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It looks like it's coming towards the end of the line for me, as far as gaming goes. It's been going down hill ever since... well... ever since either Goldeneye or Pokémon Red... or maybe WWF No Mercy...
I can't remember the exact ups and downs, but I remember there being about 6 months between finishing Conker's Bad Fur Day and getting my mitts on the Gamecube, and by then something had changed.
Gaming stopped being THE most important thing in my life and from there, although I didn't really notice it at the time, I slowly started losing all interest.
Infact, the most fun I've had from gaming recently is a heavy hit of nostalgia (although Metroid Prime has managed to very pleasantly surprise me, but I know that if I'd played this game 2 years ago, pleasantly surprised would be the biggest understatement ever).
I just don't enjoy games like I used to.
And I know why.
It's because I've more or less seen it all now.
I rememer when I first played Goldeneye, it was all fresh and exciting.
Sure, I'd played FPS before but they were crap and lifeless in comparison.
The 4 player splitscreen multiplayer, the intense single player missions which changed drastically with each difficulty setting.
But that wasn't it.
Because I'd never played a game like this before everything was new and unexplored. Everything was interesting and intruiging.
Shooting glass and watching it shatter. Shooting a guards had off, sniping unsuspecting guards from a distance, playing with glitches, exploring all possibilities with cheats (sending guards flying with explosives was HILARIOUS) and messing around with the AI.
Perfect Dark came along and nearly bettered it in nearly every way.
There were almost infinately more possibilities, only... other than the parts that were completely new from Goldeneye (like the Carrington Institute target range), I'd seen or done it all before.
And besides, when it came to FPS, I was an expert gamer now. Now I played to win, to beat it, more than I played for fun.
Sure, it had moments where I would mess around, but very few compared to Goldeneye. I'd become too experienced to enjoyed the simple pleasures in the game.
Take Pokémon Red.
The first RPG I ever played through.
This game also had it all.
Sure, the fighting system was fairly simplistic to the likes of Final Fantasy, but with so many monsters with so many different strengths and weaknesses, this sort of made it work better.
I must've spent over 500+ hours on that game (the in game clock stopped working after 256 hours and I think I passed that atleast twice - two play throughs).
Even after I finished the story, I then went about tracking down the rare Pokémon (like Zapdos and Mewtwo) and catching every single last Pokémon in the game (unlike that amature Ash, I DID catch them all! - although due to the nature of the game, I DID have to trade for some of them...).
And while I mastered the entire game, gradually learning about all the different types of Pokémon, their strengths and weaknesses, what moves they learn, where you can find them, I also spent countless hours training my super-teams to level 100.
Yeah it sounds sad now, but at the time I was totally hooked.
Sure, I got Pokémon Gold before it even reached our shores (regional lock-outs on the Gameboy! :-) ) and it was better in almost every way (starting with the fact that it was in beautiful full colour rather than everything in shades of red! :-D) but when I'd finished the story, I still spent countless hours finding the last Pokémon and training more "super teams" but the new one never made it to Level 100, and although I caught all 251, most of them were traded from my old Red game, and throughout the whole game, rather than simply enjoying the adventure, I'd, in many places, been playing to beat it, scouring for secrets and basically playing like the pro-gamer I'd become.
Such has been the nature of all games I've played before.
With Mario 64 I spent hours playing with Mario's 3D jumping tricks. With Mario Sunshine, I did that a fair bit at first (that Delphino City place is great fun for jumping on roofs) but the novelty wore out faster.
With Zelda 64 I scoured the landscape for every last heart piece and Skultula.
With Majora's Mask I didn't bother with the last heart pieces and Windwaker I stopped playing once I beat the story (I did briefly start again for a re-run with the special "hero of time" mode but got bored quickly).
The original Smash Brother's was played to death as I mastered every last character and got a high score for all of them (getting over a million points of each of the 14 - and NGC gave a raving mention + prize to an amature who only managed it with 13! :-P).
Smash Brother's Melée had more moves and modes of play and infinite possibilities and has probably clocked up the most gameplay out of all my Gamecube games but was barely played compared to the exstensive play it's predecessor got.
