Is it possible to be too picky about games?

[hooliganyouth]

Lately I've found myself not enjoying some games as much as I could and I'm not sure why - most recently "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare". It's a great game and I've enjoyed playing it but I keep wishing that it had elements of other games - i.e. the cover system from "GRAW 2" was in "COD4". It's nitpicking but it takes me out of the game. The same thing has happened with RPGs, FPS, and stealthers (all my favorite genres).

Do any of you run into this kind of problem? Is there a cure besides putting down the controller and seeing what the outside world is like? I'm not an online gamer - does that keep genres fresh?

 

[xbeaker]

Sorry to say, I think it happens to us all. Try out a few new genres, switch systems for a bit (if you can) or go out and face the ball of fire we orbit.

Most importantly, if you aren't enjoying some kind of game, don't play it. It can only serve to sour you even more. We are have a bumper crop of good games this November, take advantage of it. And just because people say it's good, and it gets great reviews doesn't mean you have to like it, or should feel strange if you don't.

Don't underestimate the value of going back to some of your favorites as well. I hit one of those "300 channels and nothing on" months a little while back. I popped in Pandora Tomorrow on a whim, and was surprised at how much fun it was to go back through it for a while.

Odds are if you really like one particular genre of game, you have just burned yourself out on it a bit. As an added bonus, if you take a break from them.. they will be cheaper when you do decide to go back!

 

[Chilango2]

Is it possible to be too picky? Yes.

I'm not sure that demanding certain mechanics, like a cover system, is being "too picky" however, something, even when basic, improve gameplay so much that its literally painful to live without them.

As far as online games, I'd argue that in all instances these are a genre in themselves for each category: Playing a FPB online s very diffrent than flying it SP, but can get just as old, same with MMORPG's etc. Mind you, if you haven't tried them, that can be a good way to expand your interest in a game, but they come with their own hassles and annoyances, like the offline game.

And like the previous poster said, you can break out the oldies. When I'm feeling *really* stuck, I pull out DosBox and play games from the 80's! Just recently been playing Millenium: Return to Earth and been having fun.

 

[hooliganyouth]

Perhaps "picky" is the wrong word - perhaps demanding is more accurate. Sometimes I feel like I expect (or have been made to expect) too much out of a game so that when I do sit down and play I can't enjoy the game for all the nitpicking or disappointment or, "Gee I wish I could do x,y, or z. Sigh."

One thing I have to say though -

In this day and age it is completely absurd to have a jump function in "realistic" games - i.e. the bunny hop in "Mercenaries". Steeple, vault, clamber, duck, dodge, shuck, and jive are all reasonable but hopping is really stupid and needs to stop.

 

[Yerocha]

The jump function is only for people who think it should be there and other people will start to forget it has a point in those games. Just remember this: FFVII characters couldn't jump. FFVII:AC characters...yeah.

More to the point, I think the demanding nature of some gamers has more to do with the types of good games they played. If a person plays only the best possible games, then they may find it hard to play anything else, especially when someone else tells you exactly what's wrong with it. It's a whole psych thing, so just try to not be so judging on a game while you play it. I find it hard, but it doesn't stop me from playing games that score 7.5 on Gamespot.

 

[xbeaker]

As long as you are discounting truely good games for nit-picky reasons. For example, were you to say you refuse to play Half-Life because it has a jump button, of if you only will play a FPS made by Ubisoft.. that is being too picky. Not enjoying COD4 because it doesn't have the robust cover system you have come to expect in tactical shooter, that is not being too picky, it is simply not enjoying how that game was made.

 

[WafflesToo]

In this day and age it is completely absurd to have a jump function in "realistic" games - i.e. the bunny hop in "Mercenaries". Steeple, vault, clamber, duck, dodge, shuck, and jive are all reasonable but hopping is really stupid and needs to stop.

QFT

Any (other) Devs out there, here's a hint. Bunnyhopping sucks, Bunnyhopping is lame, Bunnyhoppers != skilled players. If you really want to include ways for characters to scale small variations in terrain, add a climb / vault function.

 

[Katana314]

I kinda agree...I remember enjoying so many games as a kid, now I look back at them on metacritic and they have 60/70 scores.

