Raiders of the Lost Sim
Oddysey:
I play the Sims 2 almost exclusively, although I do play the occasional PS2 game and I downloaded Nero (awesome game, by the way) yesterday. For the most part, though, there aren't any games that I don't find excessively restricting. Even The Sims annoys me sometimes, because I'm stuck in suburbia and can't mess with different social structures. I don't know if this is typical of most women, or is a peculiarity of mine, but I can't stand games that aren't open ended, and games that pretend to be open ended are even worse.
This is why CRPGs annoy me. I have two really good friends who are always talking about all these great CRPGs they play. Every so often, I pick one up and mess with it for a few weeks. Then I get bored, because I keep thinking of things that it would be nifty to do, or ways to solve problems, that I'm not allowed to implement. Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, even Myst, and the only reason I got through Return to Monkey Island is that it was hilarious. Plus, the plots are usually lame, in CRPGs and computer games in general.
Example: The Jak and Daxter series of games. (Jak and Daxter, Jak II, Jak III) Fun little PS2 platformer/shooters, good animation on the first two, decent and well executed, if cliched, story for the second one. (First didn't really have a story, but was funny enough that it made up for it.) Now, the second one had some twitchyness issues for difficulty level. It tended to spike on random levels, so one gets stuck for hours doing the same thing over and over again. Third game had much, much better gameplay. Very smooth, very fun. But I didn't like it nearly as much as the other two. Why? The story sucked. And in a very specific way. There was this character who had been in the game since the beginning, and a sort of love interest for the main character just as long. (They game starts when they're both like 12 or 13.) First two games end with the annoying sidekick keeping them from kissing. Third game ends with the main character kissing . . . some other chick. Introduced in the second game, dating someone entirely different (a plot point). However, until that particular scene, there was no buildup whatsoever to the relationship, no reason why the two of them aren't still with the other people they were with in the other games.
This ticked me off. Majorly. Sure, character #2 probably appealed more to the guys playing the game (Wooh! Hot chick with a gun!) since she was some sort of special ops commando rather than a mechanic, but the first character had been developed since the beginning of the game, was smart, capable, had gotten the main characters out of major trouble several times, and had a relationship that had been built on since basically the first scene in the series. But no. The developers (Naughty Dog) had to turn it into "how alienate off your female players," especially when you think about the fact that the kind of women who play video games tend to be on the techie side themselves, and thus identifie with that character. (Not that all female gamers are techies, but most of the women who play games that I know are into science or tech, whereas there's not as strong of a correlation with men.)
Grr.
On the upside, both Spore and Oblivion look like they may be flexible enough to be worth playing. So I'm happy. But still annoyed.
rohina:
We have a lot of Nintendo stuff at home, and there are Nintendo products that are more, well, gender neutral than there seem to be for other platforms. My 5 year old daughter loves anything to do with Mario; lots of the Mario games have the girly option of playing as Princess Peach or Princess Daisy, but she also loves Yoshi. She also likes Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. We have bought a couple of PC games that were meant to have girl appeal (including My Little Pony), but the games were totally lame.
Diala:
Quote from: rohina on 2005 October 16, 00:02:25
We have bought a couple of PC games that were meant to have girl appeal (including My Little Pony), but the games were totally lame.
Unfortunately, this is one of the gaming rules that has always stayed consistent: Never buy games made especially for young girls unless you are looking for crap that is too pink and too female-stereotypical. I've downloaded some NES, SNES, and Genesis ROMs of Barbie games, just to check out the horror, and they weren't even worth the effort to download. Idiotic, no challenge, fashion-orientated, and PINK. I've NEVER seen so many different values of pink sprites gather in one place, and hell if I want to see it again.
(Though, I have to admit, Barbie Super Model for the SNES was hilarious, for all the wrong reasons. For instance, in one level, Barbie drives down a Hollywood street. Cars there have no regard for the rules of the road. They appear out of nowhere, drive backwards, and purposely try to crash into you. A lot of the other levels feature Barbie walking and skating down a road. Random birds, balls, and kids would try to make her trip and fall on her butt. If she falls too many times, it's GAEM OVAR. Hahaha.)
Quote from: Renatus
And finally, if you are interested in old NES, SNES, and Genesis games, there's always ROMs and emulators, but that's skirting the edges of legality unless you actually own the cartridges of the games you have ROMs for. That isn't completely unlikely; a lot of the old RPGs relied on a battery to keep the saved games, and those only had a life of about 6 years and are a pain in the ass to replace. Playing console games on the computer is pretty awkward with a keyboard, though.
Ah, yes. ROMs. They are considered illegal, yes, but no one has ever been arrested or charged for having them, so they are similar to recording shows on a VCR in the legal sense. Websites that have them are rather easy to find; while they DO go down every once in a while, a ton of new ones will pop in their place. It takes some getting used to, especially controlling with the keyboard, but you can also buy computer controllers that look strikingly similar to console controllers.
Batteries on games tend to last a bit longer than 6 years... if they were well taken care of. Most of my SNES games with batteries (those that I bought at launch) still can keep memory. However, in a used game shop, you don't know the treatment of the cartridge in question, or if it even still keeps memory. I *think* some stores have refunds and exchange policies for cartridges with no working batteries, but I am not sure. I've only bought a few old cartridge games in those stores.
Ness:
No consoles here... and I think my super-techy husband would be horrified to see that sort of thing going through the surround system and the new widescreen TV... hubby was in broadcast TV for a while and he's very particular about that sort of thing.
so basically, it's PC games or nothing... I'm probably a big fan of the sit back and conquer the world from your arm chair type games - so I played civilisation to death and had heaps of fun with all the different settlers games. These days that style of game seems to make a huge deal over the battles and fighting, and it just turns me off.
Years ago I got a lucas arts game - afterlife, was ok for a bit, but like sim city, once you figure out the tactics of borrowing money and then paying it back it becomes - like all the other sim city games - very, very boring!
Renatus:
Quote from: rohina on 2005 October 16, 00:02:25
She also likes Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing.
Harvest Moon! That is possibly one of the cutest, most fun games in the world. I recommend it to everyone (but stay away from the regular game boy incarnation, it was a hobbled version of the original. PSX and GBA versions were my favourites). It's one little guy with a little decrepit farm he's slowly bringing back to life... it's gentle and absolutely brilliant. Keep in mind I'm usually the sort of person who enjoys bashing hordes of monsters over the head, and I adore that game and wish there were more like it.
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