Heck, Timesplitters 2 had it all, but bar the few new twists (mostly involving that genius flaming system) I'd played it all before.
The game I've enjoyed the most recently, were ones that I'd not played anything like - Metroid Prime, Commandos and Pikmin namely.
Even then, they would've impressed me a lot more in the day.
I'm too experienced.
After all I used to say on here about never growing up, that's what happened. I never quite left Cloud Cuckoo Land... Cloud Cuckoo Land just gradually turned into a whole new place...
Time for something fresh, something new, something I've not done to death.
And yeah... I resultantly got a life... shame on me! :-S
It's not that I've given up games, or that I don't still enjoy them.
I do. I still play them a little more than I should...
But there WAS a time when a new game would be the important thing in my life, would capture my mind in a way that I could not think of anything else (VERY dangerous during exam time! :-S).
now they're just games.
So how experienced are you?
I can't remember the exact ups and downs, but I remember there being about 6 months between finishing Conker's Bad Fur Day and getting my mitts on the Gamecube, and by then something had changed.
Gaming stopped being THE most important thing in my life and from there, although I didn't really notice it at the time, I slowly started losing all interest.
Infact, the most fun I've had from gaming recently is a heavy hit of nostalgia (although Metroid Prime has managed to very pleasantly surprise me, but I know that if I'd played this game 2 years ago, pleasantly surprised would be the biggest understatement ever).
I just don't enjoy games like I used to.
And I know why.
It's because I've more or less seen it all now.
I rememer when I first played Goldeneye, it was all fresh and exciting.
Sure, I'd played FPS before but they were crap and lifeless in comparison.
The 4 player splitscreen multiplayer, the intense single player missions which changed drastically with each difficulty setting.
But that wasn't it.
Because I'd never played a game like this before everything was new and unexplored. Everything was interesting and intruiging.
Shooting glass and watching it shatter. Shooting a guards had off, sniping unsuspecting guards from a distance, playing with glitches, exploring all possibilities with cheats (sending guards flying with explosives was HILARIOUS) and messing around with the AI.
Perfect Dark came along and nearly bettered it in nearly every way.
There were almost infinately more possibilities, only... other than the parts that were completely new from Goldeneye (like the Carrington Institute target range), I'd seen or done it all before.
And besides, when it came to FPS, I was an expert gamer now. Now I played to win, to beat it, more than I played for fun.
Sure, it had moments where I would mess around, but very few compared to Goldeneye. I'd become too experienced to enjoyed the simple pleasures in the game.
Take Pokémon Red.
The first RPG I ever played through.
This game also had it all.
Sure, the fighting system was fairly simplistic to the likes of Final Fantasy, but with so many monsters with so many different strengths and weaknesses, this sort of made it work better.
I must've spent over 500+ hours on that game (the in game clock stopped working after 256 hours and I think I passed that atleast twice - two play throughs).
Even after I finished the story, I then went about tracking down the rare Pokémon (like Zapdos and Mewtwo) and catching every single last Pokémon in the game (unlike that amature Ash, I DID catch them all! - although due to the nature of the game, I DID have to trade for some of them...).
And while I mastered the entire game, gradually learning about all the different types of Pokémon, their strengths and weaknesses, what moves they learn, where you can find them, I also spent countless hours training my super-teams to level 100.
Yeah it sounds sad now, but at the time I was totally hooked.
Sure, I got Pokémon Gold before it even reached our shores (regional lock-outs on the Gameboy! :-) ) and it was better in almost every way (starting with the fact that it was in beautiful full colour rather than everything in shades of red! :-D) but when I'd finished the story, I still spent countless hours finding the last Pokémon and training more "super teams" but the new one never made it to Level 100, and although I caught all 251, most of them were traded from my old Red game, and throughout the whole game, rather than simply enjoying the adventure, I'd, in many places, been playing to beat it, scouring for secrets and basically playing like the pro-gamer I'd become.
Such has been the nature of all games I've played before.
With Mario 64 I spent hours playing with Mario's 3D jumping tricks. With Mario Sunshine, I did that a fair bit at first (that Delphino City place is great fun for jumping on roofs) but the novelty wore out faster.
