Fun, remember that? Fun?

[Diligent]

Haven't played MW2 for just the reasons you speak of: too many people online take it way to seriously.
My main reason for quitting World of Warcraft was that when it came down to the endgame raids and stuff, it was no longer about fun, it was about correctly allocating your stats and building your character the way your team wanted you to, and then researching how to do raids by watching online videos to make sure you don't fuck it up on the day. Not to mention having to schedule time out of your week for raids (heaven forbid last minute real life plans come up, because I got shit on for that once.) Maybe that was just the guild I was in but it turned into a big un-fun pile of bullshit.


I think many games get overlooked because they're not AAA big budget games that take themselves too seriously. Recently, there was Singularity. It was stupid, loud, dumb and certainly there are better games...but I had a hell of a fun time with it.

 

[Azure Sky]

I prefer 'enjoyment' to 'fun'.

I'm not sure if I'm always looking for 'fun' from my games. Sometimes I'm interested in how the stories conclude, what happens to our hero, his friends and how they will defeat the villain. At other times, I'm obsessed with the challenge of being able to defeat all the bad guys in a room faster than the last time I did it. Neither of those, in my mind, is strictly speaking 'fun'. But I 'enjoy' both.

Perhaps I'm arguing semantics.

I am going to have to agree with this.

I don't think it is so much 'fun' as it is 'enjoyment' or 'satisfaction'

It can be said the same for many things, a person doesn't really go to the movies for 'fun' but more the 'enjoyment' of it. =3

 

[Uly5535]

Killing Floor, anyone?

Prototype's also wicked fun when you're having a bad day

 

[Virus49]

Quake 3 Arena... most fun game in the history of ever.

Closest to pure gaming fun I get now is on halo 3. With a couple of my mates and a warthog the fun is endless!

 

[GiglameshSoulEater]

Play a game called Eat Lead. Its a Third-Person Shooter, but it in no way takes itself seriously and the gameplay is solid. Get it, though since its a humour game, there isnt a huge amount of replay value.

 

[Deadlock Radium]

There is a reason for why I've got 22 playthroughs on Ratchet and Clank 2..
Also, Throwing Knives in MW2 multiplayer can be really fun if you don't mind your KDR dropping a bit in the start. I have gotten pro with it.

 

[WittyInfidel]

I think it has to do with more "realism' be injected into many of the games. The more realistic we make them, the farther we move away from the fantastic and irrational, the less we tend to have fun.

Things like portals, mutants, insane fairy dragons made of chocolate all help to stretch the imagination. When we play gritty games, set in gritty settings, where everyone of dour-faced, rude, and self-absorbed, we tend to have fun less. Why is this? It's so fuggin real it mirrors the world around us.

Do we not play games to relax? To unwind? Hell, even to escape the drudgery that is everyday life?

Why would we turn our fun into the very thing we are seeking to be distracted from?

Realism, while nice and looks good on a screen, detracts from the imagination and creativity of the person playing it. It nullifies the lampoon and camp of the funny and the quirkiness of the irrational.

Remove suspension of disbelief, and you remove what drew you to the game to begin with.

Think about it. Which do you prefer? The high definition ultra-defined mess that was FF13, or the pixelated heap of LEGOs that were the FF games of yore? Personally, I'll choose the bad translations and stick waving of the old ones. They left more to the imagination.

 

[Ertol]

All my games are fun, or I don't play them. If you pick up a game, play it, and think its boring then it failed it purpose. Starcraft 2 was the last game I had fun with, since I just played a match not 10 minutes ago. I've just sort of fallen out with multiplayer games unless I'm playing with friends. Too many morons, spawn campers, glitching, and nuke farming going on in MW2 for my tastes.

I never understood the issue with Realism. Sometimes I want a game that kills me 50 times before I can get past a bend in a road because bullets actually do what they were supposed to do. It reminds me that although I can run around duct taping health kits to my chest in Bioshock, in real life I'd get destroyed in a battle. Realism is just a way to entice players who want the challange of what being shot at in real life would be like. I would have an issue if all the sudden every game became super-realistic and we lost that insane wacky fun that games can have. The realistic genre is just for a different type of gamer. Mostly the wierd military shut-ins who have enough guns to overthrow the government in their basement.

 

[Chainsauce]

Honestly I blame myself. I have a tendency to either play for the achivements or try to be "the best", and forget about fun.

 

[PatrickXD]

I most certainly agree that Black is right up their in my top 5 FPS's of all time. But it's also an Xbox release... jus' saying.
I think people need to relax more to put it simply, they just need to calm down and have a casual gaming experience with friends. that's what I do, unless it's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

 

[The Paradigm]

Killing Floor, anyone?

Prototype's also wicked fun when you're having a bad day

This. Get six friends in a Killing Floor game and you too will experience "fun."

And Prototype was fun for a while, but I made the mistake of doing the story, and now I'm stuck at a boss fight

 

[Anah'ya]

Fun?

You want to know what Fun is? Well, you probably don't really want to know what the rest of the rabble considers fun, but since I am currently riding the wave of boredom I'll go ahead and bite.

Fun is something that you don't have to take serious.
Fun is diving into a game and squeezing laughter out of yourself and your compatriots.
Fun is crowding into a game with a Comrade, taking the piss out of each other and trying to murder the other at every bloody turn---and yet manage to move forward like a well oiled clockwork.
Fun is piling a ton of folks into Skype (*grins and waves to the two Escapists in that equation, who will never find this post anyway*) and murdering things together while exchanging insults and jabs that might make a sailor blush--but still laugh your asses off.

