With a varied selection of semi-recent games, with one old game showing how it fits in.

Valued:

1.a.
Deus Ex 4 - one giant secret-hunt / theft-a-thon by a variety of means.
Grim Dawn - lots of hunting around.
Quake - most good maps feel like you're progressing around somewhere cool, with some secret-hunting.
Rise Of The Tomb Raider - so many little things to do in cool settings, but not too vague and aimless.
Dark Souls 3 - does this ridiculously well.
Doom 4 - a bit linear but the progression in environments keeps it going.

1.b.
Mordheim - little progression, no linked maps, but it really makes you think fucking hard.
Battlefleet Gothic - simple tactics but requires some work with positioning and actions.

2.
Grim Dawn - loads of effects, bodies and bits of bodies flying everywhere.
BattleFleet Gothic - even though it's just ship to ship, there's a good feeling of weight and power to it.
Quake - still fun shooting monsters in the face. AD's extra gibbage is nice.
Doom 4 - oh yeah!

3.
Mordheim - the city is nicely presented, my Skaven have lots of character.
Titanfall 2 - on-reals, but just plain goddamn beautiful.
Grim Dawn - lovely details and general great style.
Dark Souls 3 - good to great graphics, but great to perfect art direction.
Doom 4 - looks great, much better variety than D3 too.

Unvalued:

1.
Dark Souls 3 - pause the awesomeness for 2 hours while you bang your head against the same brick wall?? Fuck that, just paint the wall and I'll watch it dry.

2.
Deus Ex 4 - all the bloody emails and e-books. Dull dull dull.
Grim Dawn - all the tomes and notes and minor conversations with people you don't give a shit about.

3.
All games that do this. 

Valued -

- short-medium length experience (I have a life god-damnit)
- gameplay density of said experience (areas have purpose, no wasted space)
- game juiciness (hitting things feels satisfying, actions have meaning)
- customisability (adds extra longevity so I can dip back into the game at a whim, doom and quake are prime examples)

Not Valued -

- games which are 500 hours long (on purpose, fucking skyrim)
- games which aren't fun immediately (they hinder your abilities from the start and upgrades are arbitrary)
- COD or Fifa 

I play games for the sense of reward. Obviously there are many ways to give the player reward. I really love how exploration feels awesome in Metroid Games at least in the 2d games, as I don't own Nintendosystems and played them in an Emulator. Also the bosses in Metroid are excellant because you will not first try them always. They are doable after a few tries and if you first try kill them you feel rewarded for being really good at the game. I think AM2R, a Metroid fangame did this just as good or better than the Nintendogames themselves.
What I like is how Metroid or Zelda deliver a sense of progression/reward by giving the player more powers or items overtime.
What got me with quake was the dark scary atmosphere and the otherworldly architecture
I value as well:
-tight, very intuitive controls
-immersion through atmosphere or graphics but I take both if the game can offer them 

- short-medium length experience (I have a life god-damnit)
I don't get this argument at all. There's no obligation for you to finish the game in a fixed time. Just come back to it, and come back to it, etc. There's literally no draw-back of more content?! I would love a few more quake episodes... 

For me Brothers was one of the greatest games. It was short, meaningful and just gorgeous.
One of the few games I completed because it kept me gripped but didn't consume my free time.
Most games were like this back in the early 90's. It's more of a preference thing really, the only exception being WoW. 

I get all of those, even if they aren't my personal preference. 

I value:
- Good gameplay systems. Doesn't need to be too complex, just robust and well thought-out.
- Emergent gameplay allowing freedom and creative play, mostly why I love the so-called immersive-sim genre with games like Thief or Ultima Underworld.
- Great/good level design.
- Strong atmosphere/real sense of place.
- Immersion.
- Emphasis on sound design (with good sound tech if possible).
- High replayability/length as long as the pacing is good.
- Modding tools.

I don't care about:
- Anything taking precedence over gameplay. There's the word game in video game, it's there for a reason.
- Walking simulators. Only exception would be NaissanceE.
- 2deep4u stories that are more often than not written by pretentious hacks who think they're the new David Lynch but have the talent of a clam under anti-depressants and should consider another career option.
- Real time with pause in RPGs. I hate this system.
- Cover systems in games. 

Like:
======

> A cleverly interconnected world where you are continually coming back to previous areas throughout the whole game to unlock new routes with new abilities. (Metroid Prime, Dark Souls etc.)

> An elegant marriage of expertly-crafted puzzle elements and awesome environment (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus etc). Can be basically the entire game, or can be just part of an otherwise action-oriented game.

> Combat (in a first-person or third-person game) that requires actual thought and strategy, not just reflexes and/or character stats. Been a while since I played a game like that so I can't think of any examples right now.


Don't like:
===========

> All those pretentious "indie" wank tropes like ultra-minimalist visuals, super-pretentious hipster music as soundtrack, and (as Skacky says) "This story is sooo deep" crap. You can usually tell if a game is going to be full of this shite before you play it by looking at a picture of the developer(s), or reading whatever wanky article they've written for Gamasutra.

