Why Americans don't 1CC

[drauch]

I'm actually trying to get Thief Gold to run in Vista now. Pain in my ass.

[SNail]

it's the difference between passing outside a building and snapping a few pictures versus venturing inside and exploring every nook and cranny. Many modern games are huge mansions, filled with exhibits you're not allowed to touch: you admire a bunch of them for a minute apiece before reaching the gift shop. Shmups are more modest abodes: to appreciate them you actually have to live there for awhile and learn how everything inside works.

An elegant metaphor. I recall reading an interview with a developer who compared console games to novels and arcade games to poems. The above logic also applies to the way people appreciate literature in our time. Far more people read novels than poetry these days. The novel is a "huge mansion" where a reader generally marshals through the pages while a poem can be as short as a single line of text, a "modest abode" if ever there was one. Both forms (video games and literature) get culturally appreciated the ways they do for similar reasons.

[BryanM]

I love the power glove. It's so bad.

Jrpgs have been tepid rehashes through the ages, but hasn't every genre a lot of slushware?

even genres where the addition of stats and experience points

I mentioned this before, but Gradius is heavy on RPG elements. How your ship grows 10x more powerful, and you choose what order you take your upgrades in.

(Personally, the middle of a level isn't the place to have to be screwing around with your tech tree. The power up system of Raiden is the worst.)

Nothing wrong with an EVO Search for Eden style exp system.

Batsugun did EXP in a pretty odd way, a bastard combo of pickups and exp. Cave games got to the point where the power up was more honorific - you'd max out in stage 2 and when you die it'd just give you a few seconds of being impotent (on top of seconds you were dead) to pick them back up. A game where you have a pea shooter for a little longer and only max out in the final stage would be neat.

[Mischief Maker]

Liking the discussion so far, but I wish to re-emphasize one of my points. If the modern American gamers are so damn lazy and graphics hungry, explain the success of Geometry Wars?

Also, I don't want to derail my own thread, but here's why System Shock 2 was awful:

1. It's a game using the Thief Engine and the Thief AI, but you DON'T stealthily avoid fights. Thief was all about avoiding the fights. If anyone trots out the old, "There's stealth! You can cast an invisibility spell that makes the AI unresponsive to your presence!" you have missed everything that made Thief great.

2. RPGs are abstract games where success and failure are a measure of your characters' stats. In action games, success is based on the player's skill. There's no way you can artificially make the player better at the game if their stats outweigh their skill, so the RPG sense of escalating power gets added to Action games through what I call "virtual incompetence." The 2-year military vet can't figure out how to operate a shotgun, the ship in Jets N Guns slips all over the screen, 6 billion dollar cyborg super-agent JC Denton needs 5 seconds of intense concentration to hit a stationary target from across the room. Once you max out your stats, your in-game avatar finally handles like a regular FPS game.

(It's worth nothing that the free skillpoint cheat is the only cheat in Deus Ex that doesn't brand your save file with "Cheater," someone in the development team for that game agrees with me.)

4. Once you get over the virtual incompetence hump, the simplemindedness of the enemies' combat AI becomes crytsal clear, the game becomes laughably easy, and any sense of tension is lost. I cannot emphasize enough, Thief was about AVOIDING fights.

4. My build in SS2 was a hacker/sniper. After skating my way through the final 2/3rds of the game annihilating everything in my path, guess what happened when I took on the Many's brain and its infinitely spawning guards? I could not win without cheating. "Ha ha! Just because you can customize your build, we didn't mean to get too creative!"

5. The ending was one of the biggest disappointments in video game history.

[Wonderbanana]

1. It's a game using the Thief Engine and the Thief AI, but you DON'T stealthily avoid fights. Thief was all about avoiding the fights. If anyone trots out the old, "There's stealth! You can cast an invisibility spell that makes the AI unresponsive to your presence!" you have missed everything that made Thief great.

I cba with most of the wot but I'm baffled as to why you think using an engine from another game means a game should share the same characteristics.

[Sumez]

If SS2 was like Thief I'd have hated it. Not that I mind Thief, but stuff like that (both the stealth and the AI issue, and the "lack of challenge" for that matter) has nothing to do with what made SS2 so great! It's a cyberpunk epic adventure soaked in atmosphere. Not a tactical FPS or whatever.

I do agree that the ending was pretty lame though.


edit: Now that I think about it - the enemies are ZOMBIES! And MONKEYS! Or robots programmed simply to shoot on sight! What else would you expect from the AI, really? That's like saying Serious Sam and EspGaluda has terrible AI.

