Funny how your joke about 2.5d being the "new hotness" became reality. You're psychic! All kidding aside, it's been sooo long since I've wanted this many Nintendo games. Here's how my gaming budget is going to be allocated over the next 12-18 months:
60%-assorted Nintendo titles 25%-PSN & XBL DLC games (Scott Pilgrim looks awesome!!!) 15%-eye-searing HD stuff from Sony/Microsoft
The very top and bottom percentages are usually reversed, but not this year. It'll be nice to pay $50 for a great game again.
i love your videos but i hate the way you sometimes speaks as if you represent all gamers (I'm sorry but that is just what I'm getting from it sometimes).
What I hate is that Microsoft are using Rare to make all the stuff that gamers don't care about, like the Avatars and Kinect Sports. I know Rare are good at copying Nintendo, but I'd prefer them to be doing a Banjo version of Galaxy or something =P
Honestly? I don't give a [sandwich] about the 2.5D games or the 'retro' remakes. Frankly, I got bored of 'New' Super Mario Wii pretty quickly. And I thought Nintendo's plan for this next year or so was to try and milk handheld "3D" screens.
Anywho, the new Zelda is about the only interesting thing from Nintendo for me, and thats only because I gave Twilight princess another try and managed to enjoy it inspite of the grey-brown graphics.
Anywho, as for Kinetic... I dunno, some things they showed in the live coverage looked interesting, but I remain to be convinced. Also, why is everyone quoting $150 for price? At present, its unconfirmed rumour, as far as I'm aware.
Not to be a total ass, but this sounds like the perfect "response" video to your reviews of Star Trek and Transformers 2, with the two categories flipped. You hated a soulless cash-grab by rich idiots who appeal to hardcores, and hardcores feel the same way, only in reverse. It's the overdramatic "raping your childhood" arguement again, only more stupid because it's only a few years old and not decades.
With all the reference towards gamer improvement, and so on, you should really do an episode on NERD RAGE!!!! Because (to me, at least) getting all worked up to a ridiculous over what is essentially entertainment is one of the biggest things setting "nerd culture" as it is back to the dark, pre-computer ages.
No, I hate the Kinect because it has nothing new or interesting for me, outside of maybe Dance Central and the adventure game, whatever it was called.
And I hate the 360 because I can count the games that I would want to play on that system, but can't elsewhere ON ONE HAND. In my eyes, it's the worse console this generation. It's not bad, but the Wii and the PS3 is so beyond it it's not even funny to me.
Good to see more from you Bob, even though your Nintendo-mania is all-enclosing and not surprising (and by now kind of predictably uninteresting)
I have a theory on "Why the hate on kinect?"
I think you're a little off on your. "Casual gamers will desecrate out holy gaming." is plausible, but I think it's not the case.
People were going to Microsoft's press conference and expecting their "Call of Halo Gears" and stuff. They got it, but along with it they got everything Kinect... It's like going to see the "A-team" and it cuts halfway to "Crime and Punishment". Or going to "Crime and Punishment" and it cuts halfway to... the "A-team". If can enjoy both of them, then not a big problem. But still you were going there to see one thing and not the other. And if you have absolutely no interest in the other? You'll end up hating it for getting in the way of enjoying the stuff you came there for.
Let's look at Sony. They also had their "Hardcore" stuff and then the softcore "Move". But they placed a strategic Kevin Butler in-between to say the "Don't hate them. If you have an awesome girlfriend and your friend gets and awesome girlfriend, who wins? Everybody." They sort did a lampshade hanging and escaped (or mitigated) backlash on this waggle war thing.
I didn't think it was possible that Nintendo could possibly win me over this year, but they did it. Again. Damn Reggie and his tricks. >_>
Anyway, I can see why people don't want anything to do with the Kinect (which I preferred as Natal, but meh), but the amount of hate it's getting is kinda crazy. As a 360 and Wii owner, I doubt I'll ever want a Kinect, but I'm not going to call for the deaths of the "infidels" that do want one.
Also, I HIGHLY agree about a new Ghouls and Ghosts game. I'd also like my Mega Man Legends 3, but that's just a pipe dream. ;~;
Yes, Nintendo did win this show, showing some amazing stuff.
But here is where I disagree. I wasnt too excited for any of Microsoft's stuff either, but I didnt HATE the Kinect. My issue with it is that it needs more work. Kinect is a wonderful piece of technology, its just the creativity is not there.
When Nintendo introduced the Wii remote, we saw it being used with "Nintendo" games; Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. Games that Nintendo fans usually buy, and also some casual stuff.
And Sony's Move, whether its a blatant Wii rip-off or not, we still saw it being used for games like Resident Evil 5, Dead Space 2, LittleBigPlanet, etc. Games that most Sony guys buy.
But we didn't see that with Microsoft. We didn't see Kinect with Halo, Gears, Fable, Mass Effect, etc. Sure, have some stuff for the casual audience, that's fine. But its hard to get excited for it when it doesn't seem like it will come full circle with the games that made XBox successful.
My big issue with Kinect is that there doesnt seem to be a way to walk or run. It wasnt seen at any of the demos at E3, only games where you sit still or "on rails".
If they showed a way to combine the controller along with Kinect, and add some creative functions, THEN I would be convinced. But they seemed to hammer in the fact that you don't need buttons. And I just don't agree with that. Yea, we can browse our menus with it, but can we do a simple function like walking?
And with Sony's show, at least they showed a game called Sorcery, where you CAN walk, AND it was quite accurate, more than what we say with Miyamoto playing Zelda. Portal 2 and Twisted Metal was a good way to top off the show, too.
And you also mentioned you wish there was a retro remake or Super Ghouls n Ghosts...? Well there was one on the PSP. Just letting you know.
Bob, I have two things to say. The first one is regarding Kinect, the second one about you attitude.
You got the entire reason, why people hate Kinect wrong. The PlayStation is getting its Motion Controller along with motion games and nobody really cares that much. So why is it, people get hostile at Kinect?
The issues is not really Kinect, it's Microsoft. Microsoft is a company, that got famous for making a commercial virus, they market as an OS. But they get away with it, since their main customers are not consumers, but PC building companies like Dell, HP, Sony, Acer,... you get the idea. They also make Microsoft Office, which they sell to companies, forcing employes of said companies to use MS Office at home as well, making MS Office a de-facto standard.
Only recently has Microsoft started to enter the consumer market. The X-Box was created to stop PC game-developers from developing for non-Microsoft systems. Microsoft is not interested in giving you a good consumer experience. That's why 360s fail all the time. It does not matter, how you feel. The Zune was created not be a good MP3 player, but to stop Apple's OS from gaining popularity. Windows XP prices have been dumped once netbooks boomed. Why? Because said netbooks used to come with Linux preinstalled.
The point is, Microsoft sees consumers as idiots. They just need to advertise their crap enough, and it will start selling. Remember the Courier? Where is it now? Remember Surface? Where is it now? They put up their marketing how the new Microsoft thing is going to be soooo revolutionary, and they better should not buy anything different. Microsoft ut up that Courier video online, before the iPad was unveiled. You can buy the iPad already, but there is not even a protoype of the Courier.
And that is, where the hate for Kinect comes from. The press conference was not even real. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WkrXLJwLCY They just put actors on stage. They think we won't notice, because we were distraced by the big elephants. How stupid do they think we are? Sure, if it was life, it could have failed. Zelda failed. But you know what? It's all right, because we know WiiMotion Plus works. I have it here at home, I tried it already. I just played Red Steel 2 today, it works perfectly. But Microsoft just keeps hiding Kinect from the public. Then they have some celebrity developers tell us, how amazing it is, and how it will change everything (just like the surface). How stupid do they think we are?
Oh, and by the way... Did they really want to tell us, girls are into gamerscore? W T F ! Like you can walk to a girl like "Hey baby, I got a 2000000 gamerscore, wanna check out my Gamer's Card? " and she would be all over you? Wow, great, all that money I payed to use a P2P online service and the countless hours, I spent with random people online shooting each other in the head, to get the next achievement, was totaly worth it! Yeah!
To Microsoft all gamers are stupid. After all, how come they keep buying a device, that is destined to fail? Would anyone buy a car, knowing it will fail after just about 2,000km? No! They assume, just because their technology is soooo much more imperssive all those "casuals" are ging to dump their Wiis in order to buy a 360 AND Kinect. Remember the beginnig of Reggie's speech, where he said that technology is only half the deal? It was aimed directly at Mcrosoft and Sony. All they can do is make Wii Ripp-Offs. What reason for a Wii owner is there to buy a 360? And if you are are a PC gamer, there is even less reason to buy a 360. So why should my grandparents buy Kinect instead of a Wii? Because of technology. That's all, Microsoft has to offer. Just technolgy, without the experience.
[Rest will follow up in the next comment, due to character-rstriction]
So bottom line, gamers are hostile, because Microsoft treats us like idiots. Like some retards, who will buy anything. It's one thing for the hardcore, to look at "casuals" as retards, but when you so obviously treat them like retards, they get really angry. As I could be considered a "casual", i am angry because microsoft assumes I will buy their crap, because they have cute elephants. How stupid do they think we are?
------------------------------------------------
Now about your attitude. This is less related to your video, but I don't know any other way of contacting you.
First of all, stop using the term "casual". It's an insult used by companies, who are not allowed to say retard. Casual games for casual gamers means nothing other than retard games for retard gamers. Note how Nintendo never uses the term "casual games". I would go on, but someone else already did this for me, so I'll just send you the link: http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html It's a very interesting text, and I can agree 100%. It's quite an amount of text, but it's worth the time.
Second, what's your obsession with the idea, that gaming used to be a geek obesession? Pong did not premier on a Dungeons&Dragons convention, but in a bar. Donkey Kong was not tested in an elementary school (childern would not have the necessary money anyway), but in a bar. Gaming used to be cool, for boys, girls, men, women, everyone. It was not until all of gaming went for the "hardcore" direction, that gaming became less popular. It did not start with Sony, it started with Sega. Segas advertising was basically "if you play Nintendo, then you suck". Nintendo fell for it and started batteling Sony. The rest of the industry just went along with it. Nobody cared about those, who were left behind. The arrival of the PlayStation took it only further. You might now want to bring up games like Sonic, how they were not "hardcore!!111!". You are right, but Sonic was created and marketed to be cool and badass. The drift, that happend did not occur over night. it was a continuous evolution, or rather degeneration.The consequenzes are today just more visible. You left gaming during the PlayStation generation, you noticed, something was wrong. But others noticed it before you. The breaking point is different for everyone, but what is universal is, when things started going the wrong way.
The last issue I have is the Little Big Planet video. I don't know who you think you are, but the conclusion was a giant slap in the face. Basically the message was that the gaming market is solid, seldefined rock, and everything, that tries different is destined to fail. That's BS! It's a product of what I was mentioning above. The fault is not the consumer, who buys only Mario and Halo. No, the problem is the developers. For years we have seen the same things over and over again, just because developers don't want to try harder. They know selfproclaimed hardcore gamers are going to buy it. If they make something new, they screw up every time (they either don't try hard enough or hand the job to their worst teams). This includes Little Big Planet. Do you want to know, whay LBP really failed? It is because it has no levels. Not that it has no levels at all, but these levels are basically just demos for the editor. It's the customer, who is expected, to build the levels themself. Or wait for someone random to build the level for them. So let's say, you buy LBP. You play through the mediocre levels and then you have two options. Either waste hours to make a somewhat intresting level. Or dig for hours through piles of crappy rebuilds of Super Mario Bros. or Sonic 2 Levels, until you find a fun level. Nobody wants to waste their time like that. When I pay for a game, I pay for content. Little Big Plane is just one of many attempts to make user-generated-content games successfull. Same can be said about Spore or WiiMusic. Poor sales were not just a problem for LBP. So why did you blame regular customers? You blamed me and my friends. Just like every core gamer blames us for the poor sales of Okami. I played it and had to sit through a flea's stupid tit-jokes. That's not fun. It is not my fault, Okami sold poor. It's the developer's fault, and Capcom did decide well, to close Clover Studios.
3 million is not poor per se, but keep in mind, that LBP was intended to drive up PS3 sales, change the market and become THE new PlayStation icon. Nintendo tried to do the same thing with WiiMusic, which also faild to do its job. The console-making companies have a priority in selling consoles. If the software does not drive hardware sales, then it is a failure. 3rd party developers don't have that problem, so 3 million units would be quite good for them, but for Sony that's nothing.
It was a great failure for what it was expected to do. The only reason it got that much attention is, because it was a sidescroller. We now have a true Mario game with co-op, as well as an upcoming Donkey Kong Country. Little Big Planet 2 will fail really hard.
"We now have a true Mario game with co-op, as well as an upcoming Donkey Kong Country. Little Big Planet 2 will fail really hard."
But neither of those offer what LittleBigPlanet is really all about, and are nowhere near being the same kind of game LBP2 is. For the record I would rather play a 2D mario platformer or a new DKC, but thankfully this is not an either-or kind of thing.
A lot of people liked LBP, and it's been kept alive with DLC and user-generated content (which is plentiful, and for those entrenched in the LBP community the good content is easy to find). There's a lot of excitement for the sequel and I think it can easily end up outselling the original.
I was a little sick of all the Kinect hate on nearly every bloody forum I went to. Quite frankly, it was a little sad, especially since the responses were so stereotypical and reeked of self-entitlement. Maybe if gaming wants to stopped being looked at as insular and childish our first should be TO STOP DOING THAT CRAP. Anyway, I can't say Kinect interests me (nor does Move) but all the hate is so juvenile and tiring.
You want to know what I hate about Kinect? Look at Kinect Sports. Rare is making it. Specifically, Rare's Kameo team is making it. And guess what? Microsoft made Rare cancel Kameo 2 in favor of this game, a Wii Sports rip off. Kameo: Elements of Power is one of my favorite games from Rare and one of my favorite games period, not to mention the ending was a cliffhanger just BEGGING for a sequel. I think that's a suitable reason to be pissed off.
I've always been open to gaining support from the casual audience as long as the hardcore don't lose anything in the process. In this case, we're sacrificing Kameo and probably many other great Rare games for the sake of an attempt to make money off of the Wii's success.
That aside, I was looking forward to Kinect to give many great hardcore titles, like an RPG where you actually get to block attacks with your sword in real time or a Dragon Ball Z game or SOMETHING. The most we got out of that was Star Wars, which looks cool but they barely showed any of it. Kinect has great potential for many great games, but they just threw all that potential away to make easy money on the casual audience.
I don't hate Kinect as much as most others, but have more hatred towards Microsoft for the missed opportunity and more so for destroying the creative geniuses behind one of the best action-adventure games out there.
'I know Rare are good at copying Nintendo, but I'd prefer them to be doing a Banjo version of Galaxy or something' This. A thousand times this.
Why they made Banjo-Threeie into Banjo-Kazooie:Nuts and Bolts I will never understand. If they wanted to make Nuts and Bolts, they should have made it a continuation/homage to Diddy Kong Racing (where Banjo started).
Quick question Bob, why should these mythical hardcore straw men you continually argue against follow your advice about Kinect when you can't even follow it yourself?
Listen to your conclusion dude. You are doing exactly what you admonish other for doing. AGAIN.
You’ve never lacked the ability to go on long wordy treatises about how other people should act, yet you never seem to be willing to follow your own example. Before I even started this vid(hell, before I even knew there was a new one) I knew we'd get to the tiring bitching about Halo, or whatever it is you think Halo is. And I knew you’d be using extremely broad strokes to paint people who like it, shooters and essentially anything Nintendo doesn’t make as stupid.
Why should other people be accommodating of something they dislike when you are unwilling to do the same? Do you see the rampant hypocrisy and just ignore it or can you really not see how you are doing (on a fairly regular basis.)
I'd also like to ask what version of the Wii you own because Nintendo absolutely abandoned the core gamer. What major Nintendo releases came out after Brawl? There has been a serious drought of games for 2 bloody years. Outside of Brawl, whose major selling point was barely functional out of the gate and quickly abandoned after that, and NSMBwii, which is just about the most crass cash grab of a release since Sony decided to start selling HD upgrades of ps2 games. You were right on the money about Nintendo selling side strollers again, but why is this a good thing? That’s potentially a bigger threat than the casuals ever were. Because instead of crafting the new, genre defining, innovative gameplay that made us all fans of Nintendo in the first place, they are now selling games that would have been dated 10 years ago. Games that on any other platform, would be part of their downloadable marketplace, and only cost 15 dollars….and probably be of higher quality. Frankly, allowing Nintendo to sidestep the whole “we haven’t been the innovate force in gaming since the Dreamcast came along” by selling retro games at 3 times the price that anyone else would charge for them, while claiming that this is their ‘hardcore’ while also destroying the entire bloody reason we were interested in the Wii in the first place seems to be about the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Oh and for the record. I'll probably get Kinect. Maybe for Fable 3. Maybe for some other games. I actually wrote a giant blog entry saying essentially what you did a couple weeks ago. There's nothing that annoys me more about gamers than this idea that if they personally don't like something, then it must be bad and no one should like it. It's juvenile and douchy when they do it, and its more so when you do it, because you at least can see it in others.
Sure, Bob is kind of a hypocritic, but you are just nitpicking. Look at the big picture. Core gaming is in fact dying. it does not matter, what Nintendo does, you kind of new-valu games are destined to become extinct. What you mistake for casual is actually old-school. WiiSports ist in fact a game, that is pure arcade-like action. No intro, no turotial, yu just pick up the controller and start playing. The game may appear simple, but there is much depth in it. The angle, the thrust, the timing, everything can be tweaked just using ypur motion. Core Gamers tend to dismiss WiiSports as a game, where you just have to waggle at the right time. But the same thing could be said about shooters. After all, you just go around shooting things. And just like a shooter gamer woul protest, listing all the elaborate mechanics and tactics of the game, a WiiSports gamer could do the same thing.
You criticize Super Mario Wii for just being a 2D game, and how it should be downloadable. That's just ignorant selfproclaind elitist speaking. i love 2D games. So why should my games be cheap downloads, while your games get a disc released? Why are you better than me? After all, 2D Mario sell better, so shouldn't these customers be given a better treatment? Your only argument is technology, but I don't care about technoloy. All I want is my games to be fun. We had to wait for almost two decades for a real Super Mario, so why are YOU whining about it? You feel abandoned? You get a new shooter every second week!
Also, what gives you the idea, that anyone else could make a better game? If they can, then why didn't they do so? 2D Mario is still the golden standard of plattforming.
How come you decide what it is, that made people Nintendo fans? For most people it was 2D Mario. the next best things were Sonic and Donkey Kong Country. So it is no wonder, that Nintendo is making another DKC after Super Mario Wii's success.