With Zelda 64 I scoured the landscape for every last heart piece and Skultula.
With Majora's Mask I didn't bother with the last heart pieces and Windwaker I stopped playing once I beat the story (I did briefly start again for a re-run with the special "hero of time" mode but got bored quickly).
The original Smash Brother's was played to death as I mastered every last character and got a high score for all of them (getting over a million points of each of the 14 - and NGC gave a raving mention + prize to an amature who only managed it with 13! :-P).
Smash Brother's Melée had more moves and modes of play and infinite possibilities and has probably clocked up the most gameplay out of all my Gamecube games but was barely played compared to the exstensive play it's predecessor got.
Heck, Timesplitters 2 had it all, but bar the few new twists (mostly involving that genius flaming system) I'd played it all before.
The game I've enjoyed the most recently, were ones that I'd not played anything like - Metroid Prime, Commandos and Pikmin namely.
Even then, they would've impressed me a lot more in the day.
I'm too experienced.
After all I used to say on here about never growing up, that's what happened. I never quite left Cloud Cuckoo Land... Cloud Cuckoo Land just gradually turned into a whole new place...
Time for something fresh, something new, something I've not done to death.
And yeah... I resultantly got a life... shame on me! :-S
It's not that I've given up games, or that I don't still enjoy them.
I do. I still play them a little more than I should...
But there WAS a time when a new game would be the important thing in my life, would capture my mind in a way that I could not think of anything else (VERY dangerous during exam time! :-S).
now they're just games.
So how experienced are you?
Page:
Reading your post again (I must've misread it the first time), I think the fact GTA sold was a mixture of originality and the violence factor.
Sure, the violence factor was the big pull for kids, but there are thousands of violet games on the market and NONE pulled the masses like GTA did.
Obviously originality isn't the only ingredient to a good game, but as you wear down the typical game types, originality becomes more and more vital for your enjoyment...
Now you're experienced, you can only look back in nostalgia at the days when it was all fresh and exciting.
The multiplayer on the N64 was some of the best social experiences I've ever had.
And thanks for managing to get through my entire topic.
Most people just don't manage that nowdays! :-)
Sure, the violence factor was the big pull for kids, but there are thousands of violet games on the market and NONE pulled the masses like GTA did.
Obviously originality isn't the only ingredient to a good game, but as you wear down the typical game types, originality becomes more and more vital for your enjoyment...
Now you're experienced, you can only look back in nostalgia at the days when it was all fresh and exciting.
The multiplayer on the N64 was some of the best social experiences I've ever had.
And thanks for managing to get through my entire topic.
Most people just don't manage that nowdays! :-)
Evolution in games is good... just not as mind blowing as complete originality.
Even then, there will NEVER be complete originality.
Even games with original concepts share elements from other games, so as you get more experienced, even with a mainly original game, the core to it will be too familiar... if you know what I'm saying...
In defence of GTA by the way, the original, and GTA 3 were both VERY original.
The put together a living breathing city where you could free-roam as you please and just do the hell you want. That in itself was fantastic.
GTA started it, was expanded upon in sequels.
GTA3 blasted it into full 3D giving the gameplay a whole new dimension.
If it weren't for the crap controls, I'd probably say that it's the best game of the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube generation.
PS. You just reminded me, I've not played a "Jet Set Radio" game yet...
Something to pester my Xbox owning friend about! ;-)
Even then, there will NEVER be complete originality.
Even games with original concepts share elements from other games, so as you get more experienced, even with a mainly original game, the core to it will be too familiar... if you know what I'm saying...
In defence of GTA by the way, the original, and GTA 3 were both VERY original.
The put together a living breathing city where you could free-roam as you please and just do the hell you want. That in itself was fantastic.
GTA started it, was expanded upon in sequels.
GTA3 blasted it into full 3D giving the gameplay a whole new dimension.
If it weren't for the crap controls, I'd probably say that it's the best game of the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube generation.
PS. You just reminded me, I've not played a "Jet Set Radio" game yet...
