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Gameplay is more important. Actually, no graphics are more important. Scrap that, without a decent control system the game is rubbish. And it needs a decent amount of frames per second. Et cetera, et cetera. To be honest, I don’t think there’s any one thing that makes a game succeed. One large flaw can sink a title, but one great idea won’t be enough to shift a million copies. Really, you need to be an all-rounder, make sure everything’s covered, and then push forward for the extra inches to make yourself a classic game. Much is made of Halo’s vehicles, Final Fantasy’s depth, Zelda’s new graphical style and all the other new advances…but what about the smaller things, the incidentals, the stuff you don’t really notice until it’s gone. Or crap.
One is navigation. Playing LMA Manager on the PS2 and more recently Four Four Two: Touchline Passion on the PC, I realised just how hard it is to get to where you want nice and easily. However, stuff like Pro Evolution Soccer has a no nonsense style. And then there’s the guys who go one better, like with 007: Nightfire with the dancing ladies on the pause screen, or Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth with the video clips in the background. If you can’t use the interface, likely you won’t want to slowly go through it to play the game, meaning you’ll stop playing it, or trade it in. Which is bad.
Then there’s the score. One thing EA has always prided itself on is special stuff. Later I’ll kiss their backsides for their tried and tested formula of cramming as much stuff as humanly possible onto a DVD, but for now I’ll berate them. It doesn’t matter how famous, or popular, or cheap Ms Dynamite is – none of her songs have anything to do with football, nor do they share the same ethos of going down to your local team and barking at the full back to get stuck in. And Silverchair, young Australian metal upstarts, probably aren’t all that into golf. Take a look at Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s series: nu-metal, punk, that’s what “sk8r boiz” listen to. So there’s AC/DC, The Ramones et al jamming in the background. And for a different flavour, Halo’s huge, epic scale is backed up by a huge, epic orchestral score that builds and flows with the often tense onscreen action.
One thing that’s being included more and more often is the Extras feature. With this new generation of consoles the main software outlet is DVDs, so sensibly the game makers are bunging on videos not unlike those found on movie DVDs. Some earlier titles to take advantage were Tony Hawk’s 3 and SSX Tricky, and more recently we’ve seen Stuntman and Mortal Kombat bung them in there. They might not be hour long documentaries but hey, it shows a little class and polish, and reminds us all that deep down inside, the men sitting in the big chairs buying licenses and choosing which platform to be exclusive to really do love us.
Then there’s the things we take for granted. Just like the white bits at the end of our fingernails that protect the really sensitive skin, we only ever appreciate them when they’re not there. Case in point is Medal of Honour Frontline for the PS2. Allied Assault was a huge success on the PC, garnering a pretty big online gamer following, but Frontline didn’t include a 2-player mode, let alone i-Link 8 player mayhem. Lazy, yes. Stupid, yes. I suppose here should be a remark to which the answer is ‘no’, but it honestly was just lazy and stupid. And when there are developers willing to take games not often associated with split-screen shenanigans, like Banjo Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, manage to do the unthinkable and make platformer action type games fun for more than one.
Replayability, extras to unlock and all that should be compulsory, even in one-note tunes like Crazy Taxi. When stuff like Virtua Tennis comes along with nothing but a few courts and rackets to unlock and then the new Tiger Woods game gives you twenty odd golfers, club heads, flexes and about half a dozen courses tucked away, along with tonnes of tournament medals, scenarios and trophy balls it makes you wonder. EA get a lot of stick for being money-grabbing fools who care more about a quick buck than a good game (see the likes of Fifa) but you can’t fault them on the front-end. Lovely CG intros, all the official players and places, with tonnes of stuff to play and to achieve and to perform and…well, EA games are usually quite big. And then stuff like Ico comes along, which only gives you a completely new artistic experience – no other modes. Hehe.
Seriously though, games are never going to be perfect but sometimes you wonder if they’ve even made the effort. The silly player names in PES2 drag down the sublime engine. The bad controls stop Ape Escape 2 from being a smash hit. And so it goes on. Maybe if developers drew up a big checklist they wouldn’t miss so much stuff out. So please, feel free to add to my little effort here.
