Single-player Video Games Thread

Rejection

Lowering the standards, one post at a time.

Finished Prototype 2 recently. It’s an improvement over the previous game in almost every relevant aspect. Combat is significantly more fluid and controlled now, with more options, better animations and all that. There’s dodging, blocking and counter strikes that also give you the option of dismembering stronger enemies etc. It’s the primary reason to play the game. Second is the incredible feeling of freedom, agility and power. You can run as fast as a racecar, jump as high as a building and throw cars around like they’re stuffed animals. You can slaughter enemies any way you like, barefisted, with one of your deadly 5 mutated melee weapons, with military weapons or with military vehicles, completely up to you (except in some missions). Oh, and the finisher attacks look just spectacular.

Story is one of the aspects of the game that was dumbed down, it was somewhat interesting in the first game, but now it’s completely uninteresting. The main character is James Heller, the stereotypical two dimensional, brainless action hero. Not nearly as interesting and complex as the main character of the first game, Alex Mercer who is, by the way, included in the 2nd game. Then again, this isn’t a game you play for the story in the first place.

As for the technical side, graphics and animations are improved compared to the first game. I’m not a graphics whore but in a game like this they are relevant because of immersion. More importantly however, animations are more polished. It’s kind of poorly optimized but should run decently if you lower settings.

Finished the game and having fun with Alex Mercer’s skin and other Radnet accessories, it’s really sweet :smiley:

I picked up The Last of Us again and finished it. It is definitely a unique take on crafting realistic characters who you come to know and care about. The Last of Us is an exceptionally pretty and immersive third-person shooter; however, since I have become recently spoiled by gorgeous open world games, its boundaries and linearity slightly dampen the affect.

For the fps players out there, Destiny has some really addictive firefight action. The combat controls and mechanics are excellent. It’s like a sleeker Halo, which makes sense because it was created by Bungie, the same company responsible for developing Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo Reach before Microsoft took over the series. What’s (even) worse this time around, however, is the story. It is super short and thin. And the Halo mythology was much more interesting than anything in Destiny. But, if you like challenging and competitive shooters, you will find a decent amount of fun here. It also seems like Bungie continues to update the game with new end game missions and multiplayer modes for free. One major downside for people with unreliable internet connection, though: this game requires an internet connection at all times because the story mode is designed so that you regularly cross paths with other players. I worried that seeing and working with other players during the campaign would be a major nuisance, but to my surprise it was instead fairly enjoyable to causally cross paths and interact with other people playing the same level. The internet requirement still blows.

This is the last great game I’ve played:

Vanquish

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRAAFCAq3pI[/youtube]

This one is quite a spoiler, so don’t watch it if you haven’t played the game.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgYXCKFc_ys[/youtube]

They call it “Gears of War on crack”. I played it before playing Gears of War and I have to say that compared to this, GoW is crap.

The other one which I liked quite a bit is Metal Gear Rising (from the same company) but I have yet to finish that one.

I think this thread belongs to the “art” subforum, not here.

Literally anything can be called art. This thread is dedicated to a more casual talk and discussion about games though, rather than an attempt to evaluate their artistic value (or if they even possess it), but people are free of course to express themselves and write what they will.

Vanquish seems a little too futuristic and dynamic for me, almost like a cartoon. I’m more into gloomier type of shooters or at least a little more realistic.

Still butthurt about Last of Us being a console exclusive :imp: . I heard Destiny is pretty mediocre tho, though I’m not exactly sure this is a reliable review or a site altogether :laughing:

videogamessuck.com/review531.html

  1. You are unaware of the meaning of literally.
    What you are saying is that “anything” can be called art. Actually “anything” is a abstract noun, I suppose you might call a word, art, but that is not what you mean.
  2. If you mean “anything can be called art”, then you are also wrong. A Galaxy is not art, nor is a pebble on the beach. Art has to be what humans do, not what appears by nature alone.

Anything a human finds aesthetically appealing can be called art, even a galaxy, and it’s fun that you mention the galaxy because it really IS aesthetically appealing to me and inspires awe and wonder. That’s exactly what art is about, is it not?

