/v/ - Video Games

>Was this game patient zero

not sure if it's patient zero but it's certainly fucking up there and of course it helped push in-game exposition hard as fuck. I don't know why the fuck people thought standing in a room waiting for an NPC to open the door was more immersive or some shit, especially when the characters constantly look to gordan for input that he can't give. At the time people viewed valve as some incredible underdog company or some shit when they barely separated themselves from AAA titles at all

>discord will kill steam in your lifetime

🔯

🔯▶

🔯

🔯🔄

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>long, boring first part of the game where you can only walk around and listen to the story

This isn't inherently bad, slow starts can work very well for establishing setting or tone. In any case, HL1 also opened with a low-intensity section. If you really want something worthwhile to complain about it should be Black Mesa East.

>inconclusive ending

HL2 ended exactly the same as HL1, the Gman steals you away right after you complete your task. And the cliffhanger ending is as old as time itself.

>>15755100

>HL1 also opened with a low-intensity section

which people complained about because you had to sit through it on replays of the game, it was a lot worse in 2 because it happened more frequently. In game exposition isn't bad at base level but if it constantly stops the player I would rather just have a skippable cutscene. "trapped in a room" quickly turned into the AAA favorite of walky-talkies where you're forced to move slowly as the dialogue happens which even being stuck in a room is better than since you could put an easter egg in the room or something.

I'm convinced devs rely on walky-talky segments now because they huff their own shit out of the toilet bowl. They're so absorbed in their writing that they make sure players can't possibly miss it or skip it. That or they assume players are too stupid to take in a games story they have to railroad every story segment because they assume so poorly of the player, but I'm leaning on the former

>>15755100

I don't mind a cliffhanger ending if there is eventually a definitive continuation of the story in the next game, but Episode 1 was a fucking joke that isn't relevant to the plot at all and Episode 2 didn't answer anything and made it clear that Gabe was just making this shit up as he was going on. At least in Half Life 1 you felt some sort of accomplishment for killing the alien boss. Half Life 2 ends with Gordon having to get his ass saved from an old man.

>>15755040

Then Serious Sam gets ported to Discord and I'm still not playing video games.

>>15755029

Just gotta bonk them on the head anon.

>>15755120

>which people complained about because you had to sit through it on replays of the game

No they didn't, people thought HL was the shit because it immersed people in the game so well.

>>15755040

Good.

>>15754964

Metal Gear Solid 2 game out three years earlier, so no.

>>15754964

>did half-life 2 invent cinematic game

>what is metal gear solid

Please tell me you're mixed race

>>15756904

those people are shaved apes who never replayed the game, anyone else realized that waiting on the monorail a second time was fuckin gay

>>15755040

>This jew that is confirmed to sell your data will kill this jew that also probably sells your data.

>>Good.

What changes? Now you get to use something else that you pretend you hate.

>56%

not even close if i remember right, eli is full nigger and wasn't the mom asian?

>long, boring first part of the game where you can only walk around and listen to the story.

Half Life 1 is to blame for that one. HL2 at the very least made sure not to keep you on the train and made the story section somewhat interesting.

>Protagonist is saved by a strong, independent 56%er woman on multiple occasions

I pretty sure she only saves you at the very start of the game, albeit in a horribly hamfisted manner. She also proceeds to need saving herself several times later on. Elaine Marley from monkey island is certainly a worse case of this shit which predates half life.

>scripted as fuck events (i.e. you can't progress in the game until the combine soldier blows up a certain grate)

Again Half Life 1 is more to blame for that, though Half Life 2 exacerbated the interactive cutscene shit which its story segments.

>final level basically plays itself because it gives you a super weapon

It's a pretty common trope for a game to give you an intentionally OP weapon in it's final parts, HL2 didn't invent that.

Since this is a patient zero thread for shit things in vidya

I recently just discovered that patient zero for chromatic aberration might be God of War on the fucking PS2

If you pay really close attention you can see colored edges around certain models that should be there but then if you use PCSX2 to increase the resolution with the right settings and 480p mode (meaning the ones that don't remove half the post effects to prevent the game from shitting itself) you can see it clear as day absolutely fucking everywhere.

