"The perfect game would be a exact simulation of life itself."
And that got me thinking. Sure, games like The Sims were really popular and have a broad audience, but is it the perfect game? Surely the perfect game would take you to a amazing, far off place, and let you escape from your life (as many good books do)? Or does it combine fiction and reality, placing our ordinary environment in an extraordinary situation? I don't know, but I lean towards the escapist games... if I want to play a simulation of life, I'll go outside instead, or play a certain board game IMO the perfect game is open-ended. And you play in your favourite genre.
IF you choose to reply it might help if you think what your favourite game is, and why.
I kill a lot more people in my favorite games than I do in real life. If I was playing an exact simulation of life, I would go to jail for killing people, and I might end up being executed. That's not a recipe for a fun game, and neither is going to school for years, then working for years until I am old and poop on myself while I watch TV, which is what most people's lives consist of.
So, I am going to disagree. Great games give you an escape from life. They let you do things you can't do in real life, without facing the consequences of attempting to do them.
The difference between a perfect similation of life and life itself is: In the similation, you can get a job, as in real life; but you can also spend all your money in gambling or going to France where you climb up the Eifeltower threating to kill some people and maybe do it etc.
Sure, you can do this in real life, but then wouldn't you be in some trouble? In the real life, there isn't anything such as "Game Over". Am I not right?
The perfect game would be an adventure game. A long adventure game about the making of the best game ever.
No, I think a game about real life would be too dull. The general concept sounds good - infinite possibilities etc. - but in practice I don't think it'd work (you'd spend half the game sleeping!). Games should be fantastical and exciting. Real life is, most often, neither.
the perfect game would be liked by everyone and last forever with impossible to fault graphics and the best music ever. and probably load instantly with faultless controls and a very small file size.
i could go on by i dont want to.
id say that the closest game to perfection ive played is probably final fantasy 9.
+it takes most of the annoyances out that were in 7 and 8
+it pushed the ps1 to breaking point
+it had the best character design in any game
-the ps1 was 7 years old when it was released (so its slow and ugly compared with todays games)
-battles are SLOW
-it gets a little boring toward the end
Anyone ever play Postal 2, that was verging on a simulation of life. Well, it's a lot like my life anyway. What I'm getting at is the whole freedom thing you have while you do your chores, if you want you can decapitate someone with a shovel, but you might get arrested for it. Or you can go straight to the mall without hurting anyone and get Gary Coleman's autograph.
Or you could go to the mall and Kill Gary Coleman and his peeps... And then shoot down all those freakin police and then since no more police are around you could terrorize the poor people trying to shop. Then you could steal more weapons to do it all over again...
Haha...good times good times.
"I have dreamed a dream... But now that dream is gone from me."
Assault Andy Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered 29/07/2002
Points 5686
18th May, 2004 at 03:30:44 -
Oh yeah, about that signiture. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it.
Let's replace the term 'perfect' with 'really good' because a game can't really be 'perfect' it's based on personal preferance.
Anyway I think that a really good game (maybe not perfect) would be a game that is exactly like real life except for a few little things. Sort of like an alternative modern times. It's hard to explain what I'm thinking of.
I think a really good game would be a massively multiplayer online game with millions of people all connected at once. Imagine playing a WWII sim in virtual reality will 500,000 other real people on your team. That would be a really cool game.
So I think that if GTA on crack was created. Where it was a virtual realm that had all the physics of the real world (interacting with everything) then it would be an awsome game. What wouldn't you be able to do? Heck you could even test out new formula's that would be dangerous to mix together in the real world.
Perfect is something that cannot be truely defined by humans, because we ourselves do not know true perfection. There's Muggus's 2 cents...the artist of imperfection he is...
MUGGUS
Come and annoy me more at
www.muggus69.tk STOUT ANGER!!!
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
18th May, 2004 at 06:36:10 -
why would you want to experience real life in a game? if you want to experience real life, get your arse off the chair and step out the door. but trust me, out there is just as banal as in here.
my favourite game is half life. it's not particularly realistic (aliens invading, anyone?) nor does it have the best graphics, but you are totally immersed in that game. from the moment you're on the train watching black mesa fly by, to the very end when you finally speak to the g-man, you ARE gordon freeman. and that device works magically.
