Gameplay vs Story

So Holla Forums, I often read about people here dismissing walking simulators and story-driven games, while there also simultaneously seems to be a big love towards games like Fallout New Vegas or Planescape Tourment

On what side are you on or are there actually people there who are both?


You really don't like the OP even getting a little bit baity, huh?

please don't delete this, I hope this acceptable now

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en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pseud
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i play nip games for the story and western games for the gameplay

"Gameplay" is for manchildren with ADD

haha, it's funny, because you mean the exact opposite, right?

Same with me but the opposite.

"Story" is for childish men with autism.

The only right way to do story in games is to have it unfold through the actions of the player. Watching a cutscene or reading a log is not playing a game.

Funny, I thought doing the same menial shit over and over was an autism thing.

There's more then just gameplay and story, there's music, atmosphere, UI, animation quality, quality of life stuff, art design, worldbuilding, etc

ideally a game will do all of those things amazingly, but no game is perfect.I'm willing to give a game a chance that has no story but really good everything else or vis versa.

Asura's Wrath for example is more of an interactive anime then a game and is like 50% QTE's and cutscenes, and what gameplay it does have is shallow as shit, but the story, characters, visual design, music, and animation quality and just the sheer insanity of all the shit going on makes up for it, and it's in my top 3 favorite games of all time

This is why the Japanese games industry is superior.

By that logic, the only right way to do story in movies is have it be purely told through visuals instead of dialog.

Obviously truly impressive games will make unique use of the fact the medium is interactive, but there's nothing wrong with a game that would work as a movie, just like there's nothing wrong with a movie that would also work as a book

Funny, I thought being unable to concentrate on something like a game without little add-ins was an ADD thing.

Terrible analogy. A game is a test of skill under a set of rules. Movies and books are purely passive mediums.

Who should I believe?


I liked warcraft 3 cutscenes …

and I disliked when they tried to show arthas & illidan's fight through that weird ingame graphic style


top 3 games of all time really? not interactive movies you mean? :^)


I read/played a few choose your own adventure stories, mate.

That taste man. Gameplay is king, if your game doesn't have that then it doesn't have anything.

Asura's Wrath is one of the worst games I've played, on par with David Cage shitfests how does it get a free pass when David Cage games don't around here?

Only if you want to treat vidya purely as a medium of toys/play rather then also as a medium of storytelling/fiction

Vidya is both, and it's okay for it to be both or for a particularity one to focus on being one rather then the other.


If you wanna call Asura's Wrath a interactive anime/movie rather then a game, I won't even argue with you, because it's clearly trying to be that.

In any case, I had a fucking shit ton of fun with it and based purely on that, it'd be my third favorite game if it counts as a game. And I do genuinely think that it benefits from being interactive rather then just being a pure anime. It does really interesting things with QTE's

I want to see you both hatefucking.

That's literally what a game is. Any time you deviate from that definition, you may have a more compelling story, but you get an inferior game.

The addition of unskippable static expository elements always has the effect of reducing replayability.

Videogames are an interactive medium bud, any game that focuses on telling a generic story about anime Hulk to the point where it removes any and all interactivity is absolute garbage.

It's not about focus, if you want to make a game that focuses on story then you make the player interact with that story in a meaningful way, not toss a bunch of QTEs while he watches a shitty movie about an angry anime man saving the planet or some shit. If you can't make meaningful mechanics that match the story of your game them you've failed as a game designer.

It really is that simple.

Really storytelling is being overly reductive and focusing on gaming as a 'storytelling' medium and not as an interactive one is just pouring losers who couldn't get their shit script greenlit into the medium and is hamstringing it as a whole.

The only correct answer is that it varies by genre. It's needless and annoying in a puzzle game, but the gameplay in an RPG would have to be outstanding to keep me playing through a shit story (Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity is the only one that comes to mind as pulling this off). This is why SJW and AAA games fail. They don't deliver a good story OR gameplay, regardless of their genre.

People tend to dismiss those types of games because they offer an "experience" instead of gameplay making them easier to play and make.

And most of the people that like them are to lazy to read a book or to stupid and inpatient to watch a good movie so they prefer to have a "deep interactive experience" instead of spending time playing a game with deep lore or a big dialogue system, and even sometimes they are stupid enough to go and ask what was the message of their "Experience" despite this being bluntly obvious
Bethesdrones are a proof of this

I like you.

