Favorite game genres

I've always been partial to 3rd person melee combat games myself, it's just a crying shame that there hasn't been anything of decent quality and length since 2005. 2005 had stuff like Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, The Warriors, Nanobreakers, Rise of the Kasai and Dynasty Warriors 5. The few years prior to that also had the Legacy of Kain series which was great.

What the hell happened since then? Brutal Legend was great but should have been far longer, Viking: Battle for Asgard and Darksiders were only just okay but that seems to be it. Golden Axe: Beastrider, Conan, God of War, Dante's Inferno, Bayonetta, The Force Unleashed, and any game with the word 'Game' in the title could get a eunuch off with their suckage.

I blame this decline in quality and quantity on two main things:

1. Quick Time Events. OMFG GANTHAN IS MAKING YET ANOTHER RANT ON QTE's I SOOO DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING!!11 I digress. I'll spare everyone this time and simply sum up that I personally think that the QTE as a gameplay mechanic for brawlers is the shittiest shit that ever got shit out of the shit crusted shithole of the shit for brains shithead who had the brilliant (sarcasm, btw) idea in the first place.

2. Lack of multiplayer. This one I thought of just the other day, but maybe one of the issues here is the difficulty in making a multiplayer game out of this genre. I'm not too bothered about it as I've always been more of a single player campaign kind of gamer, but I guess I'm the minority now. A lot of people seem to be into the online multiplayer thing these days which probably explains the booming success of first person shooters and RTS. Come on now, developers. If I just sat around thinking I'm sure I could come up with all sorts of multiplayer features for brawlers.

There are a few more titles on the way like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Warriors: Legends of Troy and Captain Blood. I really want to see Edge of Twilight but I'm not sure that one's even alive anymore. To be honest, though, I'm not holding out much hope. I remember a time when it was perfectly normal to be excited about new games because more often than not they tended to be really good.

Now publishers are starting to realize that they can squeeze more money out of us through DLC. Well that's just fucking great.

Third Person Shooters that I love:

-Legacy of Kain
-Resident Evil 4
-Resident Evil 5
-Saint's Row 2
-Fallout 3 (Yes, I played through the whole game on 3rd person)
-Oblivion (Yes, same thing)
-Splinter Cell:Conviction
-Assassin's Creed 2
-Any goddamn Zelda
-WET
-Red Dead Redemption
-Dead Rising
-Dead Rising 2 (I played DR2:Case Zero, so I'll assume DR2 is as awesome)
-Prototype

Now some aren't Melee beat-'em-ups, some are just 3rd person.

The thing is all 3rd person beat-em-ups are now the same things we have seen before, and now developers have to try and mix it up to make it seem like they are using some kind of originality.

Sometimes, like Dead Rising, it pays off and works well. Other times (Bayonetta) it fails.

My favourite genre? RPGs, I mean epic big-world RPGs. Few have been able to captivate me more than Oblivion and Fallout (That includes FO2, FO3 and most likely New Vegas) Ones that make me waste hours going around and battling people. It can be turn-based like the old Final Fantasies and Pokemon, or a hybrid of FPS like Fallout. Or like the third-person Prototype.

As long as it is interesting, makes me feel like I spent my money well and I was entertained. I'm an easy man to please, but hard on some research.

Lot's of venom and great feeling of loss in your words, Ganthan. I can relate somehow, because honestly - how long can I re-play Dungeons & Dragons : Shadow Over Mystara, Fallout 2, Deus Ex or Master Of Orion 2? The anwser is - I can replay them forever, they never bore me. Question is why they don't make them as good as "yesterday" and I'm afraid we all know the anwser - money. Gaming industry is bigger and gives bigger cash than movie industry nowdays. Besides, the word industry speaks for itself - industries use creativity and novelty, but only in terms of making money. And these don't include quality, originality & etc. in games themselves.

Other anwser, wich I also think is valid, is the fact that I'm getting old.

Anyhow :

I haven't played through the whole Bayonetta as I borrowed it from a friend, but I found it very satisfying. Quick time events in that title weren't annoying, the game could go without them, as I never felt they were necessary, but once again - they weren't annoying.
Star Wars : The Force Unleashed suffered from other things than QTE - lack of freedom, even the good ol' Jedi Knight 2 had more freedom or at least gave you more feeling of freedom. It required to think a little and do some exploration. TFU is like a ride on the choo-choo train, but less exciting. Also - story was a mess, fighting also. Weak game.
Same goes for Prototype.