Thanks for reading.
-El
One is navigation. Playing LMA Manager on the PS2 and more recently Four Four Two: Touchline Passion on the PC, I realised just how hard it is to get to where you want nice and easily. However, stuff like Pro Evolution Soccer has a no nonsense style. And then there’s the guys who go one better, like with 007: Nightfire with the dancing ladies on the pause screen, or Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth with the video clips in the background. If you can’t use the interface, likely you won’t want to slowly go through it to play the game, meaning you’ll stop playing it, or trade it in. Which is bad.
Then there’s the score. One thing EA has always prided itself on is special stuff. Later I’ll kiss their backsides for their tried and tested formula of cramming as much stuff as humanly possible onto a DVD, but for now I’ll berate them. It doesn’t matter how famous, or popular, or cheap Ms Dynamite is – none of her songs have anything to do with football, nor do they share the same ethos of going down to your local team and barking at the full back to get stuck in. And Silverchair, young Australian metal upstarts, probably aren’t all that into golf. Take a look at Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s series: nu-metal, punk, that’s what “sk8r boiz” listen to. So there’s AC/DC, The Ramones et al jamming in the background. And for a different flavour, Halo’s huge, epic scale is backed up by a huge, epic orchestral score that builds and flows with the often tense onscreen action.
One thing that’s being included more and more often is the Extras feature. With this new generation of consoles the main software outlet is DVDs, so sensibly the game makers are bunging on videos not unlike those found on movie DVDs. Some earlier titles to take advantage were Tony Hawk’s 3 and SSX Tricky, and more recently we’ve seen Stuntman and Mortal Kombat bung them in there. They might not be hour long documentaries but hey, it shows a little class and polish, and reminds us all that deep down inside, the men sitting in the big chairs buying licenses and choosing which platform to be exclusive to really do love us.
Then there’s the things we take for granted. Just like the white bits at the end of our fingernails that protect the really sensitive skin, we only ever appreciate them when they’re not there. Case in point is Medal of Honour Frontline for the PS2. Allied Assault was a huge success on the PC, garnering a pretty big online gamer following, but Frontline didn’t include a 2-player mode, let alone i-Link 8 player mayhem. Lazy, yes. Stupid, yes. I suppose here should be a remark to which the answer is ‘no’, but it honestly was just lazy and stupid. And when there are developers willing to take games not often associated with split-screen shenanigans, like Banjo Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, manage to do the unthinkable and make platformer action type games fun for more than one.
Replayability, extras to unlock and all that should be compulsory, even in one-note tunes like Crazy Taxi. When stuff like Virtua Tennis comes along with nothing but a few courts and rackets to unlock and then the new Tiger Woods game gives you twenty odd golfers, club heads, flexes and about half a dozen courses tucked away, along with tonnes of tournament medals, scenarios and trophy balls it makes you wonder. EA get a lot of stick for being money-grabbing fools who care more about a quick buck than a good game (see the likes of Fifa) but you can’t fault them on the front-end. Lovely CG intros, all the official players and places, with tonnes of stuff to play and to achieve and to perform and…well, EA games are usually quite big. And then stuff like Ico comes along, which only gives you a completely new artistic experience – no other modes. Hehe.
Seriously though, games are never going to be perfect but sometimes you wonder if they’ve even made the effort. The silly player names in PES2 drag down the sublime engine. The bad controls stop Ape Escape 2 from being a smash hit. And so it goes on. Maybe if developers drew up a big checklist they wouldn’t miss so much stuff out. So please, feel free to add to my little effort here.
Thanks for reading.
-El
What I really like is once the game is completed, you can go back into the gameworld and there's a shed load of other tasks to do. Like on Jet Set Radio Future, you finish the story mode and then there's over 100 various 'street challenges' to get stuck into. Apart from the obvious aspects [like graphics, gameplay, control, etc,] this kind of thing can turn a good game into a great game.
