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Post by Weasel on Aug 9, 2010 14:33:21 GMT -5
I still maintain that even a terrible game can be fun in multiplayer.
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Post by Jave on Aug 9, 2010 14:43:49 GMT -5
What an age we live in where people claim a game isn't supposed to be good, and equate quality with price. Would the game be better if it was more or less expensive? No, wouldn't change a thing. Would it be worse if Igarashi said it's a sequel to Symphony of the Night? No, the game remains the same regardless of how its marketed. And since when does economic figures, or quotes from a developer change whether a game is good or bad? Since never. I don't know where this brainwashing process started, but I can only guess from the lowest class of idiot marketers pushing "bang for your buck" mentality. Now the players believe it! And thanks to that, games are created around this thinking pattern... doesn't stop them from being piles of crap, though. If everything in the world were free, this would be true. No matter how good or bad a game might actually be, jack up the price enough and it's no longer worth what it costs, it's really that simple. That anyone refers to a game as crap on account of it's price, what they likely mean isn't that it was somehow made worse, they mean it wasn't worth it. It's a failure of communication, not one of concept. The idea of a game being more expensive than it's worth is entirely justifiable. |
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Post by justjustin on Aug 9, 2010 17:02:37 GMT -5
It sounds like what you're talking about is whether or not a game is affordable to a person; "worth" having to do with how much money they are willing to spend. I'm talking about something different, sorry if that wasn't clear.
"Well of course it isn't supposed to be that great, it's only 15 bucks!" is something I see and hear a lot. "For it's price, it's a good game," and other similar suggestions are commonplace on internet forums, in conversations I have with other people and even in "professional" game reviews. This is what surprises me. We're at a point in time where games are being developed, critiqued, played and enjoyed based first and foremost on its low pricing. It's a phenomenon that creates masses of crappy games, and a trend I don't like!
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Post by Weasel on Aug 9, 2010 18:02:31 GMT -5
In this case, $15 gets you six levels that (from what I hear) take a good group about 12-20 minutes to finish, making for about 3 hours of actual game if you don't bother going back and grinding/finding secrets (if they even exist...) By contrast, Shadow Complex, which costs about as much, has a main game that lasts probably seven or eight hours and that's if you're not actively looking for secrets and finishing the Proving Grounds.
It's "perceived value" versus "actual value" - your experience of a game is obviously going to be shaped by how much you'd paid for it. My mom bought "Just Dance" for the Wii a while ago, for the price of $40. What she got was just shy of twenty songs...and that's it. No adjustable difficulty settings (outside of "no fail" mode), no unlockables. $40 for content that literally lasts just under two hours unless songs are replayed.
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Post by acidonia on Aug 9, 2010 18:37:06 GMT -5
You need a good team to get though the game fast although this game does have some dumb problems that could be easily fixed.
1 If a player leaves a team no other players can join the game without everyone leaving
2 it shows these boxes in multiplayer showing near by players but they are not transparent and you get cheap unfair hits because of them
3 If someone on your team has not passed as many stages as you it will not let anyone on that team play any stages after the ones the player that has passed less stages.
4 who thought puting alucards broken hyper fast sword that deals like one sword attack like 4 times in a second in the game was a good idea.
Theres way worse Xbla games than this out there although I do not understand why the Demo is only single player when it plays much better Multiplayer.
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Post by justjustin on Aug 9, 2010 19:00:53 GMT -5
It's "perceived value" versus "actual value" - your experience of a game is obviously going to be shaped by how much you'd paid for it. While this may be true for some, it is certainly not for me, so I won't argue against it. I won't bother stretching out my spiel, since I've made my previous points as clear as possible. If people want to measure the worth of a game by how long it takes to complete according to its price that's fine. The influx of PSN, 360 Arcade and Wii Ware games feed that mentality, and lots of people like those games. Time and money are not even thoughts that cross my mind when I purchase and play a game. Both factors are insignificant to the enjoyment I get out of a game I really like. Rastan takes about 30 minutes to complete but I've probably "logged" more hours on it than many people have on any game period. R-Type takes the cake. |
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Post by Jave on Aug 9, 2010 19:47:26 GMT -5
Well, don't take this the wrong way, but it must be really nice to not have to think about money when buying games.
But I really do think that the whole "for it's price, it's good" argument is speaking more to perceived value than quality. Being cheaper wouldn't make Harmony of Despair a better game, but it would make it less of an investment, and at the end of the day, one might not feel quite as much buyer's remorse over it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2010 19:51:37 GMT -5
Well, don't take this the wrong way, but it must be really nice to not have to think about money when buying games. Not sure how old you are, but being an adult with a steady job goes a long way towards that. I don't worry about collector's editions costing $100 so much as how bad it is for my backlog to keep adding new stuff. |
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Post by Jave on Aug 9, 2010 20:03:09 GMT -5
Well, I'll be quitting my steady job in a couple months in order to go back to college and learn a trade, so we'll see, but I can't imagine never worrying about how much money I'm spending on entertainment.
