New Testingstan

well if you're not saying 'xyz horribly broken game is good just because i like it' i think you're plenty objective enough
i mean a few hours ago we were laughing about all the not-very-good games we've had a good time with
some people are unable to do that; if it was fun, it must be good right

tbh its bizarre to me because like mindjack is pretty bad, but has an interesting idea and can be fun... but you'd never say it was 'good', even if you could still recommend it because its fun

Aaron wrote:

starku wrote:so if the game 'generally works' ie the buttons work and there are pictures on the screen and little messages

but quest scripting is fucked, there are dozens of semi-random game-ending bugs, the fundamental mechanics are stupid, the setting bland or whatever

its all good right??? fun! no 'objectively bad' elements because you had some quantum of enjoyment

except for y'know all of those indisputable problems

dynasty warriors has no bugs, very few glitches, and is stable (should be been polished for 20 years lol) but it's still fundamentally broken with lazy mechanics and all kinds of dumbness so saying it isn't 'objectively bad' is fucking dumb

maybe people should just accept they have no standards

for my part i have certainly accepted this :V

I don't consider any of that to be stable. Game ending glitches especially, why hello FO:NV

But I'm not sure what makes a game objectively good or bad either.

my standards aren't terribly high

if a game's controls make the game harder to play than it should be, i consider it objectively bad

man that shit with saints 3 taking out contorl options for no reason

what the fuuuuuuuuuuuuck

i didn't really have any trouble with saints 3 controls

but i almost always play with the default settings

yeah well you aren't using a ps3 controller like poor crazedwraith

and seriously there's no reason why you can't have fully mappable controls on console anyway
but locking it into one control set it just bullshit

halo woudl be unplayably stupid if you coudln't change to 'modern fps control' :V

starku wrote:yeah well you aren't using a ps3 controller like poor crazedwraith

and seriously there's no reason why you can't have fully mappable controls on console anyway
but locking it into one control set it just bullshit

halo woudl be unplayably stupid if you coudln't change to 'modern fps control' :V

yeah, locking out the option to map controls is lazy, but i wouldn't rate a game objectively bad because of that

(unlike some pc gamers lol)

ah but what if the only controls available used ps3 tiny crappy shoulders for tasks they aren't suited for

i mean its be fair to say that's more an issue with the specific port

that's a bit harder to call

i prefer the 360's controller scheme but i don't mind the ps3 layout either

so mark borrowed madden 2012 for the ps3 and i played it a lil today

for the first fifteen minutes i was like "this is ok but i don't feel like im in control at all"


turns out i wasn't in control

i was using the (much superior) dpad

but this game apparently only controls the action with teh fucking sticks

ugh



then again if the stick was where the dpad is like on a sex box or something i might use the stick

still i liek mah dpadz

teo managed to make a thread about a fucking MOON BASE into a snoozefest

starku wrote:so if the game 'generally works' ie the buttons work and there are pictures on the screen and little messages

but quest scripting is fucked, there are dozens of semi-random game-ending bugs, the fundamental mechanics are stupid, the setting bland or whatever

its all good right??? fun! no 'objectively bad' elements because you had some quantum of enjoyment

except for y'know all of those indisputable problems

I would agree that "semi-random game-ending bugs" is a bad thing. "[Q]uest scripting is fucked" as well, depending on what you mean I guess (I'm not up on your gamer lingo, sir).

But I'm not sure "fundamental mechanics are stupid" is as indisputable as you posit. I mean take the 'space shooters' thing when lack of Newtonian physics gets brought up. Is this an objective failure? I'm sure you'd have plenty of people who say yes, and plenty who don't give a shit about it.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest that X-Wing games controlled like a normal Earth-based flight sim minus the ground and gravity, for example. Nor does "fly to point Y 15km away" bug me because you'd do that in normal flight sims anyway. I mean sure you can design your missions to start you off in immediate firing range of your objective but then you'd have people complain it's not "realistic" enough (well as realistic as space fighters with FTL can be) or whatevs. For some people like the journey and shit.

well apparently even Wing Commander didn't like the journey because the autopilot cutscene button existed since the beginning

adr wrote:teo managed to make a thread about a fucking MOON BASE into a snoozefest

And the "Apple is evil" thread has turned into chest beating over who's the better human.

RogueIce wrote:But I'm not sure "fundamental mechanics are stupid" is as indisputable as you posit.

and i think you're a giant shitwit who just doesn't like being called a non-critical flip flopper
ps if you think the market for newtonian vs non-newtonian is even 20/80 you are a complete moron

starku wrote:

RogueIce wrote:But I'm not sure "fundamental mechanics are stupid" is as indisputable as you posit.

and i think you're a giant shitwit who just doesn't like being called a non-critical flip flopper

You're wrong. I fully embrace being a non-critical flip flopper.

