* I'm like this for the most part, but I really like Red Faction-- the original from 2001. It's got some great techno tracks that work as a time capsule for the music at the time, the weapons themselves are all memorable, in part due to the fuckin'
kickass sound design for them ((
Red Faction Weapon SFX - Soundboard.com (a soundboard I made a few years ago))). The story is pretty interesting too-- mining corporation on Mars lures in workers and then essentially slave drives them because there's no one to keep an eye on them-- violence, aggression, and a mysterious plague. Revolution ensues, mercenaries get brought in, Axel Capek is there with his fuckin' yes-tastic evil old man voice, it's great. A lot of aspects from it would be seen in later FPS's, but at that time everything was new and cool.
* Ehhhh, I don't necessarily believe that. How would you implement these notes in a way that wouldn't be out of the consumer's way to access-- people are lazy and easily confused. But for the most part, I agree that translations should be translations and nothing more (unless it's like that joke in Earthbound where the guy accidentally uses one katakana instead of another and it's a joke on how they look exactly the fucking same).
* Not necessarily: there are movies out there, where certain things that were just fine then are kind of
ehhhh. Holiday Inn uses blackface for the song used on Abraham Lincoln's birthday-- totally harmless, mind you, as it was only used for Bing and Linda Mason (because surprise surprise they're white), and the band was composed of actual black folks, but even still some people are like what the fuck. I myself was like that toward the very end of Blade Runner where Decker rather violently prevents Rachel from leaving that apartment. I was like "
woah! where did
this come from?!" but at the time I'm sure it didn't seem so questionable.
Now, this doesn't draw a direct parallel with games, mind you, but the general notion is the same-- as new concepts are brought into being and accepted, they're stuck onto the existing gobstopper, further polishing it up and working out more kinks. Games that quote-unquote "don't age well" are said to be as such because unlike games that
do age well, they tend to include earlier, clunkier, unfinished versions of concepts that we see today. With these newer versions to draw comparisons to, suddenly the predecessor's version doesn't seem so great anymore.
The reason why Super Mario World is still so good even after 30 years, yet Mario 1 gets shittier and shittier with each passing year, is because one of them was the Mark IV, the finished product, built with six straight years of knowledge, of fine-tuning and perfecting and improving, while the other was the junky prototype that did the best it could with its limited knowledge.
* Compare New Super Mario Bros. to New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I love the former and hate the latter. Logic dictates that I should like them the same, since they're effectively the same game, but the thing is, there's this gap between having enough content to truly be its own thing and just being a port, and inside this gap, there's just
nothing but pure and utter
tripe. "Oh FUCK,
one new power-up?! Holy
SHIT this is REVOLUTIONARY"
* How true.
* On paper, sure. Non-linearity is a desirable trait in a game
if it's done well. You play Skyrim, you're in this huge-ass world and you're like "well what in God's name." because it's non-linear like that. But I don't like Bethesda games because they're
too open. It feels like if I were to go outside, with a
supposed goal in mind but really I'm just kinda
there.
* Again, if it's handled well. NSMB2's co-op sucks ass solely because of that stupid screen-share garbo.
You had a two-screen system in the first one, just use that! Lego games' co-op was also terrible until split-screen unless you and your friend share a hivemind.
, but also because Capek's tied with Vakama and Jibolba for my favorite old man character ever
