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Harry · Sep 10th, 2006, 11:57 PM

Yes, as I said some games on the Xbox 360 show some nice ideas, but most of these were badly implemented and poorly developed. The first part of Condemned is great, but then it becomes just a very repetitive action title full of (good looking) gore.

What you said about the freedom offered in some of the best games developed in Europe and in United States is absolutely true, and some of the "glaring exceptions" I referred to in my previous post include Lionhead, Bioware, Bethesda, Valve, Rockstar Games, Surreal Software, and few others. Games like Morrowind and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic are what really made me buy and like the Xbox. One of the many reasons that made it impossible to have those games on PlayStation 2 was the lack of a built-in HDD in the console. Microsoft's decision to include the HDD in their first console was one of the most simple and at the same time brilliant ideas of the latest "console war". The Xbox gained a lot of popularity thanks to games that the PlayStation 2 could have never had - again, exclusive software is the key to win a console war. About freedom in Japanese games, it's worth noting a couple of things. I think we have two different kinds of freedom an action/adventure game can offer to the player - freedom through quantity (size of the environments, number of quests, storylines with multiple branches) and freedom through quality (character/environment interaction, complex AI, advanced game physics). Morrowind is the easiest example of the first group (according to many, brought to an excess), games like Metal Gear Solid or Half Life 2 are examples of the latter (and in fact, I have never understood how people could complain about the linearity of Valve's or Konami's masterpieces). As video games become more technologically advanced, these two aspects will merge within single games, and according to the different attitude and culture of a development team, balance between these two aspects will vary. It's difficult to say it for sure right now, as we need to wait to play at least the next two waves of killer apps for this new generation of consoles, but I think Japanese will focus more and more on the second type of freedom, with some elements of the first, while the opposite will happen among Western developers. Of course, there are, once again, big exceptions - few development teams in the whole world are able to do what Valve did with Half Life 2 (even though the games are very different in many, many ways, the only game I can compare with the "freedom through quality" of HL2 is Metal Gear Solid 3).

Another thing we shouldn't forget is that, even though they may not be using it as thoroughly as Western developers nowadays, non-linearity in action/adventure video games was invented by Japanese developers, including Miyamoto (with Zelda, but even the first Super Mario Bros featured examples of non-linearity, even though it was branchless or unidirectional), Sakamoto, and few others.

Hmmm ok, going out of topic again. Kupo will kill us.

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Sep 10th, 2006, 11:57 PM	#17
Harry Administrator Joined: Jan 2002 Location: Here Posts: 1,222	Yes, as I said some games on the Xbox 360 show some nice ideas, but most of these were badly implemented and poorly developed. The first part of Condemned is great, but then it becomes just a very repetitive action title full of (good looking) gore. What you said about the freedom offered in some of the best games developed in Europe and in United States is absolutely true, and some of the "glaring exceptions" I referred to in my previous post include Lionhead, Bioware, Bethesda, Valve, Rockstar Games, Surreal Software, and few others. Games like Morrowind and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic are what really made me buy and like the Xbox. One of the many reasons that made it impossible to have those games on PlayStation 2 was the lack of a built-in HDD in the console. Microsoft's decision to include the HDD in their first console was one of the most simple and at the same time brilliant ideas of the latest "console war". The Xbox gained a lot of popularity thanks to games that the PlayStation 2 could have never had - again, exclusive software is the key to win a console war. About freedom in Japanese games, it's worth noting a couple of things. I think we have two different kinds of freedom an action/adventure game can offer to the player - freedom through quantity (size of the environments, number of quests, storylines with multiple branches) and freedom through quality (character/environment interaction, complex AI, advanced game physics). Morrowind is the easiest example of the first group (according to many, brought to an excess), games like Metal Gear Solid or Half Life 2 are examples of the latter (and in fact, I have never understood how people could complain about the linearity of Valve's or Konami's masterpieces). As video games become more technologically advanced, these two aspects will merge within single games, and according to the different attitude and culture of a development team, balance between these two aspects will vary. It's difficult to say it for sure right now, as we need to wait to play at least the next two waves of killer apps for this new generation of consoles, but I think Japanese will focus more and more on the second type of freedom, with some elements of the first, while the opposite will happen among Western developers. Of course, there are, once again, big exceptions - few development teams in the whole world are able to do what Valve did with Half Life 2 (even though the games are very different in many, many ways, the only game I can compare with the "freedom through quality" of HL2 is Metal Gear Solid 3). Another thing we shouldn't forget is that, even though they may not be using it as thoroughly as Western developers nowadays, non-linearity in action/adventure video games was invented by Japanese developers, including Miyamoto (with Zelda, but even the first Super Mario Bros featured examples of non-linearity, even though it was branchless or unidirectional), Sakamoto, and few others. Hmmm ok, going out of topic again. Kupo will kill us.