Overused terms in game descriptions

Martys_not_smarty said:
This one here has been kinda out of vogue but it went for both video games and phones and that was "the X killer" where with phones everything for awhile that came out with a touch screen was "the iPhone killer" and with games every mmo and every fps was the WoW and CoD/Overwatch killer.
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Remember when Fable was supposed to be "the Morrowwind Killer"? that was the first real hint we got that Peter Molyneux could talk big but never really deliver.
 
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Steam has several tags I hate, but "Story Rich" is the one that just triggers me for some reason. It sounds so up its own ass pretentious.

And it pretty much applies to any game which has more story than the descriptive blurb on the store page.

Some Manajerk said:
Remember when Fable was supposed to be "the Morrowwind Killer"? that was the first real hint we got that Peter Molyneux could talk big but never really deliver.
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Brute Force was supposed to be the Halo Killer, too. I mean it got decent reviews but when's the last time you heard anyone talk about it?
 
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The funny thing is that procedural generated or "sandbox games" don't have to be bad, they just often are because the "developers" (using that term really loosely) have no fucking idea what they're doing. That's how most these terms named here really got their bad rep. they're basically interchangeable with "I as the developer am too lazy to actually get the required skills and want to put the least effort possible. I also want to get rich like the minecraft guy so please buy this you sped"
 
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Some Manajerk said:
Remember when Fable was supposed to be "the Morrowwind Killer"? that was the first real hint we got that Peter Molyneux could talk big but never really deliver.
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Yeah jesus they pushed fable to the stars before release, good game but it's apples to oranges when compared to Morrowind or a better analogy to this topic would be a jrpg to just an rpg oh and also they screwed the pooch by keeping Fable II on console only because games for Windows was super successful and didn't need console peasant games coming over and watering down the master race experience.
 
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While it's not exactly a term I can't stand series with multiple spin-offs, redos, or variations. Games like Assasssins Creed, which is what, in the double digits now?, EA Sports games, or the constant re-release of a game treated like it's a big deal.

I'm looking at you, Skyrim.
 
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AmpleApricots said:
The funny thing is that procedural generated or "sandbox games" don't have to be bad, they just often are because the "developers" (using that term really loosely) have no fucking idea what they're doing. That's how most these terms named here really got their bad rep. they're basically interchangeable with "I as the developer am too lazy to actually get the required skills and want to put the least effort possible. I also want to get rich like the minecraft guy so please buy this you sped"
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Sandboxes are not procgen, that's roguelikes. The only major indie sandbox I can think of is retro city rampage
 
I feel like I've said this before, but Roguelike. It seems to apply to EVERYTHING now adays where you get one life. Space shooter with light rpg elements? Slap that roguelike tag on it.

At this rate Super Mario Brothers will retroactively be a roguelike game.
 
purpleboy said:
Sandboxes are not procgen, that's roguelikes. The only major indie sandbox I can think of is retro city rampage
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That or wasn't meant as alternate expression just as an or, as meaning two different things. Could have made that clearer.

What is a roguelike anyways? My definition always was randomly generated levels and if you die you die, like nethack.
 
Here's one: "artistic". Let me decide if something is art, dickface. I'll always find fat nathan drake or herbert moon talking about dirty jews way more "artistic" than some weird soyboy cuck indie game
 
My theory for all the metroidvania games available now is the people who grew up playing them are now old enough to be involved in the industry and thats what they want to make for people like themselves.

AmpleApricots said:
What is a roguelike anyways? My definition always was randomly generated levels and if you die you die, like nethack.
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Nethack is exactly a rouge like. Inspired by the rpg Rouge where when you die you start over. Nethack, dungeon crawl stone soup, DOOM rouge, CDDA, are all rouge likes. slapping perma death on a game is an easy way to increase the amount of time people play it and give it that 'its so hard its like dark souls' appeal without actually putting thought into it.

subtle distinction but a lot of games are actually "rouge lites" which have a progression system. Crypt of the necrodancer has coins you collect to buy perks and items to make surviving easier. This seems dumb to me because it's based on repetition for how easy the game is, like a regular rpg. so why bother with the 'restart from easy floor when you die, breeze past to get back to hard area' stuff.
MasterDisaster said:
While it's not exactly a term I can't stand series with multiple spin-offs, redos, or variations. Games like Assasssins Creed, which is what, in the double digits now?, EA Sports games, or the constant re-release of a game treated like it's a big deal.

I'm looking at you, Skyrim.
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it's worked for the movie industry. and yearly sports titles are such a fucking cash grab its shameful but people buy them. the problem isn't sequels, it's that you listed terrible franchises as well. Zelda and Mario get away with selling similar games every few years. And I'll still buy them and the new quirky console i need to play them.
 
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An Ghost said:
My theory for all the metroidvania games available now is the people who grew up playing them are now old enough to be involved in the industry and thats what they want to make for people like themselves.


