The Witcher 2 - Interview @ Next Gen

Red Dead Redemption is GTA IV with a cowboy makeover. No more, no less. It plays almost *exactly* like the GTA games, except in an Old West setting. Same style of quests, achievements, etc.

Not trying to bring it down.. I've just never been a fan of Rockstar's gaming style. I'm praying they can break away from that template for Max Payne 3.
 
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JDR13 said:
Red Dead Redemption is GTA IV with a cowboy makeover. No more, no less. It plays almost *exactly* like the GTA games, except in an Old West setting. Same style of quests, achievements, etc.

Not trying to bring it down.. I've just never been a fan of Rockstar's gaming style. I'm praying they can break away from that template for Max Payne 3.
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I love the GTA style, Vice City is easily in my top 10 games of all time list. So a western version of that is pretty awesome sounding to me. I can't imagine playing it in low-res and with an analog stick though, the idea of it breaks my heart :(

I'll buy a PS2 someday though, so if it never comes to PC I'll give in then.

As for PS3 games I played Infamous all the way through on a friend's machine over a long weekend, as well Uncharted and some Killzone 2. I also played The Darkness then, which honestly was the best game of that lot if you ask me. Uncharted was okay but the Tomb Raider stuff was too easy, both the puzzles and climbing. Killzone seemed pretty average and the analog aiming was worse than usual. Infamous was awesome, though I thought it was really ugly. No AA or AF in 720p on a 50" screen just makes my eyes bleed, not to sound like a graphics whore.

Anyway, they were all quality games I just really have no desire to add multiple stacks of titles to my "to-do" pile right now ;)
 
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JDR13 said:
Red Dead Redemption is GTA IV with a cowboy makeover. No more, no less. It plays almost *exactly* like the GTA games, except in an Old West setting. Same style of quests, achievements, etc.

Not trying to bring it down.. I've just never been a fan of Rockstar's gaming style. I'm praying they can break away from that template for Max Payne 3.
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I don't agree with that at all.

GTAIV was full of pointless "social" activities - and it was heavily burdened by a trial and error game design, where you couldn't retry missions without having to travel ALL the way back and "guess again" how you had to go about it. No meaningful things to do on the side, at least not in my opinion. I think GTA used to be about having fun, apart from the actual main story - and GTAIV was pretty much all about the main story. The TV shows and other things didn't work for me, and I'd much rather have the city be full of interesting missions, and I greatly missed the RPG aspects of San Andreas.

Regarding mission design, RDR was much more fair, or at least that's how I remember it. It was also free from having to go bowling with friends to get advantages. Missions felt very upfront, and I don't remember many times where it wasn't natural what I had to do. It also had some nice challenges on the side, making the main story not quite so dominating. I would have wanted more, but considering the overall quality - I was incredibly impressed. Great story and strong characters. Most important of all, it just FELT fantastic. Everything from shooting to riding a horse was near perfect. That's a very hard thing to achieve, and it makes all the difference. The one fault it had, though, was that it was too easy - due to the slow-motion mechanic when shooting. Had it been more challenging - I'd have considered it the perfect western game - if such a thing could exist.

The setting, it should be said, was executed perfectly - and it's obvious that a ton of love was poured into that game. THE best western game with no competition. They also did horses better than any other game out there.

Obviously, if you're not into the GTA core design - there's no way to enjoy a game like RDR.

At heart, they're both open world games with a measure of freeform gameplay. But the devil is in the details - and beyond the similar core, they're really quite different.
 
DArtagnan said:
Obviously, if you're not into the GTA core design - there's no way to enjoy a game like RDR.
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Yeah pretty much. I can easily understand why other people enjoyed RDR, but like I said, Rockstar's style just doesn't do it for me. It should be interesting to see what they do with Max Payne 3 though.
 
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JDR13 said:
Yeah pretty much. I can easily understand why other people enjoyed RDR, but like I said, Rockstar's style just doesn't do it for me. It should be interesting to see what they do with Max Payne 3 though.
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To each his own ;)

It's interesting that you found Crysis with its semi-open world design much better than Crysis 2, and yet you really like Dead Space 2 and now you mention Max Payne 3.

MP1/2 are both incredibly linear "experience driven" content games.

I wonder what made you enjoy Crysis?

Just curious.
 
JDR13 said:
I think I'm just a little more open to a variety of styles than you are. :)
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You're probably just confused ;)

You WANT to get to the next level as a living being and focus on the obviously superior open world freeform experience - but you're stuck below.

:p
 
DArtagnan said:
You're probably just confused ;)
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Maybe, but I doubt it.

It's obvious that you have very specific things that you look for, and also have very specific things that you don't like. For instance, I also prefer an open, non-linear experience, but I don't get as bothered if that aspect isn't present. Sometimes I like a narrow, story-driven game. As you said, to each his own. :)
 
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JDR13 said:
Maybe, but I doubt it.

It's obvious that you have very specific things that you look for, and also have very specific things that you don't like. For instance, I also prefer an open, non-linear experience, but I don't get as bothered if that aspect isn't present. Sometimes I like a narrow, story-driven game. As you said, to each his own. :)
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Well, on rare occasion I do like a narrow story-driven game - but the actual gameplay is the deciding factor. I tend to get bored very easily when all I do is shoot.

I love me some exploration, which is not impossible to have in a linear game. Bioshock did it ok, for instance.
 
Crysis was damn linear, you still went from one map point to the next in the exact order the game told you to. It just had wide corridors.

Unless we are talking about non-linear combat, by which I mean "here is your objective, here are the 10 men guarding it, deal with it all as you will: stealth, balls-out, mixture, vehicle, etc." Crysis excelled at that kind of non-linear gameplay, and I would say GTA games do as well.

So maybe JD likes a linear goal system but non-linear gameplay, if that makes sense.
 
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DoctorNarrative said:
Crysis was damn linear, you still went from one map point to the next in the exact order the game told you to. It just had wide corridors.

Unless we are talking about non-linear combat, by which I mean "here is your objective, here are the 10 men guarding it, deal with it all as you will: stealth, balls-out, mixture, vehicle, etc." Crysis excelled at that kind of non-linear gameplay, and I would say GTA games do as well.

So maybe JD likes a linear goal system but non-linear gameplay, if that makes sense.
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I said semi-open for a reason ;)

The levels were quite open - most of them - but the overall narrative was linear.

As for what JDR likes, I guess it's a bit of this and that.
 
Interesting info on RDR. But, non e of the GTAs hasve appealed to me, and I don;t like the Western setting. So no RDR for me.

I like open worlds and tightly linear well scripted worlds, IF (and that is a big IF) the story and scripting is fantastic AND the gameplay is too.
 
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