Off topic: How are games failing you? - Page 11

Trumanator · #1 February 8th, 2009, 05:32 PM

And now WW is gone, and EA is doing their usual thing of making decent-good games and refusing to support them.

NKIcan · #2 February 8th, 2009, 05:55 PM

Over Cautious I think is the watchword for the day when it comes to Gaming. Its become such a big investment that companies are loathe to try new things.

Its all derivative and formulaic to the extreme.

EA basically owns much of the gaming industry now...buying out companies then totally shutting them down. Its very sad.

Also, Ive heard good things about Dreamfall: The longest Journey. How puzzle intensive is it?

JimMorrison · #3 February 8th, 2009, 08:37 PM

Westwood was one of the best studios ever. It's frustrating, as they're my only favorite game designers that I have had little luck tracking down, as to what projects they are involved with now. One game in particular that I never hear mentioned, Mars Saga, was revolutionary at the time, with turn based combat where you script your party, and then the combat round plays out in "real time". It did this with AOE/cone effect weapons and semi-realistic explosions - on the Commodore 64.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NKIcan

Also, Ive heard good things about Dreamfall: The longest Journey. How puzzle intensive is it?

Not very, it's nothing like Myst or anything like that, that's for sure. There was one somewhat frustrating sequence involving some pylons spread out in a small maze, with this freaky troll thing that would kill you in one strike. Outwitting the beasty was much more a puzzle than the other part.

And there was one very minor puzzle I had to look up a walkthrough for, only to find it involved an aural cue, and I had my sound very very low while playing at night.

The story is amazing though, and much of the dialogue is pure genius. Seriously, if you like a good fantasy story, it's hard to go wrong with it. Just, be prepared to feel like crying at the end.

Tifone · #4 February 8th, 2009, 08:10 PM

Lol, wanna laugh? Possibly one of the most... well... "role playing" CRPGs

I've played is one that is not even an RPG: the game of Blade Runner (by Westwood IIRC). More like an adventure, it's AWESOME game: it had a lot of ways to behave (playing your role

) that made you really feel how you were changing the story - of course there were fixed events or the amazing plot wouldn't have evolved, but you could make lots of choices to get to one of the 10-or-so possible endings... and also some randomization (i.e. several characters could be humans or replicants) for further replayability. Added value for recalling a lot, with the locations, the camera movements and the atmosphere, the outstanding movie.

Agema · #5 February 9th, 2009, 05:36 AM

Westwood had many great games under their belt, but towards the end the wheels were falling off their wagon. Possibly because...

According to Wikipedia, many of the staff at Westwood were very unhappy with the EA takeover, left, and created Petroglyph Games. So check them up.

JimMorrison · #6 February 9th, 2009, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agema

Westwood had many great games under their belt, but towards the end the wheels were falling off their wagon. Possibly because...

According to Wikipedia, many of the staff at Westwood were very unhappy with the EA takeover, left, and created Petroglyph Games. So check them up.

That's funny, because they did Empire at War, which had some really cool concepts (and ALMOST sated my desire for a remake of Rebellion), but ultimately got very repetitive, very fast.

Oddly, I met a number of gaming industry people in my time in WoW, including a couple who claimed to be working on that title. According to them, it was an offshoot of Westwood - but they were pretty tight lipped about most things. They also stated that they were not part of the "old guard", and apparently their co-workers (for SOME reason) didn't talk much about the glory days.

Their new project is Mytheon which is a free/micropayment MMO. Quite a departure from the old days.....

Agema · #7 February 10th, 2009, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

Oddly, I met a number of gaming industry people in my time in WoW, including a couple who claimed to be working on that title. According to them, it was an offshoot of Westwood - but they were pretty tight lipped about most things. They also stated that they were not part of the "old guard", and apparently their co-workers (for SOME reason) didn't talk much about the glory days.

The really top brass at Westwood (and hence the major old guard) got very good positions within EA. I dare say pre-takeover their day-to-day input to titles could be relatively low, but their overall creative direction might have been considerable.

* * *

I was disappointed with Star Wars Rebellion. It was hopeless at reflecting that the Empire was a vast Behemoth and the Rebels a scruffy element skulking around the fringes, although the empire working by repression and the Rebels by hope, freedom and diplomacy was implemented. The battles were well done, but it took so long to get a fleet anywhere I could never manage to actually get a decent engagement where two big battle fleets met in a galaxy-deciding blaze, just a series of hopelessly one-sided skirmishes.

JimMorrison · #8 February 10th, 2009, 03:16 PM

Hmmmm. I remember (it's been yearrrrrrrs) that with the Rebels, I fared best if I gobbled up rim systems as fast as I could with my amazing diplomants, while keeping the Empire running around in circles with Han+Chewie and my other awesome saboteurs running interference within the core. If done right, eventually I was zooming into the core with insane fleets of something like 5 Bulwark Battlecruisers, with support. Though my first strike fleets would tend to consist of just 10-12 Nebulon-B, as they had an excellent combination of firepower and maneuverability, with 2 fighter squadrons apiece, and IIRC could carry some ground forces as well.

As the Empire, it seemed a fairly simple feat to get a couple battlegroups of Star Destroyers up, and bombard the living hell out of any dissenting core systems, hammering them under the iron fist of the Empire with ruthless efficiency. The key here was to get a very strong economy going, because it takes a lot of manpower to bring the rim systems under your thumb, with so much distance between the clusters.

I don't know, I thought that there was a great combination of diplomacy (fighting for influence on each world), subterfuge (few games have had such engaging covert ops components), and gorgeous (for 1998!) space battles. I definitely rank it as one of my favorites of all time, and probably the best game to ever be associated with Lucas Arts (though Ballblazer was SWEET back in the day

oh yeah, and Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken!).

Gregstrom · #9 February 9th, 2009, 05:52 AM

That happens with takeovers. When DMA Design were bought up to become Rockstar North, a lot of staff left too.

Agema · #10 February 9th, 2009, 07:59 AM

Agreed. I think many of the big publishers buy studios for the intellectual property, not for the talent of its workers. It suggests their interest is in leveraging the "brand" and being able to knock out cheap, inferior sequels to make money, rather than nurturing talent. It's certainly telling when groups as incredibly successful as Westwood were can find they don't have creative freedom anymore.