Fuck you and your book, m8.
Language exists to describe things, and if people don't know what you're talking about when you say a word, it's a failure of the language, not of the other guy.
Games are games, if something is a game it's "game-ness" will be self-evident.


This user is right on the money.
Interactivity is the thing that defines literally everything that belongs on Holla Forums, and the measure of a game's value is how much you, the player, can interact with it.
Sometimes this just means shooting the demons or scoring a tetris, other times it means accidentally creating then feeding the world's most powerful vampire or having semi-sentient bots on your pirate server.

I just gave you the most succinct and conversationally functional definition of a game that you can get. Don't throw a fit because your argument predicates on obfuscation.

When I say that a game is a set of rules to test the player's skill for the purpose of entertainment and that a bad game is one that doesn't do that very well, I'm saying that when I'm looking for a set of rules to test the player's skill the purpose of entertainment I want something that does it well. Cutscenes, storytime, wading through logs, do not.

...

Holla Forums - flipping through DVD menus

You mean writing, dipshit. Story is too small scoped to describe the quality of a game's narrative. Video game writing should be divided into story (plot based narrative), dialogue (character interaction), and lore (world building).

Best story: Mafia I
Best dialogue: Fallout
Best lore: Morrowind

I value lore more than story though. Video game is all about entertainment derived from empirical discovery. If you want good story and dialogue, go watch Tarkovsky and read Dostoevsky. Story is best for art, not entertainment.


Morrowind has better lore than even LOTR. Nothing tops Chim.

Is this a game?

No, it's a rubber ball. You can do a lot of things with it. You can bounce it, you can throw it, you can kick it, you can bite it, you can even try to put it into a basket. Pretty interactive. But it is still not a game.

You can make a game with it by agreeing to a set of rules to test your ability to send it through a hoop.

You are right. I actually mentioned that in the first thread.

someone post a graphics card to bait this user please

Story always comes second to gameplay except in an RPG. This is common sense.

Literally kill yourselves.

Planescape: Torment is shit.

what about adventure games :^)

What about action rpgs? Dark Messiah is one of my favourite games ever.

That definition of "game" doesn't cover the full scope though.
To use a /tg/ example, the definition you cited only covers Tomb of Horrors, without considering shit like pic related.


You don't stick a DVD in the DVD player just to flip through the menus, nigger.

Lore is much more important than story in RPG. A good RPG lets it's player define their own story open endedly. Story only works for cinematic games.


Dark Messiah isn't RPG, it's action game with skill trees. RPG must involve a certain degree of abstraction in it's combat mechanics.

Gameplay is more important than story. No argument is needed.

Ehh, come again?

whatever genre Dark Messiah is, I want more of it also I have seen it classified from anywhere from FPS, to action game to RPG
of course none of those categories ever crowned it a game of the year or nominated it

I think it's a conspiracy to keep fun games out of the hands of the consumers, user.

Like chess, RPG games should involve strategy and numbers more than twitch reflexes. For example, in an ARPG FPS game like Fallout 3/NV, skill level, RNG damage, and RNG critical hits dictate the success of the player in a combat more than making 360 noscope headshots. Unlike Fallout 3 and NV, Dark Messiah's combat is very dependent to player's reflexes.

A game doesn't need an RPG label to be good.

Video games need to have gameplay. Gameplay needs to be challenging to be rewarding. Otherwise games become the modern trash that exists. A perfect example is Starcraft 2, Heart of the Swarm. So dumbed down that anyone could play it. Tanked hard. And it wasn't because of the story. People will play a good game that has no story. You can't convince people to pay $60 for a movie that goes for 8 hours just because you can pause it at any time unless you tell them it is up to them to keep the movie playing and have characters occasionally tell them they are doing a great job.

There aren't different "sides". People don't hate walking simulators because they're story focused, they hate them because they have literally nothing else.

The problem with walking simulators is they're like half a game, if that.

Here's the thing, pretentious "critics", and insecure or passionless gaming bloggers nowadays feel like it's their job to introduce us manchildren to games that aren't "fun", that we somehow "need" them. So we end up with these (barely) interactive experiences being promoted out the asshole with countless tenouttatens and BEST INDIE GAME OF THE YEAR awards, despite very few people giving a shit about them outside the hipster clique. But little they seem to realize, this concept is nothing new. Meaning, there has always been moments in games that aren't necessarily fun. It's called downtime, and it comes in form of exposition, cutscenes, exploration, a pretty landscape after a tough boss fight, etc., and these have existed in almost any type of game, from action games to RPGs.

