depends on which genres a person likes. If someone never liked FPSs or RPGs to begin with, no amount of evolutions or features are going to change their mind when they don't like the core of the genre. And when it comes to specific series, there are certain things that make them a series so if they want to make something radically different like FFXIII or what Dragon Quest IX was in the early concept stage, I see no reason why they shouldn't become new IPs or a part of a different series that more closely resembles that kind of game (sure, there's the issue of name recognition but people won't take chances on new IPs if developers don't try making them... good ones).

[cubist]

...and then a first person jrpg shooter comes out that changes the industry and you're both right.

[Mop it up]

Actually that's an interesting point. Menu-based gameplay was pretty much perfected on the SNES, so where could they go from there? They can mix up the mechanics of how it all works to create different types of strategies like they've done, but as far as evolutions go there's really nowhere else to take it. Most of the things Broodwars listed in FPS games have already been done in RPGs so many years ago, because menus make them much more easily achievable.

So I think that's why we've seen RPG elements appear in so many other styles of games, because there really is nowhere else to take menu-based gameplay. And that's why the original genre itself can feel stale to those who don't care for it to begin with, and why one would view action-RPGs and other such types of games as an evolution of menu-based games, when really they are something else entirely.

[ThePerm]

hmmm, Nintendo should include 2 different types of controllers at launch. That way it guarantees both have market penetration. I can see them going with the portable screen idea..which is basically the extention of GBAGCN cable, on the other hand i dont see why they should ditch motion control. Have your Cake and eat it too.

[Ymeegod]

I was just thinking something about longterm lifespan of the WII2.  What if it has another expansion port similar to the N64?  Since the WII2 is launching mulitple years ahead of PS4 and Xbox 3 then it's safe to say it's not going win in the graphic department but what if Big N can close the gap with a simple idea?  Upgrades.  I'm taking about a simple plug in and play--rip out the old GPU and slap a new one in.  Or Crossfire them. 

Well that's my thoughts anyhow.   

[NWR_insanolord]

But then you're in a Wii Motion+/N64 Expansion Pak situation, where you've segmented the market and can't assume everyone has the upgrade. A Motion+ costs $10 and is packed in with an extremely successful game, and there are still only a handful of games that require it.

[Ymeegod]

Motion+ just didn't have Big N following up with support.

And two, adding another GPU wouldn't be the same as new hardware.  Just the graphics are going change, for example the draw distance or maybe even resoluton.  So it's not like you're not going be able to play the game, it's just your not going play it with all the bells turned up if you don't have the upgrade.

So those that want all the features would only have to pay x amount more which would be considerable less than the Xbox 3 and PS4. 

It's a win-win for everyone.  Those that crave power can just pay for it.
 
 

[NWR_insanolord]

Well then the problem is that there wouldn't be a significant enough difference for people to actually want to buy the thing. Nobody bought an N64 expansion pak just for the higher resolution and draw distance in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. They bought it because Donkey Kong 64 required it, or because Majora's Mask required it, or because Perfect Dark all but required it. If the game still has to run on the stock hardware, you can't really do too much with the upgrade.

[Ymeegod]

What are you taking about?  PC's have been doing it for how many years?  And the N64 was just a memory expansion and I thought it was quite successful? 

Like I said it wouldn't be to hard for the developers to adapt.  It's not like the PC's where there's going be tons of options but just two. 

[NWR_insanolord]

How it's done on PCs is not at all relevant to this discussion. No matter how much Morari complains, consoles are not, and shouldn't be, the same as PCs. Not even Microsoft has taken things to that point. Two options is no better than the hundreds on PC, and in some ways is worse.

I don't think developers want consoles to do that sort of thing, and if they were I doubt Nintendo would entertain the notion, even if they're catering to what third parties want as much as they're rumored to be.

[Chozo Ghost]

A Motion+ costs $10 and is packed in with an extremely successful game, and there are still only a handful of games that require it.

But that's just because there are only a handful of games coming out for the Wii anymore. M+ is now more than just a peripheral because its now built into the controller and all new Wii consoles come bundled with it by default.

[NWR_insanolord]

Except for the 60+ million they sold before they switched to that. And Motion+ launched almost two years ago, and was known about for a while before that, so there were plenty of opportunities prior to the eternal drought we're in now.

[Nemo]

Nobody bought an N64 expansion pak just for the higher resolution and draw distance in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.

<---- This guy did.

[NWR_insanolord]

And I'm sure you are very much in the minority. When I use absolute terms like "nobody" I almost never mean for them to be taken completely literally. Usually I make that clear in context, but in that case I didn't. I meant nobody in the statistical sense. I'm sure there are a few others who did that as well, just not enough to actually mean anything. No offense intended; I'm sure I fall into that category in at least a few areas.

[BranDonk Kong]

There should not be two different versions of the Wii 2. That would just be completely retarded. If Nintendo did that, it would be the most anti-console (and anti-Nintendo) thing that any hardware developer ever did, and then third parties would do as they did with the Wii - spend a few bucks and dish out crap that's going to sell to the lowest common denominator.

[Ceric]

The Wii is the only non-portable Nintendo System without a dedicated expansion port.  I mean look at the bottom of the GameCube.  Thier is 3 of them.  I used 1 for the network adapter.  Did the Gameboy player use one of them I can't remember its been a while.  To say having an expansion ports and like is not Nintendo like I would beg to differ.  Though the multiple Sku thing with that those ports bring about I think Nintendo will now steer away from simply because of their success in the handheld arena.

[Nemo]

Did the Gameboy player use one of them?

Yes, but I don't recall if anything ever used the third GameCube port.

[Ceric]

Did the Gameboy player use one of them?

Yes, but I don't recall if anything ever used the third GameCube port.

Paging UncleBob.. Unca..
 
The Network adapter and the Modem used different ports.  I know you can have a Network adapter and GBPlayer in at the same time, thats how mine is setup so, if the modem and GBPlayer used different ports then the modem be the third one.

[Chozo Ghost]

Except for the 60+ million they sold before they switched to that. And Motion+ launched almost two years ago, and was known about for a while before that, so there were plenty of opportunities prior to the eternal drought we're in now.

Well, I don't know if quality can make up for the lack of quantity, but the new Zelda game is going to rely on M+ and that's a pretty big deal.

There should not be two different versions of the Wii 2. That would just be completely retarded.

That seems to be working out okay for the Xbox 360. They've actually had quite a few versions over the years, but generally no more than two were maintained at a time.