What makes a good game...

B

Buckle

It Wandered In From the Wastes
As I was falling asleep last night, for whatever reason a game popped in my head from many moons ago. The original Wing Commander Privateer. One of the greatest things about the game whas the fact you could smack talk the guys you were fighting. I can still hear the Church of Man pilots saying "Die by the very weapons you adore!"

Thus what I like about that game as well as Fallout, Arcanum, etc. is the fact that the makers did a great job putting you into the environment one way or another. You can lose yourself in the game. When I play games like NWN, in spite of the voice talent, I feel like I am just running errands for people I don't care about. Perhaps it is the music, plot, voice talent, or graphics but something has got to make me feel like I want to be in the game. Hopefully, Fallout 3 has smack talk with some voice talent.
 
Hasn't there been a thread similar to this recently?

Ah, nevermind, I always enjoy these anyway.

I have never played Wing Commander Privateer, but have heard good reports of what the game is like all round. The thing that made NWN bearbale, was in fact the depth of the plot and the music. Both put together, create an awesome atmosphere, similar to Fallout.

Hopefully, Fallout 3 has smack talk with some voice talent.
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FO3 forum anyone?
 
Buckle, have you played the Freelancer game, cause if you like wing commander games, you might like this. It is kind of simular but it has it's own things going for it.
 
duckman said:
The thing that made NWN bearbale, was in fact the depth of the plot and the music. Both put together, create an awesome atmosphere, similar to Fallout.
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What?

NWN's plot had all the depth of a puddle. Neither did it have much of an atmosphere, much less anything that qualifies as 'awesome.' It should be obvious that Desther was evil from the second you met him, and that Aribeth will turn evil (but offer the chance of her redemption later on, true Bioware style) as soon as her lover gets it. Aside from the characters, the plot essentially boils down to "Get the four objects from the four areas" (in the next act we have "Get the two pieces of information from the two areas" followed by "Get the three objects in the three areas" in the act after that). The back-story is minimal, the locations restrictive, and the NPCs are uninteresting; the plot was as generally horrid as the rest of the game (at least I don't have to get into the tepid gameplay).

As for Fallout 3, I would prefer text combat taunts done well. I believe voice acting places too many limitations on a RPG. Full voice acting is fine for a linear adventure game. In a RPG, it limits pretty much everything. You cannot have a large library of combat taunts or one-liners from unimportant characters. Even with important characters, it limits the dialogue options (fully voice acted RPGs tend to have dialogue options that lead to the same response, for example, nor can they ever call your character by name). Not to mention the possibility inconsistent voice-work. Text has sizable advantages, in the hands of a skilled writer.
 
Oh, my lack of God, not NWN! I still have nightmares from playing that pile of steaming shit!

Everything, but really EVERYTHING in that game sucks! Gameplay, atmosphere, characters, quests, story, voice-acting (one of the worst I've heard), music and so on and so on...

However, a magazine here presented it as an "almost perfect RPG". Well, if Tomb Raider 6 is an RPG, then NWN is an almost perfect RPG.
 
I have in fact played Freelancer. Dug the game but I finished the plot in about 14 hours and then had no more ships left to try to get. Tried it multiplayer but got bored fast.

Kotario said:
NWN's plot had all the depth of a puddle.
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That cracked me up.
 
Kotario said:
NWN's plot had all the depth of a puddle.
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How appropriate that playing NWN is about as enjoyable as drowning.

Really, NWN OC was written with almost no imagination and effort and was only kludged in so that BioWare has an excuse to call NWN a game rather than what it really is - a development kit, and not a very good one at that.
 
Freelancer had quite a bit of wasted potential. I find the controls to be really nice, and it all could have worked if the game world was more open. Unfortunately, trade was static and uninteresting, the missions were all the same, and there was no point in 'talking' to people on the stations and planets. I had a bit of fun exploring all the systems, but that was pretty transitory (some great visuals though, the system which is one giant radioactive asteroid belt or the former battlefield in the gas cloud). The developers cut it down drastically from what they were trying to accomplish, really a shame.

However, some people still have fun with it in multiplayer, with the various mods that exist for the game. The community seems pretty industrious, even now after interest has largely died down. I reinstall the game every now and again to play around with new, interesting mods, check Lancer Reactor.
 
I loved Freelancer and I've played X2 and found it to be utter shite, mostly because of the control system, but if there was some combination of Freelancers simplicity and X series' freedom I'd hit it.
 
Thanks, Kotario, but the SimCity/RTS aspect of X is one of the things I didn't like.

I just want to blow shit up in space. In a huge, free to do whatever the hell you want, become a trader or a pirate or Han Solo space.
 
Interesting, what about a Sid Meier's (Space) Pirates? That might be cool. I have X3 on the shelf here, I just might have to push myself past the learning curve to get into it.

I just dug out Star Trek: Judgment Rites too, one of the best ST games ever, IMO. It seems short now, but it brought back great memories.
 
DirtyDreamDesigner said:
I just want to blow shit up in space. In a huge, free to do whatever the hell you want, become a trader or a pirate or Han Solo space.
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I know MMPOGs are generally looked down on around here but you might want to check out EVE. It can be a beast of a time sink but it's a damn good game.
 
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