And I agree, Legacy Of Kain series are great but not quite in terms of gameplay but rather in terms of story. Great, epic, mindbending story supported by amazing voice actors (R.I.P. Tony Jay) and dense atmosphere. The realm of Nosgoth felt like home in every game of LoK series. But the gameplay, the controls especially, were a bit clunky and provided lot's of frustrations. Nevertheless, epic series, one of my fave TPP games ever.

As for multiplayer in games... well, personally I don't like multiplayer. I don't like playing with others, I'm more into well-told and excecuted story rather than multiplayer "fun" wich for me last only 30 min. max.

I don't really wait forward to games since Fallout 3 came out and it was - and is - a total dissaster. Not worse than Oblivion, but still.

The only title I'm waiting for is Deus Ex 3 or Deus Ex : Human Revolution as they called it. And I hope they'll bet on things that made DX1 great - diversity of choices and a great story. But I'm not as enthusiastic as I was few years ago towards upcoming games.

Simply because, my gaming years were and still are enchanted in years 1995-2004.
I don't care about genres as long as it's good and polished. As long as it has some magic to it. And that's a very personal thing that cannot be enclosed in genres.

Finito.

RPG's are the games are the games I play. Final Fantasy, Disgaea, Elder Scolls, Kingdom Hearts, Pokemon, Baldur's Gate, Eternal Sonata, Untold Legends, to name but a few.

Also other games that I love but don't really love the others in the genre are:
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions
GTA series
Assassin's Creed Series
Metal Gear Soild series (I can't shoot to save my life on any shooting game so...being a sneaky sneak is sooooo much better.)
WWE Smackdown series, up to the last two games, the last two sucked beyond belief.
And Tonk Hawk series (didn't get the last one, cos didn't want to pay out for the board, although I guess you could have brought it without it, but still.)

I love the side scrolling platform genre with games such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World. Today my love of the genre was reaffirmed by playing the Blade Kitten trial (It's actually quite good, if not spectacular).

And when bosses arn't being cheap, Fighter games such as Street Fighter.

I love pretty much every old game there is, but here are a few of my favorite:
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario World
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8
Sonic the Hedgehog
Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time
Legend of Dragoon
Bio Hazard Battle
Battle Toads
Spy vs Spy 2
Frogger
Mort the Chicken

Dead Space
GoW series
Battlefield Bad Company series.

I think the thread is getting a little derailed here. The topic is your preferred genres of gaming, why you like them, what you'd like to see in future, etc. It wasn't meant to be, "Here's a random list of games I like just off the top of my head."

I like 3rd person melee because I've always been drawn to the spectacle and skill of melee combat. 3rd person perspective is often crucial in order to see things better, especially when defense is so important. Games of this genre have really dried up in quality lately, though Brutal Legend and Prototype are great games.

After that I also like shooters both 1st and 3rd person. I tend to gravitate towards 3rd person due partly to the aforementioned visibility issue but also for greater ease of aiming, especially with a console controller. FPS is something I can get into now and then but the game has to be something really special and fun, like Bioshock and Borderlands. Over realistic stuff like Modern Warfare, Battlefield Bad Company, Socom whatever it is doesn't appeal to me. I don't want to play something where you'll die from just one or two pistol bullets.

Simulations of all types also captivate me. These include things like Simcity, Spore, Civilization, Imperium Romanum, Stronghold, etc. There's just something about seeing a well structured society/economy of some sort and having designed every part of it from scratch. From Dust might be cool but I hope there will be enough to actually do in it.

RPGs are good about giving plenty of content and story for your cash and things like character customization and combat automation also tickle my strategy taste buds. Japanese RPGs are a bit Meh for me and I usually only make an exception for the Final Fantasy series.

Genres I don't like much are Adventure and Sports. Never been into sports of any sort and I'm absolutely atrocious at Adventure games. Seriously, any Adventure game I've tried before I end up spending most of my time wandering around wondering what the hell to do next. I'm horrible at figuring things out on the spot.