Anything that can be framed, can be art. But yes, framing requires a subject who frames.

…but a photo or image of such things may well be.

We don’t all have to agree on what is worthy of being called art. How could we when our values differ and conflict-- In fact, it is good that we do not completely compromise our aesthetics.

The reason I said that is because I recently posted in another video game thread that was created in the art subforum, so when I left this thread I expected to be in the art subforum which is why I started looking for the music thread (which wasn’t there, of course, since I was in the off-topic subforum.) That’s all.

But if you want to discuss the “are games art?” topic I am all up for it. I’ve mastered that topic long time ago and have been through it like billions of times already.

I didn’t find it to be cartoonish, but it’s kinda arcadey, that’s true.

Yeah, all the exclusivity is a pain. I don’t buy many games so it sucks when the few games I want to play are spread out between 3 different platforms.

Destiny is mediocre.

This is literally wrong, but it is also literally right. Literally anything can be called anything because words are symbols and they can point to whatever the hell you want them to point to. Moreover, to make things even worse, in the universe that is interconnected, everything is a kind of everything else (which is to say, everything is related to everything else), meaning that, all concepts can be reduced to all other concepts, meaning that, strictly speaking, you ARE right. Everything is art, but also, which is something you didn’t mention, everything is everything else e.g. everything is woman just as everything is man just as everything is vacuum cleaner just as everything is forum and so on and so forth. I was trying to explain to some guy on some other forum a while ago about how women are vacuum cleaners, that is to say, how women can be used as vacuum cleaners (by forcing them to lick the dirt), but he didn’t believe me a word! Heraclitus and relationalism are too difficult for people (who are mostly platonists) to understand.

However – and this is a BIG however – just because everything is related to everything else does not mean that we can’t determine when something starts to be something and when it stops to be that something. It does not mean we can’t differentiate between things, it does not mean we can’t separate that which is art from that which is not art, it does not mean we can’t put things into their own categories (even though in reality everything belongs to every category.) It is a mistake to reach for such a conclusion for such a conclusion leads to nihilism, to inability to discriminate at all, to pure perception of flux (which is actually no perception at all.)

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost you by now, but don’t worry, I can say other things as well.

Basically, you are wrong: some things are art and some are not.

For example, my monitor is NOT art, though I can certainly try to use it as such.

The thing is that the word “art” denotes a function, and functions can be applied to any objects. If functions can be applied to any objects, then any object can be considered to be an object of any function. However, not all objects perform equally well at any given function, and it is precisely this that ends up determining which objects should be associated with which functions and which objects shouldn’t be associated with which functions.

Girls aren’t vacuum cleaners – they are terrible vacuum cleaners. Moreover, there are many other functions girls are far better at (e.g. giving birth to babies.)

My monitor performs terribly as a function of art and is pretty great as a function of monitor (which is why we call it monitor and not art.)

Function might be a wrong word. A more suitable word could be “a kind of becoming”.

Yes, but that does not mean that what they call art is really art. Not to insult, but reality is reality, and what you’re saying here is a pseudo-intellectual sort of thinking.

No, galaxies can never be art, unless you are connecting the stars in such a way so that they resemble various things that are not galaxies (but even in that case, that would be a really bad sort of art.)

Art is simulation. Galaxies aren’t simulations, though as I’ve said, you can use them as such. But if you do, they will be very WEAK simulations.

Simulation is an illusion, it is something that is happening merely inside of one’s head.

Simulation: that which appears to be something that it is not.

If you are staring at the stars, and seeing nothing but stars, that’s no simulation, that’s reality. However, as I’ve said earlier, if you’re seeing something other than stars, an illusion of some sort, then we’re speaking of artistic experience, which is, however, in all cases, very weak, and thus, not really an artistic experience.

There is a difference between a REAL galaxy and a galaxy painted on a canvas. A galaxy on a canvas is NOT a real galaxy, it’s a simulated galaxy – an illusion of galaxy (this is one of the reasons why architecture isn’t art.)

MagnusAnderson, I’ll read and respond to that when I’m sober.

I’m playing this baby again.