Part of it just comes from people's tendency to compare games (myself included). Couldn't we just enjoy each game, instead of treating it like a big contest? We're all at fault on that one...

 

[J.theYellow]

Understand also that the trend perpetrated by published game reviewers and the Internet has been to push the discussion of games entirely toward the fashion professional game designers talk about them. This is also considered useful by gamers who aspire to become game developers of some sort, and indeed this is often the subject of interviews for game jobs.

But let's get something else clear.

The more you understand about a game's inner workings, the less fun it is.

Ask any game designer who's worked on at least one project. You think they play their game? Not for fun, they don't. They've been playing it off and on in its buggy, unfinished state for years. (Or they've been pretending to and just reading the QA reports that tell them their game is buggy and unfinished.)

There's also the meta-game played between game marketing departments and the rabid consumer public. The millisecond games are announced for development, scant few bits of information are released about it, understandably so, but there are always going to be "veteran" gamers who won't accept anything but a look at the design documentation, even before they can play the game. And should you be foolhardy enough to call them twits for it, they'll either stammer replies and get real quiet (if you're talking in person), or they'll write term papers on why they have to know exactly what they're getting before they spend their mom's hard-earned cash on the next shiny box, that any amount of surprise and novelty has to be crushed to dust before the wrapper comes off.

 

[xbeaker]

It's funny J. I was mentioning this in one of Zera's post about nostalgia gaming. But some of my favorite games were those that I knew nothing about when I got them. The game my mom got me as a surprise for my 2600 and such. Some of my all time favorites were Star Control II for the 3DO, which I got only because I enjoyed Star Control 1. (Played it of 18 hours straight.. missing the 4th of July) and Pirates! which I got from a friend... erm, through less then 'acceptable retail channels' (I was young, stupid, impressionable, and under the age of prosecution as an adult) but even in it's gimped you-couldn't-answer-our-copy-protection-question demo version it had me entranced for months. But the more games I have for a system, the more apathy I seem to have for it. It is the rare break out title that really invigorates me and hooks me like 90% of what I played back in my younger years did.

But in the end I generally know what I will enjoy any spend my money accordingly.

 

[shadow skill]

Well I don't think what you described is being picky at all. It is one of the first things outside of the stupid mappings that are available for the controller. (When will they learn what full customization means?) The game begs for a graw type cover mechanic, it does kind of lessen the gameplay to see that you are stuck with stale strafing.

J. the Yellow:The more I play shooters on consoles especially, the more I begin to believe that no one actually plays the games, not the dev team and not the QA team. They try to check if it crashes outright but they do not actually test the nature of their own game mechanics. The Orange Box on the 360 has magically omitted any way to change weapons other than dpad buttons. But they allow you to switch the sticks around to aim with the left stick and then somehow miss the fact that the face button remapping does not allow people who may want to use southpaw sticks to use the most obvious remapping possible; mirroring the buttons on the right side of the controller to the left side.

How could the QA team miss that, I will never understand. Then there are all those other games that either do not allow any kind of customization (but want people to aim etc.) or allow partial customization that ends up crippling users who actually decide to use them in the first place! If anything people need to be more picky about the functionality of games if only to make these people actually pay attention to their products and stop handing us craptacular online experiences with stupid forced matchmaking bull and player hosting instead of dedicated servers for games.

In the end a great deal of what is being put out is crap on some level and developers should have their feet held to the fire until they get the message. No I don't mean go "ZOMG its only six hours!", or "ZOMG pixel is off here!" I mean "Hey this game would be easier to play if they gave us more control over what buttons we had to press." and "Hey it would be great if we had a real cover mechanic, and did away with stupid bunny hopping, and lame ass strafing for 'cover' game X could have been better for doing things like that."

This also speaks to the utter shit that is the review system we have come to know. They really are nothing more than engines for the massive marketing engine's that game companies employ to sell their games. You notice how most reviews never talk about how a game actually plays, they tend to tell you nothing about how the games actually play. They don't tell you what options are available to users that may or may not affect how you play the game. But they do talk about things like graphics.....

I think it is really sad that Yahtze is one of the few people that actually talks about games honestly. Though he does not talk about the things I would like to see reviewers talk about, I always feel like he has actually played any game he has talked about.