In any case I prefer single player over multiplayer, and when I do play multiplayer it's always cooperative, not versus. This gives me a bit of a love/hate relationship with RTS. I like the mechanic of commanding an army but I don't really like competing with other players. This is kind of a tough position to have because almost all RTS these days are designed to appeal to multiplayer. Part of it is I'm a sore loser, but also because people always do stuff like rushing. Sorry, but I would rather our victory get determined over a longer match where we have a big battle with many units.

You know what game I'd love to see sometime? A game where you're a werewolf. There's been a fair few vampire games and we REALLY need to give the zombie shoot-em-ups a rest, but where's the love for werewolves? A 3rd person action game featuring clawing and biting combat and trying to suppress the inner beast straining to get out would be an awesome game in my opinion.

Werewolf? You don't like adventure games, and I assume most of you don't like FMV adventure games... but still, Gabriel Knight 2 : The Beast Within was a great adventure game (although pale compared to the 1st one) with werewolves as the main pivot of the plot. But the game is quite old - 1994-95, AFAIR.
There is no game that I know that you can constantly be a werewolf, but other exaples are :
Morrowind : Bloodmoon it's an add-on to Morrowind, a great one, included in GOTY edition along with weaker (but still very good) Tribunal add-on. It focuses around working for Imperial mining company located on a Solthseim island, north of Morrowind. During the course of the plot you're sent to investigate why people are missing and you find yourself lured into Great Hunt organised once a hundred (or 1000, I don't remember) years by god of hunt, Hircine. That includes being transformed into werewolf by being biten by them or become cured and fight him as a human. Either way, you can become a licanthrope in two ways - one is being bitten and after that, every single night you'll turn into a powerfull beast that can kill almost everyone in your path. But be aware of being seen during the transformation, because then your cover will be blown and you'll be hunted by day or night, no matter of the form you'll take. Or, you can kill Hircine's paw and take his ring of licantrhophy change wich allows you to change into licanthrope whenever you want. IMO, this is the most climatic add-on I've ever played, with great atmosphere of nordic tales, curses and prophecies and the best game that you can feel like werewolf. Also, you can become a vampire in the basic Morrowind, one from three clans with all of responsibilities (people hating and hunting for you, fear of the sun etc.) or... both. Yes, lycanthropic vampire. Great game.
The other is Vampire The Masquerade : Bloodlines. Although you are a vampire through course of the game you can play as one of few clans that have different powers. Once clan, my favorite one (next to psychotic Malkavians) is Gangrel, a clan that embraces the beast within them wich allowes them to morph into lesser werewolf wich violates the masquerade when seen by common folk, but is a real powerhouse killer when tweaked with thought. Also, you fight with werewolf during the course of the game. The real, big, bad wolf, that is. And let me tell you, when I first played that part, it was intense.

But ok., if we're talking about favourinte genres, here's my opinion about them :

- adventure games. Classic point&click like good ol' LucasArts (or LucasFilm in the past) games like Day of Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Sam & Max : Hit The Road, Sierra games like the mentioned above Gabriel Kinght series or King's Quest series, others like Revolutions Broken Sword series, Beneath At Steel Sky, Cryo's (R.I.P.) Atlantis series or others like Myst or Quest for Glory, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, The Longest Journey. I like them mostly because of the - in most cases - skillful storytelling, captivating stories and the intelectuall challenge they offer. Sometimes they require logical or critical thinking, while sometimes they force you to think in an abstract way. Adventure games, like no other games can settle for good in your mind and you won't forget so soon about them even after you've finished them, because in most cases they're like a good book. My favourite genre if I have to pick one, but most new adventure games suck donkey ass.
- RPG games. Mostly because they relate to adventure games, at least in terms of good story. Titles like Fallout 1&2(disregard 3, it's a piece of shit), Baldur's Gate series, Icewind Dale series(although it's more like tactic-RPG hack'n'slash), Morrowind, Betreyal At Krondor, Ishar series(on my good ol' Amiga!)... they all had great stories, they all required some thinking, althought they're much easier than adventure games, they can be more captivating, more personal. After all, they are called Role-Playing Games for a reason...
- turn-based games. That includes both Civilization and Europa Universalis or Fallout and Master Of Orion or UFO : Enemy Unknown. I just like turn-based style of gameplay, if done properly it beats real-time solutions.
- strategy games. But the oldies. Like I said, turn-based mostly, but also I'm a great fan of first two Age of Empires games(esp. no.2). Age Of Mythology was good, it had a nice twist and movie-like campaing, and I like that because it was based on mythology not history, creators could let their imagination go, but I shiver at the travesty that Age Of Empires 3 is. God dammit, it's awful. No historical campaings? In Age of Empires game?! No wonder they've closed Ensemble Studios - that sin cannot be forgiven. I also liked the first Rise of The Nations, but, again, sequel was WTF piece of donkey turd with a power of 75.5 Magniturds. I also have sentiment for Dune 2, because it was my lovely Amiga RTS and pretty much first RTS in history. And because I love anything related to Dune. I don't like rush-bonanza RTS games like Starcraft, but I liked one of these called Battle Realms. It had an atmosphere and few good solutions.
- fighting games. My two picks - Street Fighter Alpha series(2 being my fave) and Virtua Fighter series(5 being my fave). But others like Soul Calibur, Tekken or King Of Fighters will also do. Also, a great sentiment to Mortal Kombat 2 and four. New ones - not too much. And Fight Night are the treat of the evening when my friend comes around, because he is training kickboxing and krav maga and he loves that game. And I love beating him in that game, because he sucks at it.
- hybrids. Yep, the only solution to save the modern games or to put a bane on them for all eternity. Good hybrid game - like Deus Ex, Vampire The Masquerade : Bloodlines is a good hybrid game. Bad hybrid game - like pretty much everything else - is either bad or at least decent. It's really hard to make a good hybrid game that isn't half-assed.