Assault Andy Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered 29/07/2002
Points 5686
18th May, 2004 at 07:48:53 -
The reason you would want to experience "real life in a game" is because you can practice things and do whatever you want before trying them in real life. I mean think of the GTA series, they are so much fun because they are so open ended. If you had a game that was so open ended that there was no end then you would have a freaking fun game.
if a game was created where all you did was have massive deathmatches with thousands of people in levels the size of the city in gta 3.Online of course.
that would be the best game ever
The perfect game would be a hat, and when you put on the hat, it read from your brain YOUR definition of a perfect game, made that game, then transported you in to that game.
Andy: Read AsparagusTrevor's point. Although I agree, it will take some practice to put chloroform in people's aftershave and doing it in real life is a bit of a pain.
Tigglowiggles: that's the perfect console, not the perfect game
n/a
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
18th May, 2004 at 10:41:51 -
the GTA series really isn't that open ended if you're being philosophical about it. all you can do is drive cars and shoot guns, and whilst you don't _have_ to do the missions, you can only advance if you do, and the missions themselves aren't open ended at all. if you don't do what the games designers intended - i.e. perform all the missions - then the game gets boring pretty quickly. and even after you win the story, there's not much else to do apart from run around and collect things. personally when i completed GTA3/VC all i did was reload the game and start over. it makes you think it's open ended but in fact it's not really. is non-linearity necessary? i don't think so. just because you don't have a choice in where you're going doesn't mean the game isn't fun.
yeah, I think GTA (series) would be great if they had events outside of missions, like partys and other stuff, tho it IS fun to go over to your friend's house and play it till you die then take turns
I kinda like those life simulator games (with the exception of The Sims), until you win them a few times over and realise there's nothing more to do. Good ones are like Alter Ego and Virtua School, but they're a bit on the short side. I was thinking of making one simulating the 'life of a newbie', but never really got to making an editor for it.
But really, a complete life sim would be fun, provided you could fast forward. Get thrown in jail? You can always attempt to break out. You could beat people up, steal people's girlfriends, run for mayor/president, etc.
I consider life a game, only one that you can't load. If you try too hard not to lose, you never win anything. And you can't truly win or lose, just get better or worse than some others. When it's game over... you still get a "heaven, hell, or somewhere in between" ending.
Though technically, it's impossible to make a "perfect" game. No matter how good a game is, someone will hate it. Action/arcade players don't like complex RPGs, complex RPG players don't like action/arcade... it's impossible to please everyone. Though I guess after playing a game long enough, everyone will slide towards harder and harder games for a challenge, which either means an impossible action game or a complex RPG.
Personally, the closest thing I know to a perfect game is Baldur's Gate 2. It's got hundreds of hours of gameplay, and unlike Final Fantasy, the combats are fun. And the many types of characters you can get as followers mean that you can play it at least 3 times with very different story branches each time. Heck, since every character reacts differently to every other character, you could probably play it dozens of times and get different gameplay every time. The only thing I hate about it is that it's annoyingly addictive.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
"Say you're hanging from a huge cliff at the top of mt. everest and a guy comes along and says he'll save you, and proceeds to throw religious pamphlets at you while simultaniously giving a sermon." - Dustin G
The perfect game? Dunno... I kinda agree with Muz, though.
What I love in games is physics. Ya know, ragdoll and that sorta stuff.
In most games you can't use physics to help you, well, I've tried pushing barrels at enemies in MP2, it works, and Far Cry, you can push crates at people there, and Gish(http://www.chroniclogic.com/gish/index.html) uses physics pretty well.
HF2 seems to use physics pretty well, you can pick up stuff and 'throw' at enemies, and push heavy objects in front of doors to keep enemies out...
Ya know. I love physics.
I love seing dead bodies tumble down stairs, and landing in awkvard positions... Mwahahaha!! Anyone with me?
...no? Well, I guess i'm just a sick, sick person then.
The content above makes absolutely no sense. But I guess you've already figured that out.
i have this great screenshot i took when playing a demo of raven sheild.
after one my team mates got killed (by me probably) he landed in an impossibly awkward position.
funny stuff.
Im with simen. Farcry & 2 soldiers tend to create err.....interesting results....I'll get some screenies + Rolling barrels down hills into 4 or 5 enemies is fun. Seeing them all fly around too when i hit them with the buggy at high speed into boxes