[Blackbird]

5. The ending was one of the biggest disappointments in video game history.

My vote for biggest disappointment in videogame history would probably go toward the merger of Activision and Blizzard, or toward the Activision vs Infinity Ward lawsuit.

Or when any number of awesome companies broke up/were bought out, like Sierra Entertainment or TSR.

Of course, I've only been paying close attention recently. I'm sure some vets remember some really depressing stuff from earlier in gaming's history.

[Sumez]

I have no idea who Infinity Ward is, so that's hard for me to get excited over, but there's easily tons of stuff to be depressed with, if you're really looking.
Like Konami's used-to-be dream factory being reduced to a dancing game manufacturer managing a bunch of mediocre European game studios on the side as they butcher a number of beloved franchises.

[captpain]

I'm not going to defend SS2's combat, because it isn't great, but I think the storytelling, atmosphere, and sense of exploration completely overwhelm the annoying stuff (like respawning enemies). If you're really so put off by that kind of stuff that you can't enjoy System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, then I take pity on your miserable, blackened soul.

[Deca]

I'd have to say the Ridge Racer Unbounded announcement was one of the single most soul crushingly disappointing things in the history of gaming

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Liking the discussion so far, but I wish to re-emphasize one of my points. If the modern American gamers are so damn lazy and graphics hungry, explain the success of Geometry Wars?

Because arena shooters are generally easier to pick up and play (whist having fun) due to the lack of stages and bosses. To pick up and play an Cave shmup and stay alive longer then 30 seconds needs some understanding about how these games work both in the mechanics of play and basic techniques to stay alive, bombing, bullet herding etc


What made SS2 so good is that it had a good sci-fi setting & story, married modern freelook FPS with RPG elements, Shodan, could be actually feel like a horror at times and the way the game keeps the player alone but also connected to the story by coms messagaes and audio and text recordings scattered around the ship. Im playing Deadspace atm which does exactly the same thing. Its been a while since ive played SS2 but dont you have the run of the whole ship instead of it been split off into stages?

Also SS2 used the thief game code to great effect, as it wasnt some thief in a sci-fi setting (which would of been terrible) but in the way you could hide from the monsters if you wished, and they would look for you and you could ambush them. Some ppl moan about the monsters respawning but thats much better then backtracking though empty corridors.

It did have its faults as the ending wasnt too great and left us on a cliffhanger, plus ild of preffered if I was given a chance to join Shodan or not to have different endings. And for an out and out action shooter Deus Ex was better as apart from those fucking ninja robots the enemies attacks were simple but it was set mostly in small rooms and tight corridoors so the combat ai could get away with been abit thick.

EDIT: SS2 is copied by so many newer games, which horror game boasted that the best feature was that the zombies ran? (Res evil? Left for dead?)


Sega pulling out of the hardware business is my personal worse. Ive also noticed that one or two JRPG fans wernt pleased when Square and Enix merged

[Sumez]

Its been a while since ive played SS2 but dont you have the run of the whole ship instead of it been split off into stages?

Yeah I loved the well designed Metroid'ish structure. Discovering new areas just kept on being exciting and a huge draw of the game.

[drauch]

I'm not going to defend SS2's combat, because it isn't great, but I think the storytelling, atmosphere, and sense of exploration completely overwhelm the annoying stuff (like respawning enemies). If you're really so put off by that kind of stuff that you can't enjoy System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, then I take pity on your miserable, blackened soul.

Agreed. System Shock 2 is one of my favorite games ever, but certainly isn't without some faults. Deus Ex is amazing as well. And American's don't 1cc or something like that.

[Jeneki]

Why Americans don't 1CC

For some reason this seems ripe for a "1CC'd ur mum" joke.



Playing the same content repeatedly to master the game mechanics had a short resurgence with Guitar Hero / Rock Band (well, as much mastery as you can get from a rhythm game that doesn't use graded timing for score). Every convention I've went to in the last 5 years has had a tournament for one of these two games.

So I think the will is there, it just needs the right "push" to get people excited about it.

[Sumez]

Guitar Hero is a great example.

It's technically a fast paced precision based action arcade game that has people competing for high scores. It even has a combo based scoring system.

So I guess what USA needs is a shoot'em up based on crappy Guns'n'Roses songs?

