"Floaty" in the context of Littlebigplanet or any other platform game out there means you fall so slow when jumping it's like you're floating through the air
"Floaty" in the context of Littlebigplanet or any other platform game out there means you fall so slow when jumping it's like you're floating through the air
This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel...
So that's how you make your money, Roto? Pretty good read, some of mine are phrases and not just words
"Mindblowing" - this has gotten thrown around a lot at current generation games, especially at ones with large set pieces. But just because more games, and popular ones at that, are emulating the hollywood blockbuster scene doesn't make it mindblowing. I understand a lot of this stuff happening in-game is a good trend, but Half-Life was how many years ago? This is overdue, not revolutionary.
"Design" - this can be put into one word because it's used so atrociously in many different contexts. It's a lot like the first few on Roto's list, where players will complain about "poor design" or say the design hasn't caught up with the times (saw this in an FF:4HoL review). Reviewers, and certainly not gamers are not game designers. In fact, video game reviewing, unlike other mediums, has no proper training regimes where you study the classics and learn about techniques in the medium.
"Personality" - This is a classic where the reviewer can use this to knock the game without having to actually back it up. I saw this about MAG, which had distinct art styles for each of its 3 factions. I saw this for John Daly's ProStroke Golf, which really set itself apart from other golf games with its ProStroke view, had one of the best commentators in golf, and of course, John Daly who's one of the most interesting...well, personalities! (in golf.)
"Immersion" - just gets used ridiculously all the time.
"Character Development" - used by this site's fantastic collective of literary critics day in and day out.
That's terrible reasoning for thinking that reviewers or gamers can't talk about game design. Hell, most of the people making them today, and especially 10-20 years ago would have no formal training in actually designing games, yet they do it every day. All it takes is the ability to look critically at how the pieces of a game work and work together, which can come as easily as studying games themselves as through any formal education (which you'd be hard pressed to find outside of a few schools). In fact, having as much experience as possible with games from all genres and systems will help, not hinder this. And the more experience someone has with playing games, the easier it will be for them to know when something is of that they really llike or don't like, whether or not they're able to put it into words. Some people are really bad at it mind you, especially that last part, but the only way to get better is to discuss these things with other people.Originally Posted by Bolivar
Maybe. The reasoning at the end is a little weak. But the point of this thread is words that get misused, not that have no meaning. And I think it gets misused a lot. Like I saw 4 Heroes of Light get HEAVILY penalized because it hasn't incorporated any of the design advancments since hte 8-16 bit era. But what exactly are the design advancements? FF's battle systems have been all over the place you really can't say there's been any definitive milestones that have been reached that changed everything, unless you mean a dynamic battle camera and a highly customizable character development system, which are both things it has. It kind of adds its own spin to everything with combined moves and your ability resources for every battle. As far as DS games go, it's hard to imagine it's outdated in any way, and I seriously doubt the magazine said the same thing about Bowser's Inside Story or any of the other Mario & Luigi RPG's.
As to your point, that people can design without training at all, I'm not sure if I entirely agree, granted you have a lot more experience with that kind of thing that I do. To me it seems like most games today, if not nearly ALL Games, simply use a previously existed gameplay mechanic, tune it the best they can, and deliver it with a cinematic experience. You make a third person action game, a first person shooter, a racer, an RPG, it's all based on everything that's come before it.
As opposed to actual GAME design which I feel only a few developers today really think about, which is on the level of Milton & Bradley, or the Parker Brothers. When I think of Game Design I think of Hiroyuki Ito and the battle systems he's created for Final Fantasy like the Gambit System, the Learn-or-Switch element of FFIX's equipment, the Junction System (which may just be inherently broken...er, scattered!) or ATB itself. I think of the early Command & Conquer or Warcraft games and what a nightmare they must have been to balance (aren't you making an RTS right now?) And I also think about the map design in games like Killzone 2, Counter-Strike, and even Call of Duty. Also, the sheer amount of primary, secondary weapon, equipment, special equipment, and perk combinations there are in Modern Warfare 2. Yes, the game was crazy exploited at the beginning but a lot of tweaking has gone a long way to remedy that.
Casual
As in casual gaming.
"Design" sucks when people are vague with it. Especially "level design" which I think at this point just means "fun."Yeah, for sure. When you jump in LBP, it feels like you're just kind of rising into the air, rather than launching yourself from the ground with your legs. I love me some LBP, though.
I remember when "casual" used to mean sports games and any game with violence for the sake of violence, like Grand Theft Auto. That was like five years ago. >_>
If you think this is particularly long, you're in pretty sad shape.
For the medium in which it is written, the length is quite.. lengthy.
Personally, I don't care what terms people use to describe things. I just want gamers to stop whining about every god damn little thing that they don't agree with, regardless of whether or not it is good. People seriously whine about every little minute detail and it is annoying.
The medium is a gaming blog post. It could probably stand to be longer, really.
Epic.
I guess I'm thinking in a different context than you, but still. Stop arbitrarily calling everything epic.
