Yes, exactly. Except for the most abstract puzzle games, all videogames do this. The mechanics of the game are always subordinate to the fantasy.
Guitar Hero does a really, really good job of making you feel like a rock star, just like **Halo ** does a really, really good job of making you feel like a space marine. Some people like pretending to be rock stars. Other people like pretending to be space marines. It’s all just a matter of taste.
From a game design perspective the INTERESTING thing about Guitar Hero is how the shape of the controller affects the experience. The simon-says gameplay of **Amplitude ** and **Frequency ** turns into something amazing when you force the player to adopt the posture of a fantasy guitar player. It’s a very profound reminder of the essential kinesthetic nature of videogames. Or, in the profound wisdom of Bananarama: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it, and that’s what gets results.”
I just got back from my brother’s house, where his boys just got a Wii and GH3, so I had a chance to check it out for the first time. I suspected I would enjoy it, but I liked it so much that if Wal-Mart had been open, I would’ve tried to find one. As it is, they’re so rare at the moment it’ll probably be January before I can find one even online.
Yes, I understand your extremely basic and entirely irrelevant point.
My point was that football was cited as a refutation of the argument that ALL videogames are on rails. That makes your reply, and indeed your entire point, irrelevant. Worse than that, you led with “the comparison to football is apt,” which is patently false in the context football was brought up.
Do you understand this yet, or would you like me to further elaborate?
If you think my entire point was in response to one post bringing up football games in some other context, you ought to go buy some reading comprehension before you come back to this thread. I was going to make the comparison to football videogames anyway–I had already typed part of it up before I read its mention in the thread–and seeing it had already been mentioned gave me a convenient segue. I don’t understand why you’re so hell-bent on trying to force my posts into irrelevancy. Did I piss you off on another board or something?
Ellis Dee, are you intending to be obnoxious? If you are not, please take note of the fact that several people in this thread are finding your posts confrontational. If you are intending to be obnoxious… then I wish you would stop.
Quite honestly I don’t think it sums up anything. Is anyone here is saying “Hey, you shouldn’t be having fun with that stupid game”. I think Ellis Dee is getting a little frustrated because she was making a simple point about games on rails being different to more freestyle ones and everyone seems to be mangling her meaning.
It gets more complicated when you consider mods. If you roll your own Guitar Hero track (or use the guitar with Frets on Fire), and build your own song, is it still on rails if they’re your own rails?
While I somewhat agree with you, I somewhat disagree. I think there’s more variation in rock performances than you’re crediting it with. While I do like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I think it’s a very rare guitarist or drummer that plays the same notes the same way, every time. Yes, the basic structure is there, but if you add an extra strum to a chord or a ghosted snare to the beat, or an extra kick here and there, or change up your fills, etc., these games punish you for it. In real life, as long as it’s musical, nobody cares.
Now, getting a machine to judge the musicality of extra notes and things like that, that’s a toughie.
How do you roll you own GH track if you have no access to the separated tracks? When you hit the wrong guitar notes in GH, the guitar drops out. Not having that sort of feedback would ruin the game for me.
I’m not sure what that means. By “build your own song” does that mean you are allowed to click away at the keys without buttons sliding down the track? How do you score points/advance while you’re doing that? What does the music sound like when you do that? (considering that the keys don’t have specific notes attached to them).
If you were able to able to set your own key combinations and then challenge someone else to match you in some sort of “dueling guitars” type thing, then yes that would be much more “off the rails” type of game.
Maybe it’s been mentioned already, but at the highest levels, surviving a song often means picking the pattern of notes you’re going to play and ignoring some others. So there is decision-making involved. Also, a big part of the strategy is determining when to use star power, and there are advanced techniques like ‘squeezing’ to extract more points. So it’s not just a game ‘on rails’.
Yes, if your only goal is to survive the level. All the GH tracks are learnable and you don’t have to ignore anything. Take this 9-year-old who nails 95% on Expert on one of those Dragonforce songs.
You can, through various tools, build your own interpretations of songs and put them into Guitar Hero. You see them now and again as custom songs in videos.
No. Quite the contrary, actually, as I consider you an excellent poster in soccer threads.
But you’re being disingenuous. Re-read your post that I intially responded to:
This is clearly drawing a comparison about two different games, both being on rails. If it isn’t, then what exactly did you mean by a football gamer who “has to be reminded of them on the screen”? You used the exact same phrasing in the second paragraph to describe how Guitar Hero spells out each button-press for the player.
This simply does not exist in any football game I’ve ever played. There is no graphic that pops up the “throw to the TE” button when the LB who would normally cover him blitzes leaving the TE wide open.
Now you say you didn’t intend to say that football is on rails, but instead you meant all along that football games are free-form because real-life football is free-form. And you question my reading comprehension for missing something so obvious.
If it is so simple, please explain how this quoted text in any way says that football games AREN’T on rails, since that’s what you’re claiming it said all along.
ETA: More to the point, can you really stand behind this followup statement you made: “I wasn’t comparing music games to sports games.”
I have never once made a disparaging remark about Guitar Hero or the people who enjoy it. The only thing I’ve said on that subject is this:
I don’t take issue with Guitar Hero in any way. What I DO take issue with is when people justify their enjoyment of Guitar Hero by claiming that ALL VIDEOGAMES are on rails, so Guitar Hero is no different in that respect. This is clearly, obviously, and trivially wrong.
Does it ever annoy you when sombody boldly and proudly declares something that is clearly, obviously, and trivially wrong? And then when you explain why they’re mistaken, they effectively cover their ears and shout “la-la-la I can’t hear you!”, and then finish off by declaring that they’ve won the debate?
If you’ve never run into that situation, it’s annoying as shit.