You of all people should kneel down before Nintendo and thank them. Because they are expanding gaming. If gaming is expanding it means that there will still be room for games like Halo to be made. Otherwise gaming would have died with the end of this generation.
It’s not nitpicking to suggest that a person actually follow the advice he expects of others. How is core gaming dying? It makes more and more money every year and games are finally coming into their own as a medium and as an art form by really getting mileage out of the things other media like film simply cannot do. I fail to see how unprecedented success is a bad thing. You know, I don’t recall ever having ‘proclaind’ myself an elitist. I love 2d games too, when they are of sufficient quality to merit it. As to why ‘your’ games should be cheap downloads? Because they CAN be. Shadow Complex launched for 15 dollars last year and was excellent. Pretty much took a dead genre and brought it into the modern era. People would have bought it for 20 bucks and many ended up getting it for 10. It was a HUGE success. Whereas Other M will cost 50 dollars for a less advanced version of what I will charitably call the same game. Other M and Shadow Complex can both work as DL titles. Something like Mass Effect, which has something like 12 gigs and a budget a few times larger, cannot. I don’t recall ever saying I was better than you. Though your penchant for misquoting people, using strawmen and ignoring anything that contradicts what you want to be true (even when you yourself admit it.) certainly don’t help your case. If it were that strong, you wouldn’t need to be dishonest. “After all, 2D Mario sell better, so shouldn't these customers be given a better treatment?” So, you are under the impression that paying more for less is being treated better? NSMB wii would fit on a CD. Twice. It doesn’t need to be a full retail release. And yet it does, and costs 50 bucks. The reason has nothing to do with quality…it has to do with profit. And doesn’t have online co op. Had it been released on live or PSN, it assuredly would have. It wouldn’t have sold as well without it. The fact that people are willing to pay more for less does not make it right. “Your only argument is technology, but I don't care about technoloy. All I want is my games to be fun. We had to wait for almost two decades for a real Super Mario, so why are YOU whining about it?“ Do me a favour…point out exactly where I argued about technology. I’ll wait. Give up? The thing about technology is that it gives you options. My 360 displays awesome graphics and the newest and craziest games…it also lets me play robotron. See the thing with technology, which you don’t seem to get, is that it gives you options, and if you don’t want to use them, you can opt out. This technology you seem to dislike so gives me access to everything I want, and everything you want. Your view would lock me out of what I want. Hostility towards something just because someone you resent can enjoy it as much as you do…sound kind of familiar?
And don’t give me any of this BS about “all I want is my games to be fun” like I don’t. But I want variety. I want shooters, and RPGs. And racers, and puzzle games, and fighting games, and music games I will demo once and never ever play. And that’s why your attempt (and Bob’s) to paint Hardcore gamers (read: any gamers other than those exactly like yourselves) as drooling shooter fanatics is so pathetic. “You feel abandoned? You get a new shooter every second week!” Of the games I own, maybe 5% are shooters. That said, I’m not abandoned by shooter makers or rpgs makers. They’ve giventme the games I want. Nintendo not so much. Because barring a few releases in 07, they’ve pretty much abandoned the core gamers. If I want another 2d Metroid, I’ll get Super Metroid on virtual console….which I did -for 10 dollars. I want innovation. I want to see something I can’t get everywhere else for a hell of a lot cheaper. Skyward sword does this. The rest of their titles do not.
You know what made Mario games the definitive platformers? Because when everyone was playing catch up, Nintendo was busy innovating. Sonic was Mario but faster. So nintendo gave us branching paths and secret worlds that you be replayed at any time, effectively creating the first steps towards the sandbox genre. Crash was in 3D, Mario 64 reinvented the way platformers worked, by introducing the idea of worlds that weren’t just linear tracks, with goals that could be accomplished in any order. Such innovation has not been present in large amount at nintendo in a LONG time. They used to be trail blazers. Now, motion controls aside, they aren’t even decent followers.
“You of all people should kneel down before Nintendo and thank them. Because they are expanding gaming. If gaming is expanding it means that there will still be room for games like Halo to be made. Otherwise gaming would have died with the end of this generation.”
You actually believe that, don’t you? That would be adorable if it wasn’t sad. Nintendo didn’t save anyone but their bottom line. Where’s your evidence that gaming would have died? Where’s any support for that claim? Or are you just making things up. Nintendo didn’t make mass effect, or uncharted, or the orange box, or bioshock, of call of duty, or Halo or madden or guitar hero or rock band or any other of the myriad titles this generation will be remembered by for the core. Nintendo’s effect has been limited to their platform, and their influence on others has been minimal, aside from providing many hours of hilarity in 06-07 with sony trying to act like sixaxis was some grand innovation. Outside of the Move and kinect, (whose impact may indeed be minimal) there hasn’t been much of an impact at all.
LOL Dave flailing around, trying to deny Nintendo's impact.
And for the record, yeah Nintendo did do a whole lot to boost up the industry this generation, because without them and their "new gamers," the Xbox 360 and PS3 wouldn't have even beat the PS2 from last generation, even if you combined their sales.
You COULD argue that those Wii owners would have bought 360s and PS3s anyway, but that would make them gamers by default, and thus would mean gamers by and large own Wiis, which is sort of a bad position to argue from.
Either Nintendo saved aming from freefall, or the majority of Gamers own Wiis. I'm happy with either.
You can continue to live in your dream world where Microsoft and Sony are upholding all that is gaming and will continue to do so even if they are bleeding billions, and Nintendoonly appeals to a small niche segment called the majority of the market. But reality likes to pop his head in from time to time, and he's kind of a dick about facts.
And the reality is Nintendo has had a gigantic effect on the game industry lately and seems to continue to do so with 3DS and such, totally destroying any other 3D efforts at the outset by simply not requiring glasses or ridiculously expensive TVs to replace the ridiculously expensive TVs people bought 4 years ago, and buy a pair of shickingly expensive glasses too.
I don't hate Kinect, I just can't be convinced that it isn't a complete waste of money and that it will be a total flop. By the way, why isn't this up on ScrewAttack yet?
I'm gonna be frank here... well on two things. One, is that I missed the Microsoft conference, but I have followed NATAL for over a year now. With that being said: I don't care for the KINECT. I do give it credit for its innovation. I think it's really cool, but I don't see a practical use for it, for me. For my mom, maybe, but for me, no. As for the catering to the casual audiences themselves, I don't care for that either. The capital that could be reaped from them is huge. Which is kinda messed up. Additionally, I think Microsoft and Sony got the message that they can't get away with being one sided systems that are for the exclusive hardcore anymore. They tried to come off as friendly. That, I like. They are gonna get hate by a large group of people, as well, but that doesn't mean that they're gonna get large amounts of hate per capita. I probably won't own KINECT, namely because, as a gamer, it's not what I want. That's my problem, however, not grandpa Bill's.
And I'll still buy games like Battlefield and Metal of Honor and Twisted Metal and Grand Turismo. Quite frankly, I get headaches when playing something with such high amounts of contrast. It also steals from immersion. Fallout 3 had this feel to it that made me nauseous and it wasn't colorful, so I don't know, really.
I will say that I do like the move. It relies on LED tracking and, I think, gyroscopes. The latter is much more accurate and responsive than radar tracking and works much better on 3 dimensions. The possibilities for that peripheral are endless, and that, coupled with Twisted Metal and GT5 are what'll get me to buy a PS3 this fall. See, I'm biased, but I'll admit it. I grew up with the aforementioned games, and have severely fond memories over the original Medal of Honor. It's fanboyism, but I'm stoked about MoH: Modern Battlefield no matter how much of a terd it turns out to be, which I hope isn't the case. I also am looking forward to TERA, making MMORPGs fun again. There was also this one shooter that was all about fun, not the typical saving the world business. I guess my point is: a game's a game. Diversity is needed, but at the end of the day, if it's solid and well built, nomatter what it is, it's likely a good game. You know, I actually like the concept of everyone getting into gaming... I guess that's why I tried to get my step dad to play Battlefield. Some people pay money, good money, to buy a slot machine program with 50 different slot machines. That's absurd. THAT's wrong, not some version of Wii Sports with better graphics and controls that force people to get off th... get up and work out with their whole bodies. In fact, I take back what I said. I might buy KINECT after all so everyone in my family can play it. So, yeah, KINECT is good.
Oh, by the way, great video. It felt short, but I don't blame you. The point didn't need much strafing around to get to.
This was a pretty decent episode, man. Though, I gotta say that I'm a bit confused about why you were ripping the hardcore fanbase and tell them to quit hating on the Kinect or the casual audience when you had the exact same level of hatred while talking about first-person shooters. I want to know what it is about FPS games that make you froth at the mouth like that, aside from the lack of color most of them have and the general douchebaggery they tend to attract. Maybe that can be a new Game Overthinker episode? :P
Right, because I'm SURE that those soccer moms and seniors really want halo and god of war.Nintendo hasn't brought anything to the core audience, it is just being more evenly split. Last gen it was EVERYONE had a ps2, with a minority owning an xbox or gamecube instead. A larger group owned more than one and a smaller group owned all 3. Now you have effectively split the ps2's install base among the 360 owners and ps3 owners fighting for the hardcore, with a decent number owning both. A combination of nintendo loyalists/hardcore gamers/kids and people who just buy whatever the most popular console make up the rest of what used to hbe the ps2 base. The wii also gets the new gamers....but they either don't care (or as some studies show, don't even know) about the other platforms.
The idea that the wii is helping sales of the xbox or ps3 is just bloody stupid.
Speaking as a "causal gamer", which apparently makes me a retard (real classy, yeah), I don't have a problem with both styles of games existing. Hell, I think video games are a great way to tell stories (which is why I wasted all of last week on my storytelling review blog going over E3 with a medium-tooth comb even though I'm more a comics/TV reviewer), and I have a few games that would be considered "hardcore".
On the other hand, I don't have time to finish most of them. I still haven't completed the Hulk game. I'm taking about the Ang Lee movie based game. I still haven't completed Tron 2.0 and Ultimate Spider-Man and really like those games.
The big problem is time. I don't always have time to sit down and devote hours on end to these games, but an occasional game to relax with I can do. Why shouldn't we get our cool games, too? The only argument I can support is the guy who said that Kameo was lost because of Kinect games. He has a legit beef, and it's stupid on Microsoft. Delay, maybe, but cancel?
Metroid: Other M doesn't look like a DLC game (by the way, I did download Mass Effect because Steam had it on sale for $10). It could be a full game, just with a mix of 2 and 3D elements. Donkey Kong Country Returns could be a full game. There have been a group who have wanted the sidescrollers back, even those who like the 1st and 3rd person games. Why leave that market high and dry so you can get "your games".
That's my biggest issue with the so-called "hardcore gamers" (or as I refer to them, the gaming chapter of the "everything for meeeeee" crowd, the same people who hate on "kiddie" and "girly" games). Frankly, I'M more of an untapped market than you guys. Especially since I'm a PC gamer. I don't get fighting games. No Virtua Fighter 4 for me, and I can forget Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 ever showing up. I don't demand they stop making your games. I just want my own stuff. More platformers and puzzle games. Do we even get a decent driving game anymore? All I hear about are console games. No PC press event, not even from Microsoft. Apple gamers have it worse than I do.
Enjoy the games you got and let people who aren't you enjoy their games, too. Find the games we both enjoy, and game on!
Oh Dave, you are so gullible. i advise you to read less on gaming forums and start looking at facts rather than swallawong what the industry serves you.
Why the fight against 2nd hand market? Why DLC, extra special limited collectr#s hadrcore editions, why DRM? Why are there studios closing left and right? Why is EA creating that online passport thing? it is because gaming is dying. it hs been dying for years and Nintendo was the first company to feel it.
There are no more new gamers coming, old gamers are leaving, games get more and more bloated with eeeepic cutscenes, become more stale (if a fighting game is not a Street Fighter II clone, it is not considered a real fighting game at all). There is more revenue, but less profit or even losses (Is Sony still losing money with every console they sell?). Where did all the PS2 gamers go? They did not transition to the PS360, they did not transition to the Wii, since the Wii has its own new customers. And you are telling me, gaming is healthy?
gaming is anything but becoming mainstream. Gaming as an artform? Tht#s the most crazy thing I've ever heared. Games are more and more trying to become like movies, but then they end up being bad games. So it i no wonder, regular people will rather coose an actual movie, than a deviated videogame.
As for the whole Super Mario Wii thing... Let me teach you somethin.
A product's value is not determined by its creator, its technology or whatever. It's dertermined by its customer. I do not buy downloadable games, as long, as they are above 3$. Children can't buy downloadable games. Wii gamers are way harder to satisfy than hardcore gamers (I know, this sounds shocking to you). A Wii gamer would never buy Mass Effect (2), because of DRm and EA's insame DLC policy. But a hardcore gamer would start an online petition, ramble about it on an internet forum and then end up buying the game threee days ater it comes out. If you want to sell to a Wii gamer, then you have to gve in to their demands. And I demand my games to be on a Disc (or cartridge), and to have a nice illustraded colourful manual. Nintendo is smart enough to give in to my demands. The reward will be great sales numbers.
It does not matter, what option technology gives us, it is the customer who decides what will be. Apple decided not to have Flash on their mobile devices. Although the tech nerds keep complaining about it, the customers voted with their wallets, that they don't need flash.
The musivc industry wanted to sell a CD with one or two songs you liked and charge for the package. Customers didn't like it, they demanded digital distibution. The music industry thought, they could outsmart us with DRM, but they had a rude awakening. There is a reason, why they dropped DRM. On the other hand ask Sony, how much gamers loooove digitl distribution for videogames
Do me a favour…point out exactly where I argued about technology. I’ll wait. Here you go... As to why ‘your’ games should be cheap downloads? Because they CAN be. What's that? You wrote that after my post? Indeed. But consider that it shows you have been thinking in terms of technology even before you were aware of it. You are so easy to read, and yet you can't seem to figure out your own motovation.
well spoken bob, but i think you are jumping the shark with your game overthinker video's i thought you were primarily going to analyze games, and in some cases gaming culture, this is just a long winded rant, that could have easily been saved for a forum post.
on topic: the whole motion control rage went right past me, gamers are prone to throw internet tantrums over practically anything, but i dont think a single one of them would ever truly believe that xbox gaming would collapse because of motion control. but you might be right, that it is simply annoyance with everything that is mainstream and stupid
hey everyone, I've been watching this kind of thing for a while, so I have quite a big insight on the gaming industry. I'm not surprised, I'm not angry ether I know that micro soft & sony has to take this move.
I personally think that motion control could be used for hardcore users too, but the tech & the developers understanding is going to take some time to develop. We may have to wait for the a wile maybe as long as next gen though.
heres a question, dose anyone like this generation period, it's just had so many problems, do to hardware, there's always some new problem.
On another note the nintendo 3ds maybe another big boom in the industry, maybe as big as the wii. Think of it, the people who've seen it say that it's the best 3d out there, now it's still in development, no freken glasses, and it was playing modified n64 games like star fox. Now the gaming gaming industry has been making big moves to push 3d for a year now, especially sony because they make 3d tv's. Now here comes nintendo with a little handheld that has been said to run off the souls of children by the press, and will cost you 200 dollars while sony's charging 4000 for a tv. No one's going to wont to buy anything until they can get rid of those glasses.
here's something else interesting about the 3Ds it's been in development for 15 years, ever since the bomb of the virtual boy, is this nintendo making up for it?
Nintendo rocked my socks this year. Admittedly the titles we want them have been a slow trickle since the Wii's launch (however, every one of them has been awesome) now we're getting a deluge of them. I've never been so excited to be a Nintendo fan and I started on the NES.
The 3DS is particularly interesting to me as damn near everyone says that I'm going to drop to my knees and give thanks to the gaming gods when I first see it. I have no idea about that as I fear the tech might strain my eyes, but when I look at the lineup the little miracle machine is going to boast it good be an all-star Nintendo machine to rival even the SNES.
It all seems so strangely convenient. Nintendo gets flogged for years for being the kitchy "casual sell-outs", but the moment MS and Sony embrace the new wave of "casual" gamers Nintendo steps up to deliver a mind boggling avalanche of games I want. Uncanny.
I don't like Kinect because of the fact that motion controls can make game hard to play for long periods of time and this device wants me to use my entire body as a controller, that and let's face it; name 1 blue collar jobs worker who has the energy to play a motion controlled game that requires more then a waggle? NONE! What about white collar workers? Not many. Other then that I like the Kinect. I think Kinect will have some decent titles in the future but at the moment it's still trying to find it's place. To be honest 3D is what irks me at the moment with gaming... other then the 3DS. I just can't help but feel that 3D gaming is going to cause serious problems in the future and as a person who already wears glasses, I'd hate to see more people with them because of the 3D material coming out. Once 3D evovles into that of the 3DS or hologram projections 3D could be hazardess to peoples eyesight.
I wonder what MovieBob's opinion of the 3D games is?
3d has been a round for a while we already know the health concerns, it's only a problem is you already have major eye problems. with that said there is a switch on the 3ds too turn the 3d off or adjust the depth. the game do not require you to play then in 3d.
as for sony, they have announced a PSP2 but it's unable to use 3d
HiPhish You know, I’d make a crack about you drinking the Kool Aid but I’m fairly sure whatever brings this much crazy has to be something you mainline.The gaming industry is neither giving me anything, nor am I ‘swallawonging’ anything.
“Why the fight against 2nd hand market? Why DLC, extra special limited collectr#s hadrcore editions, why DRM? Why are there studios closing left and right? Why is EA creating that online passport thing?it is because gaming is dying. it hs been dying for years and Nintendo was the first company to feel it.”
Are you seriously so blinded by your fanboyism that it even affects your math skills? I assumed logic was the only casualty. Why the fight against second hand? Because they want more money. Why the special editions? Because it gets them more money. Why DLC? MONEY. The MW2 map pack sold 2.5 million copies on a single platform. In about a week. At 15 dollars. Do the math. DLC is there because it is ridiculously, insanely lucrative. As for DRM and passports, such things have been a part of PC gaming for decades. The first games came with physical objects called feelies, that the game required you to own in order to play. Copy protection is nothing new. You might as well say Wal-Mart is going broke because they have security cameras. The gaming industry wasn’t dying, Nintendo’s market share was. The gaming industry was in fact EXPANDING. More consoles were being sold in each succeeding generation, but fewer of them were Nintendo’. They shook things up because THEY needed it to.
“There are no more new gamers coming,” Didn’t you just get done telling me about how the Wii expanded gaming?
