TheGameLlama
Level: 4
HP: 82/100
Experience to next level: 1,337 points
Strength: 40
Perception: 21 (needs glasses)
Endurance: 25
Charisma: 68
Intelligence: 88
Agility: 35
Luck: 50
Inventory:
- 360 games - 40 (3 unopened)
- PS2 games - over 100
- Wii games - 18
- Wii games being enjoyed currently - 0
- 6 plastic guitars
- 2 real guitars
- 4 gaming microphones
- Mountain Dew and Cheetohs (a.k.a. dinner)
- Dive-bombing cockatiel
- Geriatric cat of self-licking
- Ceramic lawn gnome
- $3 Salvation Army thrift store wall art
- 5-foot-tall cardboard Tiki man
Quest:
- Success - Find it. Slay a dragon, perhaps? They guard that, right? Next to the gold?
Secondary Quest:
- Go to work, bring home the bacon.
- Blog.
- Teach self web design.
Showing posts with label RPG's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPG's. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Part I - What makes RPG's so great?
There are three things people expect, want, and need out of every role-playing game: a solid story, a good amount of playtime, and a sense of growth/progress through the game.
First, the story. Think of the most memorable storylines in video games. Think of the characters you connected with the most. Think of the time Aeris died. These are all in RPG's. When you spend eighty hours of your life in a fictional world, there had better be some people there that you can't live without. With the growth of technology, the power to tell stories with increasingly dramatic panache helps keep RPG nerds glued to their screens far into the early hours of the morning. We see things in the characters we wouldn't notice at first glance as we become better acquainted, like moving in with your girlfriend of three months. You notice little character quirks and flaws you wouldn't see at first, but instead of becoming disgusted, it makes your characters/girlfriends feel even more real and important to us. Gamers usually don't play RPG's for the battle system. They play to see and be in control of their own epic story. They finish the games to see what transpires between real, believeable characters. People don't care about the characters in Halo; if your sidekick dies, big deal. If you play FFVII and you have an integral part of your party snatched away after 30 hours of playtime, you get mad. That connection makes RPG's interesting, and they will continue to be long into the forseeable future.
Next is the length of the game. No other genre (excluding games you can play online ad nauseum) makes you expect sixty hours of playtime as almost the average. At $60 a pop, that's a whopping dollar per hour. In today's economy, gamers and people in general are trying to get the biggest bang for their buck. When Fable came out with its paltry 15-hour length, people actually got livid over its length. I know people that would not buy a fifteen-hour-long RPG because they expect more game. But Metal Gear Solid 2 was about that long including ten hours or so of dialogue, and people flipped over it and would gladly pop down fifty bones for it while Fable sat next to it on the shelf, a sad and neglected step-child that nobody loves. It took me 100 hours to complete Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with all 1250 achievement points (including the expansion). That one game took a year and a half.
A year and a half.
Name a game in another genre in which you can discover something new a year and a half after you started playing it. There aren't other games with this kind of longevity. Another reason RPG's are special.
Finally, the sense of growth. In nearly all RPG's, your characters level up, get stronger, and get all around better as the game goes on. You uncover new abilities, or you can jump higher and run faster, or you are merely more capable of exploring farther into the world. This aspect of RPG's harkens all the way back to games like Dragon Warrior on the original NES. There was one save point, and it was in the castle in which you started the game. In order to even venture into the wilderness very far, you had to build your strength fighting weak slimes and bats and rats until you could make it more than three steps from the castle without having to run back to the Inn. But you got stronger. After a few hours, you find that you can turn bosses that once gave you a hard time into jelly with one whack of your trust Iron Broadsword. You become able to heal yourself without retreating to a town. You find stronger weapons and armor on the corpses of fallen foes and you become increasingly more mighty. Eventually, your powers rival those of the gods. You feel cool in real life because your game avatar can beat the pants off any wandering monster with a simple push of the A button. That power makes RPG's great.
The growth aspect of RPG's is so influential that even games such as Call of Duty 4 use it in their online play. You use a gun long enough, you get better with it, and you get more powerful guns. Metroid and Castlevania have been using the power-up-then-go-to-a-previously-inaccessible-part-of-the-world formula for decades. Without growth, there is only stagnation. People know this. Game developers know this.
Even my blog has growth. I'm past 50 posts! Ba-DOOP! Level up. RPG's are awesome, and I just showed you why.
First, the story. Think of the most memorable storylines in video games. Think of the characters you connected with the most. Think of the time Aeris died. These are all in RPG's. When you spend eighty hours of your life in a fictional world, there had better be some people there that you can't live without. With the growth of technology, the power to tell stories with increasingly dramatic panache helps keep RPG nerds glued to their screens far into the early hours of the morning. We see things in the characters we wouldn't notice at first glance as we become better acquainted, like moving in with your girlfriend of three months. You notice little character quirks and flaws you wouldn't see at first, but instead of becoming disgusted, it makes your characters/girlfriends feel even more real and important to us. Gamers usually don't play RPG's for the battle system. They play to see and be in control of their own epic story. They finish the games to see what transpires between real, believeable characters. People don't care about the characters in Halo; if your sidekick dies, big deal. If you play FFVII and you have an integral part of your party snatched away after 30 hours of playtime, you get mad. That connection makes RPG's interesting, and they will continue to be long into the forseeable future.