Something to pester my Xbox owning friend about! ;-)
Thanks.
You managed that...
Jesus, I sound like my mother.
Strafio wrote:
>
> Take Pokémon Red.
> The first RPG I ever played through.
> This game also had it all.
>
> Sure, the fighting system was fairly simplistic to the likes of Final
> Fantasy, but with so many monsters with so many different strengths
> and weaknesses, this sort of made it work better.
> I must've spent over 500+ hours on that game (the in game clock
> stopped working after 256 hours and I think I passed that atleast
> twice - two play throughs).
>
> Even after I finished the story, I then went about tracking down the
> rare Pokémon (like Zapdos and Mewtwo) and catching every
> single last Pokémon in the game (unlike that amature Ash, I
> DID catch them all! - although due to the nature of the game, I DID
> have to trade for some of them...).
> And while I mastered the entire game, gradually learning about all
> the different types of Pokémon, their strengths and
> weaknesses, what moves they learn, where you can find them, I also
> spent countless hours training my super-teams to level 100.
>
> Yeah it sounds sad now, but at the time I was totally hooked.
>
>
> Sure, I got Pokémon Gold before it even reached our shores
> (regional lock-outs on the Gameboy! :-) ) and it was better in almost
> every way (starting with the fact that it was in beautiful full
> colour rather than everything in shades of red! :-D) but when I'd
> finished the story, I still spent countless hours finding the last
> Pokémon and training more "super teams" but the new
> one never made it to Level 100, and although I caught all 251, most
> of them were traded from my old Red game, and throughout the whole
> game, rather than simply enjoying the adventure, I'd, in many places,
> been playing to beat it, scouring for secrets and basically playing
> like the pro-gamer I'd become.
Thank you. I've been saying this for a while now, Pokémon, no matter how sad it is and how you "Always hated it" - which is why I remember a lot of you at the Pokémon forum? - it was a good game, with a good lifespan. After the N64, the step up for me was to the Dreamcast, which was costing a good Ł200 less than the "next generation" of gaming, which actually, didn't have that much better specs.
I think that's what saved me. The DC, and, mainly, Jet Set Radio. The querky outlandishness of the cel shaded graphics and the plot, the wierd characters and the beautiful tags just kept me interested, which I can't say for a lot of the games I have on my PS2.
Most of them, for example XIII or Dynasty Warriors 4, are wonderful games, and I love them. But when I want to play a game, I want to play SledStorm or JSR. I don't know what it is, they have evolved no doubt, away from the purest forms.
Hence evolution is bad. In game terms. But then again, we see TimeSplitters 2, arguably the best multiplayer game on the market, coming straight from TimeSplitters, with very little difference. But there's a trend, and it might just be with me, but the more original a game is, the more fun. I'm not calling TimeSplitters 2 original, but it certainly changed the way FPS is thought about these days.
Originality is good. But, unfortunately, doesn't mean sales. It can however bring good reviews. Take JSR : F. Jet Set Radio itself had virtually no advertising, and it didn't help that it was on a console that was badly out of favour, the Dreamcast. I didn't read any reviews before I picked it up for a tenner out of a bargain bin. It's only left to give Virtua Tennis space to shine. And once again, there is an original game.
Actually, all the games I've mentioned that are original have been arcade games, or arcade style. JSR, SledStorm, TimeSplitters 2. All fast paced games. Which isn't to say that they're the original games, XIII is original, the first cel shaded FPS. But I think the problem is, originality is only useful in some ways.
Like a new way of thinking, which is why the Monkey Island series was so popular, a game that's devilishly tricky puzzles would leave you thinking all day until you screamed the answer in a maths lesson. It was original, as it wasn't serious, a major fault with point and clicks, it had jokes, puns, and secrets.
Ah, another pull factor. Secrets. Replay value. Take Pokémon for example. Why did people come home, play it, emerge for supper, then not be seen until next morning, for a good few months? Because they were busy catching a Khangaskhan, that's why. The game itself was easy, but the fact is, once you "completed" it (ie. beat the final boss) you still had another 30 monsters to catch. And the best thing about Pokémon was that it encouraged you to interact with people, trading your creature's for their's was how most breaks at school were spent. I even remember people paying for rare ones. Generally younger people, but still people.