[tab]http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/41700/header.jpg?t=1386683457[/tab]

With AtmosFear 3 and SMRTER mods. Perfect.

The only games I enjoy at the moment are 2D Super Mario platform games (including Super Luigi U), Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong Country games, Zelda games playable with a traditional controller, Deus Ex-like games (Far Cry 3, Skyrim, Fallout 3), the Portal series, racing sims (really enjoying Forza Horizon 2 on Xbox 360 at the moment), the Tomb Raider series, and the occasional stand-alone 2D platformer. At work I’m biding the time with Super Mario World until my order of WRC 4 arrives next week.

What I’m playing right now:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW3QK6CTg2g[/youtube]

I’ve had this mission to play through the Final Fantasy classics, or as much as I could stand, to see what the hype was all about. When I was growing up, some of my best friends used to talk highly of Final Fantasy and I always wondered what kind of games they were. That nagging curiosity to know what Final Fantasy was all about came back after I watched a short documentary on the history of the series. What l saw interested me so I decided to set about playing the first six games in order. What actually happened was I started with FFI, skipped to FFIV, then FFV, left FFVI uncompleted, same with FVII, now I’m trying the ninth game of the series (FFIX) and the last one I intend to try. It’s been fun and I can certainly imagine why kids were obsessed with these games. I am enjoying IX a lot, and three things I have come to count on throughout this series are a solid challenge, an interesting evolution of design, and an always captivating original score.

Final Fantasy’s origin story-

[size=85]Though often attributed to the company allegedly facing bankruptcy, Sakaguchi explained that the game was his personal last-ditch effort in the game industry and that its title, Final Fantasy, stemmed from his feelings at the time; had the game not sold well, he would have quit the business and gone back to university. The game indeed reversed Square’s lagging fortunes, and it became the company’s flagship franchise[/size]

If you really want to play semantics, you can call anything art and find justifications for it, you don’t just call it art and leave it there, you can give reasons and arguments why something, anything is art.

Ultimately we all may be made of identical matter but different arrangements of that matter in specific forms “give birth” to specific concepts matching those forms. So your claim that “everything is everything else” is false. A cat is not a dog. A woman can serve one of the possible functions of a vacuum cleaner but she can’t serve some others, just like the vacuum cleaner can’t give birth to children for example. I can agree that functions of some things can partially overlap, aka that some things are similar to other things in certain aspects. It doesn’t follow from that that “everything is everything else”

It is art TO THEM, that is my opinion. Art is what is aesthetically appealing, but what is aesthetically appealing depends completely on the individual, therefore what is art also depends completely on the individual.

I may think the video 2 Girls 1 Cup is disgusting. Even most people may think it. To scatophiliacs however, it might be perfect art and they can give subjective reasons why just like the rest of us can give subjective reasons why not.

What standard do you propose for what is art and what isn’t? Collective subjective opinions of majority (general populace)? Collective subjective opinions of majority of ARTISTS? Your own subjective opinion as an objective standard for what art is?

That’s not the definition I found.

So… an artistic experience isn’t an artistic experience…

I stare at the stars and see stars. I may associate some other similar experiences/thoughts with that image of stars but I’m not being delusional, I don’t see something other than stars when I stare at stars.

So basically, ACCORDING TO YOUR OWN SUBJECTIVE STANDARDS, architecture isn’t art because it doesn’t imitate reality, fine, according to some other person’s subjective standards of what constitutes art it may be.

While I do agree we should strive towards having similar definitions of all words, people are just so different when it comes to what they find aesthetically appealing that it’s impossible for any one particular definition of art to be adequate. That’s why I propose the vague one I use as it includes every person’s notion of what is art(every person I’ve communicated that definition to so far).

Stopped playing STALKER due to lack of time :frowning: . At most I have half an hour/day of gaming and I mostly use that to fuck around in Prototype 2.

It is you who are playing semantics here, not me.

It is true, it is just that you do not really comprehend what I am saying. You are simply not following me. What I am saying here is that everything is related to everything else, not that everything is equal to everything else.

It is not a dog, that is true, but it is a kind of dog i.e. it can be related to a dog.

