davyK wrote:

Tried GTA - was the PS2 one. Vice City was it? Wasn't for me.

From your posts in the past and this thread I have you down as very much a gameplay guy.
Gameplay in 3D GTA games has always been very much behind it's peers. GTAV caught up and was average.

What made the experiences or play, for me was just trying stuff or messing around in the online component.

My favourite experience from GTA online rivals nearly everything I have played in a single player campaign as scripted events but was 100% free range.

Skip this if you don't wanna read my GTA experience.

Me and 3 friends had completed a mission and spawned at the airfield near the prison.
My friends jumped in light air craft and helicopters leaving myself with a huge, four engine carrier plane.

We started flying over the prison, seeing who could fly lowest, this gives you instant 5 star police rating, meaning the sky filled with police choppers. My friends fended them off for a bit but quickly died or crashed their light armoured crafts. Being a carrier I could take a few hits but had no guns. I took down several whirly birds by flying into them but lost an engine.
Realising my time was short I bailed from the plane and pulled my chute.
As I floated down, still under fire, I noticed a train going past.
I managed to land on a flatbed carriage at the back of the moving train, found cover and preceded to fend off police choppers until the train headed into a tunnel and I lost the filth.
At this point I had resigned myself to riding the train into town where it would stop and I could get off.
Then I saw an orange blur coming towards me, it was my IRL housemate in a super car chasing the train. From down the hallway I heard him shout "Jump on".
I leapt from the train onto his car.
He stopped to let me in at a gap in the tunnel which was the top of a bridge.
Just as I got into the car and we wheel spun off another mate crashed into the bridge in a huge fireball after a failed attempt at a kamikaze double kill on the two of us.

God no, I hate 90% of open world games.

Knowing taste while being able to appreciate that of others is the ideal really, like any other media.
Experience games are getting somewhat of a rough ride as they are new.
Gamers are a funny bunch, often open to trying new things but quick to judge them when different.

Another good point.
Could be extended to commercial value where the closest rival to games is Bollywood, where narrative is largely garbage.

Oh, and the time/money cost of getting started making them, too.

Best part of the game, that. I only got about half way through before getting bored and giving up, but I collected every one of those goddamn orbs. Of course, Saints Row IV was essentially the same thing but better in pretty much every way, but that came much later.

Fair point, games can learn from other medium's lessons.
I would argue they already have.

At the same time I think it is worth noting the people involved in making these things and where they have come from.

Film evolved from theatre, music and art. Whereas I would argue games came from science and coding.

Gameplay is much more analogue than experince which is more emotive. Therefore gameplay would likely come more naturaly to the industry and has progressed quicker.

That most game stories are straight-to-vid standard (at best) must point to something. If it's hard to write a good story because of gameplay interrupting it...

It didn't have good writing, but I really liked Tomb Raider: Underworld's idea:

Multiplayer is an interesting angle here. How integral is it to some slices of experience (eg Live's GTA example above)? How integral is it to gameplay? Orthogonal answers to those questions?

Escape wrote:

That most game stories are straight-to-vid standard (at best) must point to something.

It does, but it could be all sorts of things. Maybe game writing doesn't attract the best writers, for whatever reason (lower pay? Less respect?) Maybe it's because it's difficult to write something that involves the player without forcing too much on them in terms of how they should be. I could go on, but I have to get ready for work.

If it's hard to write a good story because of gameplay interrupting it...

In some cases, I'm sure it is. But if the focus of a game is a story, the gameplay should be based on and around it, surely?

Of course, this is still assuming that story is necessarily an important aspect of an "experience" game. I'm not sure it is. There's also the idea of providing a framework for players to write their own story with play, which hasn't been explored a huge amount, in my knowledge.

I know I am very much a same room multi-player person, but online presence and the playground style of game are a perfect match.

If there was a freestyle Pilotwings like that I'd be all over it.

Remind Nintendo. Wings 2, too.

Escape wrote:

Remind Nintendo. Wings 2, too.

Sky Odyssey on PS2 was Pilotwings-like. Only planes but still nice despite early gen fogging etc.

The much maligned Wing Island on Wii isn't half bad if you get past the anthropomorphic animal cast.

trippy wrote:

Games are escapism

Unrelated to your post i was thinking about about this statement the other day. What does it mean? To me it implies we play games to escape from real world problems/stress or imagine some fantasy where we are different people or our life is different. I don't feel that applies to me. I love my life. I play games cos they are fun and enrich my life.

Get yourself a headset and Elite Dangerous. Escapism cubed.