old man gaming rants

[gamer_parent]

bah, you all with your electronics!

back in MY day, you know what I had? pigskin! Oh yeah, sure, we had to actually play this outside, in the sun, and in strangely uncomfortable uniforms and armor, but dammit, that's how we liked it!

 

[Kurokami]

You darn kids and your non-linearity. Why, in my day we were expected to go right and only right! Why? Because you read books right to left, correct?

You darn kids, in my day we read books left to right!

You're ignoring Hebraic.

Hebraic = Hebrew?
Or descended from Hebrew?

I don't feel like putting in the effort to search and I figured you wouldn't mind explaining if you brought it up. =]

Back in my day, we went out and played soccer because commander keen on the computer got stuck and our attention spans were low.

 

[gamer_parent]

Hebraic = Hebrew?
Or descended from Hebrew?

I don't feel like putting in the effort to search and I figured you wouldn't mind explaining if you brought it up. =]

I do believe Hebrew is in fact read that way. The same can be said of Traditional Mandarin, which is why being left handed spells disasters for those who want to write or do Caligraphy. If you're not careful, you're hand will smudge the ink/lead.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I remember playing Streets of Rage 1 and I'm only 16. That game was fucking immense. I couldn't get very far at the time but I loved picking up a pipe and whacking some twat in the face.

I have no old man gaming rants, as I said, 16 and I like the way games have developed.

EDIT: Scratch that, I do.

Games are fucking amazing. I hate the players. All these whiny little babies crying over how they got a nuke. When I was a bairn we cried about 2 things only. Getting smacked o'er the head and losing our last sonic life because we didn't reach that fecking bubble in time. Jesus, those were the days. You'd be going 50 miles per hour, because back in them days we didn't have the word kilo, and we'd hit a spike and shit would just about hit God, never mind that fan.

Now we have kids crying over how they got their ass handed to them on their FPS. Fuck that shits lame. Try getting past that second level on sonic. Those lava waves would kill you every time. If you managed to get to the fight with Dr Eggman then you were a king of the game. If you managed to beat him then you'd be shot up to demi-God.

I only knew that there was an underwater level was because my Dad showed me the wonder of the game.

Boh, I'll leave my horrible rant to you now.

 

[Kurokami]

Hebraic = Hebrew?
Or descended from Hebrew?

I don't feel like putting in the effort to search and I figured you wouldn't mind explaining if you brought it up. =]

I do believe Hebrew is in fact read that way. The same can be said of Traditional Mandarin, which is why being left handed spells disasters for those who want to write or do Caligraphy. If you're not careful, you're hand will smudge the ink/lead.

I know Hebrew is right to left, I was just curious as to what Hebraic was, I've really never heard of it before.

A friend I sat next to in Geography and I had a small problem because of handedness. He was left handed and sitting on my right, and I was right handed sitting on his left. Neither of us could ever copy notes when we needed to. (We were also too accustomed to our respective seats to ever change ^^)

 

[Kurokami]

Here's a genuine one though:

I seriously do dislike how much of a learning curve is built into every game we play now a days. Granted, because I'm familiar enough with the conventions it's not a big deal. But often times, picking up a new game takes a lot longer than it used due to just the amount of stuff you have to manage.

This is pretty much the reason why I'm sometimes still amazed that the fighting game genre is still alive. I once read somewhere that to pick up a new fighting game and be competent in it, it can take anywhere between 3-6 months of study time.

I challenge that, all I need is 5 minutes and I've already figured out a cheap as tactic.

In Tekken its called 'sidestep-grab'.

I get where you're coming from though, the 100's of combos are one thing, but they've also got juggling and what not involved which often frustrates me. Street Fighter and games like it however are the 'easy to play, difficult to master' type as I understand it though. There aren't that many, or that complex moves, what it comes down to is how fast you can spam a button and how well you know when to do it. (which I fail at, my expertise go as far as learning the ranged move and just spamming it and jumping away)

 

[gamer_parent]

Here's a genuine one though:

I seriously do dislike how much of a learning curve is built into every game we play now a days. Granted, because I'm familiar enough with the conventions it's not a big deal. But often times, picking up a new game takes a lot longer than it used due to just the amount of stuff you have to manage.