Why else would I play Hearts of Iron games?

starku wrote:ps if you think the market for newtonian vs non-newtonian is even 20/80 you are a complete moron

I have no idea what the market for newtonian vs non-newtonian is. 50/50? 60/40? 99/1?

Look, point is that I fully and freely admit that, when it comes to games, I am easily pleased far more often than I'm not.

Which is kinda the point behind why I asked what I did. Because aside from clear and obvious game-breaking bugs, promised features that were not delivered upon, or other things that just flat don't work, I wanted to know what you (and others) thought made games objectively bad.

Hopefully in more detail than "stupid and lazy mechanics" because that's a little vague. Plus I don't really play a whole lot of games so I don't have tons and tons of experience of my own to draw on.

RogueIce wrote:Look, point is that I fully and freely admit that, when it comes to games, I am easily pleased far more often than I'm not.

Which is kinda the point behind why I asked what I did. Because aside from clear and obvious game-breaking bugs, promised features that were not delivered upon, or other things that just flat don't work, I wanted to know what you (and others) thought made games objectively bad.

Hopefully in more detail than "stupid and lazy mechanics" because that's a little vague. Plus I don't really play a whole lot of games so I don't have tons and tons of experience of my own to draw on.

how about final fantasy 13? "Let's have you do nothing but grind grind grind on samey enemies while strolling down a samey corridor for 15 hours?" good enough for lazy mechanics?

maybe starcraft 2? "Let's take the same game we made 15 years ago and just throw in some new sprites!"

LA Noire? "Mash A everywhere to investigate"

Deus Ex HR? "Let's make the non lethal weapon the second most powerful weapon in the game."

FF13 broke my fuckin' heart. I really enjoyed 12 and I had hoped they would do something similar and instead we got the most linear most inane FF ever.

adr wrote:hmmmm

the final solution of the capitalist question

what could it be?

history lesson!

so the classical answer is for the working class to educate themselves on how capitalism works, why it's bad, and what the alternatives are, then when the vast majority of everyone understands the problem they should mobilise democratically to instate a better system, and democratically take control over the government to both help organise the system shift, but also to show that this is the legitimate will of the people, so no remaining capitalist still not on board with the idea can call the army and say it's a coup, and start an armed counter-revolution

of course the camp soon split into three branches.

the anarchist and vanguardist socialists believed that the working class was too dumb to be educated or that it would take a million years for them to mobilise, and believe they, as professional revolutionaries and smart guys, should lead an armed revolution and either destroy or become the government, in the interests of the working class. these guys got really popular once lenin and his boys won the second revolution in 1917. they adored him so much that the forgot all about socialism, and started believing that state capitalism was either a necessary step towards it, or as stalinists, believed that it was socialism. this was especially stupid because even lenin didn't say state capitalism was needed to attain socialism, but that it was necessary for russia, which wasn't even a capitalist state at the time, but full of peasants, who did not take too kindly to giving their livelihood up. anyway all "socialist" states since followed this path and never achieved socialism

the other branch were the democratic socialist, social democrats, whatever they choose to call themselves, who also thought working class mobilisation would take too long and wanted to do something NOW and sought to reform capitalism to make it nicer while working towards switching to socialism gradually somehow. they quickly got popular with the masses as they promised quick fixes to everything, but for the early social democrats, this of course didn't work out very well and when their promises of reform didn't pan out, the whole movement suffered a bad rap. they recuperated a little in the early 20th century and their ideas were popular within trade unions, and then THEY TOO forgot all about socialism when a dude named Keynes came along and said "no guys you can totally make capitalism work for everyone, just gotta have lots of the right government intervention", which sounded awesome to them because now they didn't even have to do that working class shit and could remain in power. and then in the western economic boom after ww2 everyone thought it was their keynesian miracle recipe had fixed everything and marx could be thrown away, and was thrown away (keynes said he was bad man look at russia), and then in the 70s keynesian capitalism collapsed when the rest of the world started to catch up, and everyone were so embarrassed no one EVER spoke about keynes again. but neither did the social democrats remember their roots and went for monetary reforms made popular by reaganomics instead, which have never worked as advertised either and caused even hilariouser crises.

then state capitalism in russia collapsed too and the vanguardists were SO EMBARRASSED they didn't know what to do and were confused for a while, but now they too have largely shifted to the earlier social democratic position of keynesian capitalism, because frankly it wasn't far from their previous position anyway and lets them too continue to promise quick fixes to the system

meanwhile the marxian branch has persisted in small numbers and consistently called the other two branches stupid and rightly predicted the outcomes of everything they try

the end??????????????????????????????

Amusingly in socialist Australia Keynes is still the man.

aren't you deregulating and free trading like everyone else?

I think we're the ones with a hard on for free trade. Harper wants a deal with India and China, so we can ship more jobs oversea ala NAFTA I suppose.

Free trade = nothing to do with keynes

I don't even know who that is.