> "Procedurally-generated [levels, quests, whatever]" crap. AKA "I made an algorithm to randomly generate mediocre and soulless content because I haven't the resources or am too lazy to do it fucking properly."

> Games where it's just about grinding and min/maxing your character stats and nothing to do with skill/thought/strategy (vast majority of RPGs and action-RPGs, and now most modern action games in general as they incorporate more and more stats and grindy shit into the gameplay) 

There's nothing lazy about making a good random level generator.

Obviously, it won't replace hand-crafted environments, but not every game is like Quake, and sometimes the focus is on having a different experience every time you play. 

i was going to write something but i will go with what kinn says

i don't care about pretentious indie games, i'm more neutral in that respect. i don't actively dislike them

but i really dislike procedurally things. the technology is just not there for now.

and grinding... i like skyrim and i would like a mod that get rids of most of the leveling. you don't get good at something in a few months (or days).

also i would like something like classes, you start with some stats and a "background" story or archetype and you can go +-25 points in those stats. the skills will slowly deteriorate to -25 if you don't use them and go to +25 if you use them. and rebalance everything with that in mind. so you have a 70 magic character that can go to +95, with 40 strength that can go to 65 or 15, etc. that would introduce some grinding, but grinding that i wouldn't mind to endure

and with things that like, i go too with that "juiciness" thing that fifth says. it's one of the things that like in arcane dimensions, it's the main reason that i seek mods for the games i like. sometimes juiciness can be something like brutal doom. after a while it gets old but you need juiciness so you end up with beautiful doom or smooth doom.

i also like that unreal thing that shambler says. that's why i like more quake and stalker that call of duty et al 

It's partially random but all the rooms are handmade.
I love the trailers. 

Replayability, good art direction, fluid animations, tight controls, direct control of the action, usability, non-annoying music, non-annoying voicework, rich soundscapes, etc. 

Looks OK but I think the scale and movement feel off. I'm more excited for Gibhard 

same here. 

My interest in STRAFE is despite the procedural generation. I like the materials system of acid v blood on the ground, and details like the blood actually staining the water.

On the topic of the thread:
- Meaningful exploration
- Meaningful returns to spaces
- Secrets that matter but aren't required (they shouldn't be obvious, but should make me feel clever when I find them)
- Mechanics that match the art work and lore rather than being arbitrary changes
- A setting I can't casually encounter
- Manual unlimited saves
- Pause
- An escape from the situation in which I myself am playing the game
- Easy return to favorite places and experiences (map lists, or console access that isn't arcane in use)
- Deterministic logic in complex data (I hate dice rolls, I do like numerous factors, gradients, and mitigation)

I'm probably getting a bit too Armchair Designer at this point. 

This board to blind to realise the old school retro love letter's to Quake and hate it becuase there cuck's 

more than either of those. I'm sure there might be a game or two waiting in the wings as well. 

The bombshell prequel is a retro game on a retro engine. It's got an advantage there 

Next person who seriously uses "cuck" on this board should be skinned and dipped in IcyHot. 

He's a proxy troll. Just look at the IP address. 

Strafe looks like one of those games made by people who think that old games looked adorably stupid. I don't like this trope, but it seems that the majority of "retro" shooters are like that. 

'sperg incoming...

is that they are marketing it as being like some shooter from the 90s, whereas everything about it looks mid-2000s except LOOK! PIXELZ!! CHIPTUNES!! - oh and then they stick in 2-color menus from some 80s game.

http://i.imgur.com/JO7C4UL.png

They think they're being cute with it, but it's just kinda cringey. To be honest you can't really walk two steps in the indie game scene without finding a sea of bellends making their 4-colour Mega Man pixel tributes, mixed up with incredibly OTT particle systems and havoc physics. 

 

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

I enjoy three kinds of games. Fast paced, action-oriented games (FPS), "Cerebral" games (RTS, some TBS) and... Uh, racing games.

I'm not a big fan of classic adventure games or high APM RTS games, and although I enjoy them I get burned out on puzzle games pretty quickly and end up using a guide.

A good example of the kind of RTS game I enjoy would be the Ultimate General series, which depicts the American Civil War. I really enjoy line battles and planning rather than trying to micro-manage troops to kite etc.

An example of an FPS game I like (that isn't my one true love, Quake) would probably be something like UT99/2k4, or on the more modern side Battlefiseld 4 (multiplayer, fuck that SP crap).
Aside from Quake and Half Life 1/2 I have to admit I struggle to get into singleplayer FPS experiences, at least if that's the focus. I find that if RPG elements are thrown in (elder scrolls, fallout (not 4!), Deus Ex, Dark Messiah) I tend not to get hooked by them.

Racing games I'll take whatever. Lately I've been modding Wreckfest, but before then I've binged on Assetto Corsa and... Well, I've put over 300 hours into racing in GTA online... 

We'll see how it is at the end of the month. The marketing appears to be working for it, although it rubs me the wrong way. In addition to what Kinn said, it seems to lack a certain self-awareness, especially for something so self-referential. I feel like true fans of 90s shooters are the least likely to be persuaded by its 'bombastic 90s shooter' shtick. I also hope they've made some performance optimizations since the demo.

