IMO, Earth & Beyond had superb dialog and quests. Not so much because of the gameplay (the core E&B gameplay was pretty lousy, so the quest gameplay was too, necessarily), but the writing itself and the character and story interactions were great, much better than any other MMO I can think of. I forget the CD’s name though I had a lengthy chat with him at GDC the year the game was canceled, but his theater-based approach to quest and story writing should be taught someplace.
Thesper
3782
Dunno if it quite fits the bill, but A Tale in the Desert’s tests are about as far as you can get from your common or garden fetch/kill/disembowel for spare parts questing in terms of offering a varied range of interesting things for players to do in order to progress in the game.
nKoan
3784
It ‘Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands’ today!
That review was hilarious. I never played that first new PoP game though, was it really that good?
“…like the next logical step for the Final Fantasy series.”
Alan_Au
3787
You could do this in the Baldur’s Gate 2 expansion, where it lets you outsource a minor retrieve-item quest to a party of low-level adventurers.
Definitely my favorite line of the review. Of course, I’ve got a real hate-on for JPRGs in general for being non-interactive, so this is not surprising.
I was distracted by the alarm in the background a couple of times. I had to listen a second time to see if it was something here at work, but it happened in the same places.
Final Fantasy XII was an entirely different beast when it came to JRPGs. Going from that (open world exploration, lots of optional side quests, semi-realtime combat like FFXI, massive cities and towns) to XIII (the opposite of all that) was damned near unbearable.
Blame the Japanese core gamer community. They apparently detested FFXII, despite its relatively high sales, and complained at length to Square-Enix about all the features that Western players generally liked.
Of course, FFXIII sold half as much as FFXII in Japan, so Square-Enix clearly missed the mark there, too.
Well that was certainly a song. A little. Not quite ready to go pro yet, though - some awkward lines in there.
Equis
3794
It’s got a good little tune, and a nice enough chorus, but yeah, not quite ready to go pro yet.
Dean
3795
Yay for Rebecca Mayes calling Yahtzee out!
I’ve said it before in this thread, but I don’t think ZP is a force for good in the gaming world. I see too many college kids aping his style (badly) and thinking that as long as they’re putting something down they’re “cool.”
I also understand Mayes feeling that by saying she doesn’t think ZP is doing anything more than propping up the straight white male pov she’s going to be attacked (by straight white males). Heck, I feel that way around here sometimes. She’s not as clever as Yahtzee (and some of her lyrics in this very song show it), but she certainly has a depth of feeling and a love of games that come through in her songs.
I could have gone through my life just fine without that particular song.
Yahtzee is the Statler and Waldorf of video games. That’s a necessary creature. The fact of the matter is that the best games I have ever played have all suffered from significant problems and they deserve to have the piss taken out of them. People were making bad jokes about crappy video games before Croshaw (one random example: Seanbaby) and they’ll continue to make bad jokes after he decides he’s sick of this scene, and it’s always cool to hate on popular stuff. Actually, now that she’s reminded me of that terrible Offspring song, I like her just a little bit less. The preemptive playing of the race-and-gender discrimination card practically makes me want to clock her one.
Like I said - not terrible, but in my opinion she would be ill-advised to quit her day job. If we have learned nothing else from the raft of crappy sixties protest songs, it is that you don’t try to sing an essay if you want to be taken seriously. I get the impression that she’d be quite good at music in general if she weren’t straining so hard to pound the words she’s saying into a particular shape. She should work on that. Or get a better songwriter. And when you’ve got a big, loud guitar track running behind you, don’t cut to you alone in a room, because that’s disconcerting.
Who is that again (link me to her stuff)?
I’ve said it before in this thread, but I don’t think ZP is a force for good in the gaming world. I see too many college kids aping his style (badly) and thinking that as long as they’re putting something down they’re “cool.”
I don’t think he is a force for anything, but I absolutely thing gaming is better off for having him, just like we benefited from the presence of Old Man Murray. ZP is over the top but his rants often contain reasonable and clever criticism.
As for “college kids aping his style”, people ape any and everything as soon as it gets popular. But cynicism and snark existed long before Yahtzee did. People have been trying do the snark thing in gaming since the 80s. Nothing new here.
I also understand Mayes feeling that by saying she doesn’t think ZP is doing anything more than propping up the straight white male pov she’s going to be attacked (by straight white males). Heck, I feel that way around here sometimes. She’s not as clever as Yahtzee (and some of her lyrics in this very song show it), but she certainly has a depth of feeling and a love of games that come through in her songs.
What is she citing on Yahtzee’s part that is so SWM-centric? What in this thread do you find SWM-centric?
That song was very odd… Guess Yahtzee must have done something?
Still, very weird.