What your typical walking simulator does is take that single element and make a game around it. It's like walking away from a restaurant and go home to cook only potatoes. It's just one ingredient of a whole meal. They can barely be called "games" (a game typically has rules, fail states and whatnot, but, I suppose we live in a time where people try really hard to stretch the definition of words, so whatever), they simply don't take full advantage of the unique aspects of this medium (or in the case of Inside, it's just average and repetitive at best), so why these morons trip over themselves to praise the next interactive movie and scream "MATURE! IT'S SO MATURE!" at the top of their lungs in hopes of becoming the next Roger Ebert boggles my fucking mind.

I don't have a problem with people liking walking simulators, I have my guilty pleasures too. But treating them as if their the second coming and life-changing experiences has become nauseating, to say the least.


Yourself.

*THEY'RE
Fuck, I knew this shit would happen to me.

I'm okay with a story as long as I feel that I'm not just waiting for it to go by so I can actually play the game, like MGS

If you have to describe something as mature, it's not.

A video game is more then JUST a game though.

In any case, I don't mind if we invent a need word for what Asura's Wrath/telltale/walking simulators belong to and we call it a seperate medium, i'd be fine with that, because there's certainly a distinction

But there's going to be franchises and "games" that don't fall neatly into either group.

The thing is, Asura's wrath DOES benefit from it's interactivity, and if it were an anime, parts of it just wouldn't work. It's DESIGNED around being interactive, even if that important interactivity is the QTE's rather then the gameplay

Just like heavy rain was meant to have all of those obnoxious QTEs where he recycles the same voice clip over and over again. I now understand it's not lazy non-interactive, button mashing garbage, it's a feature.

How am I supposed to care about angry anime man punching something if I don't push X at least twenty times while some drawn out cutscene plays?

My stance is
Story heavy games seldom lack any captivating gameplay and are often quite short.
Gameplay heavy games don't often have what could be called a compelling story.
One end is Flappy Bird and the other is Dear Esther.
With graphics vs. gameplay I go gameplay every day of the week, I'm old enough and have enough imagination to make due with shit graphics.
Gameplay vs. Story though is different because gameplay is what separates games from movies and story is the element that separates videogames from fucking Tiddlywinks.
The ability to give the player the ability to play a role in a story is important to me.
It creates an immersive experience that movies can't exhibit.

Say I'm playing State of Decay.
Moments of danger are more exhilarating to me because if that character dies than they are dead and that means having to build up a new character.
All progress in the game isn't lost but that character and their skills are.
Had I simply been watching a movie I wouldn't feel nearly as invested.

There are moments when you can knock a zombie down and stop on their head giving a very enjoyable cathartic feeling that I just wouldn't get by simply viewing the act take place.

There is a DLC however called Breakdown that is an endless campaign mode and naturally because it doesn't having any real story the whole thing feels very fruitless.
Just survival for the sake of survival.

Mate, you need to fuck right off.
I think there's a rule against it. Got what you deserved, faggot.

You got that reversed faggot.
Japs are shit writers and the west has shit gameplay.

Tell me the story of Tetris.

Most Nip games are grindfests.

Or of Spacechem.

webm related

Games should either have good story and good gameplay or just good gameplay. Having a game with a great story but no gameplay means you wasted your time making a non-interactive environment a player can walk around in while being told a story when you could have just made an animated short with the story and the game engine.

If a story is really good or full of likable characters like Undertale/Memertale/tumblrtale it can make up for somewhat weak gameplay as long as that gameplay exists. No amount of good story will make up for no gameplay.

wew

There isn't a single Walking simulator that comes close to Fallout New Vegas or Planescape Torment, most of them don't even reach JRPG tier writing, and that's scraping the underside of the barrel.

I think selling these "walking simulators" (interactive fiction) as games, in the same marketplace as games, without proper sorting, is deceptive and bad for both parties. Grouping the 2 things together with interactive fiction being injected into the pre-established game audience, it should be obvious why people who prefer gameplay would write these things off while still enjoying something that has both good gameplay and an okay story or vice versa. I think everyone would benefit from segregating these things, so everyone knows exactly what they're signing up for, a game, a game with both, or a story.

