Never noticed that one, but I always chuckled at the people who wave the controller all over the place. Turning left? Wave the controller to the left! Need to jump? Lift the controller in the air! When doing so does nothing at all (Wii controllers notwithstanding.)
I’m 52 and female. I was an adult when Pong and Pacman appeared in the arcades that I frequented.
I’ve played on various computers and an NES, SNES, PSX, PS2, and XBox 360, and I’ve played twitch, adventure, and RPGs (online and off), mostly. My favorite is RPGs.
First, I prefer substance over style. I think that FF6 is very nearly the perfect video game, and was THE best video game at the time of its release. I could have done without the Relm character, though. I’ve seen plenty of games that have great graphics, but are boring to play.
Second, the game should be fair. Someone else mentioned that racing games seem to cheat, and I’ve noticed this in racing minigames. The computer controlled car (or chocobo, in my case) should not be able to suddenly appear in front of my chocobo, when I’ve got a substantial lead going and my bird is basically just a hell of a lot faster and has more endurance than the computer’s birds. The puzzles should be tough but solvable, either by logic or a bit of trial and error. This was one of my main gripes about Myst. At least one of the puzzles required aiming mikes at various locations, and the ONLY way to find the right locations was by tediously twitching the mikes a bit at a time.
Third, it’s a GAME, not a damned movie. FF9 was particularly bad about this, and now that I’m playing Lost Odyssey I have the same complaint. Having a few movies or scenes is good, but more is not better. When I play a game, I’m not there to watch a movie. I have plenty of movies. I want to play a game, and movies in the game should either explain gameplay or they should advance the plot.
I was never exceptionally good at twitch games, but I managed to play the first three Mario games and similar games all right. However, I hate it when I have to memorize sequences of buttons to push in order to trigger a fighting maneuver. If I have to press a button at a certain time to trigger an action, OK. If I have to press half a dozen (or more!) buttons in order to pull off a slightly better punch, I’m not going to bother. I’m old enough that I have difficulty in learning new skills, and learning a new complicated skill just for a particular game doesn’t have enough benefit for me to try to do it.
If a game has more than about half a dozen characters, I’m not going to love them all equally, if they have different backgrounds and moves. I’m going to avoid the character that requires me to memorize button pushing sequences, and I’m going to avoid using the character that’s a cute but obnoxious kid. Chrono Cross had something like 44 playable characters, and even though it needed more than two game replays in order to get all of the content from the game, that’s still way too many. I think that CC could have been a much better game if it only had half, or even a quarter, of that many playable characters. Almost all of those characters had to go on a special mission to get their Level 7 special attacks/techniques, too.
One of the things that CC did right is that on a New Game +, one could use a relief charm. This meant that the central character was show when the party was moving around, but another character took his place in battles. In this way, the central character didn’t get levelled up excessively in the New Game +. Since there were three active characters in battle parties, at least the experience could be spread around a bit more evenly. In FFX, the characters could swap in and out of the front line of battle, which meant that again it was easier to spread the experience around.
Going back to the second point, the game should be fair, I don’t like to NEED to go to gamefaqs or purchase a strategy guide to find most of the game’s content. Games should be intuitive, for the most part, and Easter eggs should be rare treasures. I shouldn’t have to play pixel hunt to find that one item that I’m going to need to finish a quest. It doesn’t have to be blazingly obvious, but it shouldn’t be so obscure that I need a huge map with blinking arrows to find the thing, either.
I suck at Rock Band, too, and that frustrates me. I am not sure whether it’s because my reflexes have gone to shit, or because I used to play the guitar and now I keep trying to use my old skills in the game, but I am not a good Rock Band player. It’s probably a great game, and I’m a crappy player.
For online games, not being able to connect when I was looking forward to is a big source of frustration. If it’s because of a storm ok, what will you do, but for the last few weeks several of the people my ISP serves have been getting our MMO blocked, apparently because someone was thinking “people connecting to a server for a long time and traffic both ways = illegal P2P!” - never mind that P2P itself is not illegal.