“become more stale (if a fighting game is not a Street Fighter II clone, it is not considered a real fighting game at all`
You must have missed pretty much every fighting game in the last decade. I also marvel at the irony of a guy defending SIDESCROLLERS having the balls to call other games stale.
“ There is more revenue, but less profit or even losses (Is Sony still losing money with every console they sell?). Where did all the PS2 gamers go? They did not transition to the PS360, they did not transition to the Wii, since the Wii has its own new customers. And you are telling me, gaming is healthy?”
And again you showcase your flagrant disregard for reality. Sony`s stumbles with the ps3 are not indicative of a problem with the industry but of their company. If anything, it shows health that when a company gets bloated and arrogant, they can be swiftly made to understand their mistake. Sony recently announced that they are finally selling the ps3 at profit, and it was a rare anomaly that it took this far. 360 has been profitable since late 07 I believe, and they’ve been making money hand over fist since. The ps2 gamers, as I already discussed, were split amongst the big 3, 360 took hardcore, ps3 took Sony loyalists, Wii took the younger crowd/casuals. There are still many who have not upgraded.
“gaming is anything but becoming mainstream”
That is beyond stupid. Halo’s launch was the largest day one cash take for any entertainment product ever. Modern warfare 2 did even better. Gears and god of war and red dead redemption and man many franchises have all sold extremely well and gotten mainstream recognition.
“. Gaming as an artform Tht#s the most crazy thing I've ever heared. Games are more and more trying to become like movies, but then they end up being bad games.”
Thank you. You just made my entire argument for me. You just showed exactly stupid and juvenile your point of view is. Now as I figure you only own a Wii, I can’t be surprised that you haven’t played any games with artistic merit but trust me they exist. And they are doing things that films NEVER can. Fortunately not everyone thinks like you and we have something better. We have innovation and new ideas coming out yearly and you’re still puttering around in the dark ages. And worst of all, we have access to everything you do. We just want the option of more. But you’d rather deny us that to feed your own insecurities. That’s just sad. The entirety of your argument can be summed up as you are terrified of anything new, and can’t be bothered to do basic research. Given that the Wii gamers you seem to identify with can be satisfied with a glorified snes game every 2 years, I’m gonna say they are pretty damned easy to satisfy. Can’t even get started on the stupidity of the mass effect statement. Aside from the fact that you can get ME2, DRM free on 360. The DLC solution is that people who buy the game new get a bunch of free extra content. How dare they?
“If you want to sell to a Wii gamer, then you have to gve in to their demands. And I demand my games to be on a Disc (or cartridge), and to have a nice illustraded colourful manual. Nintendo is smart enough to give in to my demands. The reward will be great sales numbers.”
IN other words, all you care about is entirely superficial and has nothing to do with the quality of the game. This seems to be a running theme with you. You hate anything that isn’t in the right box or the right shape that you want, regardless of how it plays. In what way are you even a gamer if all you care about is the superficial. And why should everyone else be restricted to just what YOU want, when we wouldn’t put the same restrictions on you?
“The musivc industry wanted to sell a CD with one or two songs you liked and charge for the package. Customers didn't like it, they demanded digital distibution. The music industry thought, they could outsmart us with DRM, but they had a rude awakening. There is a reason, why they dropped DRM.” That would be an example of technology providing new options. And of a company not giving a proper value. And of businesses clinging to stale old models in lieu of embracing what was better for everybody. You just made 3 of my points for me. Again. As for digital distribution, I don’t have to ask Sony. I can ask valve, or Microsoft, or popcap or apple. You know, the companies who have been making insane bushels of cash off it for years. Companies which incidentally helped START the resurgence of retro gaming on modern platforms.
“What's that? You wrote that after my post? Indeed. But consider that it shows you have been thinking in terms of technology even before you were aware of it. You are so easy to read, and yet you can't seem to figure out your own motovation.” Your exact words were that my only argument was technology. Which was false because I hadn’t even mentioned tech yet. Another example of you trying to argue against a strawman. When I did bring up technology it was to explain why it is important. Mainly that it gives people options. I have access to everything you have, and everything I want in addition. But your insecurity is so great you’d rather deny everyone else what they want and force them to subside on the crumbs you’d allow them. For a person as admittedly superficial as yourself, its pretty pathetic to try and paint me as only caring about tech. YOU are the one obsessed with technology because you hate it so much.
I own a Wii and a 360 (well... actually the 360 was a graduation present) and I feel my gaming needs are best served by having BOTH (plus a PC that is 3.5 years old). I get the best of both worlds. I get the great Nintendo stuff like Super Mario Galaxy and the 'hardcore' titles I want from 360 like Halo, Gears and BioWare's stuff.
The thought that both CANNOT coexist is silly. In terms of gaming not being healthy, I would remind people that the economy has not been great in recent years but video gaming has largely avoided that trend. Maybe the numbers are not where they should be or would have been, but I think they are impressive given the context of the economic situation of the past couple of years. The true test will be where we are 5 years from now.
I think the problem that people have with Nintendo is that they milk their cash cow games too much, and don't take enough chances on new franchises. Certainly their approach to technology has been the COMPLETE OPPOSITE; Nintendo came up with the Rumble Pak, now we wouldn't dream of playing with out rumble. They took a chance on wireless controllers, the DS, the Wii, and now the 3DS. I think what gamers would like is to see a new franchise from Nintendo. Yes, we still want Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Smash Bros., etc.... but why can't they come up with something new? In 2001, Nintendo released a new franchise: Pikmin. In 2002, they came up with Animal Crossing. Since then, I can't find a franchise that isn't a derivative of or in the same franchise/brand as a previous title.
Consider that in the same time (since 2001), BioWare came up with Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age! I understand that Nintendo has hardware development as a concern which BioWare does not have... and that BioWare is a 3rd Party and Nintendo is not.... but BioWare could have just milked KOTOR if they wanted to... but they didn't.
I'm not saying that Nintendo needs to come out with a new franchise every year, but we would like to see something that ISN'T Mario or Zelda, something that we have NEVER seen before. I don't think that is too much to ask. The customer will tell Nintendo what they think with their spending as we move to the next console generation.
I'm starting to get a little miffed at how Overthinker is turning into a "LOL HERE'S SOME CONTROVERSIAL BASHING OF MY PRIMARY VIEWERBASE" show. Also: What's with the false Brooklyn-ish accent in this video?
People don't hate Kinect because it'll bring "normals" into gaming. That's not even remotely close to the reason why people hate it. People hate Kinect because it is precisely the kind of me-too copy-cat-ism that has, for the most part, ruined Holywood as a valid source of entertainment. People don't hate Kinect Sports because it's a casual motion control gimmick game, although it is that.
People hate Kinect Sports because it is literally Wii Sports with only half of the title changed.
People hate this not because grandma will start playing XBox. They hate it because it shows the depths the video game industry is now willing to sink to to make a quick buck. Kinect is a symbol of the sort of blind cash-in mentality that, up until very recently, the video game industry largely held itself above. It is a naked, glaring example that Microsoft is perfectly willing to literally take games from four years ago, switch the logo on the cover, and call it a "fresh and new" product because they hope to sell garbage to suckers.
That is the harsh, soul-crushing reality causing people to reflexively vomit. Not that non-gamers now play video games.
As for Nintendo? Yes, yes they did completely abandon the core audience for years. Sure, now they're throwing us a bone with remakes of franchises other than the Holy Trinity, but before that? Nothing but motion control gimmick games. We got Metroid, Zelda, and Mario fairly close to launch, and then absolutely nothing after that barring one or two occasional titles. This is why people talk about dusting off their Wii for the new Kirby and DK games coming up -- because we all stopped playing our Wiis when it became clear Nintendo had no intention of doing anything other than letting the shovelware pile up.
Now they're trying to make up for it. But the fear that the Wii's focus on casual gamers and motion control gimmicks would leave core gamers sucking dirt was perfectly valid because it happened.
Moviebob is from Boston so that might just be his accent flaring up because of his temper. And so far Nintendo hasn't abandoned the so-called "core" audience, if anything it's the 3rd parties. Nintendo is making as many games as they ever did.
I am an odd sort of 360 gamer. The PS3 doesn't strike me as interesting in the least, and the Wii's controls are innacurate and gimmicky, and the games themselves strike me as uninteresting and overly kid-focused.
That said, I don't get to buy many games. I've never had much disposable income. When I get games, it's because I've heard great reviews from all around and because they strike me as visually, or conceptually, interesting.
Upon inspection of my game roster (Mass Effect, Dead Rising, Fable 2, Banjo-Kazooie N&B, Overlord, etc), I notice a pattern that I'm clearly NOT in the "Hardcore crowd" of brown and grey, and yet I still prefer Microsoft to Nintendo. These games are clearly more fantasy-oriented and colorful, but I still prefer the Xbox to the Wii.
There no points to really get here other than I'm an oddball who marches to his own tune, but I look at games on the basis of playability, immersion, and conceptual originality, and Microsoft tends to deliver more sleeper hits like those.
On subject, I do think the "Xbox Wii60" and the EyeToy 2.0 are terrible ideas designed to grasp at straws as they watch Nintendo rake in money and it would take some serious software designed to utilize the hardware without gimmicks... but I don't see them pulling that off. I see these being millions of dollars that could've gone toward something actually new and interesting in the PS3's case, or making the hardware more reliable for the 360.
The one thing I have to say about Nintendo is that they do their thing and let their developers' creativity flourish instead of telling them to make something that will sell.
I don't hate the devices themselves, just that they're going to be such a waste of time and money that could be put toward useful goals.
I think I'm done with your videos. I guess I am tired of watching the same think over and over again. Dedicating one video to dwelling into the psyche of gamers with the finsesse of a wikipedia intelectual is one thing, but you are overdoing it. Bob, please understand something, you are being as much of a prejudicial ignorant towards certain gamers as you portrait said gamers to be. You just use prettier words (well, sometimes) and you just think you are being modern.
And by the way: stating over and over again that you made The Game Overthinker partly to attract attention to yourself is... well, interesting. I think this self awareness does not work in your favor, it makes you sound like the insecure one.
Bob, the last few commenters, especially John and Ciao have very strong points. Obviously I don't like being talked down on for my preference in games, called prejudice and close minded because I DO prefer GoW to Mario. It's not as simple as that, however. Otherwise I wouldn't love Aion so much (truthfully, the grind means I don't anymore but eh, new patch eventually, right?).
Obviously they don't either. Really, after reading their comments, my view has changed a bit, because I completely forgot about Nintendo's shovelware. I honestly think they speak for most of the mature gaming audience (mature being actually... mature), with their comments. The over-30 crowd might not agree, but please understand that the hardcore you refer to in your videos is such a small amount of people (who may, just may be very vocal), that the rest of us, if anything, make them look like fleas.
With that being said, I still do generally dislike the KINECT, but it's by far not something I hate.
Also, real fast. I know you're aware that you're biased towards Mario and the old age of gaming and you let the world know numerous times. How am I any worse, or better as a gamer, when my childhood memories consist of hours playing Twisted Metal, Hot Wheels Turbo Racing, Halo, Grand Turismo and Medal of Honor? Those games are my Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Mega Man, and Kid Icarus. And if I grew up playing Mario instead of Army Men Air Attack co-op with my dad, I'd probably be totally stoked about Nintendo's revivals.
People need to grow the fuck up and get over the fact that hardcore gamers aren't the only people playing games anymore. they have to appeal to a mass audience now if they want a piece of the pie that Nintendo seems to be hogging all to them self.
Like Bob said, its not gonna change anything, its just a new feature so that casual gamers have more of a selection than just one console.
Microsoft is trying to cash in on the casual gamer boom, and who can blame them. Sony is trying to make a casual gaming concept appeal to hardcore gamers, which i think is a terrible idea, but only time will tell. Cant dismiss it until it has a chance to prove me wrong.
Moral of the story.... if you don't like it, don't play it, its that simple.
Its not gonna stop Microsoft or Sony from making all the boomstick games that everyone seems to wet there pants over, just a new concept for a new generation of gamers.
Usually I agree with your comments but I think you missed the markers on this one. My hate for the kinect and move actually come from when I grew up. In the 90s we all know video games were trying to out weird one another. Every fucking thing had some out of control concept and not every one worked. But now everything blends and it sickening. I personally hate the move because I expect more of Sony and this piss poor attempt to cash in is smh worthy. And sadly the ps2 is my current favorite system of the current generation so it really pissed me off. But Microsoft I just refuse to buy their systems and the kinect is pure shit. It's just a green screen and will more than likely over heat and red ring. Yes I won't lie I just fucking hate microsoft gaming consoles. These are essentially the 32x and the 64dd like you said and it's just annoying to see companies do the same and I'm almost certain the new generation consoles from the two will follow suite but the motion control will see be spotty.
Ok, First off, I don't like kinect, not because of it threatening my medium by weighing it down, I take issue because of the pervasive nature of it. Kinect might not oust my games, but it will clog the shelves when I look, take up the entire freaking front page on everything my game touches(kinect ads and avatars and facebook). Yeah its stupid, but then again, I am not rooting to kill it, I just want the hype to get out of my way to the games I want, and really I don't even care enough to do anything.
Second, You do, as many have said, attack the Hardcore gamers with the same venom as you jab them for attacking others. I know sometimes its annoying, but please, I used to be one. I used to spend 6-10 hours DAILY on my games, I was the top of all my scoreboards and had one of the highest gamerscores I could find, I got a life and I cant say its been a bad plan, but that doesn't mean I don't miss the days of playing till I went to bed and getting up to do it again. I don't hate people with no time, I don't have much myself these days, but I don't see how being a hardcore gamer is such a bad thing either.
Third, I like Gears, I like Halo and I like Call of Duty, Bioshock was my fav game of 360 second only to Borderlands(love 2k), but I am not a jock or macho beast, I am a semi nerd, who just thinks its more fun to blow things up with giant lasers than it is hop on floating platforms. I don't hate people who enjoy those, I just hate when I cant get more than 1-2 good shooters a year when Mario, Donkey Kong and their ilk get massive support and release ever more popular iterations.
Fourth, Motion control. I go with Yahtzee, gamers, or at least the better portion of gamers willing to spend 3-5 hundred bucks on a console are not into motion because we got into this hobby to sit on our butts, making us get up is the same thing we yelled at our moms about. Also, I like shooters as I said, I cant get a decent shooter out of the wii or its clones anymore than I could do my RTS on a SNES pad, its not nearly precise or versatile enough to do it, YET. The day my shooter is supplemented by gesture and voice commands that I can count on, I'm in, but while its pinatas, Mario and such, no thanks.
Fifth, and this is in no way a jab or some sort of assault on you. But do you play like I played? Did you compete for the top score to the exclusion of real life? Did you turn down real rewards, and cling only to your games? Because I must tell you, as someone trying to recover from that, its scary, and watching that hobby get annexed by people me and my nerd friends laughed at? Shaking my Freaking reality. I personally neglected to learn something useful, to be good at something that matters, but I took pride in that I had devoted my time to something the "normals" as you said, didn't even get, I could make the jock kid look like a monkey, if just for a minute. I could make the genius into my proverbial b**ch, before reality returned. But with a shift away from immersive, intensive, complicated and sometimes even outsider-hostile games, its becoming such that the jock can kick my @$$ back, and the genius makes me look dumb on MY turf. It sucks to see what you called your one talent made simple, so the people who are already cooler than you can beat you there too. I don't know what is to be done, I'd just say, hardcore gamers of MY generation, aren't all doing it out of rage, sometimes its very near to terror. cut a little break eh? Wake em up nice.
Still love your vids, especially the "better gamer" one, it was around very near the turning point for me.
You are an idiot. Did you even see the new gameplay footage for some of the upcoming shooters? Take Gears of War 3 for an example. If you seen the gameplay footage(which you probably didn't) the level they showed of was BRIGHT and GREEN. Yeah, surprising isn't it? Call of Duty Black Ops will take place mostly in jungles, which are also dominated by the color GREEN. So next time do some research before you say that all shooter game games are rust colored and that they are all the same, cause they are not. I can tell that you don't play a lot of shooter games. You just assume that they are all "the same". Well guess what, they are not the the same. Halo is different from Call of Duty, Call of Duty is different from Bioshock, and Bioshock is different than Killzone. Why don't you TRY some of these shooters that I'm about to list, I bet you'll like them. Killzone 2 Halo 3 Call of Duty 4 Call of Duty World at War Battlefield Bad Company 2 Bioshock 2 Gears of War 2 F.E.A.R 2
I find it ironic that for a guy who has spoken against stereotypes, you sure do stereotype hardcore gamers all the time. We don't go around trash talking everyone we see. The hardcore gamers who do that are a very SMALL minority. And guess what? YOU'RE NOT ANY BETTER THAN THEY ARE!!!! You're just as prejudice as they are. You act like that hardcore gamers are always the problem. You act like we're the symbol of everything that is wrong with the world of gaming. I'm going to set the record straight with you. Hardcore Gamers don't hate Kinect because it's for casual gamers. We don't hate Kinect because grandmas will start to play the Xbox 360. We hate BECAUSE IT'S A RIP-OFF OF THE WII MOTION CONTROLS!!!!!! We hate it because Kinect represents the depths that the video game industry will now sink to, in order to make a quick buck. People hate Kinect Sports BECAUSE IT'S WII SPORTS, but with half the title changed. People hate it, because it shows that Microsoft is willing to take Wii Sports, change the logo, and call it a new game. You should admit that YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT HARDCORE GAMERS. Honestly, why do you stereotype hardcore gamers? I want to know.
I don't like the way you complain about how games use all the buttons on a controller. First off, I would like to say that games today, are more complex than games back then. Thus modern games require more buttons to function. Honestly, Halo 3 could not function with just three buttons. Neither could Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, and Gears of War 2. Also you criticize how Bionic Commando lets you control the camera. Well, then HOW ELSE WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO AIM YOUR GUN??!! You use the left stick to aim your gun too!
I want to know why you hate shooters? Do you hate them simply because they are there? Do you hate them simply because mainly hardcore gamers play them. Lord knows you HATE hardcore gamers. Seriously, I want to know. And don't you dare say that they are all they same, because they are not, in my opinion.
Awesome stuff video, you really nailed how E3 went down, even though you weren't there.
One more thing, though, I want to see a Game Overthinker video dedicated to the notion that "VIDEO GAMES COME FROM JAPAN!", and make sure to be clear and concise since, as much as I love your videos and agree on what they have to say, I'm still not entirely convinced on that notion.
You should really try the multiplayer for Battlefield Bad Company 2. I'm sure you'll really like it. Trust me, only a very SMALL minority of gamers on Xbox Live are douche bags. Even if you don't like the shooting, you can have alot of fun reviving people as medic, or repairing things as an engineer, or even snipe as a recon soldier.