It used to be pretty obvious what you were getting with the term "adventure game" before all games started mixing elements from other genres like we have today. Even in that time though "action-adventure" was very common and still expressive enough to know what kind of game it was, then of course there was just "action" or anything else for everything else.


It's unfair of me to write this off for this petty reason but I can't take this seriously when he's using a puppet.

I honestly would rather have watched "top 10 pokemons that look like butts".

Do I continue with the video should I just stop?

I stopped when he said "They're gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaames!".

You're a faggot, user.

I seriously don't understand why people want these things to be called games, as if it's not validated as a good thing if it's not a "game". I don't understand the shoehorning.


What part of my post makes it seem like I'm implying that because that was not my intention. I'm genuinely confused at your interpretation but I can;t fault you since I just woke up so my English and writing is probably awful right now. At least it's more fleshed out than what you just wrote, discuss with me user.

Allow me to elucidate.

Boi, that image you posted heavily implied that once you're finished with a game, it stops being "a game" and loses what novelty is has. Which is just plain wrong.


We need a term for these common knowledge and basic deduction "intellectuals". All of them sound the same.

No, it says if you solve a game, it is no longer a game. You can solve puzzles, you cannot solve games. Games have more than one right answer, puzzles do not.

This is why point and click 'adventure games' are puzzles, not games.

What the fuck is this trying to say? That because you know which decisions to make and what consequences they bring, that this devalues the game? It nullifies the initial mystery of those decisions, but certainly not the game itself.

This
To add to that, in my opinion irrelevant to whatever the author of the image has, I think there is fun to be had in solving a puzzle more than once (depending on the puzzle and context).

I don't mean for my argument to be telling people what is and is not fun, I only wish for proper categorization and definition of terms.

en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pseud

It devalues it as a game, but not necessarily as an experience.

To go back to my previous example of point and click adventures, once you have knowledge of how to solve the puzzles, there's no "gameplay" left. The puzzle has been solved. Play a point and click adventure with a walkthrough and you're left with interactive fiction. For a true game, a walkthrough will enhance your knowledge, but it will never solve the game for you.

Now, there's nothing wrong with interactive fiction in vidya (if done well, it can easily surpass other mediums of storytelling), but like I prefer it to be honestly labeled as such.

gameplay

story is a hit and miss by default

I'm so glad I learned this word today.

A heavy focus on story isn't a problem in itself. When it completely replaces the gameplay, it's a problem. That's what happens in most walking sims.

In Fallout: NV, you definitely can't say that the story replaces the gameplay, because there's a whole fuckton of things to shoot and places to explore. In that game, and most RPGs in general, the story is there to make the world seem alive. Just shooting things for the sake of shooting things is fine and all, but if you can give it a setting the player likes, it's only a good thing. You also need a lot of conversations for world building, to make interesting people to meet, and to let the player make choices in conversations. It's very hard to let a player define what their character thinks without doing it through conversations.

Torment has the same focus on role playing, but it has the deepest role playing that I've seen in any video game. It actually lets you define TNO's personality with lots of choices that other games don't even come close to. From what I've seen, it's pretty much unique in how much of a role playing game it is, when RPGs in general tend to mean just stats, loot and two or three dialogue choices.

tl;dr story isn't bad as long as it's done properly. Video game stories have potential to do things that can't be done in other media. Story shouldn't be there to interrupt the gameplay like in TLoU, but to make the world an interesting place to explore.

...

How long did you continue playing noughts-and-crosses after you realized that patterns that were involved? After that point playing the game means following an algorithm rather than "playing". I think this is what is meant a game is described as being solved or not. A game that has a lot of complexity, such as Go, is either hard or impossible to solve. In the case of Go I think I read that it would need more computational power than will ever be available.

There was a big Go AI vs human match recently.
youtube.com/watch?v=vFr3K2DORc8
Pretty crazy.

I used to care about story in video games when I was in high school until I stopped trying to find "meaning" in mindless fun and entertainment. I now look at games as nothing more than abstract puzzles and simulations. This makes having control wrangled from you to focus on story extremely aggravating as you're forced to passively absorb information in a medium most specifically chose to consumed due to it's interactive nature. Story can be great (if executed well), but it can usually hamper the over all experience of the game by neglecting the core gameplay to make room for it. Games are an inherently bad medium for story telling as conventional linear stories clash with the player's involvement in controlling the narrative of the game, and game development is already too expensive for developers to factor in an innumerable number of outcomes but on the player's actions to make it as involved as most people would desire. As it stands now, there are many other mediums in which the craft of story telling is already molded and which can be easily obtained and consumed. Video games don't need to become just another avenue for an ultimately similar, but infinitely more flawed story telling experience

"Experiences" and "story telling" means jack shit when making anything other than a RPG. Atmosphere is understandable, however. Music to me, is pretty important as well.

