Do you truly enjoy gaming?

[syndicated44]

I recently picked up a copy of Earth Defence Force 2017 and I cant stop playing it. I do this with quite a few games however I realized I havnt had true fun playing a game since maybe Timesplitters 2.

Usually when I play a game I try my best to play through the campaign (except rts I usually say screw story, yay skirmish). EDF has shown me just how bloody dumb games have gotten. The game has some relatively bad animations and graphics but its just pure fun. I play something like say Gears of war and its just a boring romp with pretty graphics. I think that is what all games have become pretty graphics.

Games to me have lost the fact that they are games, they are supposed to be silly and fun. Seriousness and games just never really mixed. We all argue that games need realism and all this hubbub but really it doesnt. It needs fun which many games seem to lack.

My problem with say GOW is that its not fast paced action. You play a game with huge muscle bound nutjobs with chainsaws on their guns and the entire point of it is to hide behind chest high walls and shoot at aliens also hiding behind chest high walls. The game just gets so samey. I dabbled with GOW2 and some of the levels were interesting and fun however even in levels that were more interesting and fun you had to stop everything and proceed to hide behind chest high walls and shoot at other aliens that were hiding.. see where I am going with this.

I guess maybe games have just become too easy. With regenerating health you lose those nail biting moments of barely having enough health and just squeaking by. Lets look at CODMW2, there were all sorts of hign octane moments but rarely anything that would take your breath away. I didnt care if my character lived because he usually died anyway. The story barely lasted me an afternoon (playing on hardened) and I was left with a stupid cliff hanger. Yea you have the Spec Ops levels but I dont know anyone that I could play those with. Most people I know just want to run around a small arena and shoot eachother.

Maybe I am rambling on a little to much and maybe I am just expressing my frustration with these new top of the line games that give me maybe a few nights of fun before they are bland and I never pick them up again.

So I ask you escapist have games lost their fun or am I just nuts and find bad, good and vice versa?

 

[Nex-Falx]

"Chainsaws on their guns"

Sounds like fun to me... it's all relative really.

 

[Instant K4rma]

The only games that I ever find fun are the kings of sanbox games, being Saints Row 2 Co-Op with my friend, and Crackdown (again, added fun when playing with my friend). Other than that, I find a lot of games frustrating, mainly. Sandbox games are the only games I really find fun, besides Oblivion and Fallout 3.

 

[1nsignia]

i love gaming,
i love gameplay, the gaming community, the stories. everything!

 

[Woodsey]

It's odd, most of the time when you're playing a game you're not really having fun, and yet we still play them.

Or at least, not fun in the usual sense.

 

[Moosebomber]

EDF got too repetitive. I have fun but simplicity does not amuse me.

 

[Zhandarr]

Gaming gets me up in the morning. Racing to the playstation before my brother, the excitement of shooting russians, assassinating popes, finding lost treasure, and destroying buildings with the amazing Havox engine just fills me with happiness. I know it's sad, but... I have other things to live for aswell

 

[dietpeachsnapple]

I have a very specific rule - if I am not having fun, I am not doing it right.

I will play a game until I am not having fun, then I will turn it off and play something else.

It is not my impression, however, that games are not fun anymore. I feel that they are doing just fine and that they fill a very satisfying niche in my life.

 

[WayOutThere]

Games to me have lost the fact that they are games, they are supposed to be silly and fun. Seriousness and games just never really mixed.

There should be silly game and serious games. There is no reasons why either is invalid. Each has its pros and cons.

We all argue that games need realism and all this hubbub but really it doesnt. It needs fun which many games seem to lack.

Indeed, realism is overated.

I had to stop everything and proceed to hide behind chest high walls and shoot at other aliens that were hiding.. see where I am going with this.

If a game is realistic the cover system is the better approach because it does not break your suspension of belief so much. As the cover system being to slow paced, I just don't see it.

I guess maybe games have just become too easy. With regenerating health you lose those nail biting moments of barely having enough health and just squeaking by.

YES

Edit: Oh yeah, to the the point of the thread. By emphasizing realism we indeed are stifling creativity. Realistic (serious) games are fun but reality is limiting and by sticking to reality so closely we are limiting what games can do to be fun. Modern games are fun but they are still limiting themselves.

