A video game thread

http://popdust.com/2013/02/19/an-open-plea-to-harmonix-please-dont-stop-the-rock-band/

I remember talking to somebody once who said that they played Rock Band like they’d play any other video game, trying to beat it at the highest difficulty levels, without caring about which song was being played or how much they felt like a rock star or whatever while playing it. This was inconceivable to me, but maybe it makes sense to true gamers, who probably made up a fairly big part of the Rock Band core audience.

It's probable that GDB had IRL conversations like this, but I like to imagine he was thinking back to Damo talking about playing the game on mute early in the morning purely for its timing elements.

When's Some Girl coming over.

I don't really know any actual gamer that plays games for the "escape" or fantasy of being a rock star or solider. Most hardcore gamers are interested in mechanics, gameplay systems and so forth.

It's a bit like pen & paper role playing games. There are those people that want the indulgence of pretending to be a elf of the mystical woods out to save the fair maiden. Sure.

But those players are somewhat casual about the practice and the game itself is merely a vehicle to facilitating the fantasy.

Whereas the players of the COre boards is interested in the game(s) for purely theoretical exercise. Where the fun is derived from the mechanics of the game, purely.

IN video gaming, gameplay is a considered a pure expression of play mechanics. And you can see this in a number of the most highly regarded games in the medium: Starcraft Brood War, Dota, Trap Gunner, Guardian Heroes, Street Fighter 3: 2nd Impact, Quake, Counter Strike 1.6, etc.

Doubt you will find many professional players or hardcore enthusiasts of DOTA2 commenting on how they just enjoy the fantasy of playing Tiny.

There is a reason why "bro" games like Call of Duty and casual games are looked down upon by hardcore gamers.

playing warband a lot right now

all the large-scale combat shit is great and the game is pretty much perfect for a dude like me who likes civilization but is too dumb to play it well. sieging castles with my ragtag crew of chumps and mercenaries is the most gratifying thing

I'm not a big gamer. My feelings for games like Rock Band are a lot more similar to GDB than Damo.

I haven't played Guitar Hero or Rock Band in about a year, but it still sucks they are ending the franchise.

I went to best buy and like every single xbox360 game has the exact same cover: some depressed-lokking guy with a gun. Trying to find a new game to get excited about but it's really hard.

Hard to accept but we're at a point where kids today wouldn't even consider the games that I grew up with to be "real." They'll be the ones writing history and it will say that "gaming" didn't really get its shit together until Halo came out.

Makes me think of the recent Bionic Commando sequels where Ladd Spencer has dreads and the color palette spans from muddy brown to greyish green. Weird this aesthetic can appeal to anyone.

Do you guys watch Zero Punctuation videos? I don't even really play video games but I enjoy watching his reviews all the same for the humor/sharp criticism. He's on the same page as you about shooters.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

Never heard of it, might check it out.

Dying at the single comment on GDB's article.

Really wish there was a way I could get an RSS feed of just Andrew's articles at Popdust, without all the K-pop stuff from that other dude mixed in.

http://popdust.com/author/aunterberger/

edit you mean something slightly different don't you.

Yeah, I tried plugging that URL into google reader and got a feed for all of Popdust. I'm not diligent enough to repeatedly visit a particular bookmark in the RSS era.

Duff... wrote:Never heard of it, might check it out.

You should, it has a unique visual style that you might enjoy.

Yeah, I tried plugging that URL into google reader and got a feed for all of Popdust. I'm not diligent enough to repeatedly visit a particular bookmark in the RSS era.

You could do a Google Alert that funneled results into an RSS feed. Not sure if that would catch everything he writes or not, I haven't tried tracking a particular writer that way.

Is multiquote an option that has to be manually turned on for this board?

raj 2 wrote:You could do a Google Alert that funneled results into an RSS feed. Not sure if that would catch everything he writes or not, I haven't tried tracking a particular writer that way.

Thanks, I'll look into that.

raj 2 wrote:Is multiquote an option that has to be manually turned on for this board?

fixed

Tried to multi-quote just last week, forgot I could just enable that function myself. It's a good thing no one made me god.

Happened upon a death scene from the new Tomb Raider a little while ago. Think I'll be nursing my throat for the rest of the week.

raj 2 wrote:Do you guys watch Zero Punctuation videos? I don't even really play video games but I enjoy watching his reviews all the same for the humor/sharp criticism. He's on the same page as you about shooters.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

These are funny though I only understand like every other word.

Really pissed that I missed this.

http://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/at-the-show/tournaments/retro-classic-competitions/tetris-rules/

undo wrote:Really pissed that I missed this.

http://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/at-the-show/tournaments/retro-classic-competitions/tetris-rules/

Kind of wish I had watched part of that tournament. Problem with MGC is, it's such a sprawling event, there are entire wings of rooms and several tournies you don't know exist unless you're really diligent. For me it's a pinball event, but there are probably hundreds of people there who never touch one pinball machine. And this is the first I've heard of the Tetris thing.

There were over 4,500 attendees on Saturday alone. Just insane. Agoraphobe's nightmare.

Undo, I would check out the extensive Xbox live arcade for cool platformer style games from indie developers. Castle crashers, fez, runner 2 are a few great games that go retro but maintain a great looking and unique graphic style. Besides that they are typically only $10-15 rather then $49-59.

BGwaves wrote:Undo, I would check out the extensive Xbox live arcade for cool platformer style games from indie developers. Castle crashers, fez, runner 2 are a few great games that go retro but maintain a great looking and unique graphic style. Besides that they are typically only $10-15 rather then $49-59.

This is going to sound really lame but it was a few games on Xbox live arcade that made me buy this thing from someone in the first place. I was all set to download Ikaruga and Scott Pilgrim when I realized that I have one of the Xboxes with the really small hard drive. I thought that I should get a bigger one before downloading anything. Then I started having trouble with it, had to ship it back to MS, and by the time I got it back I wasn't in the mood to play anything anymore.

If I download stuff, will I be able to redownload it onto a new hard drive (if I get a bigger one) without buying it again?

yancy wish i knew you were at MGC i almost went

i miss GDB so much

dude liteally bought me rock band and my first "next gen" console with his WSOPC winnings

remember watching his victory on cable tv with efrim

far too drunk to sign in