[je_apostrophe]

Liking the discussion so far, but I wish to re-emphasize one of my points. If the modern American gamers are so damn lazy and graphics hungry, explain the success of Geometry Wars?

I think something defining about arena shooters is that any 30 seconds of the game is basically the same as any other 30 seconds of the game. This means that the only thing to differentiate short play vs long play is score. I think Americans have a desire to "experience more"---which in this case, has the only outlet of score. I also think that Americans have weaker prides and feel bad when they can't get past the first or second level of scrolling shooter. Since most arena shooters lack such a noticeable progression, you don't feel bad when you don't reach a certain point, because you can't really tell what point you're at anyways.

[honorless]

Liking the discussion so far, but I wish to re-emphasize one of my points. If the modern American gamers are so damn lazy and graphics hungry, explain the success of Geometry Wars?

• It was a launch title. Look at what its competition was. Gauntlet, Joust, a billiards game, some PopCap games that were already free on PC...basically nothing. Also worth noting is that it underpriced several titles—including Mutant Storm Reloaded, another brightly-colored twinstick arena shooter. (Anyone even heard of that one?)
• Partly because of the above, a number of game reviewers billed it as the 360's best launch title. That's pretty good publicity.
• The graphics aren't hyperrealistic, but they're abstract and simple enough not to turn people away. More important were the effects—"Ooh! Shiny! Neon! Stuff explodes!" There's a visceral appeal to that.
• TVR already mentioned this, but it's very pick-up-and-play and the initial difficulty curve is very low.

Now, how many people stuck with Geo Wars long enough to get the harder achievements? Based on this subset of data, you are undermining your point when you call the game's success as a victory for skill-based gaming and perseverance. It is infinitely more likely that most people played until they hit a wall, then moved on to something else. "It cost less than a Value Meal*, so who cares? I got my money's worth."

In other words, the subset of people who care enough to "1CC" always has been and will always be a niche within the whole. Japan, the USA, anywhere. Perhaps even—gasp, shock—in this forum.

That's not to say that I think it's worthless to write an article proselytizing for the Church of Skill-Based Gaming. There are plenty of people out there who are open to "conversion", speaking as someone who played almost nothing but JRPGs until 2008. Unfortunately, what you have in the OP is a patronizing, vaguely-Japanophilic rant that whines about RPGs and comes to some weird conclusions about how rentals made Americans lazy. Look, the fact that you can't rent a game in Japan just means you buy it, get your money's worth as fast as humanly possible, and sell it back before you lose too much on it. Their used market is huge.

...Maybe your goal was to come off as a dismissive ass. If so, you're golden—though I gotta warn you, I doubt that'll make your pal Simon any more willing to read what you have to say. But if not, here is an article about MM9 which explains some of the thrills of skill-based gaming in a way that an audience unfamiliar with the subject can understand. It's very long-winded and the writer uses some silly buzzwords, but I think you could take some tips from it.

...And then, you know, don't start nerdraging if someone says "I get it now...but that's not what I want when I play a video game," and goes back to Angry Birds. Please.

* I don't actually know how much a Value Meal costs.

[R-Gray 1]

because some of us get bored quickly
Sure they are not only shmups players, sure they like other kind of games.
Not enough time to play again a shmup to improve.(preffer to use that time to play another shmup )

[louisg]

Yeah, it probably just has to do with what's caught the attention of game fans here; what games people are sinking time into in various terriorites. I'm not sure it's more complicated than that (out of some # of people playing a game, some proportion is going to get crazy obsessed with it and achieve astronomical scores).

On the topic of Geometry Wars: I remember that being popular before the 360 stand-alone version.

[Austin]

On the topic of Geometry Wars: I remember that being popular before the 360 stand-alone version.

Yep.. The older version of it had the benefit of being included in the Project Gotham series, a pretty popular one at that. Even a demo of Retro Evolved was in PGR3 for the 360. That's where I got a taste of it, and it ended up being the first XBLA game I bought.

[TodayIsForgotten]

• It was a launch title. Look at what its competition was. Gauntlet, Joust, a billiards game, some PopCap games that were already free on PC...basically nothing. Also worth noting is that it underpriced several titles—including Mutant Storm Reloaded, another brightly-colored twinstick arena shooter. (Anyone even heard of that one?)
• Partly because of the above, a number of game reviewers billed it as the 360's best launch title. That's pretty good publicity.
• The graphics aren't hyperrealistic, but they're abstract and simple enough not to turn people away. More important were the effects—"Ooh! Shiny! Neon! Stuff explodes!" There's a visceral appeal to that.
• TVR already mentioned this, but it's very pick-up-and-play and the initial difficulty curve is very low.