>>15759524

TLOU was a very serious offender with people praising its story telling even though it was just lots of walky talkies. Again I have no idea why people like that shit so much

>>15754964

You could certainly make the case for it, yeah. Just compare the gameplay–HL was extremely fast paced with an emphasis on movement, whereas 2 slowed everything down, made it more cover based, presumably so they could have more "cinematic" looking levels.

>>15759524

>They weren't baked into the whole experience like they are with current games.

There's almost no difference between the way HL2 handled pseudo cutscene and modern games do, I mean the only real ones I can think of is that it still allows you to move around normally (but not to progress until it's done) and that it generally still keeps going even if you do nothing but you're still basically forced to listen to things you don't care about until the game allows you to progress.

>>15759601

You're misunderstanding what I was trying to say, I meant they weren't so prevalent throughout the main section of the game like you would see in games today.

"cinematic experiences"

THE GAME HAD NO FUCKING CUT SCENES

MGS was the game that started this shit

>>15759610

True, but if you look at the progression between HL1 and 2 it just seems like it was bound to happen.

>>15759617

what the media considers "cinematic" isn't cutscenes, it's "muh in game storytelling" and similar tripe. They consider a walky talky section cinematic when a cutscene actually allowed for cinematic techniques to be used AND allowed for the player to skip them if they so desired

>>15759617

Yeah it fucking does. Cutscenes doesn't mean literal video clips, it means parts where you ain't doing shit but listen to another NPC clapping their fucking mouth.

SKIPPABLE CUTSCENES >>>>> WALKING SIMULATOR.

>>15759617

It didn't, but so did CoD.

What OP was talking about is the fact that it didn't have the sandbox nonlinear shooter gameplay seen in Far Cry, Deus Ex, and Doom. Instead, it had linear non-interactive sets that play whenever you move in a different area.

>>15759634

>>Doom

>>sandbox nonlinear

>>15759542

>Walky-Talky

That's a good word to explain a lot of these sections, where you just follow a path (sometimes it does it for you) while dialogue is spouted from the NPCs for "story-telling"

It depends I suppose.

The first successful "cinematic" experience that laid part of the groundwork for this sort of thing was probably Myst but if you really want to dig in, the oldest game that tried to be a movie that I'm aware of would be Spaceship Warlock.

>>15761256

none of those games he listed are non-linear, that phrase has lost all meaning thanks to faggots like himself. Linearity is also not a bad thing.

>>15761342

Oh, the Journeyman Project may be older, to lazy to check, it was defiantly more successful at the time.

Metal Gear Solid for sure. HL1 could count too but its far more gameplay compared to MGS, plus the opening with the lab was something new and exciting. Going to work and fucking around with vending machines, coffee etc.

MGS is minutes upon minutes of cutscenes and then you get to play in a little room which results in you moving onto more cutscenes. This is the first half hour of the game alone.

You never heard of Final Fantasy 7? Completely sold based off of commercials and CGI-cutscenes.

Every time i replay this i skip the first 2 or 3 chapters

Fun game

Masively overrated tho

Still 9/10

>>15761516

Hey that game is fun

>>15761997

>>15761993

Hi reddit

>>15759617

MGS was actually fun with its cinematic though not failed director tier shit.

>>15769340

> not failed director tier shit

Kojima has literally said he got into games because he couldn't get into the film industry.

>>15755120

>you had to sit through it on replays of the game

No you didn't. You could just load the right map and go. Modern games don't allow you to do that.

>>15769573

I guess everyone who wanted to be an action movie star but ended up following a different career path is just a failed actor.

>>15762279

To be fair the opening chapters of Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are interesting approximately twice and then it becomes tedious shit you never want to witness again. But you're forced to.

wasn´t patient zero as it came to AAA developers

>>15769610

If they proceed to pick a career path where they try their best to still pretend they are an action movie star, then yeah.