Anyway, you can have your thread back ;) 

Also, the punters will find out soon enough how fucking boring "90s-style" FPS action is when you don't have a progression through properly handcrafted levels.

Imagine Quake with randomly generated levels? It would be boring as shit. Hell, even handcrafted levels, but with randomly generated monster spawning, is boring as shit (see: Quonquer Jam).

The only thing that makes quake work as a game is proper level design and proper monster placement. 

Sounds like you underestimate Quake a lot. 

What is quake, or any other fps, without encounter design and level progression? Hint: it rhymes with boring. 

Sock's "player survey" thread got me thinking about this again, and it seems quite a few people in that thread agree with me that Quake's monsters are just "there" and the interesting part of the game is the journey through the levels.

There would literally be nothing to hold my attention if monsters and rooms were spawned at me according to an algorithm. There would be none of the clever setpieces, gags, or carefully placed combinations of elements that make up 100% of the interesting bits of that game. 

 

I've heard people saying the same thing about Quake's weapons. But simplicity isn't necessarily bad.

In case of Quake, relatively simple and straightforward mechanics make for an entertaining experience. Maybe not as much as in Doom, but still, if the game wasn't fun itself, it wouldn't attract so many level designers.

Besides, the aforementioned Qonquer mod/jam was popular enough, although I think it would benefit from some more thought put into how the waves progress. Which brings me to the next point: absolute randomness might not sound very interesting, but there's usually a fair amount of rules behind the way things operate. The trick is to find a good balance between unpredictability and design.

Easier said than done, of course. 

Kinn didn't say that simplicity is bad. I certainly don't think it's bad. I prefer simple but robust game systems to complex and really badly thought-out ones. Doom and Quake are very simple games but they still require a bit of time to master and to learn all their quirks, and good handcrafted level design, controlled progression (not in a restrictive way in this context) and hand-made monster encounters make the game much deeper than it first appears. Even with the small roster of monsters in Quake, you can have a wide variety of encouters that are crafted with care and not left to randomization.

Procedural generation is good on paper but I seriously don't think it works all that well. Like, I love Diablo and all but some generated levels are sometimes much easier or much harder than usual. I think procedural generation can be good for little details and small things, not whole levels. 

Yeah good point - in fact simplicity is an attribute I should have put on my list - games with simple, elegant mechanics usually score much higher for me than cumbersome feature-bloated games (that are usually the result of design-by-committee, or when you have rival franchises and every time one game introduces [feature X], all the competitors then scramble to shoehorn their version of [feature X] into their next soulless bowel movement that passes as a game).

I often bang on about Shadow of the Colossus but if you want a superb example of how to do minimalist mechanics properly, look no further. 

Yeah, I'm not ragging on quake's simplicity at all - again, simplicity (mechanics-wise) is one of quake's strengths.

One of the things I loved going from doom to quake is how they simplified the mechanics a little bit (removed the map, and the "use" button) whilst at the same time made the environment more immersive, and yet even without the map, you never get lost. 

Maybe "bad" wasn't exactly the right word. More like shallow without the supplement of really good level design. 

the greater you can expand the possibility space with the fewest mechanics the better IMO. I think overdesigning is an easy trap to fall into. complexity =/= depth.

I often bang on about Shadow of the Colossus but if you want a superb example of how to do minimalist mechanics properly, look no further.

+1. I consider Shadow of the Colossus to be one of the best games ever created. It really is a masterfully designed and executed game. 

killpixel really is my spirit animal :} 

 

Didn't the development of Quake suffer time restraints? Because that forced the designers to restrict alot of stuff which they had planned or partially made. 

 

Id Software was trying to make an MMO FPS then they had all the assets made (maps, models, textures etc) but were waiting for Carmack to finish the engine, then they got behind. They then scrapped the original idea of the game and made a doom like fps shooter with doom style weapons. Poof Quake! 

fun gameplay, interesting aesthetics (no matter the tech), a sense of adventure 

Poof Quake

Look, just because there's a screen where you can try out different combinations of shirt and trouser colours... 

Probably most important is a game that doesn't piss me off. 

One thing that sits outside of the gemplay that I do appreciate is menu/interface snappyness and fast loading times.
Granted games like Doom and Quake probably mostly benefit of this due to being x hardware generations removed but nothing gives me more of an uh-oh feeling that sluggish skipping menus first thing, I know the controls will be "laggy" and am right 95% of the time 

I did consider that amongst various other related factors, but that should be under "obligatory" rather than being a matter of the gamers' preference! 

What I value and don't value otherwise, hrmm, I might be a bit of an odd duck I don't know.

For MP FPS I value a completely level playing field from noob to veteran - no complicated bunny hop / trick jump mechanics to master and other item acquiring fluff or whatnot - really a minimum interface between each players reflex/muscle coordination, pretty much closer to the "body" - more like a real "DM" sport like fencing or boxing whatever. That is why I much prefer Doom to Quake 1 MP.

Combined with the 99.9% in game time being actual active playing time for DM or CTF in Doom makes it heaven for me. I really would like to find something comparable for variety though :(

SP is another story...a long one 

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