The genres I don't like... well, there ain't none. I like to play few rounds of Fifa(I've spent hours on Fifa 2000 in my teenage days) or Pro-Evo, but only with my friends and semi-sports games like Tony Hawk series are always fun to play for a while. But if I really had to pick one it would be racing games. I don't like cars, they are strange machines to me, I see nothing appealing in riding faster than 120km/h, both in real life and in games. Although I like Lotus(on Amiga 500) series, but because of sentiment and great tunes, rather than other reasons.
That's basicly all for this long post.

I just love people and their dispute over Fallout 3 (and the coming New Vegas. Srsly, FO2 fans are still going to bitch)

I have played all three and Tactics (not considered canon). Extensively. I know every twist, turn, dialogue change, special weapon location, character hideout and stat formulas.

Maybe it is the genre change, people were upset when Resident Evil 4 came out and "OMG THE CAMERAZ WEREN'T IN CORNERZ". Or maybe like Mario and Sonic where they weren't just sidescrollers anymore.

Quite frankly, if the Fallout series were still held to over-the-top 3D post-apocalyptic RPG like FO1 and FO2, the series would be dead.

I don't know why people don't like Fallout 3. Well, I don't care either, your choice is your choice.

Playing Fallout 3 for me was like drinking Sir Edwards Whiskey, the so-called "scotch finest" after being treated by two tumbler glasses of delicious JW Blue Label. If you "know the deal, then you know how I feel".

It's that, and I guess the fact that my organism can't digest modern games as much as old ones.

Teamwork games and multiplayer games.
Any multiplayer game that requires skill and gives a sense of rewarding players who work the hardest to achieve their objectives.

Survival horrors where you can simply shoot anything that moves and play as a heavily armored and armed soldier.

Mr.Green wrote:Teamwork games and multiplayer games.
Any multiplayer game that requires skill and gives a sense of rewarding players who work the hardest to achieve their objectives.

Survival horrors where you can simply shoot anything that moves and play as a heavily armored and armed soldier.

you you really liked Gears of War, Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 5?

Damien Darkside wrote:

Mr.Green wrote:Teamwork games and multiplayer games.
Any multiplayer game that requires skill and gives a sense of rewarding players who work the hardest to achieve their objectives.

Survival horrors where you can simply shoot anything that moves and play as a heavily armored and armed soldier.

you you really liked Gears of War, Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 5?

Never played Resident Evil 5.
L4D was fun but for some odd reason it didn't stick.
Gears of War is my kind of game, it really doesn't have many teamwork elements, but I know how it works and fill my roll in the game very well. Besides I love horde.

Damn right, Horde is awesome.

I carried the same damn sniper rifle throughout the game, had to ditch it for the Pillar of autumn and shotty.

pillar of autumn?

BeDaOrLiSeAr wrote:pillar of autumn?