You don't have to be original to sell games. But shifting copies doesn't make a game good. Take GTA : Vice City, a game I'm playing currently. It's not widly original, but it has it's up points. It's free roaming is a brilliant idea, taking a big step up from non-linear gaming. Even better, it has more than it's fair share of secrets. 100 Secret packages. 35 Insane Stunts. And you need them to complete it. But it sold not because of that, but because it was gratuitously violent. Want to vent some? Here, have an Uzi. Oh look, there's an old lady. Bang. Not any more.
It's this thugish mentality that, I think, that's deteriorating games. No longer do games have to be clever, the old brain (featuring in Monkey Island) has been replaced by a rocket launcher, and hands are no longer considered serious unless filled with magnum's.
Dark Chronicle was original. A very good idea. Take pictures, get ideas, make things. For once people were made to think again. For example, you're told you need to make a bazooka for your robot. So, in Dark Chronicle terms, that means a mushroom, a barrel and a pipe. Not exactly a normal line of thought. It's games that make people think in new ways that excite people, not games that make people kill in new ways.
Most games released, apart from the obviously aimed child games, will be violent. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but what happend to collecting monsters?
>
> Take Pokémon Red.
> The first RPG I ever played through.
> This game also had it all.
>
> Sure, the fighting system was fairly simplistic to the likes of Final
> Fantasy, but with so many monsters with so many different strengths
> and weaknesses, this sort of made it work better.
> I must've spent over 500+ hours on that game (the in game clock
> stopped working after 256 hours and I think I passed that atleast
> twice - two play throughs).
>
> Even after I finished the story, I then went about tracking down the
> rare Pokémon (like Zapdos and Mewtwo) and catching every
> single last Pokémon in the game (unlike that amature Ash, I
> DID catch them all! - although due to the nature of the game, I DID
> have to trade for some of them...).
> And while I mastered the entire game, gradually learning about all
> the different types of Pokémon, their strengths and
> weaknesses, what moves they learn, where you can find them, I also
> spent countless hours training my super-teams to level 100.
>
> Yeah it sounds sad now, but at the time I was totally hooked.
>
>
> Sure, I got Pokémon Gold before it even reached our shores
> (regional lock-outs on the Gameboy! :-) ) and it was better in almost
> every way (starting with the fact that it was in beautiful full
> colour rather than everything in shades of red! :-D) but when I'd
> finished the story, I still spent countless hours finding the last
> Pokémon and training more "super teams" but the new
> one never made it to Level 100, and although I caught all 251, most
> of them were traded from my old Red game, and throughout the whole
> game, rather than simply enjoying the adventure, I'd, in many places,
> been playing to beat it, scouring for secrets and basically playing
> like the pro-gamer I'd become.
Thank you. I've been saying this for a while now, Pokémon, no matter how sad it is and how you "Always hated it" - which is why I remember a lot of you at the Pokémon forum? - it was a good game, with a good lifespan. After the N64, the step up for me was to the Dreamcast, which was costing a good Ł200 less than the "next generation" of gaming, which actually, didn't have that much better specs.
I think that's what saved me. The DC, and, mainly, Jet Set Radio. The querky outlandishness of the cel shaded graphics and the plot, the wierd characters and the beautiful tags just kept me interested, which I can't say for a lot of the games I have on my PS2.
Most of them, for example XIII or Dynasty Warriors 4, are wonderful games, and I love them. But when I want to play a game, I want to play SledStorm or JSR. I don't know what it is, they have evolved no doubt, away from the purest forms.
Hence evolution is bad. In game terms. But then again, we see TimeSplitters 2, arguably the best multiplayer game on the market, coming straight from TimeSplitters, with very little difference. But there's a trend, and it might just be with me, but the more original a game is, the more fun. I'm not calling TimeSplitters 2 original, but it certainly changed the way FPS is thought about these days.