 

[sergeantz]

I'm not sure if you really can be too picky towards a game. You are purchasing a product that you want to be entertained by, and usually you're putting 50-60 bucks on it. Some people are entertained by different things that others might not agree with. I saw a person say that The Witcher should at best get a six out of ten, only for the fact that he didn't think the graphics were good enough. Do I agree with that? No, but it's his 50 dollars, and if he isn't satisfied with his experience, then so be it.

I do think that there's such a thing as being too bitchy about a game. I'm sure everyone here has seen threads where people talk about a game as if it's one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, then accuse anyone with a contradicting view of working for the company who made the game. If you didn't like a game just say why, and let it go. On the other side of the coin, if someone doesn't like a game that you do, rationally express your opinion, and let it go. Not everyone who thinks differently form you is a corporate plant/ moron baby rapist.

 

[hooliganyouth]

If anything people need to be more picky about the functionality of games if only to make these people actually pay attention to their products and stop handing us craptacular online experiences with stupid forced matchmaking bull and player hosting instead of dedicated servers for games.

In the end a great deal of what is being put out is crap on some level and developers should have their feet held to the fire until they get the message. No I don't mean go "ZOMG its only six hours!", or "ZOMG pixel is off here!" I mean "Hey this game would be easier to play if they gave us more control over what buttons we had to press." and "Hey it would be great if we had a real cover mechanic, and did away with stupid bunny hopping, and lame ass strafing for 'cover' game X could have been better for doing things like that."

I sometimes wonder - and at times have said - "Did anyone actually play this before they shipped it out?" I understand that everyone has a different taste in gaming and style of gaming, etc., etc., but when I play a game I have things I look for and often things I would like to see done. When controls or gameplay are clunky or counterintuitive or just plain awful for me then I end up sort of pissed.

I had more to say but it's lunchtime and I can't think right.

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

Yes. Some people with ridiculous demands assault the market with complaints about this or that, and it botches things for everyone else.

 

[Copter400]

*cough*yahtzee croshaw*cough cough*

 

[Girlysprite]

Simple and short: yes.

But then again, it can not really be helped I think. It's like watching nowadays kids cartoon stuff and realizing how...silly and even dumb it can be, while at the same time knowing I would have enjoyed it as a kid.

And theYellow, you're spot on with the game developer comment. If you know what's going on in the machine itself and how everything is conducted, a game looses quite some of its charm.

 

[stevesan]

heh try to not get too fired up about games..enjoy it for what it is! one friend of mine hated RE4 cuz you couldn't strafe in the game..just chill out! it's a game!

 

[Necrohydra]

But then again, it can not really be helped I think. It's like watching nowadays kids cartoon stuff and realizing how...silly and even dumb it can be, while at the same time knowing I would have enjoyed it as a kid.

People's tastes change with time and experience. What you found amusing and interesting as a kid seems simple and silly as an adult. And that just doesn't go as a result of age. The more we perform a certain action, the pickier we get about it.

Many of us gamers have likely been playing videogames for several years. We all have genres we prefer to play. Ask anyone what types of games he/she plays, and I can guarentee almost everyone will list something specific. Playing that same genre for a while, we all develop certain trends and mechanics we like to see in those games. Does it make you too picky? No - you know what you like in a game, and you don't enjoy it as much if it doesn't cater to your tastes. We all have tastes, just as we all have opinions. One game isn't going to make EVERYONE happy.

To keep things fresh, well...you either take a break from the hobby, or try something totally different. There's really no other options. You can't force yourself to like something you don't, or think something's new when you've seen it all before.

 

[shadow skill]

heh try to not get too fired up about games..enjoy it for what it is! one friend of mine hated RE4 cuz you couldn't strafe in the game..just chill out! it's a game!

I can understand that though, not being able to move and shoot at the same time is more of an artificial restriction on what the player can do in the game than is nessecary. It goes directly to suspension of disbelief, it does not really make sense like an inventtory limit would for example.

 

[EzraPound]

Yeah. I can hardly play Japanese RPGs anymore (too samey) or American FPS (same reason) - exempting highlights like Dragon Warrior VIII or Half-Life 2. Actually, after a childhood spent playing ALOT of games, very little in 2008 enthralls me.