Megell

/depaint

...Do you know what you've done?!

*paints the forums with a nuke*

NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.

*DECLOAKES*

Ghost reporting...

Back~! Well for a bit anyways, just long enough to make a point or two and disapear into a puff of smoke... also know as school.

The problem is that there are so many great games at the moment that complete statisfaction is impossible in a single genera. Games are like food, one day we'll want some skyrim for dinner - but maybe the day afterwards we feel like starting our breakfast with a side helping of starcraftII toast and battlefield cerial. It's a crappy analogy now that I've read it again, but it does make a point on how we want changes day by day. Games are very good now a days as well; but sometimes they can be a tad daunting to 'complete'. Skyrim takes at least 200 hours to beat (guestimate) - every questline, every quest, max level... and so on. But there is also multiple ways of ending the game. Games are built more on the WOW model that we honestly are getting too much at times and so they become a choire to beat rather then a pleasure. Crono-trigger was the first game that really had this as far as I experianced as it had that agravating New game + option that lead too SO MANY ways of "beating the game". It's not actually a problem unless your a raging completionist... unfortunatly all of us as old school gamers are. I would say in a broad statement that games are designed now to be more casual then completionsitic as they are something that you can pick up and play and play without ever beating them. The thing I miss personally is the sense of accomplishment at "beating a game". Portal 1 + 2 were games that could be beaten for example - As were games like supermario brother games. They had an excate time table to them. I miss actually winning.

I bought New Vegas three times.

I downloaded new-vegas for the sole purpose of testing it on my system to see how the glitch (game) would handle. It crashed every 30 minutes or less, and would corrupt upon auto and quick save stacking (that was never properally addressed for most PC users as it required specific windows operating procedures). I did enjoy it though ultimately dispite these issues, and I bought a legit copy on steam when it was part of a 20$ deal - what in retrospect was about what the game was actually worth. I'm considering purchasing a copy of skyrim post hoc to compliment the company, I just usually like play testing my games for a while before I invest money into them, and skyrim is worth full price for the amount of pleasure I got out of it.

Perhaps to deal with rampent piracy the companies should begin releasing demos again like they did for ff7. The problem with demos and early test builds I found time and time again is they are not representative of the game as a whole. A major issue is it used to be an understood agreement between the developer and the player that a demo showed the pro's and most importantly the cons of a game in full view. For example in ff7's demo the player gets to play up to the point in which the have seen most of the basics of the game - seen some cool and boring stuff - and haven't been flashed with knights of the round. With modern demos they tend to give the player a INCREDIBLE experiance in the first level where the player will experiance, but then after that the game is mostly bland and uncreative. For example skyrim's first dungon and town are criminal of this. There are lots of scripted events these places such as "Dragon, I SAW A DRAGON"! and the talking bandits in that mine along with all the clutter, traps, and excitting tricks. However in other areas comparitivily the player only encounters this shere amount of detail 20% of the time. Bioshock's demo was criminal of this as well as the player got plasmids and skills that they would not encounter until much later in the game and events and scripting that was far beyond what was for the rest of the game. (remember how the demo gives you the "rapture" start, the plane crash, it's JUST INCREDIBLE). yet after this point, dispite being a great game is no where near as grand in scope.

In other words, demos are advertisements, NOT playtests. For example when I bought my liscence for photoshop, I paid 200$ for it and haven't regretted it unless I haven't eaten for a few days (I had it pirated for a long time, but some of the collage work I do requires a legit copy for legal reasons). It was because I was first offered a public liscence, a 30 day full program demo, and I full well knew the pro's and the con's of the program vs other programs that also offered similar test periods. This is what I would call a fair demo - because it didn't just highlight the features, it highlighted the program as itself. Games need to do this and regain our trust in demos and alot of moral pirates will be willing to shell out a few extra dollars for great games here and there. Game distrubters are used car sales men, we all know it.