This is pretty much the reason why I'm sometimes still amazed that the fighting game genre is still alive. I once read somewhere that to pick up a new fighting game and be competent in it, it can take anywhere between 3-6 months of study time.

I challenge that, all I need is 5 minutes and I've already figured out a cheap as tactic.

In Tekken its called 'sidestep-grab'.

I get where you're coming from though, the 100's of combos are one thing, but they've also got juggling and what not involved which often frustrates me. Street Fighter and games like it however are the 'easy to play, difficult to master' type as I understand it though. There aren't that many, or that complex moves, what it comes down to is how fast you can spam a button and how well you know when to do it. (which I fail at, my expertise go as far as learning the ranged move and just spamming it and jumping away)

well, in the Tekken example, the side-step grab is... err... let's just say that it's not THAT effective.

But Tekken is a good example of this. For example, I tried Tekken 6 for the first time a couple weeks ago at the arcade. Now I haven't really played Tekken since Tekken 4. (The one that pretty much split the Tekken community right down the middle) If I want to pick up Tekken 6, I would first have to pick a character to play as. Simple enough. I pick Jin simply because I remember how he played his bread and butter combos back in T4. In Tekken 6? Not everyhing has changed. But you know what? It has changed enough that I no longer no what I'm doing. Sure, Jin plays more or less the same, (severely powered down though) but the rest of the cast has changed.

To add more to that, there are significant system changes like how walls work in conjunction with juggling, and just a bunch of little tweaks that significantly changes the tactics. Suddenly, I find myself having to relearn the properties to nearly 100 moves, and then finding myself having to learn about 30-40 move properties for each of the new characters because lord knows I will need to know the properties of the moves if I want to have a chance to defend against it.

And this is coming from a guy who has probably put in easily over 200 hours in Tekken by the end of T4's run.

I haven't even gotten into things like learning how to do crazy stuff like 1/60 second precision inputs for moves, stance canceling, etc.

Now imagine having to learn all of that from scratch. Hey, sure, if I locked myself in a room with a copy of the game for 3 weeks, and just played everyday for several hours, I could probably come out catching up to most of the stuff to now know that I can play the game. But still, is this really necessary?

Street Fighter 4 is another example of a game that had a far more simplistic formula that just got really complicated over time. The main culprit? 1 frame links. Though, to the game's credit it's learning curve is significantly less than SFIII: Third Strike.

 

[Kurokami]

Snipped

Actually the sidestep grab works quite well, grabbing in Tekken has developed to become somewhat broken. All you need is an opening and I've become pretty good at dodging people, then grabbing before they get in another move. I'm definitely not better than the pros, but I'll still win 2/5 times (as in win two rounds per game, generally).

For me fighting games are a bit hit/miss, you play these games for fun and the real fun lies in my opinion in the flow of combat more than just winning. Me and my brother, very like minded in some aspects, have had some of the most insane battles in Soul Calibur and Tekken. dodging, blocking, countering. None of us memorized 10 hit combos or tried to juggle our opponents for terrible, terrible damage. It was just pure fun.

 

[Flying-Emu]

Is this guy for real?
Am I being ignorant if I call "troll" here?

Who cares, it's a fun topic. And we don't get those too often 'round here n'more.

 

[Mykayel1]

You darn kids and your lengthy games. Why back in my day, games had a time limit of 200 seconds in a level, now the shortest games take 4 hours to complete, why back in my day, a good gamer could beat a game in 2 hours or less. Oh and I bet you think you're real fancy with all your gamer communities and your social events, why back in my day we would have to lock ourselves in our rooms late at night and we didn't have all them fancy GOTY awards and what-not.

Also, back in my day we didn't open threads by ripping off moviebob (Game Overthinker).

 

[Latinidiot]

Bloody 'ell, old man, put a sock inni'!

 

[ethaninja]

Lovely, and what discussion is there exactly?

None. He's just ranting >.< Guess they gotta do it somewhere.

 

[Lenny Magic]

When I was a kid the only games I had was Jump Start Knowledge Adventure. None of this meat head macho stuff, just you and a Robot trying to defeat a little girl with pigtails. And you know what I learned something, which is far more then I can say of you drool bucket brained whipper-snappers. With your Halo's, and worst of all your alien sex sims, which I have frankly only heard about but still wish to place my opinion about!

