Random Gaming Thoughts Thread *NO NEWS ITEMS*

The world is a big factor of why I like it but there are so many JRPGs I would be interested in playing but get turned off because the battle system isn't engaging enough & that's where XC is great for me.

(The sci fi element helps too!)

Tales of xillia 2 is now the saddest game I've played in a very long time.  Christ the last few chapters were depressing.  

major spoilers up to chapter 15:

 I haven't felt this sad over something since that episode of attack on titan.  Way to take my heart and serve it up on a platter tales of xillia.  I applaud you.


So, umm, to try and give this some purpose besides me going on about how amazing xillia 2 has tugged the heart strings, anyone want to mention games they've played that really tore their hearts out?

I'm actually here to post about something else, but it'd be rude of me not to reply.  I'm quite a softy, so a lot of games have had me feeling slightly damp as they come to their end.  Trying to avoid spoilers, there's:

• The final scene with the King in WW;
  
• The death in the second chapter of the first Phoenix Wright game (and pretty much any time the victim's theme plays after that), and in the fourth chapter of third;
  
• Cyan's BSOD moment in FFVI (this is probably the biggest heart-wrencher one on the list);
  
• Many many moments in Danganronpa 2, although I've never actually played the game.  Mikan's free time events, the fourth punishment, and the moment when the person who comes back from the dead dies again...  Damn you Monobear.

In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that this could be its own thread.  Care to do the honours, Athrun?

***

Anyway, something slightly more heartwarming now.  Went into GAME (yes, I know) today.  Two blokes behind the counter: big guy in a green Microsoft advertising t-shirt, and a nerdy-looking chap in standard GAME purple wear.  I tell the purple one that I'd like to pre-order SSB3D, and Greeny speaks up: "Have you played the demo.?  It's amazing!"  His colleague looks at him: he responds with something like, "Yeah, well, it's Nintendo, isn't it?"  We exchange words about Mega Man and the Villager before I complete my order.

The Wii U may be having a rough time of it, but Nintendo can still make children of us all.

On Xenoblade: It's the only non-pokemon jrpg I have ever played through to the end(and I don't really count pokemon, to be honest.) I love it to bits, and if I recall the developers said they were purposefully taking influence from western RPGs. Having since played Mad Effect, I can see the connection.

On sad things: The game moments that leap to mind are the ending of Snake Eater and the level with the ghost in Elite Beat Agents. I'm sure I could think of others if I put my mind to it.

On happy things: I was talking to a girl at work about the Wii U today. She was saying "Really? You've really got a Wii u? Nobody has a Wii u!" And her, another colleague and I had a big conversation about how much we love Nintendo. It brings people together...

Why don't you count pokemon? It has all the mechanics of a JRPG.

Yeah everyone loves playing Nintendo games, they just don't like buying there console just to play them which is a shame as we know.

Saddest moment has to be in Gears of War 2 there could be more but might be spoilers like Aerith dieing in FF7.

Pokemon is almost a genre unto itself. Putting it in the same box as a final fantasy or something would be like saying portal and cod are the same genre.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Pokemon is almost a genre unto itself. Putting it in the same box as a final fantasy or something would be like saying portal and cod are the same genre.

You have an interesting and true take there. I used to see Pokemon as a kind of 'My First RPG' but the mechanics are far too deep for that. The genius of it is that you can take it as far as you want to: personally, finishing the game and collecting many monsters are my goals, but down the road from me is a guy that breeds Pokemon for the competitive scene. I've played two actual humans, and got thrashed both times.

I think that there's a "monster capture" genre that is slightly separate from JRPGs as a whole, identified by capturing enemies and making your party out of them; but Pokémon is still definitely a JRPG series.  Strip away the sugar coating and you're training up a party, increasing their skills, healing them with Potions, teaching them special moves (with a separate MP bar for each), and fighting a series of bosses (Gym Leaders).  It even has turn-based combat and random battles!

The competitive scene is a completely different kettle of Goldeen, but it came out of the main franchise almost by accident.

In news that will likely upset mass effect fans danganronpa has pushed mass effect even further down the priority chain.  What can I say, the first half an hour of danganronpa hooked me while mass effect in the same time frame didn't.  Probably has something to do with the lack of interesting characters being introduced and evil teddy bear.

Yeah you got to give Mass Effect time 1 hour in what is 20hrs isn't much.

What balla said about pokemon that's why it's a JRPG and why it's always been included in any vote as a JRPG. Zero about 1st JRPG I never really played the genre till pokemon which got me into them a bit but mainly on handhelds

But comparing Portal & COD is a bit silly as on is Puzzle game in a first person view that use a gun type thing to solve puzzles, the other is a first person shooter to shoot people and control really different. You can get bow & arrows in Skyrim which can be played in first person is that the same nope it's a western rpg.

It's a monster catching game, a genre of its own that shares features with RPGs. You wouldn't say third-person shooters and first-person shooters were in the same genre, but they share features.

Yes I would - it's called "shooters".

I think something wanky like Extra Credit discussed this, but isn't it weird how we divide games into genres based on their controls or gameplay tropes? We don't divide films into "flashbacks", "slow motion" and "close ups".

Nope, don't think it's weird at all.  Gameplay is still the main feature of games, despite developers like Naughty Dog trying to change that to environments or cinematics.  (Nothing against Naughty Dog: it's just I get the impression that they'd rather be making films at times.)  Films, on the other hand: setting, characters, story, cinematics and sound all have relatively similar importance; and I guess that out of that lot, a combination of setting and story is probably the easiest way to categorise them.

