Come to the dark side, we have cookies!

[Archem]

Yeah, being able to pick up and play without a tutorial is usually due to good game design, simplistic games, or being part of a popular genre (see: modern FPS)

Here's a video to demonstrate my point. EMBEDDING, HO!

Sequelitis - Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X

But in the olden days, games could be downright complex, or maybe just not nearly as refined as they are today, so those manuals were actually important! It's a foreign concept today, especially with the focus on including an in-game tutorial for the simplest concepts (Press A to jump? Whoa ****!), and making sure the idea of reloading doesn't escape your grasp. This is apparent if you take a look at today's "manuals". I **** you not, I opened a game case recently and took out a single sheet of paper that was folded in half and stapled as an act of good faith or something with little more than a page-and-a-half of legal mumbo-jumbo and a picture of the controller. Black-and-white, of course.

[fruckert]

Arkham City had a trifold in it.
And a bigass catalog.

[Archem]

Precisely. Fold a sheet in half and stuff in more adds than you can shake a stick at to meet some sort of arbitrary paper quota and call it a day.

[fruckert]

Trifold only had legal **** in it (a lot of legal ****) and instructions on how to put the disc in.
Nothing on actually playing the game.

[SaiKar]

I'm a big fan of the type of game that's easy to get into, and not terribly difficult to do well at, if you don't really know what you're doing... but if you want to tackle hard obstacles, you need the edges that hide in the complexity of the systems. Well-made strategy games are like this, and I never faulted them for having mammoth rule books.

Also, that video was sweet, and it's disappointing that there are so few others of that series. Especially since I don't care about Castlevania.

[Archem]

I think that's because it's a fairly new series for him. I want more, but Egoraptor is a busy man.

Something about writing a piece about sequels that actually have some significance...

Eh.

[Prpl_Mage]

Games should be easy to get into but challenging to beat.
I doubt a lot of people had trouble getting into games such as pokemon rumble or diablo. You hit stuff till they die and they drop money. And if you actually want to know something there's usually an in-game description when you asks for it.
Like how holding your mouse over a stat in Diablo 3 explains what it actually does. Like people getting gear with "+ block chance" when they're not using a shield.  And they're all "I gotz leek 12% block chance, fuggin awesome." And I'm like. "Yeah, 12% to reduce the damage by 0..." And they're like "WTF!!!?" - all they had to do was hover that mouse over the block stat and it is explained as such "You chance to block with a shield." And then "reduces the damage taken by 0-0"

[zuhane]

I'm frightened.

[greenraven]

The last one is Geist, which apparently only us two liked.

Liek oh mai gawd! Someone else who's heard of Geist?! You are officially my new best friend here!

Seriously, that game is such a sleeper hit. They need to make a remake for the newer gens.

[Prpl_Mage]

Liek oh mai gawd! Someone else who's heard of Geist?! You are officially my new best friend here!

Seriously, that game is such a sleeper hit. They need to make a remake for the newer gens.

A buddy of mine went on and on about geist. Watched him play it but never got me hooked. But it's pretty interesting.

[Archem]

I almost bought Geist years back, but all I'd heard about it was that it was "meh" at best. Now, I kind of wish I had it. I've grown to love those mediocre games for no particular reason, and Geist seems like a pretty good game to scratch that itch.

[fruckert]

I liked it.
It was far from perfect, but I did play the **** out of it.
The possession mechanic was pretty neat, although at this point in time I think it could be done better.

As long as you manage your expectations accordingly, you'll have fun.

[Archem]

As a connoisseur of the mediocre medium, I can say that I've mastered gauging my expectations. I mean, when I play games from the late 1990s/early 2000s for the first time and can still find something about them to be amazing (usually visuals or something), then you know I'm gauging my expectations quite well.

[greenraven]

I think what made Geist "mediocre" were the limitations of the time. The idea was for too big than what could be crammed into the actual disk.

I'm pretty confident that if there was a remake for the modern systems it would be pretty awesome. Especially having ONLINE multiplayer! You only have so much fun blasting mindless bots. The whole "host vs ghost" mechanic is pretty neat game of cat and mouse when you're up against a human mind.

[greenraven]

For those of you interested I just did a few more reviews. Just click on the pics and it'll take you straight to the review.













I've been reviewing a lot of mobile games lately because that's what I've been entertaining myself with mostly. The days of playing solitaire on your phone are pretty much over, mobile games are real contenders these days.