PixlBit

I commented in the most abrasive and contentious way I could; also, does that website use Word or something, cause I typed 4, 3, 2, and 1 in this comment box before copy/pasting to your site, and they all became an indented 1. on your site. lol

We use squarespace. And I shall respond over at the site!

I feel like you repeated my points back to me, but then I guess I was repeating your points back to you, and just flipping them to be more positive ... hmmm... lol.

No, I countered your points and argued with you. Maybe read them again? I didn't agree with you for half of them lol.

No, I read them again, and I never actually disagreed with much of what you said.

I said games that suck as games trying to tell a cinematic story may as well be movies, I just liked some games that were able to juggle both well or tell their story through gameplay.

Your response was that you wouldn't consider Bioshock and SotC in that category of bad cinematic-style  games (I agree, their stories are told through gameplay) and that the problem was not that they were cinematic stories, but that cutscenes and quicktime events were too frequent. Nothing I said disagreed with that. I said I liked games that balance cinematics and gameplay well, obviously too many cinematics or quicktime events would be unbalanced.

I said that art is subjective, but acknowledged that games had a disproportionate ratio of art to trashy games when compared with other mediums.

You basically said the same.

I said I was fine with graphics being updated, as long as gameplay didn't suffer.

You said your point in the article was that gameplay and depth should not be sacrificed for prettier visuals. I never disagreed with that, I said roughly the same.

The last point we actually agree on as well, I am a callous asshole. lol

I think sequels should be on this list.
2 Games that come to mind are Call of Duty & Assassin's Creed. 1 game release a year in each series.

God of War. Not release quite as often but still, no changes to the series.

Even Sly Cooper. 2002, 2004, 2005. The latest was just released (2013) But, it plays exactly the same as all the other Slys.

Sequels should have probably been on this list... I didn't even think of that. I sort of touched on it in Aesthetic Obsession, with the rising cost game development leading to publishers wanting to play it safe, but I could have gone a bit deeper with it.

I am pretty sure 2 of those things are "Activision" and "EA" followed closely by the current CEO's of those companies..

I have to disagree. They make bad business choices, sure, but they are far from the worst things about the industry.

Did it really take holding down 3 buttons to shoot in MGS4? Man that's horrible lol.  

Yeah,  you have to press like L1, R1 and Triangle. It's ridiculous. I liked the game, up until after a breathtaking finale that instead of ending the game, introduced 16 thousand epilogues, each progressively worse than the last.

Sorry, I have to defend the game on that. Aim and Shoot are 2 different buttons like any other game that have you shoot in. Triangle only comes into play when you want to go into first person mode. You can even turn it off so you automatically go into FPS mode when you aim. The game isn't meant to be a FPS. It's a third person stealth game. They added first person to make happy those people who mostly like shooters. As far as cinematics, I agree that there were way too many of them, and they were too long. Thankfully, you could skip most of them.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't matter. If you want to snipe someone, it's necessary. Any button combination that tedious is unjustifiable, especially if it's something you'll use often.

I remember that blog on 1up. I have a new appreciation for immaturity though ever since I saw a thing on that Warren Spector "I'm getting old" speech. Immaturity at least means that people are having fun with the medium and making games, so there's some passion going into it. There may be too much, but that's better than not enough in my mind.

Yeah, I cut the swearing, polished it up, rewrote a section and made it a little less offensive, but it is essentially the same article.

 Immaturity is fine. I'm far from mature myself. They problem is, there isn't enough games trying to aim for a more mature audience. I mean you have some: Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, Silent Hill 2 etc, but for the most part it's just blood and sex.

Yeah, I get that and agree. Just saying too much immaturity is better in my book than not enough.

I suppose. I'd rather that than it be strictly a pretentious affair.

I very much agree with immaturity being counterproductive to video games achieving mainstream acceptance. I never played Lolipop Chainsaw due to that reason. Same thing with Naughty Bear, since I have no desire to murder polygon people for fun. That said, there are some mature games out there which do a good job without needing fan service or violence to sell themselves.

There definitely are! For every point on this list there are counterpoints. The problem is that these games are few and far between, and definitely not what the general public thinks of when they think of video games.

Sometimes I need the stupid anger of Kratos. So caught up in RPGs all of the time, it's nice to just bash things every now and then. I don't this game should be copied by every other game company either.

Eh. This may be counter productive to my argument, but bayonetta is much better. God of War is all about spectacle as opposed to proper depth, and could very much have fit into my cinematic games argument as well.

As far as game maturity goes, I love mature games that get me caught up in the story and think about things after (MGS, Mass Effect, The Witcher) but then I'm surprised after playing those game how much fun I have just being immature and zany in games like Brutal Legend. I think there is a time and a place for both and our industry gets too caught up sometimes in trying to be ultra serious, realistic, and gritty and forget that it's a game!

Ok, so with immaturity, a few things need to be clarified. To me, South Park and Archer aren't immature, despite having some juvenile humour, because it's handled intelligently and often leading somewhere. Brutal Legend is the same, as it is very much a parody of the over seriousness of metal music as a whole.

 Immaturity to me is a game like Duke Nukem Forever, Dead or Alive, or God of War.