Learning to decodify criticspeak has been hard. I’m old enough to remember when critics and me had similar ideas of what “great graphics” meant; nowadays, I’ll pop in a game that’s supposed to have “great graphics” and go “those arms are completely cylindric, the faces are flat and the differences between male and female characters are that the females are cold-immune (exactly the opposite of real women) and have two half-oranges stuck to their chests.”
Linear games bore me shitless. Oh, and if there’s pretty much no choice about what your character will be doing, don’t call it an RPG: say it’s set in a fantasy world, but don’t call it an RPG.
Games whose controls can’t be user-defined. This is specially common and absurd in the case of console-ported games. I’ve seen games sold in France (Azerty keyboard) which assumed a Qwerty. I’ve seen games which didn’t read the keystroke (“key number 13” - number taken out of my left elbow) but the actual symbol. That / which in US keyboards is directly on the left of the right shift, in a Spanish keyboard is shift+7…
Games which only accept one shortcut. Of course, this wasn’t so frustrating when that was the only choice, but I’m pretty ambidexterous and like being able to use both hands. When I’m playing double-shortcut games, I may fight with both hands (left on keys, right on mouse), then use AWSD to move with my left hand while taking a drink with my right, then use cursors to move while rummaging in a drawer with my left.
The reactions of some people when I play a game in a different way than they do is quite irritating. Then again, gotta love it when my “weird” stuff leads to owning them, but I’d still rather not own anybody if it meant not getting anybody saying “why are you sending diplomats to buy towns? that’s so stupid! send your army!” (because once you’ve taken out their capital, bribing becomes a lot more effective than killing, duh - that’s from Civ). Mind you, generally those people are idiots the whole time, videogames is just another excuse to be dismissive.
I can’t play a twitch game to save my life. And until I saw The Hordie (a coworker) tanking Ulduar I thought that “key bashing” was just an expression - I just can’t be that cruel to my poor keyboard.
I’ve tried to get my wife into gaming on occasion but I don’t think it’ll ever happen. She feels sick playing FPS games and doesn’t have any situational awareness, she’ll spend half the time pointing at the ground or at a wall. She also expects to be able to do things straight away, she doesn’t cope with a slow learning process and gets frustrated when she’s not immediately good at something. This means she doesn’t stick with a game beyond a few minutes.
For me, I like the idea of playing big strategy games like Civ IV and Galactic Civilisations but the reality of it usually leaves me feeling bored, confused, or overwhelmed. I don’t like micromanagement and I don’t like working my way through a new tech tree and trying to figure out what does what. I like the idea of tactical games where you might control a group of soldiers and use them on single stand alone missions but I normally ind the reality of playing this type of game isn’t that enjoyable. I often find I don’t have a good enough grasp on the controls to be able to keep adequate command of the little guys. And once again, I don’t like micromanagement, if I send a group of soldiers somewhere, I don’t want to have to follow them all and make sure that they’re doing what I told them.
So the idea of strategy and tactical games appeal to me but the reality is that I tend not to enjoy playing them.
I enjoy FPS games but I’m not that good at them so I tend to get killed a lot and often come to some wall in the game that I can’t get past. Then I’ll give the game up and probably not return to it.
Surprisingly I really enjoy racing games. Surprising because racing games were not something that appealed before I started playing them. I particularly like motorbike games with realistic handling on real tracks. Examples would be the MotoGP and World Super Bike series of games. They have a lot of frustrations though that others have already touched on.
AI that is too slow is and difficulty levels that are handled in an unrealistic way are my biggest gripes. There should be a range of difficulty levels in the game such that the hardest difficulty level is a match for someone who puts a lot of time into the game. Also the difficulty should be adjusted in realistic ways. So AI bike riders on easier difficulties behave the way a real person who’s a bit slower would. Their racing line isn’t as good or consistent, they brake a little earlier into corners but have the same top speed on the straights. They make more mistakes.
There should be a range of abilities among the AI riders so that the slowest AI riders in a higher difficulty are just slightly faster than the fastest AI riders in the next lower difficulty. That way the player will always be riding in the pack, once they get too fast for one difficulty level they can progress to the next one where they’ll find themselves in the middle to bottom end of the field.
Another frustration with racing games is AI who act like you’re not there. If you’re getting passed by an AI bike they should go around you, not through you. Better yet, they should sit behind you and apply pressure until you make a mistake, just like a real rider would.