I honestly think if they want to take the cinematic route they should just do what the king kong game did. It worked well I thought.

>>15769654

That's why Half-Life 2 let's you select the desired chapter after clicking on "New Game".

Delphine's early adventures - Future Wars, Operation Stealth, and Cruise for a Corpse - were pioneers in the "cinematic experience" thing (but in a good way). Then they made Another World and Flashback, which solidified the "cinematic platformer" genre.

And then they made Shaq Fu.

>>15755120

You just skipped right to the end of the tram ride. The bigger complaint would be the entire reactor sequence. It takes about 10 minutes and nothing interesting happens. But that's solved the same way.

>>15755174

HL2 ends with Gordon blowing up the control tower. He rescues city 17 and then goes into stasis. HL2's bigger problem is the episodes are just tech demos.

>>15757399

Alyx is portrayed as a young woman in her mid-twenties of Afro-Asian descent

She's based on a woman called Jamil Mullen. You should look her up, Alyx's face isn't deformed, the woman she's based off of looks more alien than bullsquigs do.

>>15759542

That's Gears of war. It was the first big game to make you walk down hallways as people talk.

>>15759592

That's the change in tech. HL2 is a tech demo for the physics model. If you build a game around a grav gun you need to have things to use a grav gun on.

The shift towards including consoles in the FPS design stages also slowed things down a lot. Controllers couldn't keep up so they had to lower the speed all round.

>>15759524

>I feel that games like The Last of Us and Dear Ester have more to do with narrative-focused games than HL2 did

This. Dear Esther is the progenitor of all walking sims (or at the very least the one that made it popular) and while Last of Us was the game that made the walkie-talky parts popular, Gears of War had similar scenes (although way shorter ones).

>>15770009

Walking sims existed long before Dear Ester. Myst would be the earliest I'd care to remember. Most walking sims have some minor puzzle elements and are other wise just story and graphics to oogle.

I remember playing experimental games long before Dear ester too. Nothing in them but a big ass empty world to look at.

>David Wolf: Secret Agent

How about this one, it seems to fit this theme and it's pretty damn old. Plot-centered, tons of cutscenes, you play during the action sequences but otherwise it's a strictly linear movie-like experience.

>>15769986

I forgot to include Alyx's mothers name. It's worth a reply.

<Her mother, Azian Vance, who is of Asian descent,

>>15770044

A cinematic game is like CoD where everything is laid out to be a scene from a movie. You're on a rollercoaster ride where things happen around you and you just run through them. It's different to a game full of FMV or a linear game experience.

A good example is the nuke scene in CoD4 or the ending where you're injured and slowly crawl to get the gun and kill the bad guy.

You need to understand the eras these games were made in not just the mechanics. It's why HL2 isn't cinematic even though it uses the formula for it's story telling, while CoD is. Use Bioshock as a measuring stick, it's the least cinematic a cinematic game can get. Once you cross over Bioshock you enter into cinematic games.

FMV games in the early 90's. Maybe even old adventure games. This isn't a recent phenomenon. Developers have always been chasing daddy film industry.

Also, cinematic elements aren't inherently bad, and can enhance a game. It's only now that "cinematic" goes hand in hand with stripping back the gameplay to brainless simpleton levels.

Prince of Persia, and that whole subgenre were also known as "cinematic platformers" once.

>>15770114

>>15770105

>>15770118

Lurk moar you dumb fucking prick.

>>15770150

Nice response.

>>15769986

>HL2's bigger problem is the episodes are just tech demos.

That's more of a condition for all mainline HL games.

>HL

<Look at all the crazy shit the Quake engine can do

>HL2

<Look at all the crazy shit the Source engine can do

>HL2EP1

<Look at all the pretty lighting effects also HDR

>HL2EP2

<Look at all the huge maps we can make and also the special physics in cinematics

Honestly, as tedious as all the cinematic bullshit is in HL2, at the very least you can skip it by using the chapter select or strategically placed saved games. Nowadays that's not even possible, since it's all about checkpoint saving. Even then, modern games have turned the cinematic motherfuckery to eleven so even if you had the ability to save whenever you wanted it would be irrelevant.