Well the only game that I can't make a bad comment about is Goldeneye 007 for the N64.
I could still play the game now and never get bored. I wish that all games were like this, as some only last about a month.
I could still play the game now and never get bored. I wish that all games were like this, as some only last about a month.
Gameplay is more important. Actually, no graphics are more important. Scrap that, without a decent control system the game is rubbish. And it needs a decent amount of frames per second. Et cetera, et cetera. To be honest, I don’t think there’s any one thing that makes a game succeed. One large flaw can sink a title, but one great idea won’t be enough to shift a million copies. Really, you need to be an all-rounder, make sure everything’s covered, and then push forward for the extra inches to make yourself a classic game. Much is made of Halo’s vehicles, Final Fantasy’s depth, Zelda’s new graphical style and all the other new advances…but what about the smaller things, the incidentals, the stuff you don’t really notice until it’s gone. Or crap.
One is navigation. Playing LMA Manager on the PS2 and more recently Four Four Two: Touchline Passion on the PC, I realised just how hard it is to get to where you want nice and easily. However, stuff like Pro Evolution Soccer has a no nonsense style. And then there’s the guys who go one better, like with 007: Nightfire with the dancing ladies on the pause screen, or Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth with the video clips in the background. If you can’t use the interface, likely you won’t want to slowly go through it to play the game, meaning you’ll stop playing it, or trade it in. Which is bad.
Then there’s the score. One thing EA has always prided itself on is special stuff. Later I’ll kiss their backsides for their tried and tested formula of cramming as much stuff as humanly possible onto a DVD, but for now I’ll berate them. It doesn’t matter how famous, or popular, or cheap Ms Dynamite is – none of her songs have anything to do with football, nor do they share the same ethos of going down to your local team and barking at the full back to get stuck in. And Silverchair, young Australian metal upstarts, probably aren’t all that into golf. Take a look at Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s series: nu-metal, punk, that’s what “sk8r boiz” listen to. So there’s AC/DC, The Ramones et al jamming in the background. And for a different flavour, Halo’s huge, epic scale is backed up by a huge, epic orchestral score that builds and flows with the often tense onscreen action.
One thing that’s being included more and more often is the Extras feature. With this new generation of consoles the main software outlet is DVDs, so sensibly the game makers are bunging on videos not unlike those found on movie DVDs. Some earlier titles to take advantage were Tony Hawk’s 3 and SSX Tricky, and more recently we’ve seen Stuntman and Mortal Kombat bung them in there. They might not be hour long documentaries but hey, it shows a little class and polish, and reminds us all that deep down inside, the men sitting in the big chairs buying licenses and choosing which platform to be exclusive to really do love us.
Then there’s the things we take for granted. Just like the white bits at the end of our fingernails that protect the really sensitive skin, we only ever appreciate them when they’re not there. Case in point is Medal of Honour Frontline for the PS2. Allied Assault was a huge success on the PC, garnering a pretty big online gamer following, but Frontline didn’t include a 2-player mode, let alone i-Link 8 player mayhem. Lazy, yes. Stupid, yes. I suppose here should be a remark to which the answer is ‘no’, but it honestly was just lazy and stupid. And when there are developers willing to take games not often associated with split-screen shenanigans, like Banjo Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, manage to do the unthinkable and make platformer action type games fun for more than one.
Replayability, extras to unlock and all that should be compulsory, even in one-note tunes like Crazy Taxi. When stuff like Virtua Tennis comes along with nothing but a few courts and rackets to unlock and then the new Tiger Woods game gives you twenty odd golfers, club heads, flexes and about half a dozen courses tucked away, along with tonnes of tournament medals, scenarios and trophy balls it makes you wonder. EA get a lot of stick for being money-grabbing fools who care more about a quick buck than a good game (see the likes of Fifa) but you can’t fault them on the front-end. Lovely CG intros, all the official players and places, with tonnes of stuff to play and to achieve and to perform and…well, EA games are usually quite big. And then stuff like Ico comes along, which only gives you a completely new artistic experience – no other modes. Hehe.