Or a hybrid game with RPG elements. Sometimes it makes for a worse game than otherwise. For example Tales of May'Eal would have higher replay value with less focus on the story it has now.

...

A game without story is like a steak without ketchup.

So it's pretty good then.

Gameplay vs Story
It comes down to this:
I love JRPGs and i play them for the story, i enjoy the grinding, farming and dungeon diving when i have a porpouse to do it, in the case of JRPGs the porpouse is to level up to beat the boss and progress the story
Those games i play
Then there's those visual novels style games that are little more than an endless QTE like Heavy Rain and Beyond 2 Souls, at least Heavy rain has different endings depending on what you do, nut as a game is still way to linear hand holding the player through the story as oposed to JRPG that between NPCs and sidequest allows the player to discover different bits of the story at their own peace
And then there Telltale's visual novels that always have the same ending and nothing changes dependeing on player output, those you can enjoy just the same by youtubeing them
Ultimatelly, i believe the magic word is
Player choise
Walking simulator have absolutelly no gameplay but there have been some of them well done enough to warrant a playthrough
The Stanley parable has plenty og this player choice and different endings
David Cage games have plenty of story but very little player choise
and JRPGs are all about player choise although they not always come with multiple endings
But i still maintain, you can boil it down to the initial question

For how much I want the kike on a pike, the cake golem isn't always wrong.

I wish i had been screencaping all my posts on Holla Forums
For the last week i've been getting nothing but dubs trips and quads
I feel like i've been blesed by Kek
If this post also gets dubs, i'll tatoo Kek's smug face in my buttcheck

Off by 1

There is a place made for particular individuals like this.

thatsthejoke.jpg

I'm not certain how right either of you are, but this
showcases one of the biggest problems of the modern world, especially where the polluted, disfigured husk of the Internet is concerned. This is one of the few times I've been thoroughly disgusted by something I've seen on the webs and I've spent a lot of time in some of the darker places.

Why should they be mutually exclusive, you faggoty OP?

its simple, if it dosnt have gameplay its not a game.
if it dosnt have decisions its not even a chose your own adventure.
fallout new vegas has serviceable gameplay and great decisions, making it a serviceable game and great choose your own adventure, I dont know why you would put it in the same category as non-games/not choose your own adventure when you should be comparing it to bards tale.


this is kinda what I am getting at.


I personally dont care too much about the plot in most games, but great lore really helps make a great game fucking amazing, look at dark souls or dragons dogma.

like this user I wouldnt mind a walking sim so much if the story was good and engaging, I still wouldnt call it a game but I wouldnt mind experiencing it.


so many people are hitting the nail on the head, if it has gameplay its a game. undertale has more gameplay then your average jrpg and is pretty short so it dosnt need to stretch it.


I would like to add the choices need to have consequences for them to be considered gameplay.


I cant wait for the current era to end so that yu and me can enjoy games again.

in conclusion
WALKING SIMULATORS ARE NOT GAMES AND HAVE NO GAMEPLAY YOU RETARD, THE GAMES YOU LISTED ARE AT LEAST ACTUALLY GAMES, AND ALSO THERE STORY IS GENERALLY MUCH BETTER AND INCORPORATES A VERY IMPORTANT THING KNOWN AS PLAYER CHOICE.
the sides are not story vs gameplay, story can compliment gameplay very well and can function on its own just fine in a movie or book, the walking simulators you mention are not games, they are bad movies that sometimes (but rarely) have a bunch of alternate endings whereas the games you mention HAVE GAMEPLAY making them a GAME!

gameplay >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> story

An oldie but a goodie.

If you play the game on neutral or genocide you literally are just mashing attack to get through the game.

Undertale has a garbage combat system outside of the novelty of having to 'dodge' attacks and being able to talk down enemies. Outside of that it's just a linear as fuck visual novel that actively discourages you from going on either of the two 'alternate' bad ends because muh gay skeleton/lesbian fish woman.

Most JRPGs put more thought into getting through fights than undertale.