And I actually never said “everything is everything else” but “everything is a KIND of everything else” which simply means that everything is related to everything else not that everything is related to everything else IN THE SAME WAY.

Just as cats are dogs to some people, right? It is amazing to me that you can go from “a cat is not a dog” to “art is whatever you want to be art”. It is ridiculous.

Art is NOT what is aesthetically appealing. Aesthetical appeal may be a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient condition. Girls are aesthetically pleasing, for example, but that does not make them art, even though I can convince myself they are, or relate them to art.

This is a solipsistic way of thinking at work. The goal here is to disconnect from the world, to conceive the world not as fundamentally interconnected but as fundamentally fragmented, as if individuals or parts of the world are existing, or can exist, in a vacuum (as if anything can exist in a vacuum.)

Everything is relative to the individual, OF COURSE, because everything exists in relation to something else (everything else), never on its own. But that does not mean that individuals cannot be related to each other and that a rank cannot be established. It does not mean that the universe is fundamentally fragmented. Solipsits (i.e. “relativists”) constantly yap relativism this and relativism that when in reality they are the main opponents of relativism (in the sense of relationalism.)

Just because you do not know what is better or worse DOES NOT MEAN that there is no better or worse. You are confusing your ignorance, your lack of knowledge, with non-existence of rank between tastes. It’s an extremely annoying way of thinking. The sole purpose of such thinking is to simply BAN any sort of desire to seek truth about what is better and what is worse art, what is art and what is not art. Employed by the weaklings who do not want their illusions to be shattered. THERE SIMPLY IS NO RANK, JUST STOP TELLING ME THAT I MAY BE INFERIOR TO YOU BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS HIS OWN QUALITIES AND EVERYONE HAS HIS OWN DEFICITS, AND NO WE ARE NOT EQUAL, IT’S JUST THAT THERE IS NO RANK, SO WE ARE NEITHER EQUAL NOR UNEQUAL, WE JUST SIMPLY ARE, WHY CAN’T WE JUST FORGET ABOUT IT ALL AND SIMPLY GET ALONG!? THE WORLD WOULD BE A MUCH BETTER PLACE BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Who cares what you found, dude? My ancestors didn’t find that Earth is round, so what!? Does that mean that Earth is not round? Aristotle thought that our heads contain sand and water for the purpose of cooling it. Does that mean that our heads really contain sand and water? The point is to pick your own position and pit it against mine. The trouble, however, is that you have no position. You fucking HATE positions and your position is that positions are stupid and that they should be annihilated – that’s your sole position and such a position, I am afraid, has nothing whatsoever to do with art theory or any theory (since theories are based on positions and anything that seeks to annihilate positions seeks to annihilate theorizing, thinking, intelligence, knowledge and all other mental goodness that separates humans from animals.)

According to my own “subjective standards” . . . for christsake, dude, just stop using that pretentious word that is nothing but a sheltering tactic, a way for weaklings to disconnect themselves from whatever thoughts they can’t deal with. Here’s an interesting trivia: we always access reality through our “subjective standards”. WE DO NOT HAVE DIRECT ACCESS TO REALITY. Our subjective models are maps of objective reality that is forever elusive (since knowing reality presupposes knowing the universe in its entirety, which is an impossibility.) A classic case of conflating map and territory. LOOK IT’S JUST YOUR MAP, YOU CREATED IT WITH YOUR HEAD, MEANING IT’S NOT A PERFECT MAP BUT AN IMPERFECT MAP, THAT SURELY MEANS I CAN EASILY IGNORE IT AND SIMPLY STICK TO MY OWN.

No desire to understand reality, no desire to build an all-encompassing model of reality, to consolidate all facts and all fragmented models into a unified model, no desire for fusion at all, only desire to separate oneself from the other, to run away and hide, somewhere, anywhere, as soon as possible, via any means whatsoever.

Nobody cares if people disagree. Just because people disagree does not mean they are all equally right, for christsake. ON THE CONTRARY, it SURELY means that a lot of them are dead wrong, for one reason or another.

