rasone77 on 04 September 2008
Just read this article and thought it was funny and oh so true.
Improving Video Games
September 4, 2008 by Punch Vanderpain
As summer draws to a close, I plan to spend a lot less time outside and a lot more time with my fat ass planted firmly in front of the television playing video games. As a lazy man, I’m looking forward to this quite a bit. I do, however, have a handful of suggestions that could greatly enhance my experience. Most of these are based on stupid irritants, many of which could probably be fixed pretty easily, which makes them even more irritating. Here are a few suggestions, in no particular order:
- Allow for Improvisation:
These days games like to tout the fact that they’re non-linear and offer you the ability to solve problems in several ways, but that only goes so far. Usually the only time where designers really think about improvisation is in the scripted parts of the game. You know what I’d like to see? The ability to pick up any item from the environment and use it as a weapon. Better still, the ability to pick up anything and use it to build a barrier, or what have you, to slow the bad guys down as I make my escape. I want to be able to try to build a wall out of desks and have it fail utterly, dooming my character to be torn apart by rabid dogs. I want to be able to crush an alien’s head with a cinder block that I found lying around a construction site. Don’t make me rely on only the tools the developer saw fit to give me. - A Balance of Fantasy and Realism:
It seems like games these days are really striving for realism, which is good in a lot of ways. I want a lot of things to be realistic, like the graphics and physics. It feels good to ram a photo realistic car into a light pole and have my character fly, screaming, through the windshield. On the other hand, I like to play video games so that I can escape from reality. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to pretend to single-handedly win World War II while carrying fourteen different guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. I want something that will give me enough realism to be immersive, with enough ridiculousness to still be fun. - Creative Environments:
When I play games I notice a lot of boring, recycled objects in the environment. The worst of these are usually barrels and crates, which seem to exist solely to hold useful items for me, or explode when shot. While I like getting more health packs and ammo, it seems like there has to be a better way of distributing them than via crates and barrels. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t think of the last time I came across either a crate or barrel in real life. They’re not just lying all over the goddamn place. Just about the only place I’d expect to find one would be at a dock or in a warehouse. So why not start putting stuff in coat pockets, desks, and closets? You know, like where people in real life keep their extra shotgun shells and health packs. - Non-Irritating Advertising:
In Madden Football 09, the announcers constantly take the time to remind you that the game was brought to you “by the fine folks at EA sports.” Not only was this tremendously irritating, especially given the fact that there are EA logos on every goddamn thing in the game, but I really resent them telling me that it was “brought to me” by anyone. Bullshit! I’m the one who shelled out sixty clams for the game; you bastards didn’t bring me shit. If you want to advertise in a game, and I’m not suggesting you should, then do so a little more artistically, or at least unobtrusively. - Better AI Instead of Cheating AI:
You know what burns my ass? When the bad guys in a game have to cheat to beat me, especially since I’m not particularly good at video games. All of a sudden I go from winning the race by half a lap to struggling to get third place. Not because I fucked up and wrecked my car, or because the computer just out drove me, but because the game decided that my opponents’ cars should be allowed to go twice as fast as mine when they’re losing. If a developer can’t find a way to make the computer drive better to amp up the difficulty, then they need to find another line of work. I don’t mind losing honestly, but stuff like this ruins a game for me. - No More Male Heroes Who Look Like Chicks:
Nothing takes the fun out of shooting Nazis in the face or attacking man-eating plants with a sword than playing a hero that looks like he’s halfway through a sex change procedure. There must be some sort of demand for this, considering how many games there are featuring androgynous protagonists, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who cares for it. I don’t know why anyone would want to control a wispy-haired dude in eyeshadow and tight pants to begin with. Just give me a normal looking person and I’ll be happy. If you need to make him visually distinct, then give him an eye patch or something. - The Ability to Save Whenever I Want:
I’m a fairly busy guy, so I usually don’t have time to sit around and play a game for hours at end. When I do get a chance to play, I need to be able to stop whenever I want, and not lose my progress. I don’t think that’s a lot to ask, but many games I play require me to jump through a bunch of hoops before I can shut down, and it pisses me the hell off. Why should I have to navigate my way back to a bathroom before I save, or beat my current mission? The way I see it, not letting my save when I want is just a cheap way to make the game seem longer by forcing me to replay things. It’s pointless and irritating. Which leads me to… - Let Me Play the Game Already:
When I boot up my Playstation, I want to play a goddamn game, not look at animated logos from software companies, or read about what the ESRB thinks about the violence. I could understand making the player sit through that crap the first time they play, but after that, it’s just wasting my time. I know that video game companies spend a lot of time and money producing them, and want to masturbate their corporate identities all over everything, but give me a break. I already paid for the damn thing, didn’t I?
Okay, that about does it for now. Once the video game industry gets these taken care, of I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with another list of petty, profanity-laced grievances.
This has been Dave sayin’: “I’m probably the smartest person I know.”