 

[syndicated44]

Yes, I enjoy gaming.

I like the fun of them.

But to enjoy something, does it really mean that it has to be fun?

The answer is a resounding NO.

People, why do you watch movies? Watch TV? Read?

None of these activities are fun, and yet we still do them in our spare time. Why?

It's to do with emotions.

When you go to watch a film, you never have fun, you get excitement, laughs, become happy, become sad - all of these things add up to 'enjoyment', and yet none of them are fun.

Take, for example, a Final Fantasy game - so many people love FF7, and one of the main things they will tell you is because it made them cry. Is this fun? No. This is a snippet of other forms of media - games have a unique advantage in that they are fun, but also that they can take from other media forms what they want.

And yes, I have had 'fun' with games recently.

I have never played Final Fantasy and probably never will and yes I understand that many people play games for emotions but I am not really looking at games with that mindset. I sat through every drawn out cutscene from MGS and loved all of it. Especially the final fight in MGS4 it was just a nostalgic trip of all those intense moments.

GOW had a bare bones story. Monsters with guns are trying to kill you. They then tried their best to make you sit there and eat this crap sandwich of masculinity and guy emotions. It didnt make me want to kill the aliens more. They could have done more by just having a passing moment where say a huge boss monster came out and Dom said something like this is for my wife and then your character and him proceed to fight it. As it stands all you have is a little whiny boy that wont shut the hell up about it.

You could argue they are trying to express the characters psyche and what this war has done to them but really if they stop to have a cry every ten minutes nothing would ever get done. Fun is subjective I know and I find reading very much fun. Gaming is a hard medium to really convey with it. It seems games lately never really have a climax. There is no real intense battle that makes you feel like you succeeded in something. They usually just end with a driving section or having to work your way up to some boss that ultimately fails to really be a boss.

Arkham Asylum suffered in boss areas to the next degree. I mean it was an okay game and nothing about it really wowed me however I wont say anything about it but the last fight was just so boring. I mean I had died something like 20 times beating the section before your showdown with the joker and nothing really happened. The fight was just more of the same beating of baddies. And something like batman demands epic boss fights. A fight where you had to fight off hordes of baddies would work for one fight but they do it for most of them. Really the game kinda just seems like a tour of Arkham more then actually doing anything.

I rarely come to games expecting to be emotionally touched because really, I just ripped 200 people in half with a giant razor blade are you seriously expecting me to feel anything other then wanting to do more of that?

 

[Icecoldcynic]

I pretty much always have fun when I'm playing games, and if not, I stop playing. I don't see the point playing if it's not fun.

 

[Capachinola]

Less and less for most games. Every once in a while something actually reaches out and grabs me, and its never a FPS game or anything like it.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I still enjoy games but a lot of them are not much fun to me. A lot of people seem to think that Dead Space is a must play game but I found the demo really boring so don't feel guilty about not playing it.

EDF is a lot of fun although I got bored of it part way through but I feel really bad for you not really enjoying anything since Timesplitters 2. There have been tons of games that I have enjoyed since then but I think that the shooter genre as a whole has started to get boring and serious. If you only play shooters then that may be your problem.

 

[syndicated44]

There should be silly game and serious games. There is no reasons why either is invalid. Each has its pros and cons.

I agree but seemingly everything is trying their best to bring realism to everywhere it shouldnt be.

On GOW. The cover system is awesome its a good idea, however they give you tools they dont seem to really fit. The Chainsaw gun I think sold this game more then anything. I just never used the thing and I always wanted to. I always wanted to run up to an enemy and rip him in two it just never seemed to work. There are many ways to pull this idea off it just seems to me that weaponary didnt really mix with the gameplay. I usually ended up using the machine gun and whatever secondary weapon I could find at the time. Even then I ran out of ammo and just picked up whatever weapon was there which was usually that burst shot piece of shit.

To me everything in the game seemed to work if it were on its own or in a different setting. As it stands it is just a series of ideas that dont mesh well.

EDIT:

I still enjoy games but a lot of them are not much fun to me. A lot of people seem to think that Dead Space is a must play game but I found the demo really boring so don't feel guilty about not playing it.