In other words, the subset of people who care enough to "1CC" always has been and will always be a niche within the whole. Japan, the USA, anywhere. Perhaps even—gasp, shock—in this forum.

* I don't actually know how much a Value Meal costs.

MSR is such an under-rated game. It's a shame pom pom moved to PSN.

Those could all be very precise and excellent reasons why geo wars did so well. It could also be that people do like frenetic games that they can pickup and play for a few minutes or hours in one sitting. There is no 1cc or continue option. it's go as long as you can with what you have. Perhaps if more mainstream shoot em ups did this, maybe more people would get into them? Remove continues and put it as an option in the menu's, since ya know, reviewers always pick apart this aspect of the genre.

I personally hate geo wars. Yeah, the game was really cool the first week or so but gets boring after you set a highscore. There are people who still play this a few hours everyday and i really don't get it. Why anyone would want to spend 30+ minute sessions to try and beat their score while having to turn their set to black and white to see what the ef is going on is beyond me.

And your final part I mentioned earlier on in this thread and is exactly the truth and everyone who has their reasons look no further than what this guy has written.

[Dronevil]

f you treat shmups as a "checklist" the way many other games encourage you to, it's guaranteed disappointment: it's the difference between passing outside a building and snapping a few pictures versus venturing inside and exploring every nook and cranny. Many modern games are huge mansions, filled with exhibits you're not allowed to touch: you admire a bunch of them for a minute apiece before reaching the gift shop. Shmups are more modest abodes: to appreciate them you actually have to live there for awhile and learn how everything inside works. Methinks that's also why they have such a devoted fanbase: most everyone is impressed by a trip to the museum, but nobody has as many feelings for that place as the humble couple of walls they can truly call their own.

This is one of the best definitions of the genre i've ever read. I love it.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

So I guess what USA needs is a shoot'em up based on crappy Guns'n'Roses songs?

Technically already done. Harmonix/SCEA had Frequency and the sequel Amplitude for the PS2. No GNR songs, but involved licensed artist music songs plus a few Harmonix written songs. These games were before Guitar Hero.

To review, those games involved pressing L1, R2, or R2 (default controls) in time to catch (in Frequency) or shoot (in Amplitude) rhythm "jewels" that were paced in time to music in a given lane, then had to change lanes and repeat the mechanics to keep the combo going. Obviously, the jewels represent notes.

Scoring system is based on keeping the combo going up to the x8 score multiplier, then keeping the multiplier at x8. Powerups existed to assist with gameplay--one would blast all the jewels in a lane (helpful if one missed a few jewels in the lane as it would still keep the combo), another would slow down the music for a few bars, another would double the score for four bars, and there were a few others. Frequency's lanes are in a octagonal shape and it almost makes it look like a tube shooter. Amplitude is more linear in its lane design but has slight elevation changes from time to time that can obscure some of the jewels.

Increasing game difficulty meant more complex rhythms plus a faster scroll rate to add to the difficulty.

I like the games, though I think Amplitude does have a few near impossible-setup moments where where one is at the far right lane and the next section to maintain the combo is in the leftmost lane. However, judging by how often I've seen the games in the used game stores, such a game might not do well these days, even moreso if there was a manic shooter element too it.

[Special World]

Frequency is a great game, but it's not a shooter by and stretch of the imagination.

ED: Ah, I meant Amplitude. I guess it is a shooter, but only by an EXTREME stretch of the imagination.

[toaplan_shmupfan]

Yes, it is true that Frequency uses "hands" to "catch" the note jewels, while Amplitude has an actual spaceship shooting lasers at the note jewels. Amplitude definitely qualifies as a rail shooter. Given the similar game mechanics, I just went on the safe side and listed both, since Amplitude is a sequel to Frequency (even the powerups are nearly the same).

[Deca]

Man that is way too much of a stretch, Frequency and Amplitude are rhythm games in the most basic sense of the term. No projectiles ever leave the "ship" and you never have to dodge anything, you just hit the notes as they cross the judgement line.

[BryanM]

The same reason people will go to a gym for years and never make any progress. Some (most) people just want to play around ("exercise") instead of train.

[evil_ash_xero]

I thought we didn't 1CC because our fingers are too fat.