Write a Brief Dissenting Opinion About a Popular Title Thread.

[Butcho22]

Halo 3 sucks. So does Halo 2 and Halo 1.

[Jack of Arcades]

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Oblivion sucks because of the levelling system.

[/ QUOTE ]just played again, it sucks because of the combat. Its atrocious.

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The levelling system actually rewards you for choosing as your major skills things you never use.

[Hume]

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But if you're not aspiring to be a professional musician, what's the point in learning the real guitar?

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To get laid?

[Nicholasp27]

yeah, i remember i had one of the Castlevania's paused for month's at my dad's house so i could continue each time I went over there

and my stepmom would watch me beat it, or wizards and warriors, etc etc

at after-school everyone would gather around the tvs and watch others play games and provide tips and support and it was just much more of a group activity...people putting their heads together to try to beat the harder lolo levels and such

these days it is much more about competition than cooperation it seems...and games are generally more geared toward individual or online than groups of players

[JuntMonkey]

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Super Mario 64 is a greater piece of art than Shadow of the Colossus despite the simplistic music, laughable plot, and silly, blocky characters.


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I know how much you love SM64, but that just isn't true.

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I consider video games to be art, and I think this is pretty clearly true ("high" art is another, obnoxious matter) except arguably in cases like Pong or Tetris. The game as a whole is art, not just the graphics, sound, and/or narrative. Since SM64 is a better game than Shadow of the Colossus, it's a better work of art. If you consider Shadow of the Colossus to be an overall better game than SM64 then that's fine, but I don't think that's what you meant.

If I assumed correctly about your logic, wouldn't the (apparently mediocre) Assassin's Creed be a greater work of art than Super Mario Galaxy?

[blackize]

I'm obviously working off a different definition of art. To me art is a medium used to convey an emotion or experience. Shadow of the Colossus is infinitely better in that regard than SM64 and that's all I was referring to.

[Blarg]

To me, that defines craftsmanship more than art. Any old work of even quite middling quality can convey stuff. So can a line of computer code or a spaghetti dinner. Sufficiently non-awful craftsmanship will suffice for that.

Art can be hard to define, and to some extent depends on the level of experience and perception of the viewer himself. But I think what lifts something to the level of art is insight and possibly intent. Or something like that. Real art has the potential to change you, shake you up, or make you think or feel differently than you have before -- sometimes even against your original biases and preconceptions. It has an element of challenge to it that mere good craftsmanship, however enjoyable, is not sufficient to provide. It is really about something. Mere craftsmanship, by contrast, can easily be about nothing or at least nothing more than its own workmanlike technical perfection, and can render what could have been an artistic experience into a tidy little dead-end. You can sometimes have artists who are poor craftsmen, and great craftsmen with no artistic spirit to speak of in them. The motivations driving the two types of creators can be different, even opposite.

So I think there has to be a little bit of daring and desire to say something true in art, the absence of which isn't necessarily felt in lesser works or by those who are simply accomplished craftsmen.

[JuntMonkey]

Wrote this on another forum just now: Eternal Darkness.

It's repetitive (recycling the same locations over and over in different time periods with only minor differences), there's little variety in level design, everything looks the same except for the main house, and the "psychological effects" are just gimmicks. The fact that some people used to argue that ED was better than the Resident Evil remake is a huge joke...it's not a remotely close competition. Part of the reason ED was praised so much in '02 or whenever was because it was one of the first "mature" GC titles and was one of the only decent games on the system overall.

Speaking of art and "high art" and evoking emotion and the Resident Evil remake, the shark tank sequence in the REmake is incredibly brilliant, and I would show it to a guy like Roger Ebert who thinks that games could never be "high art" (whatever that is) because the auteur (sic) does not have complete control.

[Dids]

I gave up on Oblivion when I realized that he game was at it's core, just closing Hellgates over and over again, and they were all too similar. Also the pacing of the game is totally bizzare. It wants you to wander about and do side quests, but there's this amazing urgency of the Hellgates that makes you feel like an [censored] for doing anything other than saving the world.

I liked the engine, combat didn't bug me, and think it's a neat game, it's mostly just the plotting that blows (and yeah, the monsters leveling with you is really, really dumb).

[AceLuby]

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I gave up on Oblivion when I realized that he game was at it's core, just closing Hellgates over and over again, and they were all too similar. Also the pacing of the game is totally bizzare. It wants you to wander about and do side quests, but there's this amazing urgency of the Hellgates that makes you feel like an [censored] for doing anything other than saving the world.

I liked the engine, combat didn't bug me, and think it's a neat game, it's mostly just the plotting that blows (and yeah, the monsters leveling with you is really, really dumb).

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To beat the main quest you only have to close 2...