Originality is good. But, unfortunately, doesn't mean sales. It can however bring good reviews. Take JSR : F. Jet Set Radio itself had virtually no advertising, and it didn't help that it was on a console that was badly out of favour, the Dreamcast. I didn't read any reviews before I picked it up for a tenner out of a bargain bin. It's only left to give Virtua Tennis space to shine. And once again, there is an original game.
Actually, all the games I've mentioned that are original have been arcade games, or arcade style. JSR, SledStorm, TimeSplitters 2. All fast paced games. Which isn't to say that they're the original games, XIII is original, the first cel shaded FPS. But I think the problem is, originality is only useful in some ways.
Like a new way of thinking, which is why the Monkey Island series was so popular, a game that's devilishly tricky puzzles would leave you thinking all day until you screamed the answer in a maths lesson. It was original, as it wasn't serious, a major fault with point and clicks, it had jokes, puns, and secrets.
Ah, another pull factor. Secrets. Replay value. Take Pokémon for example. Why did people come home, play it, emerge for supper, then not be seen until next morning, for a good few months? Because they were busy catching a Khangaskhan, that's why. The game itself was easy, but the fact is, once you "completed" it (ie. beat the final boss) you still had another 30 monsters to catch. And the best thing about Pokémon was that it encouraged you to interact with people, trading your creature's for their's was how most breaks at school were spent. I even remember people paying for rare ones. Generally younger people, but still people.
You don't have to be original to sell games. But shifting copies doesn't make a game good. Take GTA : Vice City, a game I'm playing currently. It's not widly original, but it has it's up points. It's free roaming is a brilliant idea, taking a big step up from non-linear gaming. Even better, it has more than it's fair share of secrets. 100 Secret packages. 35 Insane Stunts. And you need them to complete it. But it sold not because of that, but because it was gratuitously violent. Want to vent some? Here, have an Uzi. Oh look, there's an old lady. Bang. Not any more.
It's this thugish mentality that, I think, that's deteriorating games. No longer do games have to be clever, the old brain (featuring in Monkey Island) has been replaced by a rocket launcher, and hands are no longer considered serious unless filled with magnum's.
Dark Chronicle was original. A very good idea. Take pictures, get ideas, make things. For once people were made to think again. For example, you're told you need to make a bazooka for your robot. So, in Dark Chronicle terms, that means a mushroom, a barrel and a pipe. Not exactly a normal line of thought. It's games that make people think in new ways that excite people, not games that make people kill in new ways.
Most games released, apart from the obviously aimed child games, will be violent. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but what happend to collecting monsters?
It looks like it's coming towards the end of the line for me, as far as gaming goes. It's been going down hill ever since... well... ever since either Goldeneye or Pokémon Red... or maybe WWF No Mercy...
I can't remember the exact ups and downs, but I remember there being about 6 months between finishing Conker's Bad Fur Day and getting my mitts on the Gamecube, and by then something had changed.
Gaming stopped being THE most important thing in my life and from there, although I didn't really notice it at the time, I slowly started losing all interest.
Infact, the most fun I've had from gaming recently is a heavy hit of nostalgia (although Metroid Prime has managed to very pleasantly surprise me, but I know that if I'd played this game 2 years ago, pleasantly surprised would be the biggest understatement ever).
I just don't enjoy games like I used to.
And I know why.
It's because I've more or less seen it all now.
I rememer when I first played Goldeneye, it was all fresh and exciting.
Sure, I'd played FPS before but they were crap and lifeless in comparison.
The 4 player splitscreen multiplayer, the intense single player missions which changed drastically with each difficulty setting.
But that wasn't it.
Because I'd never played a game like this before everything was new and unexplored. Everything was interesting and intruiging.
Shooting glass and watching it shatter. Shooting a guards had off, sniping unsuspecting guards from a distance, playing with glitches, exploring all possibilities with cheats (sending guards flying with explosives was HILARIOUS) and messing around with the AI.
Perfect Dark came along and nearly bettered it in nearly every way.
There were almost infinately more possibilities, only... other than the parts that were completely new from Goldeneye (like the Carrington Institute target range), I'd seen or done it all before.