I suppose Fun is working together without any regard for the score or any worry of who will come out ontop.

(Of course, fun is also playing something on your own; The quality time spent with a good game that entertains and satisfies the kid in me that wants to play and the calmer side that wants a good and solid story to dig into.)

... I have honestly not said the word "fun" that many times in a row before.

 

[TraderJimmy]

You know chess can be fun, but it's also competitive.

I disagree. At the point where chess becomes competitive, it is merely memorising a string of commands (Master level). Only at the VERY highest levels does it become creative and interesting again. Very few people have the talent and dedication to reach Grandmaster level, and of those, some still insist on simply using the "I memorised a whole bunch of chess books" techniques - "clear positional play that leads to an endgame with microscopic chances at victory", in the words of Karpov. Fun, perhaps, if you think spreadsheets are a blast.

But games don't have to be fun to be great. I never found Bioshock fun, I found it terrifying (until I died the first time, after which immersion was pretty broken), funny, epic, satisfying, even tragic in places. I admired the plot and the setting a great deal - but did I have fun? No, not in the sense that I have fun playing TF2 or Dawn of War or Plants vs Zombies. I don't demand that my books be "fun". In fact, if I did, I'd be something of an airhead, reading nothing but chick-lit and airport thrillers. The same should apply to games.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to multiplayer games, especially in their more casual forms. I actually feel cheap using the less skillful ways of finishing off an enemy - it never gives me any fun. Sure, you can use those methods if you want - it's not life-or-death. But it does get in the way of other people having as much fun. I'll rarely call someone out for using cheap tactics, unless they border on griefing, but everyone's aware of them - if you want to have the kind of fun that involves dominating enemies with minimal effort, you should probably be playing a single-player game against A.I., not a multiplayer game where you're expected to tangle wits with a human.

 

[Cpt Tacos n' Cheese]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-morL278Ong&feature=related I had to. (sorry I don't know how to embed videos)

OT: I find that mods on css are more fun than normal cs games. Something like zombie escape mod is more fun for me than just playing a TDM.

 

[suhlEap]

EDIT: Oh Yea! WET! Ever played WET? No? Go play it! It is the most fun you can ever have in 3rd person!

WET? seriously. that game was boring as hell! sure the first 10 minutes were fun... then it sucked.
i can't agree more about Black though, that was a very fun game.

Ninja Gaiden 2 was very fun, hacking people into bits in such a fluid way is brilliant.
Also, Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing. as long as you play it with friends it's very fun.

 

[Scout Tactical]

I disagree. At the point where chess becomes competitive, it is merely memorising a string of commands (Master level). Only at the VERY highest levels does it become creative and interesting again. Very few people have the talent and dedication to reach Grandmaster level, and of those, some still insist on simply using the "I memorised a whole bunch of chess books" techniques - "clear positional play that leads to an endgame with microscopic chances at victory", in the words of Karpov. Fun, perhaps, if you think spreadsheets are a blast.

I disagree with this. While memorizing techniques and positions is a good way to elevate one's self to Expert level, reaching the ranks of International Master (2400+) or International Grandmaster require great creativity. Experimenting with new techniques is vital, explicitly so that people can't recognize your techniques and utilize them against you.

But games don't have to be fun to be great. I never found Bioshock fun, I found it terrifying (until I died the first time, after which immersion was pretty broken), funny, epic, satisfying, even tragic in places. I admired the plot and the setting a great deal - but did I have fun? No, not in the sense that I have fun playing TF2 or Dawn of War or Plants vs Zombies. I don't demand that my books be "fun". In fact, if I did, I'd be something of an airhead, reading nothing but chick-lit and airport thrillers. The same should apply to games.

This is the basic premise of the thread, though. I believe the OP is also saying that many modern games are too concerned with making out a message than with making themselves enjoyable. Look at Bioshock, MW2 (campaign), or any other myriad of games. They are trying to make a statement about politics or humanity, but many of these top tier games let this get in the way of the old fashioned fun. This is why story-less flash games can be more fun and addicting at times than, say, Bioshock.

 

[-Samurai-]

So TC's point is that the most important thing is to have fun, even at the expense of other people's fun.

Right.

Here's the problem with online multiplayer; When you're winning, there's a good chance the other team isn't having fun. When you're losing, there's a good chance you're not having fun.

It's impossible to cater to everyone online, so all you can do is enjoy the game yourself. That's not saying it's ok to deliberately ruin the game for others. That would make you a dick.

It is possible to enjoy losing, though. I played a match last night that we lost by 1 point, but it was generally a fun experience. Something about the match made it enjoyable. What helped was the opposite team weren't talking trash about winning by 1 point. I told a guy on the other team that his throwing knife kill on me was awesome(it really, really was. It had like 4 seconds flight time and bounced off a rock to hit me in the eye). The next few matches went the same(except we won some) and everyone had a good time.

Which is where I think I'm going with this. Most of the fun of online gaming gets taken away when people consider it a competition. Sure, you're playing to win, but you can have fun even when you lose. All that trash talking and insulting makes people take things too seriously. Instead, people should try being nice, or simply shutting up.

 

[Ryuo]

Timesplitters: Future Perfect.
Setting to Frantic mode, 5 Star bot level and One Shot Kills with Revolvers.
Or Capture the Bag 4 Vs 8. 50 Bags to win. (4 Humans 8 Bots) On the Dam.
Nothing in recent years has come close to this.

 

[Layzor]

Yawn, change the record.