I’m also not a fan of timed sequences in games. I don’t like feeling rushed and particularly when it is supposed to be an open world, what’s the point in an open world if you give the player time limits than restrict them from exploring the world?
A case in point, I’m playing Operation Flashpoint at the moment which I’m really enjoying except for the missions that force you to ignore any opportunity for flanking manoeuvres and direct straight at the enemy because it’s the only way to get it done in time. If you’re supposed to be waiting for me to take out some anti tank gunners, then bloody well wait for me to do it before start rolling into their strike zones!
another thing frustrating about Operation Flashpoint is that the difficulty is raised by reducing HUD elements and checkpoint areas. That’s not a bad idea except that I would really like to be able to have more control over how it’s done. I want to play it without the cross-hair in the middle of the screen, but the only way I can do that is by playing on the hardest difficulty which also gives me no save points, team members who don’t respawn, and no HUD elements at all, not even one to tell me if I’m crouching or standing up.
Where do you stand on movies that give you insight into characters’ motivations/history/personality but do not, per se, advance the “plot”. I personally almost find those more interesting that the ones where everyone stands around looking gloomy as they discuss their options for defeating The Evil That Cannot Be Stopped.
What? You didn’t like the FF12 “There are 7 unmarked boxes that you MUST NOT OPEN if you wish to get the Ultimate Weapon”? God. Worst design decision ever. well, not really, but pretty bad.
Have you tried something with a less irritating learning curve? Pretty much the definition of a good casual or “gateway” game is a game that’s the cliche of “simple to learn, but takes a lifetime to master”. Soul Calibur and Call of Duty are NOT these games. 
Maybe try starting her with a puzzler (Plants vs Zombies! Puzzle Quest!) or even a non-action RPG (Tales of <something>. Persona.)? Both of those sorts of games tend to ease you into the gameplay mechanics gently, and you always feel like you know what you’re doing, even if you’re not doing very much yet.
With your dislike of Micromanagement, I think you might like Kohan (Any of the entries in the series. Ahriman’s Gift is the best, but it’s pretty old by now.), since it has a relatively flat “tech tree” and you command units as “companies” rather than individually. Combat is in fact, essentially automated, and is determined by terrain, company composition, and positioning rather than who can micromanage their spellcasters more effectively.
Alternatively, you might like Sword of the Stars (Demo HERE) which does a good job of abstracting a lot of the usual micromanagement that goes into this sort of game. The exception actually being COMBAT this time, where you are advised (but not required) to give at least some direction to your individual ships, but you’ll only be controlling a dozen or so at once, generally.)
No, but when I put a book down, I’m left with (hopefully) characters, plots, incidents, and motivations that I’m invested in and that make me want to return and resume the storytelling. I also have (generally speaking) the assurance that it will all add up to some larger effect–that whether tonally, thematically, or emotionally, there will be some sort of resolution that I’m slowly, irrevocably building up to. If a book doesn’t accomplish this, it’s generally considered a failure.
But none of these things apply (from my limited experience) to videogames. A mild curiosity about the next challenge is not the same as an investment in story or character. I don’t have any confidence that, in the grand scheme of things, it all culminates in anything more than a big “Good for You!” when you’re done. And most videogames, I suspect, aren’t designed to deliver these kinds of experiences. Which is fine.
But which is why they aren’t for me.
What other kinds of video games are there, other than ones with rounds (or stages, or chapters, or something incremental)? And I never said I need stories for my entertainment. But I do prefer catharsis. Completing a jigsaw puzzle never feels like a waste of time, but maybe because it’s tactile and stimulating in a hands-on way. But I think w/jigsaw puzzles, you have an end in sight–the completion of the picture. Ditto crosswords. Video games seem designed to have the end be relatively “unattainable”–for good reasons (you want to get as much value for your money as possible), but having this non-tactile accomplishment feel so far away diminishes the excitement with me. YMOV.
I’m not a gamer, but I do have a Wii and a SNES.
I was really into gaming when I was a little kid - on my Commodore 64. Then on the Nintendo. Even with those systems, I only really had a very small library and played the same games over and over (mostly Super Mario Bros. and Tetris).