God damn Bob, I think you should do a video on the whole hardcore thing next. You don't have to change your views, -though a good number of your audience wants you to cut the harshness- but you really should offer the mentality behind it, and if you offer good solid facts behind your reasoning, I'm sure most of us will respect your opinion alot more.
I'll admit that I don't know what amount of the internet is what, and that, maybe, a good number of them just may be the type to go into a gun shop looking for a sniper rifle to "pwn noobs," something you don't even joke about. I have a good feeling that that isn't the case and that most of us are, as gamers, more mature than that. Of course, I'm repeating myself, but I can't emphasize that enough.
Reptile said it in harsher terms than I would have, but he has a point. A direct point. I'm gonna tangent off of that and say something I generally say everywhere else.
I do think that it is a growing trend to, now that gamers have been discouraged to play as big manly men they wouldn't want to converse with in real life, bash the image (which might have been largely true at one point), of the typical hardcore gamer that shoots Prozac and calls everything with a hint of life in it "Gheeey." I know, I used to follow it too, because I was the insecure one. I spitefully refused to fire up anything other than L4D a couple years ago thinking that the moment I fired up S4League in class, I would be called a faggot. Surprise, people didn't see the colorful game (in Machine Shop. Ma-chine shop! On a Halo day. Yes. A Halo day.) as a fagfest. Rather, those that watched were interested because of the gameplay itself which wasn't by the least ordinary for a shooter. I was complimented for the game. The colorful, cartoony, "gheeey" game. They weren't the people I thought they, and the rest of the world, save for the 'pure', were.
I think other people are like that... or maybe bashing the old "cool" games is the new cool for them. I hope it's just the insecurity that I had as an immature little 16 year old, because the latter is just facepalm-worthy.
The wrapup about why people hate on things is both insightful, and probably dead on. Of course the words would mean more if you didn't take any and every opportunity to hate on the Halo fans, Gears fans, and in general anyone who has made MS's gaming division even mildly successful, even in THIS very video.
But all in all I can't discount your overall point. And personally I'd like to own a Kinect. Not for games because it all looks like tech demos and shovelware at this point. But I'd love the opportunity to bark orders at my Xbox.
Great episode, even if I'm pretty sure that motion control is going to end up a gimmick anyway. We'll see how it goes. I'm curious if you'll ever bring up some of the more story-driven, less hardcore games for the other two consoles, stuff that Bioware(Mass Effect), Bethesda(Fallout 3 Oblivion), Obsidian and Square-Enix(Nier) have come out with. I don't just mean just RPGs either. Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 is definitely worth looking at, as are Quantic Dream's two masterpieces, Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Just thought I'd throw some ideas your way. While Nintendo may have the most toy-like games, I sometimes wonder if you're allowing your paradigm of 'games are toys' to block out some of these more adult entries into the industry. I hope you keep doing Game OT, because it's awesome! Keep up the good work!
If you don't like first person shooter games so much, then why not do a video about how they can "improve".
You really want to hear how a Nintendofile would "improve" an FPS? I'm sorry but a Yoshi level isn't going to improve Halo in the slightest. And Gears already had one only it was called a Brumak level. Either way, I think you're barking up the wrong tree friend.
I'm with you though. I'd like to have a little less Halo/Gears/FPS bile in Bob's videos.
Thank you. You want to be REALLY mind screwed? Look up his video about kirby. It's all about how he succumed to peer pressure and dissed on the kirby games because he didn't like how the main character looks.
Apparently he does not see that rather salient parallels.
The Kirby video was perhaps the best episode of Game Overthinker. Ever. It had insight, a good message at the end, yes, did bash the 14 year olds on Xbox Live, but didn't classify everyone as them for simply liking shooters, and most importantly, humility.
I know but it really pisses me off the way he takes every opportunity he can to praise Nintendo and everything they've done, while he bashes first person shooters simply for existing. And while he claims "hardcore" gamers judge things "unfairly", he sure does judge first person shooters harshly. And whats worse, he really doesn't give any legit reasons for hating shooters. "They're all the same", thats all? Maybe I'd respect you're opinion alot more if you at least gave some real LEGIT reasons for hating shooters.
Ok, maybe I'm missing the point here, because I never though of Bob as someone who "hates shooters just because they exist", or even hates them at all. If I am not mistaken, Bob had nothing but praise for BioShock, and his criticism towards Call of Duty 4 had a VERY good, solid reason behind it (single player campain was too short). I don't know where this whole "BOB UR A JERK CUZ U HATEZ TEH SHOOTERZ" came from, but it doesn't correspond to the majority of The Game Overthinker videos.
That being said, I still think Bob has demonstrated (and still does) an uncanny prejudice towards certain types of gamer ("hardcore" or not, I don't care), and that prejudice is of similar nature to the one he portraits Nintendo fans as being a victim of. Of course, I am referering to the whole Bob impersonation of a "hardcore" gamer saying that Kirby is "GAAAAAY" with that ridiculous demented tone. And that, I think, is pathetic and not funny at all.
Also, Bob - as the Game Overthinker - needs to tone down the preaching of how nerds should or shouldn't behave. As far as I am concerned, no one elected him as a teacher or an authority on the matter. If he thinks that nerd behavior in general is somewhat having a negative effect on his life, he should deal with it alone. Personally, I think this is more of a case of Messiash Complex then everything else.
Oh, but I'm sure he said in his A Tale Of Two Games video and I quote "I don't even like first person shooters, and this is probably about as good as they can get right now(referring to Modern Warfare 2). And he constantly states that the Halo series is "overrated". He also falsely accuses them of all being "samie rust colored FPS's. Look, just because they "look" the same on the surface, does not mean there are the same. But he also harshly judges the people who play first person shooters. Just so you know Bob, everyone is NOT a douchebag on Xbox Live. Seriously, I played Modern Warfare 2 regularly, and I have rarely encountered any douchebags on Xbox Live.
My feeling is that Bob is starting to grate a little bit on my nerves on his constant Xbox-Hardcore gamer joke bashing, mainly because I myself as an gamer and an Otaku share many if at least around 90% of Bob's interests if I can make a reasonable geuss only lacking solidarity in the movie geek department (I like just about everything and have low standards, I like it when Bob explains the importance of movies, genres, directors etc but I don't go out of my way to watch old movies).
But I like Halo, I like FPS's, I tend to prefer more realistic ones like Flash Point to Haloesque arcade shooters but I do appreciate them when they have a solid story which Halo has.
Halo interests me because of its Ender's Gamesque story if you've read the books, I do not know if Bob has ever read them or not but if he hasn't it may explain some of which he doesn't understand.
If he has read it (skeptical as apparantly the Halo legends story provided to him was apparantly the first time he's heard of it) it would be nice for some sort of concession on that front that as a story it satisfies those of us who like military thriller stories like the Posleen Wars, Ender's Game, Starship Troopers etc.
of course as shooters go I really prefer realism and is why I love Project Reality and wish some mainstream company would produce something like it without sucking like with Dragon Rising.
As for why people 'HATE' the Kinect, I have no bloody idea, 90% of the internet is stupid, and so are 90% of the comments so you can discount about 90% of it.
Now as for Motion control for the Xbox, I personally dislike Motion control in a Yahtzeesque sort of way, its a gimmicky contrivance shoehorned into games where the Gamecube controller is better suited for it.
But I "Love" the idea of a FPS with motion control with you standing with a gun attachment to the Kinnect Y-Mote or whatever its called using the IRV motion tracking so that you can have realistic combat movements in a FPS.
I would get it for that.
Because FPS's are the kind of game you can't play slouched and we already saw something similar in House.
However in conclusion, I really wish Bob would lay off the Halo crowd bashing, yes the 12 year olds who scream the lower f bomb in your ears are douches, and sometimes the rest of us can get overly excited during a match.
But many of us ARE JUST LIKE YOU! We like D&D, we like Anime, we like geeky stuff, but we also like our grey and brown GRIMDARK FPS's too!
Why can't we have our cake and eat!? Play and enjoy Halo, gears of War or God of War without haviong to be bashed as the people who used to beat us up in High School!?
Nintendo making only minigame collections was never a realistic scenario. For one thing, it ignored the fact that Nintendogs and Brain Training didn't prevent Nintendo from making Advance Wars and New Super Mario Bros. For another, Nintendo's hardcore lineup at the time of launch was as good as it had ever been; within a year of release we had new Zelda, Metroid, and Mario titles, and Smash Bros dropped a few months later. 2007 to early 2008 is the single best year of quality Nintendo's ever produced for the hardcore gamer. If anything, the period after that time proved the hardcore doubters somewhat right, as Nintendo entered the holiday season with nothing more compelling than Animal Crossing, with secondary and tertiary hardcore franchises like Star Fox and Kirby nowhere in sight. Thankfully, this E3 has shown that was a standard Nintendo drought such as we saw on the gamecube and N64.
@ Blayne. Preaching is fine. My issue is that he regularily does the very things he admonishes others for doing. Hell, even his typical hardcore gamers impression "GAAAAYYY" is somehting he himself has done. Go look up his comments on the wolverine trailer regarding gambit's presence.
The MW2 review is especially notable, since when you consider the sins bob routinely accuses FPS games (and their players) of being guilty of, with a special emphasis on Halo, because MW2 is guilty of ALL of them. I get the sense that he decides what he will like before having experienced it using criteria known only to himself but I'm betting "reminding him of his childhood" is a big one. It explains the wqhole prejudice angle as well. And the prejudice is the big problem. I mean, does anyone have any illusion as to whether the next spiderman movie will get a good review? Regardless of quality we know he'll bash it because it doesn't have sam raimy and he has decided he hates it.
as for tha halo expanded universe, he has implies he's read fall of reach without ever saying it. I'm thinking he hasn't given in the halo legends review he went on about hwo subversive it was to have a female spartan when ardent halo fans (and anyone from a culture with gender politics advanced beyond the 1970s or modern day japan) saw it coming miles away, if only for the factthat there are like a dozen of them in the books.
My problem with both Sony and Microsoft is that they think that they have to copy what Nintendo does just compete. Look, all three companies have something that the others don't have (or have at least better than the others). Nintendo has the innovative games, Microsoft has the online support (most of the time, looking at the hack job MW2 was), and Sony has the far superior graphics. I don't know why everyone thinks that they need to copy the Wii, just copy the one thing that Nintendo has done for years; create characters that KIDS can actually like. The "Heroes" of Microsoft and Sony (Master Chief, Kratos, etc.) are all for the muscle headed adults really. If they really want to make money, then need a mascot that kids love. A.k.a., a Mario or Sonic (old school Sonic btw) type of figure.
You wanna know why I hate Kinect so much? 1) You have to stand in order to use it. 2) Only 2 players at once.
And you might say, "Oh, you don't HAVE to buy it.". But you know what? Microsoft basically PISSED on gamers at E3 by pandering to the casual crowd.
Yeah, Nintendo's E3 was great this year. But why was it great? Because it finally was about gamers again. Because after four years of pissing on gamers, Nintendo said, "Y'know what? We've totally neglected the reason why were able to release the Wii - the hardcore gamers." And frankly, it's about time. My Wii has been gathering dust for years..... YEARS. I haven't been this excited over a Nintendo E3 conference in about 5 years.
And it's not like it's the motion controls and the casual gaming that got us mad. Sony successfully demonstrated that you can release a motion controller that satisfies the casual AS WELL as the hardcore. MS didn't even think of doing that.
Instead of releasing game footage for new titles and announcing exclusivity deals, they totally focus on casual gamers while only displaying game footage and games that we've already seen and know about.
It isn't Kinect that's pissing me off. It's Microsoft's obvious (and poor) pursuit to capture some of the sweet cash that the Wii made.
You know, I've been noticing that Killzone 3 seems to be improving on the things you bitch about on first person shooters. For one, the guys at Guerrilla are increasing the level variety and color scheme. The level they showed off at E3 was an arctic landscape, and they final game will include a lethal alien jungle, nuclear wastelands and also some space battles. Also, they hired an external writer to focus on only writing the storyline so as to give a fresh perspective to the story. So it seems they spent MORE than 25 cents worth of writing. So respond to this if thats NOT good enough for you and if your still gonna hate this like you do every other shooter except Bioshock and Modern Warfare 2. But also respond to me if you may like this and are going to try it when it comes out on Feb. 2011.
You know how you said in your A Tale of Two Games video, you said that Modern Warfare 2 was about as good as first person shooters can get, are you actually saying that MW2 is better than Bioshock? You may not be saying that directly, but you're implying it. Say what what you will about Bioshock, but it is just as much fps game as MW2 is. Bioshock is a first person shooter, end of story.
Mr. Chipman, Might I suggest you get your definitions straight on what is a Hardcore Gamer or not so you don't infuuriate everyone and look like a mad hypocrite. They are a smal minority and while I have agreed with you for quite some tiem now, this time I beleive it is time to get your facts straight and stop living in Nintendoland. I'm a Nintendo fanboy but I can name a huge list of things I want a Playstation for. Perhaps you should quit putting Nintendo on the pedestal it deserves and start giving it real critisisms and giving the PS3 and Xbox real prraise.
I beg of you, please, just, take a look at this: http://thatonerantinggeek.blogspot.com/2010/07/geek-rant-topic-03-hardcore-gamers-or.html andmake your next video an evaluation or re-evaluation on what exactly you think ahardcare gamer is, what one really is, and what the false ones are becuase as far as I can tell, the guys you rag aon are a demographic that only THINK they are the hardcore gamer when in all actuality the real hardcore gamers are the inteligent ones who are being marginalized.
So quit controversy mongering and start overthinking again, or you're making yourself no better than Glenn Beck. I mean ha-sheesh, your analysis of why gamers hate the Kinect couldn't be any more incorrect, it's almost saddening that it's the conclusion you've come to. it may have been the solution at one point it's not now.
Also, so shooters aren't your thing and they're insanely popular. So? That doesn't mean they're all the same, they just happen to share a genre a lot of them are similar. I tend to enjoy your work in movies and video games but you really have been grating lately. You are, unsurprisingly, out of touch with who exactly you're commenting on.
The best summary of e3. Microsoft was hit with a swarm of tomatoes. Nintendo cleaned up and gave everyone real entertainment. Then Sony came on and weren't hit with the same fate as Microsoft because the audience ran out of tomatoes...
Actually sir, let's go over the negatives of kinect.
It makes you look dumb.
It costs a fucking lot.
Anyone who ever cared already has a wii and doesn't need to spend what, $400? for an even more awkward piece of shit that might not even work (did they ever fix the issue with black people?)
And along with kinect, microsoft directly copied several of Nintendo's "casual" titles. And did you see that kinectimals presentation from E3? CREEPY AS FUCK. That doesn't make me want it. that makes me want to run away.
This is going to sound stupid but could we stop marginalizing 360 gamers for a minute? Yes I know that most of the frat boys own the 360 but SOME of us are decent people who got the 360 because we were on a limited budget, the 360 shared titles with a lot of 360 games and at the time I couldn't afford the high end pc required to play them. Without the 360 I would have never gotten to play Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fable II, Deadrising (Okay that one wasn't PC but it is still a fun game) Mass Effect 1&2, Bioshock 1&2, and a whole host of other games that either weren't released for the PS3 immediately or were never released for the PC and the only other alternative at the time was to splurge on a fancy new PC. So I guess I am asking if maybe the people like me could get a crow bar of seperation from the frat tards you typically associate with the 360, and remember not all of us who have the 360 own multiple copies of boring Gun Grey FPSs.
As for the kinect issue itself. I don't mind it unless the triple A WRPGs and other games I have an interest in start requiring me to shill out $150 dollars to play the Kinect, like for instance... Fable III was thinking of doing. Luckily even Molyneux realized that this might not be the best idea ever and so that has to be worth something. Also yes, I am looking forward to Fable III it is bright colorful the gameplay is typically fun and while the story of 2 was incredibly retarded the additions in 3 will help me survive if Molyneux puts another grimdark story in bright fantasy land so yeah... I know you probably won't read this but could we decent RPG nerds get that crowbar of seperation from the FPS nuts that use the 360?
Bob sounded surprisingly enthusiastic about GoldenEye. Given how he's not a big FPS fan and he always calls it like he sees it, I'm a little surprised. If I asked him about it, I'd bet that he would say something about GoldenEye coming out when FPS weren't bland and unoriginal.
Motion control doesn't have staying power for two main reasons.
1. It slows down the process between thinking "I want this" and experiencing "this" on-screen. It takes longer to swing your arm than it does to twitch your finger.
2. Your actions have no weight. You might as well have a pretend swordfight with pretend swords or play tennis with pretend balls.
Both 1 and 2 cause motion control to feel uncanny and awkward. While there are games that can take advantage of the technology and the technology itself is well made, it isn't the future.
Not until full body, 5 sense immersive VR interfaces anyways.
One thing I don't like about the arguments that go against Kinect is "it's just ripping off the wiimote."
Let's just look at it like this.
Remember when discs were space-age technology as far as console were concerned as companies deciding to go disc-only were walking a pretty thin line that anyone would say was too damn fucking risky? Then the ps1 happened.
Remember when everyone tried their hand at internet gaming for the home consoles and it all failed except when Microsoft did it for the original Xbox?
Now, Nintendo comes out with a wireless, motion tracked controller. It's called the next logical step. It's just that. We're taking steps at improving the overall technology. I bet by the next generation motion tracked controllers will be a STANDARD in each one just as an online service and wireless controllers are now. No one's copying anyone. They're seeing that Nintendo took a risky step forward and just so happened to be a the right time, much like when the playstation came around or when Xboxlive did. Right time, right risks. The other companies aren't trying to cash-in on Nintendo's luck [though that is obviously a small part of it, it is a competitive market after-all] they're just riding the wave, and going along with the evolution of the home console technology.
One thing I would like to add: if anyone's ripping off anyone, Sony is ripping off Nintendo. At least MS took an old idea [a la eyetoy] and tried it with modern technology to try and improve. From what I've seen from having played, it's the same old story: you need absolutely perfect room space and lighting for it to work at maximum potential. Otherwise, it's like trying to maneuver a virgin who is too shy to give you feedback, but who also doubles up as a fucking minefield and math problem at the same time.
86 comments:
Funny how your joke about 2.5d being the "new hotness" became reality. You're psychic! All kidding aside, it's been sooo long since I've wanted this many Nintendo games. Here's how my gaming budget is going to be allocated over the next 12-18 months:
60%-assorted Nintendo titles
25%-PSN & XBL DLC games (Scott Pilgrim looks awesome!!!)