Nethack is exactly a rouge like. Inspired by the rpg Rouge where when you die you start over. Nethack, dungeon crawl stone soup, DOOM rouge, CDDA, are all rouge likes. slapping perma death on a game is an easy way to increase the amount of time people play it and give it that 'its so hard its like dark souls' appeal without actually putting thought into it.

subtle distinction but a lot of games are actually "rouge lites" which have a progression system. Crypt of the necrodancer has coins you collect to buy perks and items to make surviving easier. This seems dumb to me because it's based on repetition for how easy the game is, like a regular rpg. so why bother with the 'restart from easy floor when you die, breeze past to get back to hard area' stuff.
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Jesus fuck man, you saw so many people write it before you and yet here you are talking about rouge-likes. Look, red is red is red, if it makes the cheeks look like they have a healthy glow, it's fucking rouge.

OK here's my contribution to the thread.
Female Protagonist (Not that games with female protagonists are bad, but games with that as a descriptor seem to be)
Story Driven (No complaining about the shit gameplay!)
Indie (That is not a category!)
RPG Elements (Every game made after 1990 seems to fit this one way or another)
Crafting (See above)
 
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AmpleApricots said:
The funny thing is that procedural generated or "sandbox games" don't have to be bad, they just often are because the "developers" (using that term really loosely) have no fucking idea what they're doing. That's how most these terms named here really got their bad rep. they're basically interchangeable with "I as the developer am too lazy to actually get the required skills and want to put the least effort possible. I also want to get rich like the minecraft guy so please buy this you sped"
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Why don't they just say "randomly generated'? That is literally what the term means.

And 'rogue-like'? That's just a stuck-up way to say 'stealth based'.
 
In an optimal case you kind of want to hit a balance between completely and utterly random (to the point of it barely making sense) and interesting permutations of a given framework. Of course with these unity-fuckers procedurally generated means "we don't have to make any content, the rng is gonna make it for us" and that's also exactly how these games end up feeling.

I've also heard the definition "ASCII graphics!" for roguelike but nah, that's not it. What gets me about all that "retro game graphics" stuff is that I actually used to play games when modern games looked like that (and how much colors your computer can display at once was an actual performance stat) and the good ones never looked this shitty. As much spread as pixel art has these days, it's actually a bastardization that has no real base in "history" so to say. It's just lazy "programmer art".

EDIT: to give an example:

NFsB0oN.png


The grame this graphic was from came out in 1987 and the computer that image was displayed on could only display 32 colors (out of a palette of 4096) at once. (or 64, if one half of the palette hat half the brightness of the original color) Shit never looked like weird 8-color stickfigures in the good titles.
 
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AmpleApricots said:
What is a roguelike anyways? My definition always was randomly generated levels and if you die you die, like nethack.
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http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Berlin_Interpretation

Core features:

High value factors
Random environment generation
The game world is randomly generated in a way that increases replayability. Appearance and placement of items is random. Appearance of monsters is fixed, their placement is random. Fixed content (plots or puzzles or vaults) removes randomness.

Permadeath
You are not expected to win the game with your first character. You start over from the first level when you die. (It is possible to save games but the savefile is deleted upon loading.) The random environment makes this enjoyable rather than punishing.

Turn-based
Each command corresponds to a single action/movement. The game is not sensitive to time, you can take your time to choose your action.

Grid-based
The world is represented by a uniform grid of tiles. Monsters (and the player) take up one tile, regardless of size.

Non-modal
Movement, battle and other actions take place in the same mode. Every action should be available at any point of the game. Violations to this are ADOM's overworld or Angband's and Crawl's shops.

Complexity
The game has enough complexity to allow several solutions to common goals. This is obtained by providing enough item/monster and item/item interactions and is strongly connected to having just one mode.

Resource management
You have to manage your limited resources (e.g. food, healing potions) and find uses for the resources you receive.

Hack'n'slash
Even though there can be much more to the game, killing lots of monsters is a very important part of a roguelike. The game is player-vs-world: there are no monster/monster relations (like enmities, or diplomacy).

Exploration and discovery
The game requires careful exploration of the dungeon levels and discovery of the usage of unidentified items. This has to be done anew every time the player starts a new game.
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The definitive roguelike is probably Nethack.
 
Innovative - you press a button and something happens on screen. Nothing's really changed much in 30 odd years so stop telling me something is innovative or that a game coulda been better if it had just been more innovative.

Cinematic

Gritty

Setpiece

Killer app :story:

Next gen

RPG elements - currently being rammed into plenty of games that don't even need them all to pass under inspection that they are in fact modern bloated vidyagames filled with filler content that you won't even care about unless you're a virtual world kleptomaniac.

I basically hate 90% of the terms I guess. They're holdovers mostly created by marketing teams, picked up and carried on by vidyajurnalists who are now more interested in how many skin tones are put on a front cover than what the actual content of the game itself is like.
 
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