If it wasn't for the presence of story, the entire horror genre would not exist at all and my favorite games are horror games (Silent Hill and FEAR.

Its weird because I never see any of these gameplay purists outside of these types of threads, whenever there is a FEAR or Silent Hill thread you see most people agree that they are pretty good games you never really see anybody dropping in to shit on them for having story elements or anything.

Anyways outside of walking sims I think some story elements are useful for defining the aesthetic and atmosphere of the game itself and to give a little bit of context to what your doing, even doom had this and it used its story to support the satanic elements and enemies in the game and it worked well.

Shit taste, faggot

You mean that thing SMT started doing decades ago?

It's because those games are actually games. In Silent Hill, you can do a no damage S rank speed run. The gameplay involves avoiding enemy encounters and solving puzzles by navigating the world. The first time you play through it, it's a dark and atmospheric survival game that challenges the player to merely stay alive. Once you've become acquainted with it and you have memorized (or at least have a general understanding) how all the puzzles work and where to go in segments, then the challenge becomes to do the right things in the right order to complete the game as quickly as possible or even just get a particular ending.

It's a game. There are rules in place and therefore challenges to be overcome. Same with all the Resident Evil games. Hell, even The Last of Us is more of a game than Gone Home. Now, you may have your personal issues with some elements from these games, and that is absolutely fine. However, nobody is arguing that they aren't video games. Gone Home, on the other hand, is a shit. No challenge, no rules, nothing. The "experience" is the win state, and most people would agree that it misses the fucking point of video games in the first place.

I don't know what is point of this discussion if most games nowadays fail at both. Without a means to measure quality, quality can't be expected of the medium. In other words, videogames are only good by accident because the medium is lead by hacks.

Just kill me now famalam.

but how are people supposed to find it? ;_;


Also what's wrong with the term Action RPG?


But why did you like Until Dawn?

>>>/back/

Not disagreeing here but its interesting to me because one of the pros that people on here always list when talking about Silent Hill is the story line, You don't see people like that one guy above talking about how because Silent Hill has cut scenes that means it isn't as repayable. (Silent Hill is in my list of "Games Ive replayed the most.")

And with FEAR you see people praising aspects that are story related, one of the biggest things in FEAR that people praise of course is the replica soldiers but besides them praising the great AI and shit you see them praising the idea of mass produced clone soldiers that respond to a psychic commander and saying "That's awesome" and praising the VA work and specifically how the VA's react to the player fucking them up "Hes too fast!" "FUCK!". You don't see anybody dropping in to shit on FEAR because they tell you about the soldiers background and what they are.

...

...

I don't generally waste my time on shitty survival-horror games, but if said cutscenes are not skippable then they absolutely present an impediment to replaying. You can only enjoy exposition so many times before you have it memorized and just want to get back to the game part of the game. If the exposition is skippable then it's hardly a problem.

GO BACK TO TUMBLR

It's called pruning, threads with less then a certain number of replies auto-deletes ate page 5.

I think the point purists make is that games are interactive by their very nature, and therefore can exist perfectly fine without storytelling elements at all whatsoever. I know, this is a contentious statement, but it's true. I personally don't believe that games should be totally devoid of story. I think story, when used right, can enhance a game and make it better. However, clearly some people want to use storytelling as an excuse to change what video games are at their core, and this is where I think most people take issue. Ninja Gaiden II has a story. It's cheesy action movie cliche from the 80's but it's in there. You may not like it, and you might believe that it could've been done better, which is fine. However, Ninja Gaiden II has some of the best 2D action segments on the NES, or even in general. It's a fantastic game that will really challenge the player's ability to learn, memorize, and execute specific inputs in order to simply complete the game. If you can beat it, then it is a testament to your ability as a player. From there, if you can speed run it or complete it without dying or even taking damage a single time, it's even more impressive, because the challenges in place ask so much of the player's ability to respond. Completing this game in less than 15 minutes without using any magical abilities and without taking damage a single time is a true achievement.

Ninja Gaiden II's average story is offset by its fantastic gameplay. No other media, aside from music and artistic crafts that don't hinge on literature (painting, sculpting, etc), can claim to withstand the brunt of a shitty story, because storytelling is a primary element of those other media.

no

it got some very fast replies, but then got deleted almost immideatly

Its not just cut scenes it has a static story line and notes that you have to read that a lot of time have the answer to puzzles. So why do so many people replay it so much? Why are there no people in the Silent Hill and horror game threads talking about how Silent Hill should not have a story line?