15%-eye-searing HD stuff from Sony/Microsoft
The very top and bottom percentages are usually reversed, but not this year. It'll be nice to pay $50 for a great game again.
i love your videos but i hate the way you sometimes speaks as if you represent all gamers (I'm sorry but that is just what I'm getting from it sometimes).
What I hate is that Microsoft are using Rare to make all the stuff that gamers don't care about, like the Avatars and Kinect Sports. I know Rare are good at copying Nintendo, but I'd prefer them to be doing a Banjo version of Galaxy or something =P
Honestly? I don't give a [sandwich] about the 2.5D games or the 'retro' remakes. Frankly, I got bored of 'New' Super Mario Wii pretty quickly. And I thought Nintendo's plan for this next year or so was to try and milk handheld "3D" screens.
Anywho, the new Zelda is about the only interesting thing from Nintendo for me, and thats only because I gave Twilight princess another try and managed to enjoy it inspite of the grey-brown graphics.
Anywho, as for Kinetic... I dunno, some things they showed in the live coverage looked interesting, but I remain to be convinced. Also, why is everyone quoting $150 for price? At present, its unconfirmed rumour, as far as I'm aware.
Not to be a total ass, but this sounds like the perfect "response" video to your reviews of Star Trek and Transformers 2, with the two categories flipped. You hated a soulless cash-grab by rich idiots who appeal to hardcores, and hardcores feel the same way, only in reverse. It's the overdramatic "raping your childhood" arguement again, only more stupid because it's only a few years old and not decades.
With all the reference towards gamer improvement, and so on, you should really do an episode on NERD RAGE!!!! Because (to me, at least) getting all worked up to a ridiculous over what is essentially entertainment is one of the biggest things setting "nerd culture" as it is back to the dark, pre-computer ages.
No, I hate the Kinect because it has nothing new or interesting for me, outside of maybe Dance Central and the adventure game, whatever it was called.
And I hate the 360 because I can count the games that I would want to play on that system, but can't elsewhere ON ONE HAND. In my eyes, it's the worse console this generation. It's not bad, but the Wii and the PS3 is so beyond it it's not even funny to me.
Good to see more from you Bob, even though your Nintendo-mania is all-enclosing and not surprising (and by now kind of predictably uninteresting)
I have a theory on "Why the hate on kinect?"
I think you're a little off on your. "Casual gamers will desecrate out holy gaming." is plausible, but I think it's not the case.
People were going to Microsoft's press conference and expecting their "Call of Halo Gears" and stuff. They got it, but along with it they got everything Kinect...
It's like going to see the "A-team" and it cuts halfway to "Crime and Punishment". Or going to "Crime and Punishment" and it cuts halfway to... the "A-team". If can enjoy both of them, then not a big problem. But still you were going there to see one thing and not the other. And if you have absolutely no interest in the other? You'll end up hating it for getting in the way of enjoying the stuff you came there for.
Let's look at Sony. They also had their "Hardcore" stuff and then the softcore "Move". But they placed a strategic Kevin Butler in-between to say the "Don't hate them. If you have an awesome girlfriend and your friend gets and awesome girlfriend, who wins? Everybody." They sort did a lampshade hanging and escaped (or mitigated) backlash on this waggle war thing.
Or so one might think...
I liked this video.
I didn't think it was possible that Nintendo could possibly win me over this year, but they did it. Again. Damn Reggie and his tricks. >_>
Anyway, I can see why people don't want anything to do with the Kinect (which I preferred as Natal, but meh), but the amount of hate it's getting is kinda crazy. As a 360 and Wii owner, I doubt I'll ever want a Kinect, but I'm not going to call for the deaths of the "infidels" that do want one.
Also, I HIGHLY agree about a new Ghouls and Ghosts game. I'd also like my Mega Man Legends 3, but that's just a pipe dream. ;~;
I agree with about 70% of what you said.
Yes, Nintendo did win this show, showing some amazing stuff.
But here is where I disagree. I wasnt too excited for any of Microsoft's stuff either, but I didnt HATE the Kinect. My issue with it is that it needs more work. Kinect is a wonderful piece of technology, its just the creativity is not there.
When Nintendo introduced the Wii remote, we saw it being used with "Nintendo" games; Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. Games that Nintendo fans usually buy, and also some casual stuff.
And Sony's Move, whether its a blatant Wii rip-off or not, we still saw it being used for games like Resident Evil 5, Dead Space 2, LittleBigPlanet, etc. Games that most Sony guys buy.
But we didn't see that with Microsoft. We didn't see Kinect with Halo, Gears, Fable, Mass Effect, etc. Sure, have some stuff for the casual audience, that's fine. But its hard to get excited for it when it doesn't seem like it will come full circle with the games that made XBox successful.
My big issue with Kinect is that there doesnt seem to be a way to walk or run. It wasnt seen at any of the demos at E3, only games where you sit still or "on rails".
If they showed a way to combine the controller along with Kinect, and add some creative functions, THEN I would be convinced. But they seemed to hammer in the fact that you don't need buttons. And I just don't agree with that. Yea, we can browse our menus with it, but can we do a simple function like walking?
And with Sony's show, at least they showed a game called Sorcery, where you CAN walk, AND it was quite accurate, more than what we say with Miyamoto playing Zelda. Portal 2 and Twisted Metal was a good way to top off the show, too.
And you also mentioned you wish there was a retro remake or Super Ghouls n Ghosts...? Well there was one on the PSP. Just letting you know.
Love your work,
Peace
Bob, I have two things to say. The first one is regarding Kinect, the second one about you attitude.
You got the entire reason, why people hate Kinect wrong. The PlayStation is getting its Motion Controller along with motion games and nobody really cares that much. So why is it, people get hostile at Kinect?
The issues is not really Kinect, it's Microsoft. Microsoft is a company, that got famous for making a commercial virus, they market as an OS. But they get away with it, since their main customers are not consumers, but PC building companies like Dell, HP, Sony, Acer,... you get the idea. They also make Microsoft Office, which they sell to companies, forcing employes of said companies to use MS Office at home as well, making MS Office a de-facto standard.
Only recently has Microsoft started to enter the consumer market. The X-Box was created to stop PC game-developers from developing for non-Microsoft systems. Microsoft is not interested in giving you a good consumer experience. That's why 360s fail all the time. It does not matter, how you feel. The Zune was created not be a good MP3 player, but to stop Apple's OS from gaining popularity. Windows XP prices have been dumped once netbooks boomed. Why? Because said netbooks used to come with Linux preinstalled.
The point is, Microsoft sees consumers as idiots. They just need to advertise their crap enough, and it will start selling. Remember the Courier? Where is it now? Remember Surface? Where is it now? They put up their marketing how the new Microsoft thing is going to be soooo revolutionary, and they better should not buy anything different.
Microsoft ut up that Courier video online, before the iPad was unveiled. You can buy the iPad already, but there is not even a protoype of the Courier.
And that is, where the hate for Kinect comes from. The press conference was not even real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WkrXLJwLCY
They just put actors on stage. They think we won't notice, because we were distraced by the big elephants. How stupid do they think we are?
Sure, if it was life, it could have failed. Zelda failed. But you know what? It's all right, because we know WiiMotion Plus works. I have it here at home, I tried it already. I just played Red Steel 2 today, it works perfectly. But Microsoft just keeps hiding Kinect from the public. Then they have some celebrity developers tell us, how amazing it is, and how it will change everything (just like the surface). How stupid do they think we are?
Oh, and by the way... Did they really want to tell us, girls are into gamerscore? W T F ! Like you can walk to a girl like "Hey baby, I got a 2000000 gamerscore, wanna check out my Gamer's Card? " and she would be all over you? Wow, great, all that money I payed to use a P2P online service and the countless hours, I spent with random people online shooting each other in the head, to get the next achievement, was totaly worth it! Yeah!
To Microsoft all gamers are stupid. After all, how come they keep buying a device, that is destined to fail? Would anyone buy a car, knowing it will fail after just about 2,000km? No!
They assume, just because their technology is soooo much more imperssive all those "casuals" are ging to dump their Wiis in order to buy a 360 AND Kinect.
Remember the beginnig of Reggie's speech, where he said that technology is only half the deal? It was aimed directly at Mcrosoft and Sony. All they can do is make Wii Ripp-Offs. What reason for a Wii owner is there to buy a 360? And if you are are a PC gamer, there is even less reason to buy a 360. So why should my grandparents buy Kinect instead of a Wii? Because of technology. That's all, Microsoft has to offer. Just technolgy, without the experience.
[Rest will follow up in the next comment, due to character-rstriction]
So bottom line, gamers are hostile, because Microsoft treats us like idiots. Like some retards, who will buy anything. It's one thing for the hardcore, to look at "casuals" as retards, but when you so obviously treat them like retards, they get really angry. As I could be considered a "casual", i am angry because microsoft assumes I will buy their crap, because they have cute elephants.
How stupid do they think we are?
------------------------------------------------
Now about your attitude. This is less related to your video, but I don't know any other way of contacting you.
First of all, stop using the term "casual". It's an insult used by companies, who are not allowed to say retard. Casual games for casual gamers means nothing other than retard games for retard gamers. Note how Nintendo never uses the term "casual games". I would go on, but someone else already did this for me, so I'll just send you the link:
http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html
It's a very interesting text, and I can agree 100%. It's quite an amount of text, but it's worth the time.
Second, what's your obsession with the idea, that gaming used to be a geek obesession?
Pong did not premier on a Dungeons&Dragons convention, but in a bar. Donkey Kong was not tested in an elementary school (childern would not have the necessary money anyway), but in a bar.
Gaming used to be cool, for boys, girls, men, women, everyone. It was not until all of gaming went for the "hardcore" direction, that gaming became less popular. It did not start with Sony, it started with Sega.
Segas advertising was basically "if you play Nintendo, then you suck". Nintendo fell for it and started batteling Sony. The rest of the industry just went along with it. Nobody cared about those, who were left behind. The arrival of the PlayStation took it only further.
You might now want to bring up games like Sonic, how they were not "hardcore!!111!". You are right, but Sonic was created and marketed to be cool and badass. The drift, that happend did not occur over night. it was a continuous evolution, or rather degeneration.The consequenzes are today just more visible.
You left gaming during the PlayStation generation, you noticed, something was wrong. But others noticed it before you. The breaking point is different for everyone, but what is universal is, when things started going the wrong way.
[again, continue with the next comment]
The last issue I have is the Little Big Planet video.
I don't know who you think you are, but the conclusion was a giant slap in the face. Basically the message was that the gaming market is solid, seldefined rock, and everything, that tries different is destined to fail. That's BS! It's a product of what I was mentioning above. The fault is not the consumer, who buys only Mario and Halo.
No, the problem is the developers. For years we have seen the same things over and over again, just because developers don't want to try harder. They know selfproclaimed hardcore gamers are going to buy it. If they make something new, they screw up every time (they either don't try hard enough or hand the job to their worst teams). This includes Little Big Planet.
Do you want to know, whay LBP really failed? It is because it has no levels. Not that it has no levels at all, but these levels are basically just demos for the editor. It's the customer, who is expected, to build the levels themself. Or wait for someone random to build the level for them.
So let's say, you buy LBP. You play through the mediocre levels and then you have two options. Either waste hours to make a somewhat intresting level. Or dig for hours through piles of crappy rebuilds of Super Mario Bros. or Sonic 2 Levels, until you find a fun level.
Nobody wants to waste their time like that. When I pay for a game, I pay for content. Little Big Plane is just one of many attempts to make user-generated-content games successfull. Same can be said about Spore or WiiMusic. Poor sales were not just a problem for LBP.
So why did you blame regular customers? You blamed me and my friends. Just like every core gamer blames us for the poor sales of Okami. I played it and had to sit through a flea's stupid tit-jokes. That's not fun. It is not my fault, Okami sold poor. It's the developer's fault, and Capcom did decide well, to close Clover Studios.
@HiPhish:
You said:
"Poor sales were not just a problem for LBP."
LBP had a problem with sales? 3 million+ not enough?
Enjoyed reading that article, thanks for linking to it.
3 million is not poor per se, but keep in mind, that LBP was intended to drive up PS3 sales, change the market and become THE new PlayStation icon. Nintendo tried to do the same thing with WiiMusic, which also faild to do its job. The console-making companies have a priority in selling consoles. If the software does not drive hardware sales, then it is a failure. 3rd party developers don't have that problem, so 3 million units would be quite good for them, but for Sony that's nothing.
It was a great failure for what it was expected to do. The only reason it got that much attention is, because it was a sidescroller. We now have a true Mario game with co-op, as well as an upcoming Donkey Kong Country. Little Big Planet 2 will fail really hard.
"We now have a true Mario game with co-op, as well as an upcoming Donkey Kong Country. Little Big Planet 2 will fail really hard."
But neither of those offer what LittleBigPlanet is really all about, and are nowhere near being the same kind of game LBP2 is.
For the record I would rather play a 2D mario platformer or a new DKC, but thankfully this is not an either-or kind of thing.
A lot of people liked LBP, and it's been kept alive with DLC and user-generated content (which is plentiful, and for those entrenched in the LBP community the good content is easy to find). There's a lot of excitement for the sequel and I think it can easily end up outselling the original.
I was a little sick of all the Kinect hate on nearly every bloody forum I went to. Quite frankly, it was a little sad, especially since the responses were so stereotypical and reeked of self-entitlement. Maybe if gaming wants to stopped being looked at as insular and childish our first should be TO STOP DOING THAT CRAP. Anyway, I can't say Kinect interests me (nor does Move) but all the hate is so juvenile and tiring.
You want to know what I hate about Kinect? Look at Kinect Sports. Rare is making it. Specifically, Rare's Kameo team is making it. And guess what? Microsoft made Rare cancel Kameo 2 in favor of this game, a Wii Sports rip off. Kameo: Elements of Power is one of my favorite games from Rare and one of my favorite games period, not to mention the ending was a cliffhanger just BEGGING for a sequel. I think that's a suitable reason to be pissed off.
I've always been open to gaining support from the casual audience as long as the hardcore don't lose anything in the process. In this case, we're sacrificing Kameo and probably many other great Rare games for the sake of an attempt to make money off of the Wii's success.
That aside, I was looking forward to Kinect to give many great hardcore titles, like an RPG where you actually get to block attacks with your sword in real time or a Dragon Ball Z game or SOMETHING. The most we got out of that was Star Wars, which looks cool but they barely showed any of it. Kinect has great potential for many great games, but they just threw all that potential away to make easy money on the casual audience.
I don't hate Kinect as much as most others, but have more hatred towards Microsoft for the missed opportunity and more so for destroying the creative geniuses behind one of the best action-adventure games out there.
'I know Rare are good at copying Nintendo, but I'd prefer them to be doing a Banjo version of Galaxy or something'
This. A thousand times this.
Why they made Banjo-Threeie into Banjo-Kazooie:Nuts and Bolts I will never understand. If they wanted to make Nuts and Bolts, they should have made it a continuation/homage to Diddy Kong Racing (where Banjo started).
Quick question Bob, why should these mythical hardcore straw men you continually argue against follow your advice about Kinect when you can't even follow it yourself?
Listen to your conclusion dude. You are doing exactly what you admonish other for doing. AGAIN.
You’ve never lacked the ability to go on long wordy treatises about how other people should act, yet you never seem to be willing to follow your own example. Before I even started this vid(hell, before I even knew there was a new one) I knew we'd get to the tiring bitching about Halo, or whatever it is you think Halo is. And I knew you’d be using extremely broad strokes to paint people who like it, shooters and essentially anything Nintendo doesn’t make as stupid.
Why should other people be accommodating of something they dislike when you are unwilling to do the same? Do you see the rampant hypocrisy and just ignore it or can you really not see how you are doing (on a fairly regular basis.)
I'd also like to ask what version of the Wii you own because Nintendo absolutely abandoned the core gamer. What major Nintendo releases came out after Brawl? There has been a serious drought of games for 2 bloody years. Outside of Brawl, whose major selling point was barely functional out of the gate and quickly abandoned after that, and NSMBwii, which is just about the most crass cash grab of a release since Sony decided to start selling HD upgrades of ps2 games.
You were right on the money about Nintendo selling side strollers again, but why is this a good thing? That’s potentially a bigger threat than the casuals ever were. Because instead of crafting the new, genre defining, innovative gameplay that made us all fans of Nintendo in the first place, they are now selling games that would have been dated 10 years ago. Games that on any other platform, would be part of their downloadable marketplace, and only cost 15 dollars….and probably be of higher quality.
Frankly, allowing Nintendo to sidestep the whole “we haven’t been the innovate force in gaming since the Dreamcast came along” by selling retro games at 3 times the price that anyone else would charge for them, while claiming that this is their ‘hardcore’ while also destroying the entire bloody reason we were interested in the Wii in the first place seems to be about the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Oh and for the record. I'll probably get Kinect. Maybe for Fable 3. Maybe for some other games. I actually wrote a giant blog entry saying essentially what you did a couple weeks ago. There's nothing that annoys me more about gamers than this idea that if they personally don't like something, then it must be bad and no one should like it. It's juvenile and douchy when they do it, and its more so when you do it, because you at least can see it in others.
Oh Dave, you are so wrong on so many things.
Sure, Bob is kind of a hypocritic, but you are just nitpicking. Look at the big picture. Core gaming is in fact dying. it does not matter, what Nintendo does, you kind of new-valu games are destined to become extinct. What you mistake for casual is actually old-school. WiiSports ist in fact a game, that is pure arcade-like action. No intro, no turotial, yu just pick up the controller and start playing. The game may appear simple, but there is much depth in it. The angle, the thrust, the timing, everything can be tweaked just using ypur motion. Core Gamers tend to dismiss WiiSports as a game, where you just have to waggle at the right time. But the same thing could be said about shooters. After all, you just go around shooting things. And just like a shooter gamer woul protest, listing all the elaborate mechanics and tactics of the game, a WiiSports gamer could do the same thing.
You criticize Super Mario Wii for just being a 2D game, and how it should be downloadable. That's just ignorant selfproclaind elitist speaking. i love 2D games. So why should my games be cheap downloads, while your games get a disc released? Why are you better than me? After all, 2D Mario sell better, so shouldn't these customers be given a better treatment? Your only argument is technology, but I don't care about technoloy. All I want is my games to be fun.
We had to wait for almost two decades for a real Super Mario, so why are YOU whining about it? You feel abandoned? You get a new shooter every second week!
Also, what gives you the idea, that anyone else could make a better game? If they can, then why didn't they do so? 2D Mario is still the golden standard of plattforming.
How come you decide what it is, that made people Nintendo fans? For most people it was 2D Mario. the next best things were Sonic and Donkey Kong Country. So it is no wonder, that Nintendo is making another DKC after Super Mario Wii's success.