Now, I did not want to be harsh to you, but that’s the only way I can deal with “arguments” like this (i.e. you have no arguments, you are merely trying to annihilate all positions, all theorizing, you are located OUTSIDE of the process of theorizing, not within it.) You are a poison, a deadly poison, perhaps not intentionally so, but that’s what you are with your ideas.

I’ll respond to you when I catch some time, but just to let you know that I’m not offended in the least. Unlike some others here I’m not a delicate little flower that bitches and moans at every mean word he encounters. Feel free to express your emotions through whatever words and tone you want, I really don’t mind.

That’s nice to hear.

To add some extra substance to my previous post, I will respond to a claim that I anticipate you will come back with.

The claim is basically that dogs are objective (i.e. that they exist OUTSIDE of mind) whereas art is subjective (i.e. it exists WITHIN mind.) I am pretty sure you will raise this point, so I will cover it in advance.

This is an easy one: subjective is a relative term (just like every other term.) What does this mean? This means that what is subjective to me (i.e. what is within MY mind) is objective to someone else (i.e. it is OUTSIDE of their mind.) So while art is indeed something that exists within one’s mind, a neuronal process of some sort, this neuronal process is in itself objective (the fact that the person containing it is incapable of observing it, the fact that such a person lacks sufficiently high level of self-observation, is no argument against this.) So dog is a dog and a neuronal process associated with art is a neuronal process associated with art.

Now, not every neuronal process is art. Moreover, not every neuronal process that is pleasant is art. To say so is to associate word “art” with a very broad category of neuronal phenomena that is of no interest to us. What we want to do here is to see difference where there is and then put the sufficiently different neuronal processes in different categories.

Then take architecture, interior design, exterior design, fashion design, nail design and what else and compare it to paintings, sculpture, poems, novels, music, theater, films and videogames. There is a massive difference between the two categories, isn’t there? Sure, they all share a parent category (i.e. they all give pleasure) but they are also different in many ways.

There’s your error. A cat is not a kind of a dog; a doberman is a kind of a dog. A cat may be RELATED (in a vague sense) to a dog, but it’s not a kind of a dog.

Um, yeah, you did:

The most specific definition of art I could accept is “that what is made by humans and aesthetically appealing”, the underlined part is the new part I have considered adding. Then again, the feeling of aesthetic appreciation for me doesn’t depend at all on whether something is made by humans or not, and it wouldn’t make sense to me to call a pile of shit art and a beautiful landscape not art just because the pile of shit was made by a human. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t aesthetically appreciate something just because it is made by humans and I do aesthetically appreciate things which aren’t human-made, and since it doesn’t make sense to me to not call something aesthetically appealing (a landscape f.e.) art and to call something aesthetically unappealing (pile of shit) not art I dropped the “that what is made by humans” part.

I’m not a solipsist, I’m a truth seeker and honest enough to admit that some things we simply can’t measure objectively.

That’s a rant, not an argument. I asked you to propose a standard for objectively determining what is art and measuring the quality of it. And I’ll get back to scatophilia later.

If you want to attempt to put people in categories there are things like statistical averages which show what kind of people prefer what kind of music on average, f.e. I remember reading one about music and IQ correlation. That however doesn’t in any way refute my position and it’s a pretty uncertain and fallible way to make judgments about an individual in most cases.

Your definition is vague. “That which appears to be something that it is not.” can also refer to other things, not exclusively simulation.

My position is that there is no objectively valid position when it comes to the question of “What is good art?” because when it comes to aesthetic appeal the term “good” itself is subjective and means different things to different people. Most art theory I know however merely describes art as opposed to prescribing what is good and should be listened to and what is bad and should be avoided. That decision is left for the individual to make.

Hey, I agree that we can do that to a pretty certain extent when it comes to some other things, just not art.

Right and wrong imply objectivity, so I don’t use them at all (or at least try to avoid using them) when discussing art.

If neuronal processes are objective (occur in everybody the same way) as opposed to subjective (occurring different in different people), how come people have different artistic tastes?

If your and scatophiliac’s brain have same neural processes happening inside how come the scatophiliac can consider shit art and you can’t? How come people’s views of what constitutes art are different in the slightest if the neuronal processes are objective?