Because that's all they are: categorisations.  As such, and despite my response to Zero above, they can be as detailed as you like.  You can have "RPG", "JRPG", "monster-capturing JRPG", or "erotic monster-capturing JRPG" (Pokémon Lopunny Edition, coming to Japan in summer 2015), and all of those are valid genres, depending on how much detail you want to go into.  You just start with the simplest and most relevant way to categorise them, and build on that - and for games, that's surely got to be gameplay.

Balladeer wrote:

Yes I would - it's called "shooters".

By that logic, Pokemon and Final Fantasy are the same genre, when there's enough of a difference there that saying that feels wrong.

I just remembered 'Super Monkey Ball is a puzzler' and I boaked a wee bit.

I didn't like that in Balladeer's and Jay's genre vote threads last year - we just turfed a bunch of stuff together without any well-informed rationale. Everyone does it, but still...*thumbs down*

TPS & FPS are two different genres as in most cases they play completely different from a GAMEPLAY sense.

I find playing pokemon like any other JRPG, I've got my team/party whom I level up to go through dungeon's and get to the end boss /gym leaders of each. Which is just like Final Fantasy in core GAMEPLAY sense.

But yes you can go further down in to genres, like Rainbow Six a tactical FPS for instance. It's how far you want to go like balla points out but when it comes to someone doing a end of year award for instance there not going to go the winner of the best first persons puzzler is Portal as that's just stupid.

Balladeer wrote:

Gameplay is still the main feature of games, despite developers like Naughty Dog trying to change that to environments or cinematics.  (Nothing against Naughty Dog: it's just I get the impression that they'd rather be making films at times.)  

Woah, wait a minute there Balla! Whilst there are some games that could be accused of that (Quantic Dreams is an obvious answer) one of the reasons that Naughty Dog games are so brilliant is that they both pack amazing graphics and gameplay. I cannot think of many better third person shooters (Vanquish and Binary Domain maybe but the Uncharted games are better all round) and as far as I'm concerned TLoU is the best Survival game of the gen.

You're better placed to argue than I am, Andy - I've never played 'em. But when most people talk about the Uncharted games and TLoU, it's all the story and the setting and the characters they gush about - the more filmic stuff. In fact, people tend to be quite sniffy about the gameplay in TLoU, but feel that the rest of the game makes up for it. So I've found anyway. Meanwhile, Uncharted's actual gameplay gets labelled "safe", but that's mostly by Yahtzee who is not exactly a trustworthy source!

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I just remembered 'Super Monkey Ball is a puzzler' and I boaked a wee bit.

I didn't like that in Balladeer's and Jay's genre vote threads last year - we just turfed a bunch of stuff together without any well-informed rationale. Everyone does it, but still...*thumbs down*

I wasn't going to mention it, but now that you've brought up the SMB debacle... Nah, I'm still not going to mention it. But you know what I'm thinking, right?

And trying to go through and apply well-informed rationale to the definition of each genre would have taken much longer than the time set aside. Most people have a "general idea" of what goes into every genre, and while there may be a few disagreements, they're few enough that the threads worked okay. Obviously you're not going to satisfy everyone who has strong opinions on what should be in each genre, but I think that most of us were willing to go along with the consensus by the end.

And speaking of the vote threads...

JayMoyles wrote:

By that logic, Pokemon and Final Fantasy are the same genre, when there's enough of a difference there that saying that feels wrong.

Wasn't it your thread where RPG week was mostly Pokémon games? And the others were all JRPG-ish! Like I said, it depends how detailed you want the classification to go, but I agree with Mas on this one. They play similarly enough to be put together in one genre if you want to do so.

Naughty Dog are a great studio and Uncharted does have great gameplay but it's not a third person shooter it's a action adventure game just like the Tomb Raiders of old a Third Person Shooter is Gears of War for instance.

I'm one of those that sniff at the gameplay of TLoU Balla, but the rest of the games make up for it and I would class that as a action adventure game as well.

To me the only difference between Gears and Uncharted is the tone and the fact you can jump and climb (in scripted sections at that) in Uncharted. The core game boils down to hunkering down behind cover shooting folks in the head. As for TLoU there is no way you can consider it action adventure. It's a game with limited resources that needs clever tactics and stealth to survive, so stealth/survival. Obviously if you play it on easy you can shoot your way through, but you can do that with Splinter Cell and Metal Gear too and nobody would argue they aren't stealth.

There's loads of climbing bit's in uncharted especially the first that aren't scripted, I don't think in till now I've heard anyone put Uncharted as a third person shooter. Wiki has it down as a action adventure with third person shooter elements which is most likely the most correct thing, IGN has it down as a third person action, If you want to buy Uncharted from a website such as GAME it's under action adventure, I could look up some more but I think most will put it as something action not shooter as it's core thing.

But MGS & Splinter Cell Mechanics is stealth. TLoU your saying the bit when you get play as Joel again winter is survival horror, no way there's no horror for a start and stealth bit's is only really limited to clickers. You shouldn't have to put the game on super mega hard mode to make it a survival game, it should play the same in it's core mechanic be it on super duper easy or super mega hard and that's what MGS & Splinter Cell does.

I said Survival not Survival Horror If you have a shoot out even on lower difficulties you can't get away with it unscathed. The game is clearly leaning towards stealth even on lower difficulties, however unlike Splinter Cell or Metal Gear, if you pull your gun out and go in loud your ammo is limited and you can't just mow everyone down (which is not the case on higher difficulties in those games).

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree as I can't see how TLoU is anything like MGS in its gameplay or the genre you put in as to me TLOU will always be action adventure.

I did miss read the survival horror bit, I saw survival and instantly thought survival horror.

I think the term "action adventure" has muddied the waters of a lot games, it covers too wide of a spectrum as a game like Legend of Zelda can be considered action adventure but it is clearly a different game to the like of Uncharted/TLoU.

I've always classed those last two as third person shooters even though TLoU as Andy says has a big focus on stealth.