Later on I got myself a SNES when SNES was on its way out. I have three games, Donkey Kong Country II, which came with the console, Zelda and some Star Wars game. I’ve played Zelda through 3 times in 10 years, haven’t finished DKCII yet, and never got very far on Star Wars.
For me my biggest problem with games through the years has been the way controllers progressed. Too many buttons. I also became positively stupid when things turned 3D. Like Death Ray’s wife, I spend a lot of time staring at corners when I try to play a FPS. In driving games, I drive everywhere but the track. My friend excitedly showed my Halo one night, with his surround sound system, in the dark. I almost passed out I was so dizzy.
I was super excited to get a Wii, and enjoyed bowling for a short while. Then I really enjoyed Super Paper Mario. I tried Zelda Twilight Princess (I bought it!) and have given up on it. It’s too hard for me or something.
I do have Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2 and The Beatles Rock band. I like those - they’re easy, repetitive and mindless. Of course, I can’t play on anything past medium and I’m not very good on the drums. But the few times I’ve had people over to play it was absolutely fantastic.
As for computer games - I simply don’t have the money to keep up with them. I don’t want to buy new graphics cards or processors to keep up with games. I don’t want to sit in my desk chair an extra 5 hours a night. I don’t want to play against people online who are so much better than me so that I always die. I’ve just never gotten into them.
The thing I dislike most about the Wii is having to wait for all this shit to load all the time. You play your song in Rock Band and have to wait 3 minutes to get to the next one while things are “loading” or “saving.” I paid just as much for my Wii as I did for my desktop, and it seems to severely lack in speed.
FWIW I do watch sports. But sports have guaranteed beginnings and endings within a few hours. They don’t require me to have any skill or to think. I can eat, drink and smoke without pausing the game. I can take a call or walk away. I can listen while in my car or take the game outside with me on the radio. I can talk about the game the next day with other people. I see it as a completely different thing.
You should always be able to walk away or take a call during any single player game. In fact, unlike watching a sport where you might miss the big play if you do that, the game should always be waiting exactly where you left it. Yeah, online games don’t do this (out of necessity) but they are the tiny minority.
The paralell I was failing to draw earlier is that sports are:
Fundamentally meaningless. You’re not left with anything when you’re done.
Complicated. Someone who doesn’t follow them is going to be left bloody confused when you start talking about them.
Essentially solitary. Yes, you can watch the game with friends, but you can play Street Fighter with friends too.
However, since none of these really apply to your objections (mostly, that games are too hard for relaxation) that’s fine.
I really should start some sort of checklist:
Video Games? Yes/no/why?
Jigsaw puzzles? Yes/no/why?
Sports (watching, not playing)? yes/no/why?
Board/Tabletop games? yes/no/why?
I find this subject fascinating.
The last third of the Ultima series had a good story arc going. In each game, as the story unfolded, I found it to be just like a good book - couldn’t wait to see what happened next. Then waiting for the next game in the series was akin to waiting for the next novel in a series.
VII and VII Part II were the best at this; VIII was a bit of a disappointment game-play wise, but not with the ongoing story. Then, the final installment, IX, was the opposite: good game play, but they totally fucked up the story. There were also the Underworld games which expanded the story further, but I wasn’t into those.
Anyway, my point is, there are - or perhaps I should say were - games out there that are good at storytelling.
There still are, but they don’t get limelight the way the Ultima games used to. (U7 was very good in this regard. I sortof lost track of U7:Part2 though.)
A lot of people turn of their noses at JRPGs, but if nothing else, they tell very interesting stories.
Longtime gamer, cut my teeth on Sword of Fargoal on the Vic-20 and never looked back…
My biggest annoyances are flow-breaking boss battles and quick-time events. Doubly so when they are combined. Zelda and Resident Evil are the most guilty offenders.
Nothing pisses me off more than leaving my fun adventurous gameplay and world immersion when the boss shows up–having to repetitively bang my head against a contrived “puzzle” by trial and error, grinding new Pavlovian reflexes that I never wanted and will never again be used. There’s a reason that I passed over Dragon’s Lair in the arcades, leaving the chumps to stuff it full of quarters when they failed again at the up-left-up-up-pause-down-right-right pattern for the thousandth time. It just wasn’t fun.
