Back in the day

[Abzu]

I remember when this made me go holy fucking shit!

[Grudge]

Quake 2's graphics seemed like the best ever at the time.

[Abzu]

I looooove Skyward Sword

[Abzu]

I've got about 5 or 6 that I really dig in this period and a few more I want to get soon. Couple dozen WiiWare and Wii Console games downloaded also.

[Abzu]

I think Skyward Sword's soundtrack is my favorite game soundtrack ever. It's immense and I don't hate one second of those 10 odd hours, but there are about two CDs worth of music that I absolutely fucking love. The present-time Lanayru tracks are so beautiful and haunting and desolate.



[youtube]weT8_6nqaCE[/youtube]



[youtube]0LfAcKnDYWQ[/youtube]

[Mesarthim]

the best zelda was the one on snes.

[Abzu]

I love A Link To The Past. I played it from my childhood through my teens and it never got old. I jammed it last winter on Wii Console. It's a wonderful game. Skyward Sword topped it for me.

[shadowalk]

[quote name="Abzu"]I remember when this made me go holy fucking shit!



[/quote]



having a voodoo glide card back in the day makes you a badass

[Abzu]

[quote name="Skinoperable"]
[quote name="Pho Queue"]the best zelda was the one on snes.[/quote]



n64*



no, not majora's mask[/quote]

Ocarina is an amazing game.

[vega]

[youtube]plqLUedocvs[/youtube]

[Hugo.]

When I bought my first 3dfx card (Voodoo Banshee) the first game I tried out was Quake 2. The difference was incredible.

[agony bagony]

doom 2 > doom 3

[Abzu]

2 is my favorite in the series

[agony bagony]

i kind of appreciate how they wanted to make 3 all creepy and whatnot but when we're talking about a demon invasion i just want tons of shit attacking me at all times. i dont need the lights off or a gradual understanding that there are zombies and imps all over the place



this







is way scarier than this

[agony bagony]

*and also more fun

[zim]

[quote name="it the dusto"]*and also more fun[/quote]



as someone going into game design, i'm really interested in the topic of what makes games fun. i'd really appreciate it if you could explain why the original doom is more fun to you.

[agony bagony]

because doom 2 is more about the game and less about the experience of playing the game. lighting and shading and textures and realistic looking settings &c are all very nice, but those things wind up detracting from the "fun" of doom 3, since there's less of an emphasis on play. it's also possible that doom 3 just suffers from the sequel problem of trying, years after the fact, to do something different with an original idea but recreate the magic of that idea at the same time--see the second star wars trilogy and the third godfather for the most prominent examples of this.



dk actually had a really convincing argument related to this on 2.0 (it wasn't an original argument; he just made it very well), which is that the more complicated and "realistic" the game is, the less fun it tends to be, since simple games are the ones that focus on play. the dusty corollary to the dk argument is that really complicated or graphically involved games are less fun for a wide audience, since the audience needs a more highly developed and specialized set of skills to play the thing "correctly."



i could go on about this, but i will also add that i think the first two doom games are a great balance of puzzle-solving and killing shit / not dying. the third doom game is more about puzzle solving and storytelling; you're supposed to figure out what's happened to this martian base, what these creatures are, how they got there, how to stop them from coming, &c. when i'm in the middle of a game--especially a demon / zombie-shooting game, i don't need and don't care about any back story. it's the simplest premise in the world and doesn't require embellishment (see left 4 dead for another example of this). so now that i've thought about it for three paragraphs and you have stopped reading, it occurs to me that probably the biggest reason doom 3 flops, for me, is that it over-tells a story.



the lesson here is to know when you've got a simple and great idea, and to let the idea work for itself.

[agony bagony]

*one other thing is the enemies in doom 2 look kind of goofy and menacing at the same time. they're super pixelated and not "realistic" by the 3-d standards of the living world (not that we know what demons look like anyway) but they also don't try to look realistic. the demons in doom 3 look smoother & more textured & more "realistic," but they also aren't really scary because they aren't realistic enough. they fall into the same uncanny valley that makes computer animated porn an impossibility and the first toy story unintentionally funny whenever humans appear

[shadowalk]

The conceptualization of games back then was much different. I can imagine a game like Doom was released back in the day when game developers would conceptualize games by having a meeting together and discuss how they really weren't really concerned about polished graphics or an effective storyline or what makes this game different from that other game and so and so forth. They were more focused on just making a game that was just too damn fun regardless of the effectiveness of the game assets.



Nowadays, game development is such a large industry and is one of the most profitable ventures out there. Commercialism is now a key part of the conceptualization process. If you're part of a game development team and your team came up with a really great looking game with excellent graphics, amazing gameplay and a wonderful storyline, there's still a big chance that the game development heads won't give the green light simply because they determined that your game won't sell that much according to their standards. Thus, there is more pressure on the game developers that most of them are more focused on making a game that would standout among other games rather making a game that is just simply fun to play.

[agony bagony]

first explain why we should care

[Grudge]

I have one word for Doom 3. Gray.

[Abzu]

[quote name="it the dusto"]first explain why we should care[/quote]

[deckard]

i remember my dad getting a new work laptop and it was good enough to run quake, i was so fucking happy.



i think he was on the phone to the psychiatrist straight away.

[Abzu]

The first time I jammed Quake was at a fellating lover's house. When I closed my eyes that night, all I saw was Quake.

[deckard]

fucking fps

[Methuselah Honeysuckle]

Chest gun

[deckard]

nail gun

[Abzu]

[quote name="toozey"]nail gun [/quote]

:::::::::::::;;;;;;;

[Abzu]

You were eviscerated by a fiend.

[shadowalk]

the grizzly grotto