Games on the PC getting dumber and dumber?

[darkewaffle]

Here's hopeing Valve stays within their roots with Half-Life 3 (if that happens), HL2 is one of the few remaining "raw" games these days.

While I love HL2, at the same time it's pretty easy, linear and polished. In what way does "raw" describe it?

Am I the only one who thinks games don't all have to be challenging? I don't always enjoy a challenge. Sometimes just mindlessly shooting things, upgrading my character and equipment, and progressing through a story is enough. That's what releases the dopamine right?

Personally a game needs to have some pretty strong "x-factors" for me to be able to look past simplistic/dull gameplay. Borderlands 2 is a mediocre, shallow FPS but I did play through it twice (solo and co-op) for all the storytelling, humor, voiceacting, etc. Mass Effect kind of falls into this camp as well, while I loved the universe/characters/writing/lore and generally everything about it, I still think the gameplay itself was a major weakness in all three titles.

On the other hand, I think gameplay can carry a game in the absence of all else - such as N.

 

[EDUSAN]

i think i understand what Teknobug meant and i feel the same way

hl2 is one of the last FPS that didnt have "aiming" mode, or cutscenes all the time, or shining objects that tell you what you can use, or a "show objective way" button, or map, or mini map, or that "press to focus" button that shows you something of interest while its happening.

you control your char from the beginning to the end

 

[Veliko]

It's hardly surprising or praiseworthy that a game as linear as Half Life 2 didn't have any arrows or mini maps.

 

[EDUSAN]

dead space 2 has it and its not too different linearwise to hl2

 

[Veliko]

It's also optional from what I remember of playing the first game, not the mention that you have to revisit areas in Dead Space and so it's easier to get lost.

 

[Savatar]

It varies, I don't think we can generalize that all games are getting 'dumber'. There are some places where we have seen trends that can be seen as dumb, but some other changes could have also added things to the genre. One good example would be shooters... if we compare something old-school like Half-Life with something new like Crysis, the idea of the shield recharging itself can be seen as 'dumb'. However, Half-Life didn't have any notion of a suit which could let you swap out abilities for speed, cloaking and so on as Crysis lets you - this feature arguably makes for a better game because now you can handle situations in different ways. I'm not saying Crysis is better than Half-Life (it's not), but those new features/changes can be seen as progress. A somewhat open-world design like Crysis has its own pros/cons, whereas Half-Life's environments help drive the narrative (but potentially limits choice and freedom).

The same kind of pros/cons could be used to analyze changes in any genre. There's no one size fits all, and there's still really neat games being made!

 

[BSim500]

"Games on the PC getting dumber and dumber?"

Um, yes...

 

[Red Hawk]

Um, yes...

Oh ho, very funny. Because older RPGs never only had a couple options that would move a conversation forward (rather than just answering a question) and Dragon Age II never allowed you to wait for a while asking questions before moving the conversation forward.