No, and neither are most other games.
You are wrong.
You have a different experience, but you're still performing the same set of tasks. Rather like Left 4 Dead. Each round is different to the last, but you're performing a limited set of tasks.
Maybe so, but my point has always been that the number of different tasks performed in a game like SS2 or Fallout is greater compared to the tasks involved in a game like L4D. I was never trying to claim that in SS2, each second of gameplay is entirely different from the previous, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make by stating that you perform a limited set of tasks in all games. It's all relative here.
...and there are different weapon and enemy types in Left 4 Dead. Comparing L4D with a singleplayer game is kind of pointless seeing as how the gameis made with coop in mind. So, it's not about killing enemy type 1 with weapon type 3, then enemy type 4 with weapon type 1, then enemy type 2 with weapon type 5, it's about working as a team to overcome an obstacle which cannot be overcome without teamwork. The very concept is fundamentally different; direct juxtaposition is pointless.
I see.
No, my argument is that reducing a game to its base elements when describing it misrepresents it. That it can easily be done for any game simply shows how ridiculous it is to reduce a game to its base elements when describing it. It would be like describing Lord of the Rings as hobbits + orks + war + ring.
You keep pointing out that I'm doing it injustice by supposedly oversimplifying my description of it, yet you refuse to actually provide a description that supposedly represents it properly. I still fail to see how the game is anything more than what I described it as.
I agree with you, but who takes fanboys seriously? Whether they're console fanboys or PC fanboys, they're all idiots. As for Gears, that game is overly constricting. You're forced into a particular styIe of play and you're given very limited options on how you play the game. Your only options are to advance to the cover ahead or retreat to the cover behind. PC gamers value freedom quite highly. Mass Effect does combat so, so much better that, the coop notwithstanding, I already consider Gears 2 utterly redundant unless it's making some very major improvements.
And arguing the example rather than the point is a totally valid way to prove... nothing.
No you.
Your opinion is a fact? I guess I read the sign wrong, we're in System Wars here!
A game offering more content than another game is a matter of fact, not opinion. As for the higher quality part, I didn't mean it in terms of "better" or "more fun", but rather in the sense that the game world is more elaborate and complex in design. L4D is a collection of maps with zombies thrown in at random points, that's far less work than designing the game world seen in something like Fallout, where you have NPCs, dialog, greater level of interactivity with environment to accomodate the use of different skills/items etc.
Not when Tetris was first released it wasn't. Tetris was something new and awesome, and I've spent a hell of a long time playing Tetris over the years. In fact, it's the only Gameboy game I ever bought. I can see L4D being similar.
While we're on the topic of "arguing the example rather than the point"...
A full price may be justified for Tetris back when it first came out, but not in this day and age even if it were being released for the first time. It's not just a matter of how good the game is, but a matter of how much the game offers. I can fully understand a game like Arcanum or X-com costing $50 (if they were released today for the first time), but a game like PacMan or Tetris would be a rip-off at anything more than $5 (ignoring the fact that it can be played for free in a million places on the internet). To me, a game's worth in price is determined by how much effort went into the game design. Even if a game doesn't end up being entirely great, I can still understand if a dev decides to charge full price for it if it's justified by the amount of content and the complexity of the game. That won't necessarily make it a good game, but it won't be a rip-off either.
You've got it backwards. It won't be a great game because I'll spend hundreds of hours with it. I'll spend hundreds of hours with it because it'll be a great game. A great game that I'll spend hundreds of hours wirth? Worth the price tag.
Doesn't matter how many hours of enjoyment it'll give someone. It's worth in price can only be justified by the content in the game, which is why Tetris (lets assume Tetris was never released till now) would be a rip-off at $50 in this day and age, and same reason why L4D is a rip-off as far as I'm concerned unless it costs something like $30 (in which case, I would say the price is justified even though I'll still think the game is a steaming pile of crap).
You do realise that the game will have new weapons and maps/campaigns added after release, right? Probably game modes, too. TF2 is twicw the game now that it was at release - Valve has indicated that L4D will get the same treatment. It's part of their anti-piracy treatment. Even if there is too little right out of the box, they're going to add a lot over the coming year(s).
Good for it. Why should I pay full price now to get half the game? I'd rather they make me pay half the price now, and then once the extra content comes out, let me decide if it's worth paying the other half to access the extra content.
Gears of War 2 is offering a game mode where players have to gun down endless swarms of enemies coming at the player in random numbers from random directions? Because that's the real appeal of L4D. It's not (especially) the coop and it's certainly not that they're zombies. It's the swarm. I love killing. I love killing, and very few games let me kill huge swarms of things - and most of those that do are bad. The original Doom games are really the only ones that ever got it right.
I don't know about the randomized part, but the game has a 5 player coop mode where you face wave after wave of Locusts.
But it really, really does look like L4D is getting it right. It may seem like an easy concept to get right, but it isn't. Serious Sam, Starship Troopers, Painkiller. All tried and failed. Valve looks like they're getting it right and I haven't seen a game like it on any platform since 1996. The (four player) coop is just the cherry on top.
How is it getting it right? It doesn't even properly emulate the experience of fighting zombies. Zombies are supposed to be these incredibly slow, stupid enemies whose real threat comes from their insane, overwhelming numbers coming at you relentlessly from all directions as you're backed up against a wall and firing your weapon madly in desperation. But in L4D, all the zombies seem to be olympic marathon runners, which makes the whole "zombie" aspect rather superficial and gimmicky since they don't even act like real zombies. And from what I've seen of the game, it appears to be one big cluster**** with the player just firing his gun randomly rather than using any real tactics. I've seen them stressing the co-op experience a lot, but aside from the generic stuff like sticking together and reviving your teammates if they're down, I've yet see any interesting teamwork tactics in the game.
Painkiller had lots of great level and enemy design, and plenty of interesting weapons. Even a silly, gimmicky game like Dead Rising (which I enjoyed for an hour at most) seems to have been more fun than L4D by offering you tons of weird, unusual weapons to butcher zombies with. Left 4 Dead? It appears to be utterly insignificant.
fatshodan
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