The cancer that is killing gaming: the source

Same here. My close friends and co-workers are far from hardcore gamers. It's even hard to talk with them about games.

 

You should remember that The Verge founded by the former staff of Engadget, who got into an argument with the AOL brass because they didn't write enough stories that were basically ads and quit in early 2011? Even before that they proved themselves to be pretty terrible Apple fanboys who did all kids of idiotic "tests" to make non-Apple products look bad. The first case that springs to mind is the test where 3 people had to take a picture and send it via email. The only one who wasn't using his personal phone was the one using an N8, and as you might guess he did it all wrong, ended up last and would have been the fastest if he had done it right.

Blogs, specially gadget ones, in my opinion aren't places where you go for good reviews or articles, you go there for announcements and first impressions and nothing else. They're essentially just crappy tech news sites written by clueless fanboys and/or hipsters with a comments section. They're really not even blogs when they're written by people who get paid to do so.

I for one stopped reading reviews online years ago when I realized that the vast majority of reviewers are idiots and all of the competent ones have gotten tired of editors breathing down their neck, making sure they don't piss off advertisers by giving bad games bad reviews, and quit (one of the last bastions of good reviewers being the now former editorial staff of Edge Magazine). These days I just simply go by the word of mouth and occasionally buy games that just look interesting (I bought one of my favorite games, Zone of the Enders 2, just this way).

 

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A review is an opinion piece. Its not a heavily researched, award winner that is going to be headlines for years to come. Review pieces are what the person thought, nothing more, nothing less. People either gain respect for their reviews, or they don't. Some people love Ebert, others hate him, but he always gives his truthful opinion, right or "Wrong". And the fact that people are talking about this guy means that people are going and visiting and reading his review, which means money. Why would any company turn away money in this economic (or any) climate?

 

Nothing wrong with his review in my opinion. I'm just glad he was honest rather than pandering because it's a 'classic'.

It's just a shame that you still feel the need to viciously defend a game that already has many positive reviews, just because one person didn't enjoy it and has no sentimental feelings towards it.

Why make a 5-page fuss over what amounts to 'this person hasn't enjoyed a game I enjoy and therefore must be wrong'? I once told a friend about how great Frontier: Elite II is, how it's a staple of my childhood and once a year I chuck a good deal of hours into playing it. He gave it a go on my suggestion, and actually disliked the game because it has a reasonable learning curve and doesn't give you much instruction in-game on how to play. As such, he told me he didn't like it very much... a game I personally can't get enough of. Do you know what I said? I said 'oh, OK then' and moved on. I didn't personally attack him. I don't tell the whole world how much of a dick he is because he played it for a few hours and give up. I just shrug my shoulders and move on. It really isn't worth the time, especially as whilst I could be sitting there whining about it, I go off and chuck a few more hours in.

Also, I really don't get the hatred of casual games or hardcore games or any other kind of game that isn't something with a massive storyline or has a relatively shallow learning curve. The market is big enough that you will always find a game you enjoy and will keep on playing no matter how many 'Angry Birds' or 'Plants Vs Zombies' or 'Just Dance 4's there are in the market.

Despite the attitudes of parents, 'gamers', news organisations and the like, I feel the games market is finally maturing into a rich and complete assortment of tastes and styles similar to the markets for films and books. By claiming the market is 'going to hell' because the mass market doesn't buy the games you like is equivalent to saying that 'Twilight' destroys the book market for avid readers or 'The Hangover Part II' destroys the arthouse film market. It doesn't and will never do no matter what happens: what it does do is inject huge amounts of money into publishers so they can make the less commercially successful and more 'off-the-wall' IPs, as well as funding investment companies who help build the next indie game startup.

By claiming that new, easier to digest trends in gaming destroy good games is rubbish, claiming that 'casual gaming' is killing 'hardcore gaming' is tripe, and believing that you are morally superior because you have moved on from the casual games of your youth (such as 95% of the games you loved as a child) is a little belittling towards everyone who plays games (hardcore gamers included).

Anyway, that's enough of me ranting. Sorry if you disagree, but you are perfectly allowed to.

 

I was raised on the SNES. Something happened during the transition between the 16 bit gen and the 32/64 bit gen. I don't know what, but even though I was only like 10 or 11 I immediatly noticed games didn't seem all that impossible anymore. When all I had was a an SNES beating a game was a true achievement. All of a sudden it was the norm.

Coincidently that's also the generation that the Playstation dominated. Sony was not like Nintendo, Sega, or Atari. They do a whole lot more than make games. What I mean is sometime in the late '90s gaming went mainstream and sold out to having to satisfy the new majority. That's all.

 

Funny how most of the rebuttal arguments used here are that Nights isn't that great. At least SarcasticJoe pointed out something relevant. I'm not a fan of that game either, I remember being pretty pissed at sega at the time for cancelling Xtreme and having to wait 3+ years for a new sonic game.

The thing is Nights is still an iconic game, pretending to be a game journo while being completely deluded about it its not an excuse, is just saying "I'm an ignorant idiot who can even google why this game was so important even if its my work, but I check twitter ever milisecond!"

And the worst part is that the guy criticized the game for all dumb n00b reasons, he reminds me of a douche that died 6 times in a row against the Hunter in Dead Space because he didn't get that you couldn't defeat that boss and you had to escape. He kept shooting at it while it grew its limbs back, until the retard ran out of ammo and got killed.

Its the same situation, the game doesn't tell you "you can't defeat it you have to escape", you have to find that out by yourself, same as Nights bosses. This kind of complaint can only come from a total idiot who never played any other game than COD, why else would he expect to have a HUD telling him exactly what the fuck to do?

And don't start with the "casuals are gamers too" crap, I don't mind a girl playing farmville all day, but it pisses me off that some idiot savant who is in the same league than that girl thinks he can pretend to be a real gamer and give an opinion about a major classic game like this one.

If you want to be a casual be a casual, but don't go and shit over games you can't even understand. Seriously, its like hearing a dumb redneck comparing WWE to Kubrick movies......

 

Got Nights on 360 today. Played it and was like, yeah this is Nights. Time to make this game my bitch. and I'm in the process or that now.

It's weird though playing a remake so close to playing the Original version for the first time