You of all people should kneel down before Nintendo and thank them. Because they are expanding gaming. If gaming is expanding it means that there will still be room for games like Halo to be made. Otherwise gaming would have died with the end of this generation.
It’s not nitpicking to suggest that a person actually follow the advice he expects of others. How is core gaming dying? It makes more and more money every year and games are finally coming into their own as a medium and as an art form by really getting mileage out of the things other media like film simply cannot do. I fail to see how unprecedented success is a bad thing.
You know, I don’t recall ever having ‘proclaind’ myself an elitist. I love 2d games too, when they are of sufficient quality to merit it. As to why ‘your’ games should be cheap downloads? Because they CAN be. Shadow Complex launched for 15 dollars last year and was excellent. Pretty much took a dead genre and brought it into the modern era. People would have bought it for 20 bucks and many ended up getting it for 10. It was a HUGE success. Whereas Other M will cost 50 dollars for a less advanced version of what I will charitably call the same game.
Other M and Shadow Complex can both work as DL titles. Something like Mass Effect, which has something like 12 gigs and a budget a few times larger, cannot.
I don’t recall ever saying I was better than you. Though your penchant for misquoting people, using strawmen and ignoring anything that contradicts what you want to be true (even when you yourself admit it.) certainly don’t help your case. If it were that strong, you wouldn’t need to be dishonest.
“After all, 2D Mario sell better, so shouldn't these customers be given a better treatment?”
So, you are under the impression that paying more for less is being treated better? NSMB wii would fit on a CD. Twice. It doesn’t need to be a full retail release. And yet it does, and costs 50 bucks. The reason has nothing to do with quality…it has to do with profit. And doesn’t have online co op. Had it been released on live or PSN, it assuredly would have. It wouldn’t have sold as well without it. The fact that people are willing to pay more for less does not make it right.
“Your only argument is technology, but I don't care about technoloy. All I want is my games to be fun.
We had to wait for almost two decades for a real Super Mario, so why are YOU whining about it?“
Do me a favour…point out exactly where I argued about technology. I’ll wait. Give up? The thing about technology is that it gives you options. My 360 displays awesome graphics and the newest and craziest games…it also lets me play robotron. See the thing with technology, which you don’t seem to get, is that it gives you options, and if you don’t want to use them, you can opt out. This technology you seem to dislike so gives me access to everything I want, and everything you want. Your view would lock me out of what I want. Hostility towards something just because someone you resent can enjoy it as much as you do…sound kind of familiar?
And don’t give me any of this BS about “all I want is my games to be fun” like I don’t. But I want variety. I want shooters, and RPGs. And racers, and puzzle games, and fighting games, and music games I will demo once and never ever play. And that’s why your attempt (and Bob’s) to paint Hardcore gamers (read: any gamers other than those exactly like yourselves) as drooling shooter fanatics is so pathetic.
“You feel abandoned? You get a new shooter every second week!”
Of the games I own, maybe 5% are shooters. That said, I’m not abandoned by shooter makers or rpgs makers. They’ve giventme the games I want. Nintendo not so much. Because barring a few releases in 07, they’ve pretty much abandoned the core gamers. If I want another 2d Metroid, I’ll get Super Metroid on virtual console….which I did -for 10 dollars. I want innovation. I want to see something I can’t get everywhere else for a hell of a lot cheaper. Skyward sword does this. The rest of their titles do not.
You know what made Mario games the definitive platformers? Because when everyone was playing catch up, Nintendo was busy innovating. Sonic was Mario but faster. So nintendo gave us branching paths and secret worlds that you be replayed at any time, effectively creating the first steps towards the sandbox genre. Crash was in 3D, Mario 64 reinvented the way platformers worked, by introducing the idea of worlds that weren’t just linear tracks, with goals that could be accomplished in any order. Such innovation has not been present in large amount at nintendo in a LONG time. They used to be trail blazers. Now, motion controls aside, they aren’t even decent followers.
“You of all people should kneel down before Nintendo and thank them. Because they are expanding gaming. If gaming is expanding it means that there will still be room for games like Halo to be made. Otherwise gaming would have died with the end of this generation.”
You actually believe that, don’t you? That would be adorable if it wasn’t sad. Nintendo didn’t save anyone but their bottom line. Where’s your evidence that gaming would have died? Where’s any support for that claim? Or are you just making things up. Nintendo didn’t make mass effect, or uncharted, or the orange box, or bioshock, of call of duty, or Halo or madden or guitar hero or rock band or any other of the myriad titles this generation will be remembered by for the core. Nintendo’s effect has been limited to their platform, and their influence on others has been minimal, aside from providing many hours of hilarity in 06-07 with sony trying to act like sixaxis was some grand innovation. Outside of the Move and kinect, (whose impact may indeed be minimal) there hasn’t been much of an impact at all.
LOL Dave flailing around, trying to deny Nintendo's impact.
And for the record, yeah Nintendo did do a whole lot to boost up the industry this generation, because without them and their "new gamers," the Xbox 360 and PS3 wouldn't have even beat the PS2 from last generation, even if you combined their sales.
You COULD argue that those Wii owners would have bought 360s and PS3s anyway, but that would make them gamers by default, and thus would mean gamers by and large own Wiis, which is sort of a bad position to argue from.
Either Nintendo saved aming from freefall, or the majority of Gamers own Wiis. I'm happy with either.
You can continue to live in your dream world where Microsoft and Sony are upholding all that is gaming and will continue to do so even if they are bleeding billions, and Nintendoonly appeals to a small niche segment called the majority of the market. But reality likes to pop his head in from time to time, and he's kind of a dick about facts.
And the reality is Nintendo has had a gigantic effect on the game industry lately and seems to continue to do so with 3DS and such, totally destroying any other 3D efforts at the outset by simply not requiring glasses or ridiculously expensive TVs to replace the ridiculously expensive TVs people bought 4 years ago, and buy a pair of shickingly expensive glasses too.
I don't hate Kinect, I just can't be convinced that it isn't a complete waste of money and that it will be a total flop.
By the way, why isn't this up on ScrewAttack yet?
I'm gonna be frank here... well on two things. One, is that I missed the Microsoft conference, but I have followed NATAL for over a year now. With that being said: I don't care for the KINECT. I do give it credit for its innovation. I think it's really cool, but I don't see a practical use for it, for me. For my mom, maybe, but for me, no. As for the catering to the casual audiences themselves, I don't care for that either. The capital that could be reaped from them is huge. Which is kinda messed up. Additionally, I think Microsoft and Sony got the message that they can't get away with being one sided systems that are for the exclusive hardcore anymore. They tried to come off as friendly. That, I like. They are gonna get hate by a large group of people, as well, but that doesn't mean that they're gonna get large amounts of hate per capita. I probably won't own KINECT, namely because, as a gamer, it's not what I want. That's my problem, however, not grandpa Bill's.
And I'll still buy games like Battlefield and Metal of Honor and Twisted Metal and Grand Turismo. Quite frankly, I get headaches when playing something with such high amounts of contrast. It also steals from immersion. Fallout 3 had this feel to it that made me nauseous and it wasn't colorful, so I don't know, really.
I will say that I do like the move. It relies on LED tracking and, I think, gyroscopes. The latter is much more accurate and responsive than radar tracking and works much better on 3 dimensions. The possibilities for that peripheral are endless, and that, coupled with Twisted Metal and GT5 are what'll get me to buy a PS3 this fall. See, I'm biased, but I'll admit it. I grew up with the aforementioned games, and have severely fond memories over the original Medal of Honor. It's fanboyism, but I'm stoked about MoH: Modern Battlefield no matter how much of a terd it turns out to be, which I hope isn't the case. I also am looking forward to TERA, making MMORPGs fun again. There was also this one shooter that was all about fun, not the typical saving the world business. I guess my point is: a game's a game. Diversity is needed, but at the end of the day, if it's solid and well built, nomatter what it is, it's likely a good game. You know, I actually like the concept of everyone getting into gaming... I guess that's why I tried to get my step dad to play Battlefield. Some people pay money, good money, to buy a slot machine program with 50 different slot machines. That's absurd. THAT's wrong, not some version of Wii Sports with better graphics and controls that force people to get off th... get up and work out with their whole bodies. In fact, I take back what I said. I might buy KINECT after all so everyone in my family can play it. So, yeah, KINECT is good.
Oh, by the way, great video. It felt short, but I don't blame you. The point didn't need much strafing around to get to.
This was a pretty decent episode, man. Though, I gotta say that I'm a bit confused about why you were ripping the hardcore fanbase and tell them to quit hating on the Kinect or the casual audience when you had the exact same level of hatred while talking about first-person shooters. I want to know what it is about FPS games that make you froth at the mouth like that, aside from the lack of color most of them have and the general douchebaggery they tend to attract. Maybe that can be a new Game Overthinker episode? :P
@ jeff
Right, because I'm SURE that those soccer moms and seniors really want halo and god of war.Nintendo hasn't brought anything to the core audience, it is just being more evenly split. Last gen it was EVERYONE had a ps2, with a minority owning an xbox or gamecube instead. A larger group owned more than one and a smaller group owned all 3. Now you have effectively split the ps2's install base among the 360 owners and ps3 owners fighting for the hardcore, with a decent number owning both. A combination of nintendo loyalists/hardcore gamers/kids and people who just buy whatever the most popular console make up the rest of what used to hbe the ps2 base. The wii also gets the new gamers....but they either don't care (or as some studies show, don't even know) about the other platforms.
The idea that the wii is helping sales of the xbox or ps3 is just bloody stupid.
Speaking as a "causal gamer", which apparently makes me a retard (real classy, yeah), I don't have a problem with both styles of games existing. Hell, I think video games are a great way to tell stories (which is why I wasted all of last week on my storytelling review blog going over E3 with a medium-tooth comb even though I'm more a comics/TV reviewer), and I have a few games that would be considered "hardcore".
On the other hand, I don't have time to finish most of them. I still haven't completed the Hulk game. I'm taking about the Ang Lee movie based game. I still haven't completed Tron 2.0 and Ultimate Spider-Man and really like those games.
The big problem is time. I don't always have time to sit down and devote hours on end to these games, but an occasional game to relax with I can do. Why shouldn't we get our cool games, too? The only argument I can support is the guy who said that Kameo was lost because of Kinect games. He has a legit beef, and it's stupid on Microsoft. Delay, maybe, but cancel?
Metroid: Other M doesn't look like a DLC game (by the way, I did download Mass Effect because Steam had it on sale for $10). It could be a full game, just with a mix of 2 and 3D elements. Donkey Kong Country Returns could be a full game. There have been a group who have wanted the sidescrollers back, even those who like the 1st and 3rd person games. Why leave that market high and dry so you can get "your games".
That's my biggest issue with the so-called "hardcore gamers" (or as I refer to them, the gaming chapter of the "everything for meeeeee" crowd, the same people who hate on "kiddie" and "girly" games). Frankly, I'M more of an untapped market than you guys. Especially since I'm a PC gamer. I don't get fighting games. No Virtua Fighter 4 for me, and I can forget Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 ever showing up. I don't demand they stop making your games. I just want my own stuff. More platformers and puzzle games. Do we even get a decent driving game anymore? All I hear about are console games. No PC press event, not even from Microsoft. Apple gamers have it worse than I do.
Enjoy the games you got and let people who aren't you enjoy their games, too. Find the games we both enjoy, and game on!
Oh Dave, you are so gullible. i advise you to read less on gaming forums and start looking at facts rather than swallawong what the industry serves you.
Why the fight against 2nd hand market? Why DLC, extra special limited collectr#s hadrcore editions, why DRM? Why are there studios closing left and right? Why is EA creating that online passport thing?
it is because gaming is dying. it hs been dying for years and Nintendo was the first company to feel it.
There are no more new gamers coming, old gamers are leaving, games get more and more bloated with eeeepic cutscenes, become more stale (if a fighting game is not a Street Fighter II clone, it is not considered a real fighting game at all). There is more revenue, but less profit or even losses (Is Sony still losing money with every console they sell?). Where did all the PS2 gamers go? They did not transition to the PS360, they did not transition to the Wii, since the Wii has its own new customers.
And you are telling me, gaming is healthy?
gaming is anything but becoming mainstream. Gaming as an artform? Tht#s the most crazy thing I've ever heared. Games are more and more trying to become like movies, but then they end up being bad games. So it i no wonder, regular people will rather coose an actual movie, than a deviated videogame.
As for the whole Super Mario Wii thing... Let me teach you somethin.
A product's value is not determined by its creator, its technology or whatever. It's dertermined by its customer. I do not buy downloadable games, as long, as they are above 3$. Children can't buy downloadable games. Wii gamers are way harder to satisfy than hardcore gamers (I know, this sounds shocking to you). A Wii gamer would never buy Mass Effect (2), because of DRm and EA's insame DLC policy. But a hardcore gamer would start an online petition, ramble about it on an internet forum and then end up buying the game threee days ater it comes out.
If you want to sell to a Wii gamer, then you have to gve in to their demands. And I demand my games to be on a Disc (or cartridge), and to have a nice illustraded colourful manual. Nintendo is smart enough to give in to my demands. The reward will be great sales numbers.
It does not matter, what option technology gives us, it is the customer who decides what will be.
Apple decided not to have Flash on their mobile devices. Although the tech nerds keep complaining about it, the customers voted with their wallets, that they don't need flash.
The musivc industry wanted to sell a CD with one or two songs you liked and charge for the package. Customers didn't like it, they demanded digital distibution. The music industry thought, they could outsmart us with DRM, but they had a rude awakening. There is a reason, why they dropped DRM.
On the other hand ask Sony, how much gamers loooove digitl distribution for videogames
Do me a favour…point out exactly where I argued about technology. I’ll wait.
Here you go...
As to why ‘your’ games should be cheap downloads? Because they CAN be.
What's that? You wrote that after my post? Indeed. But consider that it shows you have been thinking in terms of technology even before you were aware of it. You are so easy to read, and yet you can't seem to figure out your own motovation.
well spoken bob, but i think you are jumping the shark with your game overthinker video's i thought you were primarily going to analyze games, and in some cases gaming culture, this is just a long winded rant, that could have easily been saved for a forum post.
on topic: the whole motion control rage went right past me, gamers are prone to throw internet tantrums over practically anything, but i dont think a single one of them would ever truly believe that xbox gaming would collapse because of motion control. but you might be right, that it is simply annoyance with everything that is mainstream and stupid
hey everyone, I've been watching this kind of thing for a while, so I have quite a big insight on the gaming industry. I'm not surprised, I'm not angry ether I know that micro soft & sony has to take this move.
I personally think that motion control could be used for hardcore users too, but the tech & the developers understanding is going to take some time to develop. We may have to wait for the a wile maybe as long as next gen though.
heres a question, dose anyone like this generation period, it's just had so many problems, do to hardware, there's always some new problem.
On another note the nintendo 3ds maybe another big boom in the industry, maybe as big as the wii. Think of it, the people who've seen it say that it's the best 3d out there, now it's still in development, no freken glasses, and it was playing modified n64 games like star fox. Now the gaming gaming industry has been making big moves to push 3d for a year now, especially sony because they make 3d tv's. Now here comes nintendo with a little handheld that has been said to run off the souls of children by the press, and will cost you 200 dollars while sony's charging 4000 for a tv. No one's going to wont to buy anything until they can get rid of those glasses.
here's something else interesting about the 3Ds it's been in development for 15 years, ever since the bomb of the virtual boy, is this nintendo making up for it?
Nintendo rocked my socks this year. Admittedly the titles we want them have been a slow trickle since the Wii's launch (however, every one of them has been awesome) now we're getting a deluge of them. I've never been so excited to be a Nintendo fan and I started on the NES.
The 3DS is particularly interesting to me as damn near everyone says that I'm going to drop to my knees and give thanks to the gaming gods when I first see it. I have no idea about that as I fear the tech might strain my eyes, but when I look at the lineup the little miracle machine is going to boast it good be an all-star Nintendo machine to rival even the SNES.
It all seems so strangely convenient. Nintendo gets flogged for years for being the kitchy "casual sell-outs", but the moment MS and Sony embrace the new wave of "casual" gamers Nintendo steps up to deliver a mind boggling avalanche of games I want. Uncanny.
I don't like Kinect because of the fact that motion controls can make game hard to play for long periods of time and this device wants me to use my entire body as a controller, that and let's face it; name 1 blue collar jobs worker who has the energy to play a motion controlled game that requires more then a waggle? NONE! What about white collar workers? Not many. Other then that I like the Kinect. I think Kinect will have some decent titles in the future but at the moment it's still trying to find it's place. To be honest 3D is what irks me at the moment with gaming... other then the 3DS. I just can't help but feel that 3D gaming is going to cause serious problems in the future and as a person who already wears glasses, I'd hate to see more people with them because of the 3D material coming out. Once 3D evovles into that of the 3DS or hologram projections 3D could be hazardess to peoples eyesight.
I wonder what MovieBob's opinion of the 3D games is?
3d has been a round for a while we already know the health concerns, it's only a problem is you already have major eye problems. with that said there is a switch on the 3ds too turn the 3d off or adjust the depth. the game do not require you to play then in 3d.
as for sony, they have announced a PSP2 but it's unable to use 3d
HiPhish
You know, I’d make a crack about you drinking the Kool Aid but I’m fairly sure whatever brings this much crazy has to be something you mainline.The gaming industry is neither giving me anything, nor am I ‘swallawonging’ anything.
“Why the fight against 2nd hand market? Why DLC, extra special limited collectr#s hadrcore editions, why DRM? Why are there studios closing left and right? Why is EA creating that online passport thing?it is because gaming is dying. it hs been dying for years and Nintendo was the first company to feel it.”
Are you seriously so blinded by your fanboyism that it even affects your math skills? I assumed logic was the only casualty. Why the fight against second hand? Because they want more money. Why the special editions? Because it gets them more money. Why DLC? MONEY. The MW2 map pack sold 2.5 million copies on a single platform. In about a week. At 15 dollars. Do the math. DLC is there because it is ridiculously, insanely lucrative. As for DRM and passports, such things have been a part of PC gaming for decades. The first games came with physical objects called feelies, that the game required you to own in order to play. Copy protection is nothing new. You might as well say Wal-Mart is going broke because they have security cameras.
The gaming industry wasn’t dying, Nintendo’s market share was. The gaming industry was in fact EXPANDING. More consoles were being sold in each succeeding generation, but fewer of them were Nintendo’. They shook things up because THEY needed it to.
“There are no more new gamers coming,”
Didn’t you just get done telling me about how the Wii expanded gaming?
