The Best Games of 2020 136
Gamasutra held a contest this year to describe what hit video games in the year 2020 would be like. Over 150 detailed entries were sent in, and they've posted the top 20. One persistent theme is the ever-present connectedness to the outside world, both in reality-based games and with multiplayer modes that are part of typical daily interactions. Quoting:
"It's just an average day at your job. Noon swings around and it's time to amble out of the cubicle farm and venture outside into the city to find some lunch. You put on your slick steel framed Hunters Glasses, place your Hunters earpiece, and with black and white Hunters Gloves on, step out of the building and onto the street. After a block suddenly your dark tinted shades switch to a red tint. A silky female voice echoes in your ear, 'Players within range. Good Hunting.' The glasses are acting as a WiFi enabled computer screen. You swivel your head to scope the scene and find someone standing out within the red crowd as a white outline. The man with the white outline is scouting the area as well, trying to find who else is in the game right now. You get within range, pack a virtual snow ball with your gloves, approach slowly, wind up and throw with all your might the virtual snow ball at the man with the white outline. 'Player Eliminated,' says the female voice, 'Uploading Statistics.'"
That different? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:That different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comment holds true only for consoles and ignores years of PC based gaming that had all that.
PCs were doing online gaming well before Goldeneye 64 came out and with the arrival of software like Gamespy, or formerly, Quakespy, we had software that could find games.
Even in Quake 1 people were developing clan skins for their characters and were able to share them so that their clan's players had their own skins. Modding and sharing content goes back even further with games like Doom having support (Alien Doom etc. anyone?).
The article talks about 11 years time, 11 years ago in 1998 we had Quake 2, and later that year we had Half-Life. Not long after I had a mobile phone with games, WAP support, a calendar, address book, calculator and so on.
Things haven't changed as much as you think in this time, they've just gotten more polish which wasn't in in the first place simply because computer hardware hand't shrunk enough to handle it. There's certainly been very little innovation in gaming in this time, merely doing the same, better. This is almost certainly because few companies want to take risks to try and do things different- they just want to stick with the tried and tested and do it better because it's safe money.
Re:Why should they be so different? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's because with more players you usually end up with a better variety of tactics and aren't stuck fighting over the same bridge/building/whatever for the whole map as well as having more different players to fight. Effectively you end up with much more variation and it becomes harder for 7 players to just camp one building.
I guess basically, some people like to snipe, some people hate snipers, some people like fast paced close quarter combat, some like to camp a room in a building, some just like a mix of all of it. With a big map and lots of players chances are you can have it all whereas in a standard game with 16 players there's nearly always a map you just hate and don't want to play because you're forced into a certain playstyle you don't enjoy.
Also, more players often means more balance, because whilst awesome players (or even cheaters for that matter) can still stand out in their kill count, they can't single handedly sway the game each and every time because they're still onlyand I've been on both sides of that. I've played games where I've been on a team that just gets repeatedly slaughtered and I've been on a team and repeatedly slaughtered, both, to me, are quite boring, I'd rather have a close battle which is challenging and hence much more rewarding.
Re:Looking at those entries ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. It was Scott Adams. And he had a point.
If you could live in an all-encompassing virtual reality world, why would you ever want to leave? You would only want to work just enough to give yourself food and pay the power bill on your holodeck. The world economy would crumble and cease to exist as we know it.
And why would you want to get married to a real wife and have real kids? They'd whine, misbehave, spend your money, and drool all over you. (And don't get me started about the kids.) You could have your very own holofamily instead.
Yes, the invention of the holodecks would spell the demise of humanity.
Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, what a load of rubbish. (Score:3, Insightful)
ledow said:
> you can't beat a keyboard/mouse combo for FPS
?!?
Let me introduce you to the Wii Zapper.
Wii Zapper, please meet Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol.
Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol, please meet:
- Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles (unfortunately v4 Wii edition doesn't work w/ a normal Zapper)
- Quantum of Solace
- House of the Dead Chop Til You Drop
- Call of Duty World at War
- Medal of Honor Heroes 2
- Call of Duty 3
- Wiiware: Onslaught
Even Link's Crossbow Training has some quite good ``Ranger'' level where one moves about in a 3D terrain to shoot enemies.
