New Rpgs game settings

[Purkake]

Do you ever actually sleep, Tale?

[Tale]

I try not to.

[sorophx]

Plus it has Dark Corners of Earth style sanity system and no weapons AFAIK.

 

what? an adventure game without weapons? this is unheard of! what do they think this is, 1990s?

[Purkake]

Well, they are from Europe.

 

You can use the physics to chuck things at the enemies, but it's not very effective.

[entrerix]

are there any adventure games with weapons?

 

i thought adventure games were like Myst, monkey island, Longest Journey, grim fandango etc etc?

[Tale]

Sam and Max have guns.

 

Resident Evil games (pre-4) are part of a subgenre of adventure.

[entrerix]

resident evil games were imo an entirely new genre. neither action nor adventure but sharing a few qualities of each. but i did not know that the sam and max games had fighting in them

[Purkake]

Resident Evil actually started the survival horror genre.

[Tale]

Resident Evil actually started the survival horror genre.

I wish I could hate you to death.

 

Though you're right in a way. It named and popularized it.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Tale

[Purkake]

That's what it said in Wikipedia under survival horror.

 

I personally couldn't care less about the genre.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Purkake

[Labadal]

An even better example.

[sorophx]

I thought Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle and such are quests. and adventure games are Tomb Raider and such, you know, platformers gone 3D with emphasis on exploring. but I guess back in the day adventures and quests walked hand-in-hand

[Purkake]

Defining genres is a mucky road that always ends in a horrible mire filled with shoggoths and despair.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Purkake

[entrerix]

tomb raider was an action platformer.

 

 

ive never heard of quest games. im pretty sure myst was not a quest game.

 

but yes, genre discussion is a bad idea. I will withdraw from the debate after posting this (from the single most scientifically precise website known to man):

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game#Definition

 

 

edit:

oh and this

 

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=...77269eb79cf8370

Edited September 15, 2010 by entrerix

[Tale]

Defining genres is a mucky road that always ends in a horrible mire filled with shoggoths and despair.

Largely because video games are modern enough that their genre labels are just nonsense. We'll name them after the most famous example of the genre as often as we accept marketing labels.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Tale

[Purkake]

I don't think putting a pretty little label on everything does the medium any favors either. It's just another bit of minutia for fanboys to argue over.

[Tale]

Organizational and communication tools are important.

 

It's not simply to label it and argue, but a tool for quickly communicating facts about it that you may be familiar with.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Tale

[entrerix]

i agree its a good tool for quickly communicating ideas, which is also why its easier to describe to someone a game in terms of another game instead of a genre.

 

ie "borderlands is like diablo, but a first person shooter". now the person is probably thinking, "ok so i wander around and kill monsters to get better gear so i can go kill more monsters, but they way i kill them is like in Doom", which is essentially what they are doing.

 

now if i were to say "borderlands is a first person action roleplaying game" they could be thinking about 10 million different things because those genre terms are way too muddled nowadays to know what that means.

 

once upon a time people were describing diablo as the first "action rpg". now it seems like every rpg is an "action rpg".

 

am I in favor of making more clear definitions? not really, mostly because i think genres change as time progresses, so the only good way to define a genre is to wait until it is dead before labeling it. like emo music, it died in 1999.

 

[Purkake]

@Tale: Yes, but whichever genre you decide to label a specific game under, the content of the game will stay the same.

 

I just think that people tend to get stuck in the minutia instead of taking every game at face value. Games aren't designed by fitting different genre "blocks" into place, it's the final product that matters.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Purkake

[Tale]

i agree its a good tool for quickly communicating ideas, which is also why its easier to describe to someone a game in terms of another game instead of a genre.

This creates genre labels, too. Adventure (after a game titled adventure), Metroidvania (not oft recognized as a genre label, but one in its own right), and Roguelike (after Rogue) are three such that you may be familiar with.

 

The problem with having to always find another game to specifically reference is that whoever you're communicating with may not get the specific reference. Broad references are more accessible.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Tale

[entrerix]

i love metroidvania as a genre description. it makes me feel warm and tingly inside.

[Purkake]

So yeah, my point was that labeling things leads to expectations which will more often than not lead to disappointment.

 

I understand that it is pretty much unavoidable, but I do urge people to try to evaluate games on their own merits instead of what you think they should be.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Purkake

[sorophx]

and yeah, back in the day nobody called Diablo "action rpg", like Tale said, it was "rogue" which only goes to show how stupid can the whole genre distinction thing be

[Labadal]

Genre definitions has its ups and downs.

 

If a gamer asked me how Darksiders played, I'd tell him that it is God of War mixed with Zelda. A gamer has probably heard of these games.

 

If a non gamer asks me, I'd just tell him that it is an action adventure.

[Orogun01]

and yeah, back in the day nobody called Diablo "action rpg", like Tale said, it was "rogue" which only goes to show how stupid can the whole genre distinction thing be

Actually none of the trademarks of rogue where present on Diablo, it makes as much sense as calling it a dungeon crawler.

Unless you are talking about Diablo 2 in which case disregard all that I've said.

Edited September 15, 2010 by Orogun01