 

[gamer_parent]

Snipped

Actually the sidestep grab works quite well, grabbing in Tekken has developed to become somewhat broken. All you need is an opening and I've pretty good at dodging people, then grabbing before they get in another move. I'm definitely not better than the pros, but I'll still win 2/5 times (as in win two rounds per game, generally).

For me fighting games are a bit hit/miss, you play these games for fun and the real fun lies in my opinion in the flow of combat more than just winning. Me and my brother, very like minded in some aspects, have had some of the most insane battles in Soul Calibur and Tekken. dodging, blocking, countering. None of us memorized 10 hit combos or tried to juggle our opponents for terrible, terrible damage. It was just pure fun.

well, I won't tell you how you SHOULD play the game. As long as it's fun for you, that's fine.

For me though, the fun in these games, being competitive in nature, is to try to ekk out every advantage I can, and see where I go. Yes, it's about the flow of combat, of course. But then to me, the aesthetics of the combat, while interesting, will sometimes feel secondary next to the mind game that is going on.

To be fair though, ALL competitive games, no matter how simple the rules, will at some point get pretty intensely technical.

but in Tekken's case? I'm sorry dude, but the arcades I used to go to, most of the people there can break the grab with an 80% ratio. For them it's because they learn to read the opponent to know when a grab is coming, but also because you can see the grab they're using based on the arm that's stretch out. Seriously, try it out. Load up the game, and do some grabs. You'll notice the arm extended corresponds to the throw escape button.

True, it's hard to do on reaction, requiring you to react within 0.3 seconds of seeing it (though i've seen 14 year old kids at the arcade who CAN do that), but there's a reason why in tournament level play, you'll almost never see a grab.

You could, of course, just as easily say that you don't really need to know all that to play the game. And that's sort of true. But then that means you're missing out on a huge part of the game itself in doing so.

 

[gamer_parent]

Also, back in my day we didn't open threads by ripping off moviebob (Game Overthinker).

hey, I could have totally gone the route of talking about politics in gaming.

 

[GLo Jones]

Is this guy for real?
Am I being ignorant if I call "troll" here?

uh, yes. gaming WAS that simple dude. look up pong and mario. all he is doing is talking about gaming's past. you call him troll, and you call the entire history into question.

I thought Jezzascmezza was bringing up how the Genesis/SNES etc. weren't actually that long ago. Hell I'm only 19 and I remember scanning through the shelves of retailers for games for my beloved Mega Drive (like Streets of Rage 2, for example).

OT: Back in my day, we didn't have any of these fancy 60Hz televisions. We made do dammit! I'd like to see Digdug made better on your flashy LCD screens!

 

[gamer_parent]

Is this guy for real?
Am I being ignorant if I call "troll" here?

uh, yes. gaming WAS that simple dude. look up pong and mario. all he is doing is talking about gaming's past. you call him troll, and you call the entire history into question.

I thought Jezzascmezza was bringing up how the Genesis/SNES etc. weren't actually that long ago. Hell I'm only 19 and I remember scanning through the shelves of retailers for games for my beloved Mega Drive (like Streets of Rage 2, for example).

OT: Back in my day, we didn't have any of these fancy 60Hz televisions. We made do dammit! I'd like to see Digdug made better on your flashy LCD screens!

To qualify where I'm coming from, yeah, SNES and Genesis were only a mere 20 years ago, but then now a days when I see people talk about "classic" games, somehow Halo, a game that didn't exist until I believe 2003, was always brought up. I mean really? a 7 year old title is now considered classic? When did this happen? The thread was pretty much in response to that. But I'll be the first admit that in the grand scheme of things, I'm not THAT old either.

 

[Kurokami]

Snipped

Weird, I don't play at the arcades because me using those controls is like watching a white kid first learning to use chopsticks, but the guys I played are (for the most part) regular arcade goers. Guess I've bought into their bragging a bit too much, so fair enough. On them it works atleast, so I'm happy enough with that. =]

And yeah, truth be told, fighting games aren't really my thing. I play at parties because I can gamble on it easily and used to play with my brother cause it wasn't competitive, but really I've always preferred other shit. Like you said, excellent reaction times and instinct are what it takes and I just don't care that much ayiwhen plng the games to develop them (and I sure as hell haven't inherited those traits). I'm more the guy who plays strategy games and RPG's to figure out different ways of screwing an opponent over without them knowing what the ****.