Next is the length of the game. No other genre (excluding games you can play online ad nauseum) makes you expect sixty hours of playtime as almost the average. At $60 a pop, that's a whopping dollar per hour. In today's economy, gamers and people in general are trying to get the biggest bang for their buck. When Fable came out with its paltry 15-hour length, people actually got livid over its length. I know people that would not buy a fifteen-hour-long RPG because they expect more game. But Metal Gear Solid 2 was about that long including ten hours or so of dialogue, and people flipped over it and would gladly pop down fifty bones for it while Fable sat next to it on the shelf, a sad and neglected step-child that nobody loves. It took me 100 hours to complete Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion with all 1250 achievement points (including the expansion). That one game took a year and a half.
A year and a half.
Name a game in another genre in which you can discover something new a year and a half after you started playing it. There aren't other games with this kind of longevity. Another reason RPG's are special.
Finally, the sense of growth. In nearly all RPG's, your characters level up, get stronger, and get all around better as the game goes on. You uncover new abilities, or you can jump higher and run faster, or you are merely more capable of exploring farther into the world. This aspect of RPG's harkens all the way back to games like Dragon Warrior on the original NES. There was one save point, and it was in the castle in which you started the game. In order to even venture into the wilderness very far, you had to build your strength fighting weak slimes and bats and rats until you could make it more than three steps from the castle without having to run back to the Inn. But you got stronger. After a few hours, you find that you can turn bosses that once gave you a hard time into jelly with one whack of your trust Iron Broadsword. You become able to heal yourself without retreating to a town. You find stronger weapons and armor on the corpses of fallen foes and you become increasingly more mighty. Eventually, your powers rival those of the gods. You feel cool in real life because your game avatar can beat the pants off any wandering monster with a simple push of the A button. That power makes RPG's great.
The growth aspect of RPG's is so influential that even games such as Call of Duty 4 use it in their online play. You use a gun long enough, you get better with it, and you get more powerful guns. Metroid and Castlevania have been using the power-up-then-go-to-a-previously-inaccessible-part-of-the-world formula for decades. Without growth, there is only stagnation. People know this. Game developers know this.
Even my blog has growth. I'm past 50 posts! Ba-DOOP! Level up. RPG's are awesome, and I just showed you why.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Deal.
Yeah, I missed two days. I was on vacation for the first time since Christmas. I'm back.
Games are expensive. Sometimes, good games are even more expensive. Also, certain genres have a tendency to maintain their value better. Sports games halve in price after a few months. After a few years, Madden is $3 and WWF Smackdown Vs. Raw is $5. Conversely, Pokemon is worth as much today used as it was when first released brand new. Many RPG's are super rare and valuable to people with lots of expendable income... Any Final Fantasy, Shining Force, or Panzer Dragoon game is worth way more today than it probably should be, although many of these games are timeless. The only way a serious game collector will accrue all of his most wanted games is with a lot of money, or a lot of luck. Pawn shops are great places for finding deals, because many of them will have a rack of games with a sign like "SNES games $3." All SNES games are not worth $3. But I sure wish I could get by paying just $3 for every one of 'em...
I thought it would be fun to compile a list of the best deals I've found on games in my years of garage saling and pawn shopping:
Shining Force for Genesis - $2 (This morning! Awesome!)
Final Fantasy II for SNES - $4 at a comic shop, $15 at a garage sale
Super Mario RPG for SNES - $15 at the same garage sale
Illusion of Gaia on SNES - $3 at a used CD store
Final Fantasy 3 for SNES - $40 with SimCity and a Super Nintendo
Final Fantasy Tactics - $15 at a garage sale (original not greatest hits)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - $15 brand new at Blockbuster! Too bad I opened it to, you know, play and enjoy it. I could have retired if I sold that when I hit 60.
Dragon Quest VIII on PS2 - $20 new at Best Buy. Best bang for your buck of any new game ever in the history of the world. If only I could find Dragon Warrior 2, 3, or 4 on NES for less than $50...
Games are expensive. Sometimes, good games are even more expensive. Also, certain genres have a tendency to maintain their value better. Sports games halve in price after a few months. After a few years, Madden is $3 and WWF Smackdown Vs. Raw is $5. Conversely, Pokemon is worth as much today used as it was when first released brand new. Many RPG's are super rare and valuable to people with lots of expendable income... Any Final Fantasy, Shining Force, or Panzer Dragoon game is worth way more today than it probably should be, although many of these games are timeless. The only way a serious game collector will accrue all of his most wanted games is with a lot of money, or a lot of luck. Pawn shops are great places for finding deals, because many of them will have a rack of games with a sign like "SNES games $3." All SNES games are not worth $3. But I sure wish I could get by paying just $3 for every one of 'em...
I thought it would be fun to compile a list of the best deals I've found on games in my years of garage saling and pawn shopping:
Shining Force for Genesis - $2 (This morning! Awesome!)
Final Fantasy II for SNES - $4 at a comic shop, $15 at a garage sale
Super Mario RPG for SNES - $15 at the same garage sale
Illusion of Gaia on SNES - $3 at a used CD store
Final Fantasy 3 for SNES - $40 with SimCity and a Super Nintendo
Final Fantasy Tactics - $15 at a garage sale (original not greatest hits)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - $15 brand new at Blockbuster! Too bad I opened it to, you know, play and enjoy it. I could have retired if I sold that when I hit 60.
Dragon Quest VIII on PS2 - $20 new at Best Buy. Best bang for your buck of any new game ever in the history of the world. If only I could find Dragon Warrior 2, 3, or 4 on NES for less than $50...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
