Why are there no Half-Life or Counterstrike clones?
- Thread starter V da Mighty Taco
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?Yeah sure, they both have realistic weapons and both have people dying in a few good hits, but to say that an art style choice and a single game mechanic constitute the core gameplay is ridiculous. Neither series actually plays anything like the other and your suggestion that the two are almost interchangeable for one another makes me wonder if you've ever played either for more than a couple of minutes.TAdamson said:
Believe it or not, things like one life per round, terrible accuracy while moving, and levels with distinct objectives and two separate team spawning areas make CS play far differently than any COD title I've played. There really is nothing out there that plays like CS.
As I said, kinaesthetically different. I never said that they were completely interchangeable but I do lump them together because they both favour tight twitchy maps and have "realistic" weapons.Vivi22 said:
I was alluding to the one-life per round with my "interruption of game-flow" comment.
And what is with this website and it's forum members challenging whether people have "played the game" when ever they disagree with someone. Quit with the snarky bullshit, guy.
You said the core play, implying the core gameplay, is the same which is objectively false. Aside from having weapons which kill in few hits, teams, and a similar visual aesthetic the two are nothing alike.TAdamson said:
And saying they're kinaesthetically different doesn't really mean anything since kinaesthetics is, to quote wikipedia for a moment, "Kinaesthetics is the study of body motion, and of the perception (both conscious and unconscious) of one's own body motions." It has absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay in these two series and doesn't says nothing of any value.
If you don't like the word kinaesthetics how about "game-feel".Vivi22 said:
And I count that as the core gameplay. You run around a small map and shoot the other team with modern-day weapons. The fact that you have to stop when you die in CS is secondary to me.
You want to talk about multiplayer games that actually feel different (Enough to count for me anyway.) try playing some Tribes, or Arma 2, or try to get in on the Planetside Beta.
I was in the process of editing in more of my response to address things you edited into yours after I posted, so I'll leave them here:
It's not simple opinion that a game of CS plays out differently than a game of COD. It's a statement based on hundreds of games and who knows how many hours of experience. And so far you haven't made a reasoned argument for why they're similar beyond citing a simple aesthetic similarity with no impact on gameplay, and one similar (but very different given CS weapons are much less accurate while moving than in COD) gameplay mechanic. You're ignoring the multitude of other mechanics which drastically differentiate the play experience to make a comparison which isn't valid.
It would be like me arguing the core gameplay in Doom and Quake 2 is the same because both feature similar weapons and have monsters in some research facility setting.
If you were just arguing that CS shared a single mechanic with COD you'd get not argument, but that wasn't what your posts have been implying all this time. Core gameplay includes all game mechanics and how they interact to create the whole gameplay experience. Picking and choosing one or two to make two very different games sound similar is disingenuous.
As I said above, stating that the core play is the same heavily implies that you're saying they play very similarly. They don't. CS doesn't just have the sort of run and gun twitchy gameplay which COD has, particularly since you don't respawn until the end of the round. An actual game of CS can often play out as a careful game of poking and defending as each team attempts to gain the slight edge they need to gain ground and achieve their objective. That doesn't happen in COD because gaining or losing a momentary advantage isn't as important when your teammates simply respawn after a few moments. Yes, battles start and end quickly, but to say that is the entire game is to ignore the careful positioning and small pokes at the enemy to test their numbers and gauge their response. There's a lot more to playing CS than running and gunning since each life is so valuable. That isn't the case in COD.
You edited it in after I replied. But regardless, acknowledging an interruption in game flow while ignoring the impact that interruption has on the way the game is played is silly.
I questioned whether you played them because speaking as someone who's played hundreds of hours of both types of game, you either haven't played them, haven't spent much time thinking about how the mechanics affect how each is played, or you flat out don't understand how they're played.
It's not simple opinion that a game of CS plays out differently than a game of COD. It's a statement based on hundreds of games and who knows how many hours of experience. And so far you haven't made a reasoned argument for why they're similar beyond citing a simple aesthetic similarity with no impact on gameplay, and one similar (but very different given CS weapons are much less accurate while moving than in COD) gameplay mechanic. You're ignoring the multitude of other mechanics which drastically differentiate the play experience to make a comparison which isn't valid.
It would be like me arguing the core gameplay in Doom and Quake 2 is the same because both feature similar weapons and have monsters in some research facility setting.
See my Doom and Quake 2 comparison above. If you oversimplify things like that then they seem very similar. But leaving out the effect of objective based maps with distinct team spawn locations and one life per round on gameplay to make your comparison is like ignoring the fact that Quake 2 is a true 3D game while Doom only faked it to compare those. They play vastly differently because of that, just like CS plays very differently from COD when you don't gloss over the impact of major game mechanics to force an invalid comparison.TAdamson said:
If you were just arguing that CS shared a single mechanic with COD you'd get not argument, but that wasn't what your posts have been implying all this time. Core gameplay includes all game mechanics and how they interact to create the whole gameplay experience. Picking and choosing one or two to make two very different games sound similar is disingenuous.
I think it'd be pretty cool to have a free to play Counterstrike game, like the Battlefield P4F - I mean I used to play BFP4F before BF3 arrived, and it's a pretty decent setup - spend a few quid for a good weapon, but it doesn't feel like your being overly punished for not spending money on it the whole time. A game like that for Counterstrike would be cool - levelling up a character, buying weapons, playing rounds online, forming clans. There is certainly a market for games like that.