Revolutionary - Mostly in today's context cause seriously the word could only be properly used 25+ years ago and be somewhat accurate with a few here and there. Yet, I'm annoyed as hell how often this word gets thrown around cause half the time, its attached to games that haven't been around long enough to have a real impact on the industry so you really can't say its revolutionary unless, a year after, a bunch of clone games pop up. The other time its used is for games that really had no major revolutionary impact cause the game is no different from other anything else in its genre, it wasn't a complete change of form and procedure as the word revolutionary actually means. They are simply games that added new elements to set them apart from other games/consoles in the market and were successful. They didn't change how the genre operates (well there are some exceptions). So please stop using the word.
"Ahead of its time" - I hate this expression. Mostly cause its used for games that don't deserve it either by not really being ahead of its time (just on schedule thank you very much) or pertains to games and consoles who did something cool but no one really payed attention to it. So the term is used as an excuse to why no one liked it and sometimes its used in the opposite context where people love it because it was "ahead of its time". Seriously, how do you even know this when talking about anything recent? You have a crystal ball that tells you what the future of gaming is going to be and this one title just slipped by the crystal ball radar? Let's pretend the gaming industry exists in a determinist world view and just accept that games come out when they are suppose to and none magically missed the mark on the time scale cause everything is predetermined so it arrived exactly when it needed to, thank you very much.
Casual and Hardcore - Can anyone tell me really what the difference is here? Especially when it comes to taste in gaming? Why do I lose hardcore status cause I like my DS and Wii games? How come you're automatically inducted to being a more "serious and hardcore" gamer because you own a PS3, PSP, and X-Box 360? Why does taking a break from playing a gritty crime drama title and blood soaked FPS shooter to a mindless fun filled rhythm game or heaven forbid, Wii Sports automatically means that I'm out of sync with the hardcore crowd who somehow think that playing games with T and M ratings automatically makes them better? Its like saying you don't really like movies cause you occasionally watch a children's flick or some brain dead popcorn flick instead of watching the Sundance Film Festival. You can play both and not be either casual or hardcore, so stop using these terms as a badge of honor or as some silly form of an imaginary hierarchy that exists in your head. Most of my "causal" gamer friends don't own Nintendo consoles or even have a 360, some of my more hardcore gamer friends don't own any of the consoles but are still fascinated by motion gaming. So this idea of using these terms as derogatory statements about another gamer cause you don't like their games/consoles/gaming interface is just plain stupid. Grow up and stop being a fanboy douche, you fanboy douche.
As for Hardcore, there is a big difference between being hardcore and just plain obsessive and OCD like. I'm what you would call an OCD gamer, I have to complete certain tasks in a game finish every game I start, and understand the games underlying mechanics and exploitations. Is this healthy? No. So what makes me "hardcore" to some people makes me pathologically insane to other people. Whether you believe "Hardcore" is a positive term depends on which side of "obsessive gaming" you stand on.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
This was exactly what I was going to say. Nearly word for word.
I've found myself to disagree with a lot of the comments in this thread. A lot of the words and phrases brought up seem kind of crucial when describing the pro's and con's of a game.
Most of these terms do have legitimate uses in theory, but I agree completely with Roto that they're all rendered pretty useless because people misuse them entirely.* Oh and I agree with WK on 'Revolutionary' more than I can say, probably because I have played first-hand, when they were new, genuinely revolutionary games - DooM**, Populous, Civilization, and so on. And I'm well enough informed about games before my time to generally know which ones matter even though I wasn't there on day one. Seeing it applied to something like Gears of War, though a game I like a lot, is a bit daft.
* Except pedestrian.
** And yes I know about Wolfenstein 3D but DooM had far greater impact and they're still making WADs today.
The term Hardcore gamer essentially means gamer with no life lolCasual and Hardcore - Can anyone tell me really what the difference is here? Especially when it comes to taste in gaming? Why do I lose hardcore status cause I like my DS and Wii games? How come you're automatically inducted to being a more "serious and hardcore" gamer because you own a PS3, PSP, and X-Box 360? Why does taking a break from playing a gritty crime drama title and blood soaked FPS shooter to a mindless fun filled rhythm game or heaven forbid, Wii Sports automatically means that I'm out of sync with the hardcore crowd who somehow think that playing games with T and M ratings automatically makes them better? Its like saying you don't really like movies cause you occasionally watch a children's flick or some brain dead popcorn flick instead of watching the Sundance Film Festival. You can play both and not be either casual or hardcore, so stop using these terms as a badge of honor or as some silly form of an imaginary hierarchy that exists in your head. Most of my "causal" gamer friends don't own Nintendo consoles or even have a 360, some of my more hardcore gamer friends don't own any of the consoles but are still fascinated by motion gaming. So this idea of using these terms as derogatory statements about another gamer cause you don't like their games/consoles/gaming interface is just plain stupid. Grow up and stop being a fanboy douche, you fanboy douche.
As for Hardcore, there is a big difference between being hardcore and just plain obsessive and OCD like. I'm what you would call an OCD gamer, I have to complete certain tasks in a game finish every game I start, and understand the games underlying mechanics and exploitations. Is this healthy? No. So what makes me "hardcore" to some people makes me pathologically insane to other people. Whether you believe "Hardcore" is a positive term depends on which side of "obsessive gaming" you stand on.
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