And besides, when it came to FPS, I was an expert gamer now. Now I played to win, to beat it, more than I played for fun.
Sure, it had moments where I would mess around, but very few compared to Goldeneye. I'd become too experienced to enjoyed the simple pleasures in the game.
Take Pokémon Red.
The first RPG I ever played through.
This game also had it all.
Sure, the fighting system was fairly simplistic to the likes of Final Fantasy, but with so many monsters with so many different strengths and weaknesses, this sort of made it work better.
I must've spent over 500+ hours on that game (the in game clock stopped working after 256 hours and I think I passed that atleast twice - two play throughs).
Even after I finished the story, I then went about tracking down the rare Pokémon (like Zapdos and Mewtwo) and catching every single last Pokémon in the game (unlike that amature Ash, I DID catch them all! - although due to the nature of the game, I DID have to trade for some of them...).
And while I mastered the entire game, gradually learning about all the different types of Pokémon, their strengths and weaknesses, what moves they learn, where you can find them, I also spent countless hours training my super-teams to level 100.
Yeah it sounds sad now, but at the time I was totally hooked.
Sure, I got Pokémon Gold before it even reached our shores (regional lock-outs on the Gameboy! :-) ) and it was better in almost every way (starting with the fact that it was in beautiful full colour rather than everything in shades of red! :-D) but when I'd finished the story, I still spent countless hours finding the last Pokémon and training more "super teams" but the new one never made it to Level 100, and although I caught all 251, most of them were traded from my old Red game, and throughout the whole game, rather than simply enjoying the adventure, I'd, in many places, been playing to beat it, scouring for secrets and basically playing like the pro-gamer I'd become.
Such has been the nature of all games I've played before.
With Mario 64 I spent hours playing with Mario's 3D jumping tricks. With Mario Sunshine, I did that a fair bit at first (that Delphino City place is great fun for jumping on roofs) but the novelty wore out faster.
With Zelda 64 I scoured the landscape for every last heart piece and Skultula.
With Majora's Mask I didn't bother with the last heart pieces and Windwaker I stopped playing once I beat the story (I did briefly start again for a re-run with the special "hero of time" mode but got bored quickly).
The original Smash Brother's was played to death as I mastered every last character and got a high score for all of them (getting over a million points of each of the 14 - and NGC gave a raving mention + prize to an amature who only managed it with 13! :-P).
Smash Brother's Melée had more moves and modes of play and infinite possibilities and has probably clocked up the most gameplay out of all my Gamecube games but was barely played compared to the exstensive play it's predecessor got.
Heck, Timesplitters 2 had it all, but bar the few new twists (mostly involving that genius flaming system) I'd played it all before.
The game I've enjoyed the most recently, were ones that I'd not played anything like - Metroid Prime, Commandos and Pikmin namely.
Even then, they would've impressed me a lot more in the day.
I'm too experienced.
After all I used to say on here about never growing up, that's what happened. I never quite left Cloud Cuckoo Land... Cloud Cuckoo Land just gradually turned into a whole new place...
Time for something fresh, something new, something I've not done to death.
And yeah... I resultantly got a life... shame on me! :-S
It's not that I've given up games, or that I don't still enjoy them.
I do. I still play them a little more than I should...
But there WAS a time when a new game would be the important thing in my life, would capture my mind in a way that I could not think of anything else (VERY dangerous during exam time! :-S).
now they're just games.
So how experienced are you?
I can't remember the exact ups and downs, but I remember there being about 6 months between finishing Conker's Bad Fur Day and getting my mitts on the Gamecube, and by then something had changed.
Gaming stopped being THE most important thing in my life and from there, although I didn't really notice it at the time, I slowly started losing all interest.
Infact, the most fun I've had from gaming recently is a heavy hit of nostalgia (although Metroid Prime has managed to very pleasantly surprise me, but I know that if I'd played this game 2 years ago, pleasantly surprised would be the biggest understatement ever).
I just don't enjoy games like I used to.
And I know why.
It's because I've more or less seen it all now.
I rememer when I first played Goldeneye, it was all fresh and exciting.