It's because you've made a shit thread.
Take that shit back to 4chan.

In Silent Hill you can skip the cutscenes, and once you've memorized the solutions to the puzzles, you don't need to take time to read the notes anymore, unless you must first read the note to make the puzzle active or something. Most of the puzzles in Silent Hill involve collecting a set of items and placing them in the correct order into a series of slots. It's basically key hunting. If it's not that, then it's a specific combination to a code of some sort (for example play the right musical notes on the piano in order to solve the puzzle). All of this can be memorized. This doesn't deter from gameplay at all. So, those who have never played before can take their time and learn about the world at their own pace, and experienced players can rush to complete objectives without having to worry about being impeded by a 5 fucking minute cutscene.

Games can exist fine without a story line, I am not under any circumstances contending that issue but if you look at it even the games that are very story light are a lot of the time given character and more life with some story elements.

Example, Serious Sam, people react positively to the character of Serious Sam Stone, they think he is funny and likeable and like to post pictures of him. Nobody is in serious Sam Threads saying that Sam should Just be a grey block that does not say anything ever In fact that would take away from the game, not add to it.

Then you have games like Silent Hill where the story is inseparable from the game and without it a lot of the aspect of horror and dread which is so central to the game would be missing.

Congrats, you're now the buttmad and salty children we used to laugh at.

Found the woman

Trying to argue one side over another is black and white autism.
It all depends on the genre and the game.

Even then the storyline of Silent Hill drives the level design, the aesthetic, the audio design and the enemy design, a lot of the encounters with enemies and beyond. Without the story it wouldn't be what it is.

Why are you bullying me, Mark?

Why do you delete succesful threads, which there is much interest in?
It wasn't like this just a few months ago.

who hurt you? ;_;

That's the point of the genocide run, it's not meant to feel good. You're actively hunting down and killing every monster you can get your hands on.


It would have been fun if Undertale had a huge, sprawling world to explore but the development team was like one guy and a couple of artists. Not really the kind of manpower you need. Especially with how much attention to detail the game had.


There are no gay skeletons in Undertale. Sans and Papyrus are brothers. The only gays are RG 01 and RG 02 and that's mainly played for laughs.

"simulators" can be fun as long as they are fun allowed simulators, rarely something branding itself as a simulator actually tries at any point to accurate simulate anything. See for instance any car simulator save for rfactor ever, arma, euro truck simulator.
that's because nowadays that's synonymous with bad gameplay. No matter how good anything else in a game is, if the gameplay isn't good it's as bad as it gets
"Holla Forums likes good vidya, what the fuck!?"


i stopped when i figured out he wasn't going to list the top 10 pokemon that look like butts

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I don't understand the point you're making, user. You asked why people don't complain about games like Silent Hill and FEAR because they have storylines. Well, the reason is because they're more than just story; they feature challenging gameplay scenarios. You may say that the story makes up a significant portion of these games, and you wouldn't be wrong, but without the gameplay they'd just be movies.In these games, the story works to inform the gameplay, like said. However, you can have a game with an interesting atmosphere that does not hinge on a well told or detailed story. I know everyone throws this example around all the fucking time, but look at Dark Souls. That game's story can be summarized as, "The Gods before you fought to keep their utopia alive. Now that it's dying, the remnants cling to shreds of hope and work to deceive the uneducated humans so that these souls may become willing sacrifices to the flame in order to keep the dying age alive for as long as possible. You can hear the recounted history of this dying world from multiple sources and determine for yourself what is right." You never once have to interact with this storyline at all whatsoever. It's there if you wish to explore it, and it does inform the choices that went into environmental/character/enemy/level/ design and therefore influences the atmosphere that the world is trying to convey, but it's an absolutely optional element of the game that can be safely ignored. Without this storyline, the game is a generic action RPG in a medieval fantasy setting.

There aren't a lot of gameplay purists out there. Most people agree that games can be enhanced by storytelling elements. I feel it's important to point out that games also don't need traditional storytelling at all.

Placescape Torment is fucking shit tho

I think I agree with you, I'm only really contending with the people who seem to believe that "story = bad."

Your in fact bringing up another of my points which is that a compelling story line can be told with no cut scenes or even dialogue, it can be told with just the environment your playing in.