As for Half Life, well I'm not sure that we'll ever see another game like Half Life, it's too deep - even Half Life 3 won't be as deep, because these days 40 hours of gameplay is too long for designers - it'll be circumcised down to a 10 hour campaign. No developers have the funds or the freedom to actually tackle a game like Half Life... Valve does of course, but their business model means that it would take decades to provide us with 40 hours of good storyline driven gameplay.
It's like the TV series LOST, now love or hate LOST, but there's no question that it's the last time we'll see anything remotely like it. Nobody is prepared to spend real money on a TV series, not the Walking Dead folk, not the Breaking Bad folk, not the Falling Skies folk... nobody. We have to accept that the days of big budget flyaway success stories are a thing of the past - videogames and TV shows are often lucky just to break even, and that's not enough for networks and publishers. We are doomed to pay £5 an hour for shallow entertainment that doesn't compare to the £1 per hour we would have paid 10 years ago. We have to look to other places for value for money, intelligent and satisfying entertainment. Take Minecraft, best £15 anyone could spend considering the amount of time people can spend playing it. It's pretty miserible when there's only a handful of products that offer real value for money these days.
As for Half Life, well I'm not sure that we'll ever see another game like Half Life, it's too deep - even Half Life 3 won't be as deep, because these days 40 hours of gameplay is too long for designers - it'll be circumcised down to a 10 hour campaign. No developers have the funds or the freedom to actually tackle a game like Half Life... Valve does of course, but their business model means that it would take decades to provide us with 40 hours of good storyline driven gameplay.
It's like the TV series LOST, now love or hate LOST, but there's no question that it's the last time we'll see anything remotely like it. Nobody is prepared to spend real money on a TV series, not the Walking Dead folk, not the Breaking Bad folk, not the Falling Skies folk... nobody. We have to accept that the days of big budget flyaway success stories are a thing of the past - videogames and TV shows are often lucky just to break even, and that's not enough for networks and publishers. We are doomed to pay £5 an hour for shallow entertainment that doesn't compare to the £1 per hour we would have paid 10 years ago. We have to look to other places for value for money, intelligent and satisfying entertainment. Take Minecraft, best £15 anyone could spend considering the amount of time people can spend playing it. It's pretty miserible when there's only a handful of products that offer real value for money these days.
I was playing Crysis 2 not long ago. When I was halfway through I suddenly realised that I was basically just playing a new, shinier version of Half Life. I steered a mute bloke in a special suit through linear levels, now and then disrupted by cut scenes. And he more or less single-handedly, drove back an alien invasion and fought some opposing military force with threadbare motivations, while everyone around him was dying. And in the end he talked with some mysterious guy.
Seeing that big lack of originality and innovation made me very sad. Stupid shooters.
Seeing that big lack of originality and innovation made me very sad. Stupid shooters.
Okay point taken. I've never really played CS with people sensible enough to act as a team.Vivi22 said:
It does't take away the fact that the attraction of both games is tight well designed maps with lethal military style weaponry.
And I would say the "core-gameplay" entails modes of movement, interaction and feedback. Dynamics resulting from rules imposed by game modes is secondary. These rules make them different games but at their core they are the same.
Let compare snakes and ladders to monopoly. The rules make them different but the core game play (Rolling a die.) make them the same.
I don't know about anyone else but I've yet to see or play a Halo clone. The only thing that gets copied off Halo is the whole 'Shields' mechanic but other than that nothing comes close to it.
The thing about this is that the "rules" regarding things like spawn locations or, perhaps more importantly, one life per round are no less a part of the core gameplay than movement or the means of interaction. In fact, things like movement are coded in much the same way to provide rules and structure to the game. And I would certainly argue that the one life per round is every bit as important as the rules governing movement, or how weapons work in the game because that one rule dictates so much of how the game is played. In some ways it may be the most important gameplay mechanic of all because without it, CS literally wouldn't be CS and would play substantially differently.TAdamson said:
And I disagree with the snakes and ladders to monopoly comparison for the same reasons. Yes, the mechanic governing movement is similar since you roll dice to move. But the other game mechanics such as the snakes and ladders, or buying and selling property and collecting rent in monopoly are definite game mechanics which make the games drastically dissimilar. Sure, they have a similar movement mechanic, but nobody could argue the two games are similar based solely on that one mechanic and expect their argument to be taken seriously. Games can have individual mechanics in common but be completely different because of how they interact with other game mechanics which may be either unique to them, or at simply implemented differently from other games.
But if you cloned Half-Life, wouldn't you just get an extra life?
*Badum-tish!*
I'm sorry, I'll leave now.
*Badum-tish!*
I'm sorry, I'll leave now.
Sorry but I noticed no similarities. How the game looked and played was completely differant. Maybe thats just because I love Halo though and its rare that another game invokes the same joy as it does.wabbbit said:
What you're saying is that Call of Duty needed to add an extra game mode in order to make itself similar to Counter Strike, because the core games are so dissimilar.TAdamson said:
And also that Black Ops saw Gun Game and thought it'd be a fun thing to have in its game too.
The core games themselves still play fundamentally differently despite those two points.
