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Post by Ex on Feb 14, 2018 13:55:58 GMT -5
I think it bugged me so much because it seemed to revolve around set pieces to make the player "feel cool" (eg. buy this game to live your fantasy of becoming an elite delta force soldier jumping out of a helicopter) instead of an actual test of skill. I think difficulty in seventh gen shooters largely went away due to a more pertinent influence; Halo's regenerating health.
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Post by anayo on Feb 14, 2018 14:42:53 GMT -5
I think difficulty in seventh gen shooters largely went away due to a more pertinent influence; Halo's regenerating health. Maaayybe...? In Halo itself that feature seemed OK cause your deflector shield was layered over a health bar. You could survive a few shots, but if you kept taking fire you'd get injured and would need to find a health kit. Then in later games everyone mysteriously decided to make the deflector shield the main health bar. That just seems way less nuanced and interesting (not to mention less plausible. I can buy a 23rd century space marine with futuristic shields. But why can a 21st century soldier just take a breather and recover from gunshot wounds?) Overall I think "handholding" bugs me more than regenerating shields. It's almost this mentality that there aren't really any stakes and you can't fail, everything's just an audiovisual aid to fantastize about being a badass. I mean like this:
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Post by Ex on Feb 14, 2018 14:57:39 GMT -5
In Halo itself that feature seemed OK cause your deflector shield was layered over a health bar. Yep you're right, the shield regenerated, not the health (which took health packs to refill). I suppose in that way, Halo's system acted as a bridge between the old way (health packs) and the modern way (regenerating health). I still contend Halo acted as harbinger for that style of health management to reach prominence in seventh gen shooters. I also agree elaborate shooter level design certainly gave way to "corridor shooter" syndrome. That was a result of multiple factors. Publisher costs, reduced difficulty to appease wider demographic, faster development time, crap like that. I've often called the 7th Generation of gaming the "Push A to Win" generation. The level design thing you cited is but one of many examples why.
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Post by chibby on Feb 14, 2018 21:31:09 GMT -5
I agree with a lot of what's been said here.
As a fan of both old and new gaming, I also like old games for what I'm going to call "Spiritual Reasons".
We've touched on this in another thread but video games were only sometimes allowed and only in certain contexts (it was an ever moving target) in my household growing up so there's a measure of forbidden fruit syndrome in playing any game at all for me. That intensifies when the game the generations during which I was disconnected.
Additionally, I have a lot of either lost or repressed memories from when I was growing up. I don't always think to myself that I'm playing an old game to create memories that I should have had, but sometimes I look at my collection or beat something difficult and feel a certain sense of restoration.
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