Sure, I'd played FPS before but they were crap and lifeless in comparison.
The 4 player splitscreen multiplayer, the intense single player missions which changed drastically with each difficulty setting.
But that wasn't it.
Because I'd never played a game like this before everything was new and unexplored. Everything was interesting and intruiging.
Shooting glass and watching it shatter. Shooting a guards had off, sniping unsuspecting guards from a distance, playing with glitches, exploring all possibilities with cheats (sending guards flying with explosives was HILARIOUS) and messing around with the AI.
Perfect Dark came along and nearly bettered it in nearly every way.
There were almost infinately more possibilities, only... other than the parts that were completely new from Goldeneye (like the Carrington Institute target range), I'd seen or done it all before.
And besides, when it came to FPS, I was an expert gamer now. Now I played to win, to beat it, more than I played for fun.
Sure, it had moments where I would mess around, but very few compared to Goldeneye. I'd become too experienced to enjoyed the simple pleasures in the game.
Take Pokémon Red.
The first RPG I ever played through.
This game also had it all.
Sure, the fighting system was fairly simplistic to the likes of Final Fantasy, but with so many monsters with so many different strengths and weaknesses, this sort of made it work better.
I must've spent over 500+ hours on that game (the in game clock stopped working after 256 hours and I think I passed that atleast twice - two play throughs).
Even after I finished the story, I then went about tracking down the rare Pokémon (like Zapdos and Mewtwo) and catching every single last Pokémon in the game (unlike that amature Ash, I DID catch them all! - although due to the nature of the game, I DID have to trade for some of them...).
And while I mastered the entire game, gradually learning about all the different types of Pokémon, their strengths and weaknesses, what moves they learn, where you can find them, I also spent countless hours training my super-teams to level 100.
Yeah it sounds sad now, but at the time I was totally hooked.
Sure, I got Pokémon Gold before it even reached our shores (regional lock-outs on the Gameboy! :-) ) and it was better in almost every way (starting with the fact that it was in beautiful full colour rather than everything in shades of red! :-D) but when I'd finished the story, I still spent countless hours finding the last Pokémon and training more "super teams" but the new one never made it to Level 100, and although I caught all 251, most of them were traded from my old Red game, and throughout the whole game, rather than simply enjoying the adventure, I'd, in many places, been playing to beat it, scouring for secrets and basically playing like the pro-gamer I'd become.
Such has been the nature of all games I've played before.
With Mario 64 I spent hours playing with Mario's 3D jumping tricks. With Mario Sunshine, I did that a fair bit at first (that Delphino City place is great fun for jumping on roofs) but the novelty wore out faster.
With Zelda 64 I scoured the landscape for every last heart piece and Skultula.
With Majora's Mask I didn't bother with the last heart pieces and Windwaker I stopped playing once I beat the story (I did briefly start again for a re-run with the special "hero of time" mode but got bored quickly).
The original Smash Brother's was played to death as I mastered every last character and got a high score for all of them (getting over a million points of each of the 14 - and NGC gave a raving mention + prize to an amature who only managed it with 13! :-P).
Smash Brother's Melée had more moves and modes of play and infinite possibilities and has probably clocked up the most gameplay out of all my Gamecube games but was barely played compared to the exstensive play it's predecessor got.
Heck, Timesplitters 2 had it all, but bar the few new twists (mostly involving that genius flaming system) I'd played it all before.
The game I've enjoyed the most recently, were ones that I'd not played anything like - Metroid Prime, Commandos and Pikmin namely.
Even then, they would've impressed me a lot more in the day.
I'm too experienced.
After all I used to say on here about never growing up, that's what happened. I never quite left Cloud Cuckoo Land... Cloud Cuckoo Land just gradually turned into a whole new place...
Time for something fresh, something new, something I've not done to death.
And yeah... I resultantly got a life... shame on me! :-S
It's not that I've given up games, or that I don't still enjoy them.
I do. I still play them a little more than I should...
But there WAS a time when a new game would be the important thing in my life, would capture my mind in a way that I could not think of anything else (VERY dangerous during exam time! :-S).
now they're just games.
So how experienced are you?
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