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Post by Feynman on Aug 9, 2010 20:14:45 GMT -5
It sounds like what you're talking about is whether or not a game is affordable to a person; "worth" having to do with how much money they are willing to spend. I'm talking about something different, sorry if that wasn't clear. "Well of course it isn't supposed to be that great, it's only 15 bucks!" is something I see and hear a lot. "For it's price, it's a good game," and other similar suggestions are commonplace on internet forums, in conversations I have with other people and even in "professional" game reviews. This is what surprises me. We're at a point in time where games are being developed, critiqued, played and enjoyed based first and foremost on its low pricing. It's a phenomenon that creates masses of crappy games, and a trend I don't like! I love you. This has been something that really, really annoys me. As an avid RPG player, one thing that has always bothered me was when RPGs began to be advertised as having "X hours of gameplay." That's a ludicrous statement to make, because the enjoyment of an RPG has nothing to do whatsoever with how long it is. I love Final Fantasy (NES/PSX version), and have played it to completion literally dozens of times. Final Fantasy takes under 20 hours to finish. Other RPGs that take 80 hours to finish aren't necessarily better - frequently they're worse, because the battle system begins to wear itself out halfway through the game. Over time, this kind of bullshit benchmark started being applied to other genres in the form of price. My most hated phrase is "Game X offers good value considering it's price." No it doesn't. A game's value has bugger all to do with how much it costs. A fun game is just as fun if it costs ten dollars, twenty dollars, or even fifty dollars. I bought Noitu Love 2 the day it was released for $20, and it was plenty worth it. It's a short game (taking only a handful of hours to finish), but extremely fun, and one I've loaded up time and time again. Yet I frequently heard complaints about the game. Apparently it wasn't long enough to warrant costing $20. Because it cost $20, it was crap and nobody should buy it. What? The game doesn't spontaneously become more enjoyable just because it costs less money. And games don't suddenly become less enjoyable when the price goes up. I mean, they could have handed out copies of Superman 64 for free and it still wouldn't have been any good. Harmony of Despair isn't "good for $15." It's just bad, regardless of the price. That's $15 that could have been spent on something that sucks significantly less. A turd in a bun is still a turd in a bun, even if they only charge you a nickel. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2010 20:22:37 GMT -5
Well, I'll be quitting my steady job in a couple months in order to go back to college and learn a trade, so we'll see, but I can't imagine never worrying about how much money I'm spending on entertainment. Then you are legally sane and have a good future ahead of you. Also, I totally agree with feynman and justjustin. RPGs as a whole have seriously degraded in quality as companies started to think that massive amounts of timesinks were the answer, rather than, you know...making their games fun to begin with. |
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Post by kyouki on Aug 9, 2010 21:05:40 GMT -5
Agreed 100%. If HoD is decent considering it is only $15, well then I guess Konami should reduce the price to $2 and then it would be the best game of all time. And maybe Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just too good- increase that retail price to $100 to reign in those reviews!
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Post by justjustin on Aug 9, 2010 21:20:55 GMT -5
Let's spread the love, man. Also Jave, I (hopefully) understand what you're saying. Practically everyone who plays games has, at some point, held off or decided not to buy something because it wasn't economical at the time. If we were all billionaires I suspect we'd all have bigger collections. My secret is just not buying very much, or buying cheap used games. Luckily my taste in games tends to prevent bankrupting myself. But I'm talking about people who judge a game based on price, and developers who make games to"justify" that 15 or 60 dollars (making a crappy small game or developing a real timesink). I'm tired of hearing people say "How can you complain about that game, it was only 10 bucks!" or "Only 15 hours of gameplay? How is that worth 60 dollars?" Agreed 100%. If HoD is decent considering it is only $15, well then I guess Konami should reduce the price to $2 and then it would be the best game of all time. And maybe Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just too good- increase that retail price to $100 to reign in those reviews! And this is a perfect way of putting it, lol. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2010 22:00:40 GMT -5
Well, I'll be quitting my steady job in a couple months in order to go back to college and learn a trade, so we'll see, but I can't imagine never worrying about how much money I'm spending on entertainment. Yeah, see that you don't, you'll be better off that way. I just got a big surprise at how much I've spent over the past month, and now I'm cracking down on my spending like my life depends on it. That being said, anyone want to buy some games? ;p |
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Post by Jave on Aug 9, 2010 22:34:30 GMT -5
Agreed 100%. If HoD is decent considering it is only $15, well then I guess Konami should reduce the price to $2 and then it would be the best game of all time. See, this is what I'm talking about, though. It doesn't become a better game at two bucks, it just becomes a lot easier to swallow the proverbial medicine at that price, and I really do think that in a large most cases, when people seem to intimate that being cheap makes the game better, they just mean that it was worth the price they paid, and that the issue is more how they say it than what they mean to say. I'll concede, I could be wrong about that, but it's the impression I got from the people I've asked. |
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