EDF is a lot of fun although I got bored of it part way through but I feel really bad for you not really enjoying anything since Timesplitters 2. There have been tons of games that I have enjoyed since then but I think that the shooter genre as a whole has started to get boring and serious. If you only play shooters then that may be your problem.

Maybe I was being a bit overdramatic stating that I havnt enjoyed anything this much since TS2 I really enjoyed Time Splitters future perfect.

I play everything. My arguments with RPGs is another thread entirely. What really wowed me in EDF was the final boss. It was just so over the top and insane that when I beat it I sat there for a good 15 minutes just catching my breath. The rest of the game is awesomely fun and the ants scurrying over the buildins reminds me very much of a handful of ant infestations I have had. However I have a few arguments with the game it was just really pure fun.

The enemies were introduced very nicely and then gave you many different scenarios to fight them in. I especially loved the 4 legged walker which was shown I believe 3 or 4 times before you could actually kill it. It builds up to a perfect climax. It really is a genius game in its own regards and I havnt played a game that really is genius in a very long time.

 

[Terramax]

What it comes down to is personal preference. Some play for challenge, others for atmosphere, others for cheap thrills, etc. Regenerating health bars, checkpoints around every corner, it suits certain games better than others. I think what's important is choice. Choice of difficulty, whether you want regeneration or checkpoints, or even how to play i.e. why didn't Mirror's Edge give you more chances to fight back against enemies should you want to play it like a typical FPS?

Yes, I still find many games fun. What I'd suggest syndicated44 is renting more often if you're only getting a few nights fun out of each and every one of them.

 

[TheNoirGuy]

I recently picked up a copy of Earth Defence Force 2017 and I cant stop playing it. I do this with quite a few games however I realized I havnt had true fun playing a game since maybe Timesplitters 2.

First off I loved Timesplitters 2 and future perfect! I still play it every so often.

And usually I don't play games that I don't think are fun. Sometimes I'll play something to the end just to complete it, but then I usually go back to my staple favs, even though I've beaten them 5 million times, because they're so much fun, much like going back to Timesplitters.

 

[Capachinola]

What it comes down to is personal preference. Some play for challenge, others for atmosphere, others for cheap thrills, etc. Regenerating health bars, checkpoints around every corner, it suits certain games better than others. I think what's important is choice. Choice of difficulty, whether you want regeneration or checkpoints, or even how to play i.e. why didn't Mirror's Edge give you more chances to fight back against enemies should you want to play it like a typical FPS?

Yes, I still find many games fun. What I'd suggest syndicated44 is renting more often if you're only getting a few nights fun out of each and every one of them.

Not to mention, you have the choice to play the game you enjoy endlessly, but the next person might say "well, that was boring.."
Not every game can be built for one person, because that one person would love it to death, but it just wouldnt play the way everyone else wanted it to.

Designers have to give and take for they're games to be marketable to all sorts of people.. to bad a lot of gamers don't want what I want, and im sure everyone else feels that same way.

 

[The Holy Chaotic]

What it comes down to is personal preference. Some play for challenge, others for atmosphere, others for cheap thrills, etc. Regenerating health bars, checkpoints around every corner, it suits certain games better than others. I think what's important is choice. Choice of difficulty, whether you want regeneration or checkpoints, or even how to play i.e. why didn't Mirror's Edge give you more chances to fight back against enemies should you want to play it like a typical FPS?

Yes, I still find many games fun. What I'd suggest syndicated44 is renting more often if you're only getting a few nights fun out of each and every one of them.

I agree.

 

[Rockatansky]

Gaming has changed for me as I've got older. I've got a demanding job, a young family and the subsequent responsibilities, my spare time is limited but I carefully budget some gaming time into it. I can't spend entire evenings, stay up all night or have all day sessions gaming like I used to playing Mario 64, Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time and Halo, but I wish I could.

The great games I don't have the time to play now will still be available when I do, I don't mind playing catch up. After 25 years I still enjoy (love) gaming, just wish I had more time to play.

There are so many great games out there that if you can't find something you enjoy playing then you need to do a bit more research before you buy. I don't want to sound patronising, it's just that they've been making great games since about 1980, there's got to be thousands of fun games out there for the playing.

If that doesn't work then you may just be a bit jaded and need a break. If the spark hasn't gone completely then some game will catch your interest, tempt you back re-ignite the old flame.