Sounds... Halo-ish to me.

thats what i thought, but im still confused

>.>
If this is Horde the only reference I can make is Hammer of Dawn but whatever.

If anyone needs help with Horde anytime add me (Agent Whiskey, minus the parentheses), I fill the support, heavy weapons, medic, and defense roll.

Hamer of Dawn

Stupid me being sick and playing both Halo and GOW before posting.

They both sound powerful though.

I like to think of myself as a hardcore gamer. Keep in mind that the standards of being a "hardcore" gamer are pretty low when the vast majority of people I know IRL are total non gamers (Some even refer to all video games simply as Nintendo because that's literally all they know about it). That being the case there are lots of times when true hardcore professional gamers who play pretty much every single game and understand every slight nuance about the industry tend to say stuff that confuses even me.

This week's Zero Punctuation was for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, a new game I haven't yet played but would like to. Now just so we're clear, while I do find him to be a good source of entertainment, I don't really value Yahtzee's opinions on much of anything. However, this time around he said some things that just don't add up.

He mentions the term "Metroidvania", which is something I heard before and it generally refers to the idea that Metroid and Castlevania games play exactly the same. Not only do I not support this idea, it doesn't even really make much sense. Okay, they both started out as side scrolling platforming action games, but that's it. Even then they didn't really play all that similarly and have differentiated even more greatly since then. They're pretty much completely different game genres now so let's give the Metroidvania thing a rest, what say?

The other thing is the idea that a Castlevania game that isn't free roaming isn't truly a Castlevania game. Excuse me? I haven't played every Castlevania out there but I'm pretty sure that the majority of them have a structured level design. Sure, Curse of Darkness was somewhat free roaming in that you could go back to earlier levels if you wanted to explore, collect crafting ingredients or just dick about, but the game still had set levels complete with end bosses. How can you say that free roaming is a necessary part of the Castlevania series when half or less of the games actually had it?

Finally, what's with all the hate for the 3D games?! Lament of Innocence didn't do anything for me, but the N64 games were good and the aforementioned Curse of Darkness is, for me, STILL the last great 3rd person melee action game since its release.

I blame all this on fanboys.

It's not much about being a fanboy, but being an older folk who remembers their old franchise from days of their childhood/adolescence, wich creates nostalgia. And because of that they expect the impossible from the new entries, wich is almost never given, in their opinion. For the most part they don't see the good sides of the product and even if they do, the number of flaws, in subjective way of understanding, overshadows the whole new entry and in the end the game is bad or medicore at least. In their opinion.

I have it like that with Fallout wich was - and is - more than a game to me. That's why my hopes were high for F3, even though I accepted the fact that it would not be the same, laws of market and tech evolution. But despite that I still hated it. Because it was so poor compared to older entries. Poor as a game, not poor as graphics, sound or gameplay. I don't doubt that's the effect of being nostalgic about it, but so it happens, that I still like to play Fallout 1 or 2 once or twice a year. It doesn't lost any of it's charm for me. While my brother, 13 y.o. can't stand it. Not because it has weak graphics or archaic gameplay. It's because he cannot or doesn't want to understand it's plot. He says it has too much text in it. And I was 12 when I first touched Fallout 1 and I couldn't understand anything from it because I didn't know english much. I played the game with big, fat english dictionary. He has this game in polish, as it was translated many years after it's release. And he finds plot and text in polish to be too complicated, tired and confusing.

Gamers are lazy folk nowdays wich means that games bring no challenge. Nor to manual skills or intellect. Games nowdays are more and more what our parents or politicians think they are - kid's stuff. Nevermind the growing brutality of the games, realism and such - they're simpler, easier and don't want to challenge us on the intellectual level like the old one did(f.ex. Planescape Torment, Deus Ex, tons of good ol' adventure games wich were considered mainstream back in a day). They're back on what they were in 80's - simple fun games with facade of serious stuff. A facade of violence and so-called realism.
Is it good or bad? Yes, it's good, because games are meant to be played for enjoyment. But I feel stupid every single time when some new title comes up and I beat it. I feel like a magpie being treated with shiny stuff and nothing more. 90's were the golden age of gaming, the boom on the market was fantastic. It was technological revolution, for example 3dfx cards vs. OpenGL stuff. I feel that since, let's say 2004 it's only an evolution. A very slow one.

Ok., rant over.