>>15770169

quake was literally a tech demo

>>15770214

So was Doom. id did so well because it took academic theories and then applied them to the real world. FPS games were easy to fit within those systems so they made FPS games.

>>15770169

TF2 was Valve's ingame store test and Lost coast is the commentary/HDR test. CS:Go was the skins test.

It's nothing to do with HL specifically.

Using "tech demo" as a derisive term is pretty stupid. A lot of all time classics went out of their way to push tech. What matters is if they were fun and are still fun, which the Half Life games are, even if shitting on them seems to be /v/'s hipster flavour of the month.

>>15757399

If the mom was asian how was she full nigger you goddamn idiot?

>>15770264

You don't even undestand what tech demo means. It means it's just showing off new technology without the content and/or gameplay to make it a good game. Which is basically what HL2 was. It was a huge downgrade from the first in essentially every way that relates to gameplay. Terrible guns and gunplay, slow and constant unskippable interruptions.

>hurr if you don't like this one popular yet awful game you're just a hipster

You're an absolute retard.

>>15754964

Unfortunately no and I get the feeling that neither is Metal Gear Solid as some anons want to push it. If anything, MGS brought that kind of thing to people's attention, especially with MGS2 and Fukushima's writing but Half-Life is the patient zero for the FPS genre for sure, which is ultiamtely what grabbed the western investors attention who wanted to push the cinematic experience outside of cutscenes that ultimately fucked the games.

>>15762279

>Defending anything made by Gaybe while shitting on the japanese

Go back to SA you goon.

>>15770264

>Being this much of a retard

>/v/ is one person

<I shiggy diggy

soon you retards will start hating duke nukem because of its realistic environments and scripted sequences.

>Patient zero

You're close. It was the first one even though it was good.

>>15770325

For HL2? Sure, I can see that criticism, given that there were downgrades from the previous title. But when you get something like >>15770169 where you're just listing off whatever new tech each title had to show off. It seems less "tech demo" and more "new games have new tech, what a shocker".

>>15761346

The levels in Doom are very non-linear. Similar to fags who only do the main quest, just because you personally made a beeline to each key in a level does not mean it is linear. There are entire sections of levels behind optional doors that you don't even need to open before hitting the exit switch.

>>15770400

The levels in Doom are garbage. Romero made streamlined, point A to point B levels which held the player's hand and directed them to the ending, not just because he made the majority of the first episode, but because that's his style of level design. Sandy's levels were atrocious messes, maze-like but not in a good way. Tom Hall's levels were the only good ones in layout, but they were often ruined by Sandy Petersen's tabletop design choices, which make no sense in a computer game of any genre. Doom isn't remembered for level design, it's remembered for being a technical achievement and for its impeccable game design: all the weapons feel and play right, the enemies synergize with eachother incredibly well, the key system just works. But the levels that were shipped with the game are honestly pretty bad.

>>15770325

I like HL2. I think it complements HL1. But that's irrelevant, because people are shitting on HL1 now too.

>>15770452

It's not "pretty bad" in general, they are hit-and-miss. Doom 2 was worse. Romero had optional sections to his levels too; I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

>>15770332

>J"RPG"s were never good.

>>15770727

I really dislike seeing people hold Doom on a pedestal when it comes to level design, because it had fairly poor level design. Fan modifications outdo the stock levels many times over. Later games in Doom's style also outdid Doom's levels, games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, etc.

>>15770749

>Fan modifications outdo the stock levels many times over.

Yeah, 25 years of hindsight will do that. But at the same time, it's disingenuous to say that no Doom levels were good at all, especially relative to modern FPS levels.

>>15770749

>Later games in Doom's style also outdid Doom's levels, games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, etc.

They had more and better tools to make levels to begin with so it's not surprising that they would be better.

Although if you look at modern takes on what a shooter of that era should be you quickly realize that tools aren't shit without talented people using them.