“become more stale (if a fighting game is not a Street Fighter II clone, it is not considered a real fighting game at all`
You must have missed pretty much every fighting game in the last decade. I also marvel at the irony of a guy defending SIDESCROLLERS having the balls to call other games stale.
“ There is more revenue, but less profit or even losses (Is Sony still losing money with every console they sell?). Where did all the PS2 gamers go? They did not transition to the PS360, they did not transition to the Wii, since the Wii has its own new customers.
And you are telling me, gaming is healthy?”
And again you showcase your flagrant disregard for reality. Sony`s stumbles with the ps3 are not indicative of a problem with the industry but of their company. If anything, it shows health that when a company gets bloated and arrogant, they can be swiftly made to understand their mistake. Sony recently announced that they are finally selling the ps3 at profit, and it was a rare anomaly that it took this far. 360 has been profitable since late 07 I believe, and they’ve been making money hand over fist since. The ps2 gamers, as I already discussed, were split amongst the big 3, 360 took hardcore, ps3 took Sony loyalists, Wii took the younger crowd/casuals. There are still many who have not upgraded.
“gaming is anything but becoming mainstream”
That is beyond stupid. Halo’s launch was the largest day one cash take for any entertainment product ever. Modern warfare 2 did even better. Gears and god of war and red dead redemption and man many franchises have all sold extremely well and gotten mainstream recognition.
“. Gaming as an artform Tht#s the most crazy thing I've ever heared. Games are more and more trying to become like movies, but then they end up being bad games.”
Thank you. You just made my entire argument for me. You just showed exactly stupid and juvenile your point of view is. Now as I figure you only own a Wii, I can’t be surprised that you haven’t played any games with artistic merit but trust me they exist. And they are doing things that films NEVER can.
Fortunately not everyone thinks like you and we have something better. We have innovation and new ideas coming out yearly and you’re still puttering around in the dark ages. And worst of all, we have access to everything you do. We just want the option of more. But you’d rather deny us that to feed your own insecurities. That’s just sad.
The entirety of your argument can be summed up as you are terrified of anything new, and can’t be bothered to do basic research. Given that the Wii gamers you seem to identify with can be satisfied with a glorified snes game every 2 years, I’m gonna say they are pretty damned easy to satisfy. Can’t even get started on the stupidity of the mass effect statement. Aside from the fact that you can get ME2, DRM free on 360. The DLC solution is that people who buy the game new get a bunch of free extra content. How dare they?
“If you want to sell to a Wii gamer, then you have to gve in to their demands. And I demand my games to be on a Disc (or cartridge), and to have a nice illustraded colourful manual. Nintendo is smart enough to give in to my demands. The reward will be great sales numbers.”
IN other words, all you care about is entirely superficial and has nothing to do with the quality of the game. This seems to be a running theme with you. You hate anything that isn’t in the right box or the right shape that you want, regardless of how it plays. In what way are you even a gamer if all you care about is the superficial. And why should everyone else be restricted to just what YOU want, when we wouldn’t put the same restrictions on you?
“The musivc industry wanted to sell a CD with one or two songs you liked and charge for the package. Customers didn't like it, they demanded digital distibution. The music industry thought, they could outsmart us with DRM, but they had a rude awakening. There is a reason, why they dropped DRM.”
That would be an example of technology providing new options. And of a company not giving a proper value. And of businesses clinging to stale old models in lieu of embracing what was better for everybody. You just made 3 of my points for me. Again.
As for digital distribution, I don’t have to ask Sony. I can ask valve, or Microsoft, or popcap or apple. You know, the companies who have been making insane bushels of cash off it for years. Companies which incidentally helped START the resurgence of retro gaming on modern platforms.
“What's that? You wrote that after my post? Indeed. But consider that it shows you have been thinking in terms of technology even before you were aware of it. You are so easy to read, and yet you can't seem to figure out your own motovation.”
Your exact words were that my only argument was technology. Which was false because I hadn’t even mentioned tech yet. Another example of you trying to argue against a strawman. When I did bring up technology it was to explain why it is important. Mainly that it gives people options. I have access to everything you have, and everything I want in addition. But your insecurity is so great you’d rather deny everyone else what they want and force them to subside on the crumbs you’d allow them. For a person as admittedly superficial as yourself, its pretty pathetic to try and paint me as only caring about tech. YOU are the one obsessed with technology because you hate it so much.
Wow; this is an epic argument going on.
I own a Wii and a 360 (well... actually the 360 was a graduation present) and I feel my gaming needs are best served by having BOTH (plus a PC that is 3.5 years old). I get the best of both worlds. I get the great Nintendo stuff like Super Mario Galaxy and the 'hardcore' titles I want from 360 like Halo, Gears and BioWare's stuff.
The thought that both CANNOT coexist is silly. In terms of gaming not being healthy, I would remind people that the economy has not been great in recent years but video gaming has largely avoided that trend. Maybe the numbers are not where they should be or would have been, but I think they are impressive given the context of the economic situation of the past couple of years. The true test will be where we are 5 years from now.
I think the problem that people have with Nintendo is that they milk their cash cow games too much, and don't take enough chances on new franchises. Certainly their approach to technology has been the COMPLETE OPPOSITE; Nintendo came up with the Rumble Pak, now we wouldn't dream of playing with out rumble. They took a chance on wireless controllers, the DS, the Wii, and now the 3DS. I think what gamers would like is to see a new franchise from Nintendo. Yes, we still want Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Smash Bros., etc.... but why can't they come up with something new? In 2001, Nintendo released a new franchise: Pikmin. In 2002, they came up with Animal Crossing. Since then, I can't find a franchise that isn't a derivative of or in the same franchise/brand as a previous title.
Consider that in the same time (since 2001), BioWare came up with Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age! I understand that Nintendo has hardware development as a concern which BioWare does not have... and that BioWare is a 3rd Party and Nintendo is not.... but BioWare could have just milked KOTOR if they wanted to... but they didn't.
I'm not saying that Nintendo needs to come out with a new franchise every year, but we would like to see something that ISN'T Mario or Zelda, something that we have NEVER seen before. I don't think that is too much to ask. The customer will tell Nintendo what they think with their spending as we move to the next console generation.
I'm starting to get a little miffed at how Overthinker is turning into a "LOL HERE'S SOME CONTROVERSIAL BASHING OF MY PRIMARY VIEWERBASE" show. Also: What's with the false Brooklyn-ish accent in this video?
People don't hate Kinect because it'll bring "normals" into gaming. That's not even remotely close to the reason why people hate it. People hate Kinect because it is precisely the kind of me-too copy-cat-ism that has, for the most part, ruined Holywood as a valid source of entertainment. People don't hate Kinect Sports because it's a casual motion control gimmick game, although it is that.
People hate Kinect Sports because it is literally Wii Sports with only half of the title changed.
People hate this not because grandma will start playing XBox. They hate it because it shows the depths the video game industry is now willing to sink to to make a quick buck. Kinect is a symbol of the sort of blind cash-in mentality that, up until very recently, the video game industry largely held itself above. It is a naked, glaring example that Microsoft is perfectly willing to literally take games from four years ago, switch the logo on the cover, and call it a "fresh and new" product because they hope to sell garbage to suckers.
That is the harsh, soul-crushing reality causing people to reflexively vomit. Not that non-gamers now play video games.
As for Nintendo? Yes, yes they did completely abandon the core audience for years. Sure, now they're throwing us a bone with remakes of franchises other than the Holy Trinity, but before that? Nothing but motion control gimmick games. We got Metroid, Zelda, and Mario fairly close to launch, and then absolutely nothing after that barring one or two occasional titles. This is why people talk about dusting off their Wii for the new Kirby and DK games coming up -- because we all stopped playing our Wiis when it became clear Nintendo had no intention of doing anything other than letting the shovelware pile up.
Now they're trying to make up for it. But the fear that the Wii's focus on casual gamers and motion control gimmicks would leave core gamers sucking dirt was perfectly valid because it happened.
Moviebob is from Boston so that might just be his accent flaring up because of his temper. And so far Nintendo hasn't abandoned the so-called "core" audience, if anything it's the 3rd parties. Nintendo is making as many games as they ever did.
I am an odd sort of 360 gamer. The PS3 doesn't strike me as interesting in the least, and the Wii's controls are innacurate and gimmicky, and the games themselves strike me as uninteresting and overly kid-focused.
That said, I don't get to buy many games. I've never had much disposable income. When I get games, it's because I've heard great reviews from all around and because they strike me as visually, or conceptually, interesting.
Upon inspection of my game roster (Mass Effect, Dead Rising, Fable 2, Banjo-Kazooie N&B, Overlord, etc), I notice a pattern that I'm clearly NOT in the "Hardcore crowd" of brown and grey, and yet I still prefer Microsoft to Nintendo. These games are clearly more fantasy-oriented and colorful, but I still prefer the Xbox to the Wii.
There no points to really get here other than I'm an oddball who marches to his own tune, but I look at games on the basis of playability, immersion, and conceptual originality, and Microsoft tends to deliver more sleeper hits like those.
On subject, I do think the "Xbox Wii60" and the EyeToy 2.0 are terrible ideas designed to grasp at straws as they watch Nintendo rake in money and it would take some serious software designed to utilize the hardware without gimmicks... but I don't see them pulling that off. I see these being millions of dollars that could've gone toward something actually new and interesting in the PS3's case, or making the hardware more reliable for the 360.
The one thing I have to say about Nintendo is that they do their thing and let their developers' creativity flourish instead of telling them to make something that will sell.
I don't hate the devices themselves, just that they're going to be such a waste of time and money that could be put toward useful goals.
Bob,
I think I'm done with your videos. I guess I am tired of watching the same think over and over again. Dedicating one video to dwelling into the psyche of gamers with the finsesse of a wikipedia intelectual is one thing, but you are overdoing it. Bob, please understand something, you are being as much of a prejudicial ignorant towards certain gamers as you portrait said gamers to be. You just use prettier words (well, sometimes) and you just think you are being modern.
And by the way: stating over and over again that you made The Game Overthinker partly to attract attention to yourself is... well, interesting. I think this self awareness does not work in your favor, it makes you sound like the insecure one.
Bob, the last few commenters, especially John and Ciao have very strong points. Obviously I don't like being talked down on for my preference in games, called prejudice and close minded because I DO prefer GoW to Mario. It's not as simple as that, however. Otherwise I wouldn't love Aion so much (truthfully, the grind means I don't anymore but eh, new patch eventually, right?).
Obviously they don't either. Really, after reading their comments, my view has changed a bit, because I completely forgot about Nintendo's shovelware. I honestly think they speak for most of the mature gaming audience (mature being actually... mature), with their comments. The over-30 crowd might not agree, but please understand that the hardcore you refer to in your videos is such a small amount of people (who may, just may be very vocal), that the rest of us, if anything, make them look like fleas.
With that being said, I still do generally dislike the KINECT, but it's by far not something I hate.
Also, real fast. I know you're aware that you're biased towards Mario and the old age of gaming and you let the world know numerous times. How am I any worse, or better as a gamer, when my childhood memories consist of hours playing Twisted Metal, Hot Wheels Turbo Racing, Halo, Grand Turismo and Medal of Honor? Those games are my Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Mega Man, and Kid Icarus. And if I grew up playing Mario instead of Army Men Air Attack co-op with my dad, I'd probably be totally stoked about Nintendo's revivals.
Couldn't agree more.
People need to grow the fuck up and get over the fact that hardcore gamers aren't the only people playing games anymore. they have to appeal to a mass audience now if they want a piece of the pie that Nintendo seems to be hogging all to them self.
Like Bob said, its not gonna change anything, its just a new feature so that casual gamers have more of a selection than just one console.
Microsoft is trying to cash in on the casual gamer boom, and who can blame them. Sony is trying to make a casual gaming concept appeal to hardcore gamers, which i think is a terrible idea, but only time will tell. Cant dismiss it until it has a chance to prove me wrong.
Moral of the story.... if you don't like it, don't play it, its that simple.
Its not gonna stop Microsoft or Sony from making all the boomstick games that everyone seems to wet there pants over, just a new concept for a new generation of gamers.
Usually I agree with your comments but I think you missed the markers on this one. My hate for the kinect and move actually come from when I grew up. In the 90s we all know video games were trying to out weird one another. Every fucking thing had some out of control concept and not every one worked. But now everything blends and it sickening. I personally hate the move because I expect more of Sony and this piss poor attempt to cash in is smh worthy. And sadly the ps2 is my current favorite system of the current generation so it really pissed me off. But Microsoft I just refuse to buy their systems and the kinect is pure shit. It's just a green screen and will more than likely over heat and red ring. Yes I won't lie I just fucking hate microsoft gaming consoles. These are essentially the 32x and the 64dd like you said and it's just annoying to see companies do the same and I'm almost certain the new generation consoles from the two will follow suite but the motion control will see be spotty.
Ok, First off, I don't like kinect, not because of it threatening my medium by weighing it down, I take issue because of the pervasive nature of it. Kinect might not oust my games, but it will clog the shelves when I look, take up the entire freaking front page on everything my game touches(kinect ads and avatars and facebook). Yeah its stupid, but then again, I am not rooting to kill it, I just want the hype to get out of my way to the games I want, and really I don't even care enough to do anything.
Second, You do, as many have said, attack the Hardcore gamers with the same venom as you jab them for attacking others. I know sometimes its annoying, but please, I used to be one. I used to spend 6-10 hours DAILY on my games, I was the top of all my scoreboards and had one of the highest gamerscores I could find, I got a life and I cant say its been a bad plan, but that doesn't mean I don't miss the days of playing till I went to bed and getting up to do it again. I don't hate people with no time, I don't have much myself these days, but I don't see how being a hardcore gamer is such a bad thing either.
Third, I like Gears, I like Halo and I like Call of Duty, Bioshock was my fav game of 360 second only to Borderlands(love 2k), but I am not a jock or macho beast, I am a semi nerd, who just thinks its more fun to blow things up with giant lasers than it is hop on floating platforms. I don't hate people who enjoy those, I just hate when I cant get more than 1-2 good shooters a year when Mario, Donkey Kong and their ilk get massive support and release ever more popular iterations.
Fourth, Motion control. I go with Yahtzee, gamers, or at least the better portion of gamers willing to spend 3-5 hundred bucks on a console are not into motion because we got into this hobby to sit on our butts, making us get up is the same thing we yelled at our moms about. Also, I like shooters as I said, I cant get a decent shooter out of the wii or its clones anymore than I could do my RTS on a SNES pad, its not nearly precise or versatile enough to do it, YET.
The day my shooter is supplemented by gesture and voice commands that I can count on, I'm in, but while its pinatas, Mario and such, no thanks.
Fifth, and this is in no way a jab or some sort of assault on you. But do you play like I played? Did you compete for the top score to the exclusion of real life? Did you turn down real rewards, and cling only to your games? Because I must tell you, as someone trying to recover from that, its scary, and watching that hobby get annexed by people me and my nerd friends laughed at? Shaking my Freaking reality.
I personally neglected to learn something useful, to be good at something that matters, but I took pride in that I had devoted my time to something the "normals" as you said, didn't even get, I could make the jock kid look like a monkey, if just for a minute. I could make the genius into my proverbial b**ch, before reality returned. But with a shift away from immersive, intensive, complicated and sometimes even outsider-hostile games, its becoming such that the jock can kick my @$$ back, and the genius makes me look dumb on MY turf. It sucks to see what you called your one talent made simple, so the people who are already cooler than you can beat you there too.
I don't know what is to be done, I'd just say, hardcore gamers of MY generation, aren't all doing it out of rage, sometimes its very near to terror. cut a little break eh? Wake em up nice.
Still love your vids, especially the "better gamer" one, it was around very near the turning point for me.
You are an idiot. Did you even see the new gameplay footage for some of the upcoming shooters? Take Gears of War 3 for an example. If you seen the gameplay footage(which you probably didn't) the level they showed of was BRIGHT and GREEN. Yeah, surprising isn't it? Call of Duty Black Ops will take place mostly in jungles, which are also dominated by the color GREEN. So next time do some research before you say that all shooter game games are rust colored and that they are all the same, cause they are not. I can tell that you don't play a lot of shooter games. You just assume that they are all "the same".
Well guess what, they are not the the same. Halo is different from Call of Duty, Call of Duty is different from Bioshock, and Bioshock is different than Killzone. Why don't you TRY some of these shooters that I'm about to list, I bet you'll like them.
Killzone 2
Halo 3
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty World at War
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Bioshock 2
Gears of War 2
F.E.A.R 2
I find it ironic that for a guy who has spoken against stereotypes, you sure do stereotype hardcore gamers all the time. We don't go around trash talking everyone we see. The hardcore gamers who do that are a very SMALL minority. And guess what? YOU'RE NOT ANY BETTER THAN THEY ARE!!!! You're just as prejudice as they are. You act like that hardcore gamers are always the problem. You act like we're the symbol of everything that is wrong with the world of gaming. I'm going to set the record straight with you. Hardcore Gamers don't hate Kinect because it's for casual gamers. We don't hate Kinect because grandmas will start to play the Xbox 360. We hate BECAUSE IT'S A RIP-OFF OF THE WII MOTION CONTROLS!!!!!! We hate it because Kinect represents the depths that the video game industry will now sink to, in order to make a quick buck. People hate Kinect Sports BECAUSE IT'S WII SPORTS, but with half the title changed. People hate it, because it shows that Microsoft is willing to take Wii Sports, change the logo, and call it a new game. You should admit that YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT HARDCORE GAMERS. Honestly, why do you stereotype hardcore gamers? I want to know.
I don't like the way you complain about how games use all the buttons on a controller. First off, I would like to say that games today, are more complex than games back then. Thus modern games require more buttons to function. Honestly, Halo 3 could not function with just three buttons. Neither could Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, and Gears of War 2. Also you criticize how Bionic Commando lets you control the camera. Well, then HOW ELSE WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO AIM YOUR GUN??!! You use the left stick to aim your gun too!
I want to know why you hate shooters? Do you hate them simply because they are there? Do you hate them simply because mainly hardcore gamers play them. Lord knows you HATE hardcore gamers. Seriously, I want to know. And don't you dare say that they are all they same, because they are not, in my opinion.
Awesome stuff video, you really nailed how E3 went down, even though you weren't there.
One more thing, though, I want to see a Game Overthinker video dedicated to the notion that "VIDEO GAMES COME FROM JAPAN!", and make sure to be clear and concise since, as much as I love your videos and agree on what they have to say, I'm still not entirely convinced on that notion.
You should really try the multiplayer for Battlefield Bad Company 2. I'm sure you'll really like it. Trust me, only a very SMALL minority of gamers on Xbox Live are douche bags. Even if you don't like the shooting, you can have alot of fun reviving people as medic, or repairing things as an engineer, or even snipe as a recon soldier.