Seriously though, games are never going to be perfect but sometimes you wonder if they’ve even made the effort. The silly player names in PES2 drag down the sublime engine. The bad controls stop Ape Escape 2 from being a smash hit. And so it goes on. Maybe if developers drew up a big checklist they wouldn’t miss so much stuff out. So please, feel free to add to my little effort here.
Thanks for reading.
-El
One is navigation. Playing LMA Manager on the PS2 and more recently Four Four Two: Touchline Passion on the PC, I realised just how hard it is to get to where you want nice and easily. However, stuff like Pro Evolution Soccer has a no nonsense style. And then there’s the guys who go one better, like with 007: Nightfire with the dancing ladies on the pause screen, or Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth with the video clips in the background. If you can’t use the interface, likely you won’t want to slowly go through it to play the game, meaning you’ll stop playing it, or trade it in. Which is bad.
Then there’s the score. One thing EA has always prided itself on is special stuff. Later I’ll kiss their backsides for their tried and tested formula of cramming as much stuff as humanly possible onto a DVD, but for now I’ll berate them. It doesn’t matter how famous, or popular, or cheap Ms Dynamite is – none of her songs have anything to do with football, nor do they share the same ethos of going down to your local team and barking at the full back to get stuck in. And Silverchair, young Australian metal upstarts, probably aren’t all that into golf. Take a look at Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s series: nu-metal, punk, that’s what “sk8r boiz” listen to. So there’s AC/DC, The Ramones et al jamming in the background. And for a different flavour, Halo’s huge, epic scale is backed up by a huge, epic orchestral score that builds and flows with the often tense onscreen action.
One thing that’s being included more and more often is the Extras feature. With this new generation of consoles the main software outlet is DVDs, so sensibly the game makers are bunging on videos not unlike those found on movie DVDs. Some earlier titles to take advantage were Tony Hawk’s 3 and SSX Tricky, and more recently we’ve seen Stuntman and Mortal Kombat bung them in there. They might not be hour long documentaries but hey, it shows a little class and polish, and reminds us all that deep down inside, the men sitting in the big chairs buying licenses and choosing which platform to be exclusive to really do love us.
Then there’s the things we take for granted. Just like the white bits at the end of our fingernails that protect the really sensitive skin, we only ever appreciate them when they’re not there. Case in point is Medal of Honour Frontline for the PS2. Allied Assault was a huge success on the PC, garnering a pretty big online gamer following, but Frontline didn’t include a 2-player mode, let alone i-Link 8 player mayhem. Lazy, yes. Stupid, yes. I suppose here should be a remark to which the answer is ‘no’, but it honestly was just lazy and stupid. And when there are developers willing to take games not often associated with split-screen shenanigans, like Banjo Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, manage to do the unthinkable and make platformer action type games fun for more than one.
Replayability, extras to unlock and all that should be compulsory, even in one-note tunes like Crazy Taxi. When stuff like Virtua Tennis comes along with nothing but a few courts and rackets to unlock and then the new Tiger Woods game gives you twenty odd golfers, club heads, flexes and about half a dozen courses tucked away, along with tonnes of tournament medals, scenarios and trophy balls it makes you wonder. EA get a lot of stick for being money-grabbing fools who care more about a quick buck than a good game (see the likes of Fifa) but you can’t fault them on the front-end. Lovely CG intros, all the official players and places, with tonnes of stuff to play and to achieve and to perform and…well, EA games are usually quite big. And then stuff like Ico comes along, which only gives you a completely new artistic experience – no other modes. Hehe.
Seriously though, games are never going to be perfect but sometimes you wonder if they’ve even made the effort. The silly player names in PES2 drag down the sublime engine. The bad controls stop Ape Escape 2 from being a smash hit. And so it goes on. Maybe if developers drew up a big checklist they wouldn’t miss so much stuff out. So please, feel free to add to my little effort here.
Thanks for reading.
-El