There is little story in Doom or Quake but the story is there nonetheless you can clearly see that hell has invaded mars and it creates a very cool atmosphere. Quake is even more atmospheric IMO and all it needs is a paragraph or two if that to set up the setting.

Just because a story is minimalist and not told traditionally does not make it non compelling.

walking simulators are for simple people that need to be told a simple story in a non-direct way where gameplay or other story archs wont get in the way of their simple story.

they just want to be told a simple story without any challenge, but they want to do it on a computer. what they really want is an audiobook with a visual element.

they dont want things like gameplay or other story archs to get in the way of their distilled experience. then they'll call it more mature and act like intellectuals. kind of like how graphic novel people scoff at comics, meanwhile comics like calvin and hobbes are often much more profound and intelligent than graphic novels, but not seen that way because graphic novels have a more "adult" theme at first glance.

I'll bite.

A game that has solid gameplay, but sub-optimal interaction is still worth a play usually. A fun game is a fun game and no other medium provides that.
Then you have games that have mediocre gameplay but a good atmosphere or story to them. It's usually a case by case basis and there's little point in splitting hairs if it's acceptable or not. Take non-games like the Sam and Max games, they have pretty shit gameplay but they got good dialogue and sometimes you get the odd well thought out puzzle. Or Morrowind with some of its archaic and cryptic nature, it has some intricate systems and an immersive as fuck atmosphere. I can't stand JRPG games since I find their gameplay pretty shockingly bad but they offer a lot of game and some cunts like getting gear and getting stronger.
The main issue is complete non-games or games that have their gameplay elements so watered down AND they have a shitty on rails story to tell that is usually pretentious as fuck. Pretty much your standard VNs, biocuck infinite, gone homo and such. AAA games tend to have on rails story with bad gameplay and indie story driven games tend to be pretentious as fuck with little to no interaction.

Not-Porn games come under the same shite since they tend to no gaem and they're not even good porn. I can't fathom why someone would play half of these games since you'd be better off looking at porn and playing something fun, you'd walk away with more stimulation than playing shite that barely tickles your willy.

And the same to these pretentious/on rail games, you'd be better off playing a game that has actual content to offer and to watch a film/series or read a book which an actually engaging story.
As said, the middle ground is pointless to split hair over since it's a pretty grey area and some shit pleases some folk and not others.

That being said, OP is still a faggot for trying to see what is acceptable on Holla Forums rather than make up his own mind.

>It's not tedium it's a design choice

Ironically being shit is still being shit, you could have easily made that into an enjoyable experience with the double gut punch that you're doing something horrible for kicks.

Making it a literal grind is just awful, but I'm not talking about the tedious grind out everything ending, I'm talking about the literal press X combat system.

Seriously any fucking JRPG has more thought out combat than undertale does, it's pretty embarrassing to say the least that it steals so heavily from games like Earthbound but couldn't put together a fun turn based combat system.

I never said it was an original mechanic just that it was a novelty.

Undertale is poorly executed in all respects and the praise it gets is mind boggling to say the least.

You're confusing contextualization with story telling.

Doom had scary looking monster to immediate communicate visually that they were enemies and to help differentiate between different enemies so the player can plan ahead strategically just by looking at them.

Silent Hill contextualizes the setting so it can establish atmosphere

It's an easy way to visually feed players information using pre-established notions on how things work through real world naturally occurring phenomenon. If it has wings, it probably flies. If there's fire coming out of it, it can probably hurt the player character on contact

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Spacechem has story, you work your way up in a company until you hep your boss defeat eldritch entities, then become the boss when he dies.

Immersion and fun.

I view gameplay as the most important part. I don't mind story as long as it is well done and enhances my enjoyment of a game.

Are you trying to tell me that a naughts and crosses videogame is not a videogame

bump

You're confusing video games with movies and books.

Why not both

both are required, the problem is gettng em in the right mix for the specific game

That would depend on whether or not they cooked the steak right.

lol which is better guys, apples or oranges?

Here's my problem, what I don't get is that, with the whole story is not important in games being said to death and for good reason, why aren't there more games structured like toys, instead of using a traditional 3-act structure that most linear entertainment forms use? Even before the whole "cinematic experience" bullshit started to pop up, games were still structured around a story. Sure they had gameplay, but it always felt like it was separated from the narrative. Hell even some of the greatest games like Super Metroid or Okami are structured like that. Where are the games that are designed like traiditional games/toys like Dwarf Fortress or The Sims.