God damn Bob, I think you should do a video on the whole hardcore thing next. You don't have to change your views, -though a good number of your audience wants you to cut the harshness- but you really should offer the mentality behind it, and if you offer good solid facts behind your reasoning, I'm sure most of us will respect your opinion alot more.
I'll admit that I don't know what amount of the internet is what, and that, maybe, a good number of them just may be the type to go into a gun shop looking for a sniper rifle to "pwn noobs," something you don't even joke about. I have a good feeling that that isn't the case and that most of us are, as gamers, more mature than that. Of course, I'm repeating myself, but I can't emphasize that enough.
Reptile said it in harsher terms than I would have, but he has a point. A direct point. I'm gonna tangent off of that and say something I generally say everywhere else.
I do think that it is a growing trend to, now that gamers have been discouraged to play as big manly men they wouldn't want to converse with in real life, bash the image (which might have been largely true at one point), of the typical hardcore gamer that shoots Prozac and calls everything with a hint of life in it "Gheeey." I know, I used to follow it too, because I was the insecure one. I spitefully refused to fire up anything other than L4D a couple years ago thinking that the moment I fired up S4League in class, I would be called a faggot. Surprise, people didn't see the colorful game (in Machine Shop. Ma-chine shop! On a Halo day. Yes. A Halo day.) as a fagfest. Rather, those that watched were interested because of the gameplay itself which wasn't by the least ordinary for a shooter. I was complimented for the game. The colorful, cartoony, "gheeey" game. They weren't the people I thought they, and the rest of the world, save for the 'pure', were.
I think other people are like that... or maybe bashing the old "cool" games is the new cool for them. I hope it's just the insecurity that I had as an immature little 16 year old, because the latter is just facepalm-worthy.
I'm confused where did my post go? What are the guidelines to commenting here?
On another note I feel that Dave makes the best argument.
The wrapup about why people hate on things is both insightful, and probably dead on. Of course the words would mean more if you didn't take any and every opportunity to hate on the Halo fans, Gears fans, and in general anyone who has made MS's gaming division even mildly successful, even in THIS very video.
But all in all I can't discount your overall point. And personally I'd like to own a Kinect. Not for games because it all looks like tech demos and shovelware at this point. But I'd love the opportunity to bark orders at my Xbox.
Great episode, even if I'm pretty sure that motion control is going to end up a gimmick anyway. We'll see how it goes.
I'm curious if you'll ever bring up some of the more story-driven, less hardcore games for the other two consoles, stuff that Bioware(Mass Effect), Bethesda(Fallout 3 Oblivion), Obsidian and Square-Enix(Nier) have come out with. I don't just mean just RPGs either. Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 is definitely worth looking at, as are Quantic Dream's two masterpieces, Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Just thought I'd throw some ideas your way. While Nintendo may have the most toy-like games, I sometimes wonder if you're allowing your paradigm of 'games are toys' to block out some of these more adult entries into the industry.
I hope you keep doing Game OT, because it's awesome! Keep up the good work!
If you don't like first person shooter games so much, then why not do a video about how they can "improve".
If you don't like first person shooter games so much, then why not do a video about how they can "improve".
You really want to hear how a Nintendofile would "improve" an FPS? I'm sorry but a Yoshi level isn't going to improve Halo in the slightest. And Gears already had one only it was called a Brumak level. Either way, I think you're barking up the wrong tree friend.
I'm with you though. I'd like to have a little less Halo/Gears/FPS bile in Bob's videos.
@ Blayne
Thank you. You want to be REALLY mind screwed? Look up his video about kirby. It's all about how he succumed to peer pressure and dissed on the kirby games because he didn't like how the main character looks.
Apparently he does not see that rather salient parallels.
The Kirby video was perhaps the best episode of Game Overthinker. Ever. It had insight, a good message at the end, yes, did bash the 14 year olds on Xbox Live, but didn't classify everyone as them for simply liking shooters, and most importantly, humility.
I know but it really pisses me off the way he takes every opportunity he can to praise Nintendo and everything they've done, while he bashes first person shooters simply for existing. And while he claims "hardcore" gamers judge things "unfairly", he sure does judge first
person shooters harshly. And whats worse, he really doesn't give any legit reasons for hating shooters. "They're all the same", thats all? Maybe I'd respect you're opinion alot more if you at least gave some real LEGIT reasons for hating shooters.
Ok, maybe I'm missing the point here, because I never though of Bob as someone who "hates shooters just because they exist", or even hates them at all. If I am not mistaken, Bob had nothing but praise for BioShock, and his criticism towards Call of Duty 4 had a VERY good, solid reason behind it (single player campain was too short). I don't know where this whole "BOB UR A JERK CUZ U HATEZ TEH SHOOTERZ" came from, but it doesn't correspond to the majority of The Game Overthinker videos.
That being said, I still think Bob has demonstrated (and still does) an uncanny prejudice towards certain types of gamer ("hardcore" or not, I don't care), and that prejudice is of similar nature to the one he portraits Nintendo fans as being a victim of. Of course, I am referering to the whole Bob impersonation of a "hardcore" gamer saying that Kirby is "GAAAAAY" with that ridiculous demented tone. And that, I think, is pathetic and not funny at all.
Also, Bob - as the Game Overthinker - needs to tone down the preaching of how nerds should or shouldn't behave. As far as I am concerned, no one elected him as a teacher or an authority on the matter. If he thinks that nerd behavior in general is somewhat having a negative effect on his life, he should deal with it alone. Personally, I think this is more of a case of Messiash Complex then everything else.
Oh, but I'm sure he said in his A Tale Of Two Games video and I quote "I don't even like first person shooters, and this is probably about as good as they can get right now(referring to Modern Warfare 2). And he constantly states that the Halo series is "overrated". He also falsely accuses them of all being "samie rust colored FPS's. Look, just because they "look" the same on the surface, does not mean there are the same. But he also harshly judges the people who play first person shooters. Just so you know Bob, everyone is NOT a douchebag on Xbox Live. Seriously, I played Modern Warfare 2 regularly, and I have rarely encountered any douchebags on Xbox Live.
LOL all the comments barking orders about what videos to make.
Seems like his opinions are as popular as ever, considering all the comments.
@Dave
My feeling is that Bob is starting to grate a little bit on my nerves on his constant Xbox-Hardcore gamer joke bashing, mainly because I myself as an gamer and an Otaku share many if at least around 90% of Bob's interests if I can make a reasonable geuss only lacking solidarity in the movie geek department (I like just about everything and have low standards, I like it when Bob explains the importance of movies, genres, directors etc but I don't go out of my way to watch old movies).
But I like Halo, I like FPS's, I tend to prefer more realistic ones like Flash Point to Haloesque arcade shooters but I do appreciate them when they have a solid story which Halo has.
Halo interests me because of its Ender's Gamesque story if you've read the books, I do not know if Bob has ever read them or not but if he hasn't it may explain some of which he doesn't understand.
If he has read it (skeptical as apparantly the Halo legends story provided to him was apparantly the first time he's heard of it) it would be nice for some sort of concession on that front that as a story it satisfies those of us who like military thriller stories like the Posleen Wars, Ender's Game, Starship Troopers etc.
of course as shooters go I really prefer realism and is why I love Project Reality and wish some mainstream company would produce something like it without sucking like with Dragon Rising.
As for why people 'HATE' the Kinect, I have no bloody idea, 90% of the internet is stupid, and so are 90% of the comments so you can discount about 90% of it.
Now as for Motion control for the Xbox, I personally dislike Motion control in a Yahtzeesque sort of way, its a gimmicky contrivance shoehorned into games where the Gamecube controller is better suited for it.
But I "Love" the idea of a FPS with motion control with you standing with a gun attachment to the Kinnect Y-Mote or whatever its called using the IRV motion tracking so that you can have realistic combat movements in a FPS.
I would get it for that.
Because FPS's are the kind of game you can't play slouched and we already saw something similar in House.
However in conclusion, I really wish Bob would lay off the Halo crowd bashing, yes the 12 year olds who scream the lower f bomb in your ears are douches, and sometimes the rest of us can get overly excited during a match.
But many of us ARE JUST LIKE YOU! We like D&D, we like Anime, we like geeky stuff, but we also like our grey and brown GRIMDARK FPS's too!
Why can't we have our cake and eat!? Play and enjoy Halo, gears of War or God of War without haviong to be bashed as the people who used to beat us up in High School!?
Nintendo making only minigame collections was never a realistic scenario. For one thing, it ignored the fact that Nintendogs and Brain Training didn't prevent Nintendo from making Advance Wars and New Super Mario Bros. For another, Nintendo's hardcore lineup at the time of launch was as good as it had ever been; within a year of release we had new Zelda, Metroid, and Mario titles, and Smash Bros dropped a few months later. 2007 to early 2008 is the single best year of quality Nintendo's ever produced for the hardcore gamer. If anything, the period after that time proved the hardcore doubters somewhat right, as Nintendo entered the holiday season with nothing more compelling than Animal Crossing, with secondary and tertiary hardcore franchises like Star Fox and Kirby nowhere in sight. Thankfully, this E3 has shown that was a standard Nintendo drought such as we saw on the gamecube and N64.
@ Blayne. Preaching is fine. My issue is that he regularily does the very things he admonishes others for doing. Hell, even his typical hardcore gamers impression "GAAAAYYY" is somehting he himself has done. Go look up his comments on the wolverine trailer regarding gambit's presence.
The MW2 review is especially notable, since when you consider the sins bob routinely accuses FPS games (and their players) of being guilty of, with a special emphasis on Halo, because MW2 is guilty of ALL of them. I get the sense that he decides what he will like before having experienced it using criteria known only to himself but I'm betting "reminding him of his childhood" is a big one. It explains the wqhole prejudice angle as well. And the prejudice is the big problem. I mean, does anyone have any illusion as to whether the next spiderman movie will get a good review? Regardless of quality we know he'll bash it because it doesn't have sam raimy and he has decided he hates it.
as for tha halo expanded universe, he has implies he's read fall of reach without ever saying it. I'm thinking he hasn't given in the halo legends review he went on about hwo subversive it was to have a female spartan when ardent halo fans (and anyone from a culture with gender politics advanced beyond the 1970s or modern day japan) saw it coming miles away, if only for the factthat there are like a dozen of them in the books.
My problem with both Sony and Microsoft is that they think that they have to copy what Nintendo does just compete. Look, all three companies have something that the others don't have (or have at least better than the others). Nintendo has the innovative games, Microsoft has the online support (most of the time, looking at the hack job MW2 was), and Sony has the far superior graphics. I don't know why everyone thinks that they need to copy the Wii, just copy the one thing that Nintendo has done for years; create characters that KIDS can actually like. The "Heroes" of Microsoft and Sony (Master Chief, Kratos, etc.) are all for the muscle headed adults really. If they really want to make money, then need a mascot that kids love. A.k.a., a Mario or Sonic (old school Sonic btw) type of figure.
WOW, Bob. Just WOW.
You wanna know why I hate Kinect so much? 1) You have to stand in order to use it. 2) Only 2 players at once.
And you might say, "Oh, you don't HAVE to buy it.". But you know what? Microsoft basically PISSED on gamers at E3 by pandering to the casual crowd.
Yeah, Nintendo's E3 was great this year. But why was it great? Because it finally was about gamers again. Because after four years of pissing on gamers, Nintendo said, "Y'know what? We've totally neglected the reason why were able to release the Wii - the hardcore gamers." And frankly, it's about time. My Wii has been gathering dust for years..... YEARS. I haven't been this excited over a Nintendo E3 conference in about 5 years.
And it's not like it's the motion controls and the casual gaming that got us mad. Sony successfully demonstrated that you can release a motion controller that satisfies the casual AS WELL as the hardcore. MS didn't even think of doing that.
Instead of releasing game footage for new titles and announcing exclusivity deals, they totally focus on casual gamers while only displaying game footage and games that we've already seen and know about.
It isn't Kinect that's pissing me off. It's Microsoft's obvious (and poor) pursuit to capture some of the sweet cash that the Wii made.
You know, I've been noticing that Killzone 3 seems to be improving on the things you bitch about on first person shooters. For one, the guys at Guerrilla are increasing the level variety and color scheme. The level they showed off at E3 was an arctic landscape, and they final game will include a lethal alien jungle, nuclear wastelands and also some space battles. Also, they hired an external writer to focus on only writing the storyline so as to give a fresh perspective to the story. So it seems they spent MORE than 25 cents worth of writing. So respond to this if thats NOT good enough for you and if your still gonna hate this like you do every other shooter except Bioshock and Modern Warfare 2. But also respond to me if you may like this and are going to try it when it comes out on Feb. 2011.
You know how you said in your A Tale of Two Games video, you said that Modern Warfare 2 was about as good as first person shooters can get, are you actually saying that MW2 is better than Bioshock? You may not be saying that directly, but you're implying it. Say what what you will about Bioshock, but it is just as much fps game as MW2 is. Bioshock is a first person shooter, end of story.
Mr. Chipman, Might I suggest you get your definitions straight on what is a Hardcore Gamer or not so you don't infuuriate everyone and look like a mad hypocrite. They are a smal minority and while I have agreed with you for quite some tiem now, this time I beleive it is time to get your facts straight and stop living in Nintendoland. I'm a Nintendo fanboy but I can name a huge list of things I want a Playstation for. Perhaps you should quit putting Nintendo on the pedestal it deserves and start giving it real critisisms and giving the PS3 and Xbox real prraise.
I beg of you, please, just, take a look at this: http://thatonerantinggeek.blogspot.com/2010/07/geek-rant-topic-03-hardcore-gamers-or.html andmake your next video an evaluation or re-evaluation on what exactly you think ahardcare gamer is, what one really is, and what the false ones are becuase as far as I can tell, the guys you rag aon are a demographic that only THINK they are the hardcore gamer when in all actuality the real hardcore gamers are the inteligent ones who are being marginalized.
So quit controversy mongering and start overthinking again, or you're making yourself no better than Glenn Beck. I mean ha-sheesh, your analysis of why gamers hate the Kinect couldn't be any more incorrect, it's almost saddening that it's the conclusion you've come to. it may have been the solution at one point it's not now.
Also, so shooters aren't your thing and they're insanely popular. So? That doesn't mean they're all the same, they just happen to share a genre a lot of them are similar. I tend to enjoy your work in movies and video games but you really have been grating lately. You are, unsurprisingly, out of touch with who exactly you're commenting on.
The best summary of e3. Microsoft was hit with a swarm of tomatoes. Nintendo cleaned up and gave everyone real entertainment. Then Sony came on and weren't hit with the same fate as Microsoft because the audience ran out of tomatoes...
Actually sir, let's go over the negatives of kinect.
It makes you look dumb.
It costs a fucking lot.
Anyone who ever cared already has a wii and doesn't need to spend what, $400? for an even more awkward piece of shit that might not even work (did they ever fix the issue with black people?)
And along with kinect, microsoft directly copied several of Nintendo's "casual" titles. And did you see that kinectimals presentation from E3? CREEPY AS FUCK. That doesn't make me want it. that makes me want to run away.
This is going to sound stupid but could we stop marginalizing 360 gamers for a minute? Yes I know that most of the frat boys own the 360 but SOME of us are decent people who got the 360 because we were on a limited budget, the 360 shared titles with a lot of 360 games and at the time I couldn't afford the high end pc required to play them. Without the 360 I would have never gotten to play Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fable II, Deadrising (Okay that one wasn't PC but it is still a fun game) Mass Effect 1&2, Bioshock 1&2, and a whole host of other games that either weren't released for the PS3 immediately or were never released for the PC and the only other alternative at the time was to splurge on a fancy new PC. So I guess I am asking if maybe the people like me could get a crow bar of seperation from the frat tards you typically associate with the 360, and remember not all of us who have the 360 own multiple copies of boring Gun Grey FPSs.
As for the kinect issue itself. I don't mind it unless the triple A WRPGs and other games I have an interest in start requiring me to shill out $150 dollars to play the Kinect, like for instance... Fable III was thinking of doing. Luckily even Molyneux realized that this might not be the best idea ever and so that has to be worth something. Also yes, I am looking forward to Fable III it is bright colorful the gameplay is typically fun and while the story of 2 was incredibly retarded the additions in 3 will help me survive if Molyneux puts another grimdark story in bright fantasy land so yeah...
I know you probably won't read this but could we decent RPG nerds get that crowbar of seperation from the FPS nuts that use the 360?
Bob sounded surprisingly enthusiastic about GoldenEye.
Given how he's not a big FPS fan and he always calls it like he sees it, I'm a little surprised. If I asked him about it, I'd bet that he would say something about GoldenEye coming out when FPS weren't bland and unoriginal.
Motion control doesn't have staying power for two main reasons.
1. It slows down the process between thinking "I want this" and experiencing "this" on-screen. It takes longer to swing your arm than it does to twitch your finger.
2. Your actions have no weight. You might as well have a pretend swordfight with pretend swords or play tennis with pretend balls.
Both 1 and 2 cause motion control to feel uncanny and awkward. While there are games that can take advantage of the technology and the technology itself is well made, it isn't the future.
Not until full body, 5 sense immersive VR interfaces anyways.
One thing I don't like about the arguments that go against Kinect is "it's just ripping off the wiimote."
Let's just look at it like this.
Remember when discs were space-age technology as far as console were concerned as companies deciding to go disc-only were walking a pretty thin line that anyone would say was too damn fucking risky? Then the ps1 happened.
Remember when everyone tried their hand at internet gaming for the home consoles and it all failed except when Microsoft did it for the original Xbox?
Now, Nintendo comes out with a wireless, motion tracked controller.
It's called the next logical step. It's just that. We're taking steps at improving the overall technology. I bet by the next generation motion tracked controllers will be a STANDARD in each one just as an online service and wireless controllers are now.
No one's copying anyone. They're seeing that Nintendo took a risky step forward and just so happened to be a the right time, much like when the playstation came around or when Xboxlive did. Right time, right risks.
The other companies aren't trying to cash-in on Nintendo's luck [though that is obviously a small part of it, it is a competitive market after-all] they're just riding the wave, and going along with the evolution of the home console technology.
One thing I would like to add: if anyone's ripping off anyone, Sony is ripping off Nintendo. At least MS took an old idea [a la eyetoy] and tried it with modern technology to try and improve. From what I've seen from having played, it's the same old story: you need absolutely perfect room space and lighting for it to work at maximum potential. Otherwise, it's like trying to maneuver a virgin who is too shy to give you feedback, but who also doubles up as a fucking minefield and math problem at the same time.
Yeah. That's what metaphor I'm going with.
Post a Comment