William
(whose first project after getting a Wii was to make a Zapper out of Legos, then, since that was too expensive crafted a couple at his basement workbench out of wood to give away w/ used copies of _Link's Crossbow Training_ at work --- really do need to draw up the plans for those...)
Re:Looking at those entries ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh, what a load of rubbish. (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't say you can't USE other systems. I said you can't BEAT mouse/keyboard.
- Tiny flick of the wrist and tap of a key = 180 turn (or slightly more, or slightly less, depending on your needs - 3D sound and good knowledge of the terrain make this especially useful), crouch, compensate for height difference (perfectly if you know how), straight into a headshot. You can't do that with anything except a mouse/keyboard (or extremely realistic virtual reality) setup.
- Precision movement of one pixel up and to the left while aiming at distant targets with a non-zoomed, non-autoaimed weapon.
- Finish taking out one target and move onto another without auto-aim turned on (auto-aim is an EXTRA control system) and without losing more than a single bullet in between the targets.
- Not running in straight lines towards key points (yuck!) - with mouse-precision you can actually take optimal routes, walk around obstacles etc.
You just cannot do some of the above AT ALL without a mouse. The ones you can do on a joystick or other control system are hideously limited, slower, less accurate, or all three compared to using even a £5 optical mouse. You can compensate, and when you play against someone who uses similar/same control systems, you'll do fine. But play against an experienced mouse user and you will be at a severe disadvantage. Lightguns are fine for some shooters that don't require a lot of actual movement of the player, but so was the zapper for Duck Hunt... load it up on an emulator and play with a mouse and I guarantee you will get better scores. Even some of the "classic" shooters like Operation Wolf/Thunderbolt are unrecognisable when you play them in an emulator using a mouse for the cursor - it literally goes from a frantic, difficult game, to an easy point-and-click. And when you need to MOVE and shoot, then things become a different matter entirely... you need your weakest hand to move (not your gun hand and certainly not any other gesture, e.g. leaning or using accelerometers etc., because it will be much slower than the fast-twitch muscles in your trained-typist's fingers) and with a lightgun, you are moving a large portion of your body to make it work, thus affecting fine control on your weak hand (try playing with mini-joystick and lightgun, it's quite difficult compared to the rest). A mouse means much less movement. A keyboard, although you don't think it's ideal, actually works much better than even a joystick or D-pad because you can switch from forward to backwards in a flash and have at least five or six easily accessible action buttons within close reach without needing to logically connect "A" with "reload" (the keyboard, if mapped properly to WASD etc., is an incredibly easy and incredibly OLD style of control that's been around for years for a reason).
Don't even get me started on rapidity of buying weapons in CS manually if you're a fast typer versus auto-buy scripts. They just aren't as easy or quickly customisable as doing it yourself.
I'm not a great CS player, but there's no way I can even get close to my keyboard/mouse scores on any other control system and I'm not alone.
Re:Why should they be so different? (Score:2, Insightful)
So you missed the Wii and DS, huh? The idea behind those was that more graphics don't matter as much as new inputs and genres. A plain horsepower race won't be able to happen from here on, the current "HD" market is already ruining companies with its costs, a race would mean death for everyone.
BTW, we do get bigger worlds, bigger battles but it turned out that you can only interact with so much land area and so many enemies at a time (especially in games with melee combat as the only way to fight) so the payoff is kinda low. Plus there's only so much content you can get into a game anyway so more land area mostly means more filler rather than more to see.
I think if Nintendo's control method isn't taken to the hardcore it runs the risk of eventually being just another fad, rather than an integral part of gaming.
I think the hardcore is just a loud whiny bunch with delusions of grandeur. Their lack of approval doesn't destroy something. Hell, the hardcore was gaming on computers when the NES came out and thought it was a stupidly simple system. In fact hardcore gamers tend to be luddites who deride new controls as simplified and stupid while those new controls then go on to work better for most other people and thus taking a majority of the market until the hardcore are turned into a grumpy niche and ignored, then a new hardcore arises in the new market.