Okay, that’s a new one on me. What’s a JRPG?
Japanese RPG. Final Fantasy type stuff with turn-based combat, as opposed to, say, D&D style games.
Thanks!
Yeah sort of. We’ve played one of the arcade billiards games for the Xbox and played one of the cricket games for a while, but it doesn’t particularly interest her so she’s just doing it to amuse me in which case I may as well play something I want to play while she surfs the net.
She also has it in her head that video games are for kids, she’s beginning to realise that this is not true anymore, but I don’t think she’ll ever fully accept it as a legitimate adult activity. That probably keeps her from it more than anything else.
Thanks, I played one of the Total War games a while ago and liked that. I liked the tactics involved in the combat. I think my dislike for micromanagement comes in two forms. I’m not that keen on resource management and base building and I also dislike micromanaging units when it’s due to their poor AI and path following routines.
Eh, I figure that they usually advance the plot somewhat. More importantly, I get more emotionally invested in the characters, and enjoy the game more, if these movies aren’t overdone.
I didn’t finish FFIX, too many movies for my taste, and I got irritated at the characters. I didn’t finish FFX, because again, I got irritated at the characters. Plus in FFX, some of the ultimate weapons were impossible to obtain…I don’t mean difficult, I mean impossible! I did manage to get Lulu’s weapon, and some of the others, but I failed at that chocobo race every time. I figured, if I didn’t like two games in a row, the problem is probably that I don’t like the way the developers are making the games these days. So I’ve quit buying FF games.
Play Grim Fandango. Or Mass Effect. Or No More Heroes. Or Phoenix Wright. Or the Half-Life series. Or countless other games that have actual story rather than just challenges. I guarantee you you’ll have an experience at least as strong as any book can provide. We’re way past the days of Pong and Tetris.
I used to play vieo games a lot. Arcades (Tempest, Centipedeand the like), Atari 2600, Apple II (Lode Runner, Snake Bite, Karateka)
But these days, I don’t play many. I do an annual Unreal Tournament 2004(friends and I vs bots) , the occasional popcap type game, and Lord of The Rings Online.
I don’t have the dextereity to handle many modern twitch games (more than a joysick and two buttons). I kinda like FPS, but not enough to buy them (I played the Halo Demo)
Brian
Turn based combat isn’t really what I’d consider a defining characteristic of the genre - plenty of western RPGs used it back in the day, and plenty of JRPGs have realtime combat systems now. Moreso, I’d cite:
Predetermined main character - in a JRPG, you take on the role of a predetermined main character. You don’t get to pick his class/stats/appearance/whatever. It’s less about letting the player choose who they are as they go through the world and more about telling the story of a specific individual.
“Battle Arenas” - While some Western RPGs used to do this (Ultima 3-5), this is another stylistic difference. In most WRPGs these days, combat occurs on the same map as general gameplay/exploration. In JRPGs, it frequently involves “zooming in” to a special “arena” view where combat takes place. This is related to the fact that usually, during the exploration phases of the game, the party is represented by a single character, and the zoomed in arena displays everyone seperately.
Differences in restricting the world - in many WRPGs, the developers keep you from going where you’re ‘not supposed’ to go in the world by making that area too dangerous. JRPGs on the other hand, are more likely to prevent you from stumbling into those areas at all, via guards not letting you through the gate, needing some alternative form of transportation, etc.
The Party - though this one is blurrier, WRPGs are more likely to feature a lone protagonist.
“Free will” - in WRPGs, the protagonist is more likely to be free to be a jerkass - killing townspeople or whathaveyou. JRPGs almost universally prevent this sort of behavior.
This is my frustration.
My gaming crack consists of online PVP games. And I generally suck at them.
I recently began flying fighter planes in an older online combat shooter. This indicates to me a possession of certain underlying masochistic tendencies. Most newbs give up the game pretty quickly because, you know, they’re smart. The game is notoriously unforgiving, and the vets wildly outnumber the newbs. And yet I keep trying even though the frustration easily outweighs the fun.
It’s an odd hallmark of my personality. I like competition of all sorts, yet I’m generally a lousy competitor.