AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Pretty sure the sales of Psychonauts and Shadow of the Colossus (the predecessors to Brutal pegend and The Last Guardian, respectively) disagree with them being good games having anything to do with how well they sell.

And I know he'll like the games because everyone will. Duh.

This. Also:
Pretty sure that boosted the sales at least a bit.

Its true that that happened, but then Painkiller was a cheap, very dumb game - it was less convincing people to try it, and more informing them of its existence. More like telling people "Hey, this is awesome. Its like Doom, and its the cost of a downloadable game".

We gamers (you Nintendo fans especially. No offence) are widespread reluctant to try new things. New things like an open world hack & slash/RTS set in a Metal themed world, or a co-op game between a boy and his gigantic kitten. New things like interesting new characters, challenging stories, complex moral structure, and the like. The mans great challenge will be getting us as a whole to make these games the successes they so richly deserve to be.

SotColossus sold brilliantly, so I don't know what you're on about there.
And Psychonauts was brilliant... except when you actually consider it as a game. All the praise is given to its story, imagery, characters, and other stuff that a game shouldn't be focusing on; the actual gameplay was notably sub-par, while the excessive loading times and a boring start to the game put a lot of people off.


RUBBISH! That's the kind of talk that people give to try explain why there's few big-hit innovative games. The real reason is because nearly all new-style games are rarely more successful than taking the best of the best in common genres and tweaking them. But to say that people don't play them because they're afraid of change is downright laughable; look at all the popularity of flash games, for crying out loud!

Umm, are you me? Sorry, I just feel like I'm arguing with myself from 6 months ago. Its a weird form of Deja Vu.

Sold brilliantly? For a game that was one of the most emotionally charged works gaming had ever seen, one of the most brilliant concepts for a game in a decade, and easily one of the greatest games of all time (no matter what the stupid Times has to say), less than a million worldwide is not "sold brilliantly", especially when you consider that fucking 50 Cent Bulletproof managed over a million. The game should have sold 2.5 million at least.

As for Psychonauts, well, your mileage may vary. The gameplay and loading wasn't as good as, say, God of War (where loading was, I think, nonexistent), but in terms of its originality, writing, dialogue, level design and variety of gameplay, the game is a great title, and deserved far better than it got. Not to the level of "best game evar", but still a great game


RUBBISH! That's the kind of talk that people give to try explain why there's few big-hit innovative games. The real reason is because nearly all new-style games are rarely more successful than taking the best of the best in common genres and tweaking them. But to say that people don't play them because they're afraid of change is downright laughable; look at all the popularity of flash games, for crying out loud![/quote]They're afraid to invest in change - quirky flash games and offbeat PsN titles will continue to sell, but for major releases, people seem reluctant to put up $110 on an untested idea.

Oh, so your definition of selling well is relative to an arbitrary scale based on how much you liked the game? You make this mistake a lot, Indigo. Your opinions aren't facts. They're opinions. Even the Times disagrees with you.

Yes, originality, writing, dialogue. Those are all things that Plasma mentioned in his post. They make the game more original, but not a better game. As for level design and gameplay, I can't say, since I haven't played it. I just wanted to point out that more than half of the merits you describe the game as having are related to story, not gameplay.

The reason I haven't played Psychonauts is mostly because I don't have a PlayStation 2, but I've never felt that interested. It looks like one of those games, y'know? Kind of like Blinx the time sweeper or Sly Cooper. A cartoony game where the platforming is kinda messy, but you have strange abilities to make up for that. Let me guess: in Psychonauts, you have the ability to double-jump? I dunno, something about those games doesn't appeal to me.

It's also available for the PC.
I haven't played Blinx or Sly Cooper, but I can say that Psychonauts' platforming is not messy. It gets pretty hard, especially towards the end, but it's mostly done well.
Also, that may be personal opinion, but while the abilities in Psychonauts are certainly fun (yes, you can double jump), what makes it are the characters and the humor. The game starts out pretty slow (which makes the demo a bit lame), but it gets a lot better as it progresses.
Still, I can understand passing on it; I was disappointed by the demo and only bought it months after testing it, mostly because I was bored and some reviewers I like spoke positively about it.

Yes, well, saying that they're afraid to invest in change is like saying they're afraid of trying to befriend an enraged grizzly bear; it might work, and it might have good pay-offs, but it doesn't mean that it's not practically suicidal!

I'm confused as to what you mean by $110 though, considering major releases can cost millions of dollars to make.


Wait, are you talking about the developers/publishers, or the customers?

Who pays $110 for a video game?

Don't the Australian prices come out to something around that?

This thread has taken a turn for the very strange.

I hope not! That is about 92 USD

EDIT: Or 65 EUR for our European friends.

Customers. Hence the $110.

Yeah, thats rthe average Australian price for a new release at this point, with Activision trying to move it up to $120

Jesus fuck. That's nearly twice what we pay in America

We pay around $40 for brand new games. That's 60 AUD or about €35 EUR.

At least according to http://www.xe.com/

Please go away from this discussion about new and interesting games as you clearly have nothing whatsoever to contribute.

And Sly Coopers platforming is actually usually referred to as some of the best, or rather was until inFAMOUS.