T w e n t y S i d e d
Now that we know that the Final Fantasy VII remake isn’t going to happen, we can begin to rationalize about how this is a good thing.
I’m holding out for a Thief remake. I’m sure they wouldn’t turn Garret into a slab of beef with a auto-fire crossbow and re-imagine the whole game as a linear cover-based shooter with regenerating health.
They wouldn’t!
Shut up!
Batman: Arkham City
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
Push the Button!
Scenes from Half-Life 2:Episode 2, showing Gordon Freeman being a jerk.
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Ah, sweet and innocent Shamus, just wait and see as your dreams are brought to torture at the hands of todays big budget developers…
Chocobo breeding though, was pretty much as worthwhile as Farmville though… so many effort just to see those gold feathers.
At the rate the publishers are going, in 5 years everyone will be playing Tetris 4: revenge of the L-shaped figure.
We do have “thi4f” to look forward to…
Also, given the various FF7 spin-offs we already have, I wouldn’t put it past them to make a facebook game.
No, see, Thief will be reimagined as an Assassin’s Creed knockoff, where you are commanded to “be stealthy” through the use of smoke bomb arrows, undetectable poison dart arrows, chain lightning arrows, rapid-fire auto-crossbow arrows, and an outfit so obviously sinister that Gandhi would give you a citizen’s arrest.
Fortunately, you’ll turn invisible if you sit on a bench.
Imagine fighting 15 hammerites at once.
Stop it! Just stop it! All of you!
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
You’re right. You’re absolutely right. We need to think of the children.
Thief Jr.: A pint-size hidden object game where Garret’s sugary sweet twin children have to find where daddy’s stashed their birthday presents, with occasional mini-games where they have to sneak past their parents to do it.
That was hilarious.
The really sucky part is when you need 12 friends to help you expand your airship and only 3 other people you know are playing FFVII so you have to beg friends to play or add random strangers to your friend list.
Don’t worry Mari, you will always have the option to buy, with real-life money, that airship expansion you always dreamed of.
Well thank goodness. Because I would totally rather spend actual money than annoy faceless internet people ;-)
Yeah, that’s where Zynga missed the me demographic. I’ll spend upfront money to buy a game but once I HAVE the game and am playing it, I don’t give them money anymore. Why should I PAY MONEY FOR IMAGINARY STUFF??? It’s like asking me to pay per-word or per-note for the extra verse in a song I already own.
iTunes store: “Oh, you like Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Margaritaville’? Good news. For only 4 cents per word you can download Jimmy’s all-new verse that goes in the middle of the song!”
Me: “Um, that’s ok. I’ll just keep the song the way I’ve listened to it for years. Or beg my friends and relatives to sign up with iTunes so that I can get the new verse for free.”
iTunes store: “Hey, that’s a great idea! Maybe your friends and family will be stupid enough to give us money for the extra verse! If we can’t sucker you, we’ll sign up everyone in the world. There are people out there stupid enough, you know, if our user-base is big enough…”
Me: “Good luck with that. Just leave me out of the paying part, thanks.”
Thief remake? Sure, that will go the same way as Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell.
What happened to the Splinter Cell goodness of Pandora Tomorrow? What about getting the objectives without letting anyone know you were even there? Ah, fuck that, I’ll just shoot 4 people in the head at once and kill off all the city guards until they run out of reinforcements…
:'(
I want Syndicate remade!
Though actually, that could work as an FPS.
Well the rumour is they are remaking syndicate…
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/14/trademarked-man-syndicate%E2%80%99s-baaaaaaaack/
Damn that game was hard. Even when I cheated and had all the upgrades I still couldn’t finish the final territory.
the trick for that ultra hard mission in the middle of the Atlantic was lasers, which could insta kill the initial assault at super long range, then relying on the mini-guns they dropped after you ran out of laser juice.
I finished Syndicate (the only thing I remember about the final mission is getting the towers to run out of rockets), but not Syndicate Wars. I never got past the space station in that one.
I would love another Thief game, but for the fact that they kept getting worse as they came out. Dark Project was awesome. Metal Age was good, and the rooftop thieving mission was the best of any mish in all three games. I found the technology boost to be too much though (security cameras. Really?) and killed a lot of the stealth aspects. Deadly Shadows, aside from (shudder) The Cradle, was crap. Too short, too cramped, and lost Garrett his cool sword from the previous games for no reason.
One game I’d love to see remade is Crusader: No Remorse. It was a 3/4 top-down view game made in the 90’s that had a lot of good puzzles, combat moves, and weapons. As well as a cool story.
But don’t worry! Thi4f will restore the franchise to its original steathly roots and atmosphere!
Don’t like boring waiting games? Play it Your Way(tm). Customise your Master Thief with a variety of RPG skills! Be a Master Swordsman or Smoothtalking womanizing con man (with a chice of 2 romances!)! Level up your stealth to use your blackjack to perform 4 different brutal criticals! (one of which will not appear in the Australian version!). Don’t like genre-breaking regening health? You will have a magical forcefield artefact instead that will fit perfectly into the lore! Autofire crossbows? That’s silly. If you want rapid fire, that’s what those wands are for!
Did I mention we have an all-star list of voice-actors?
Sadly… I am only joking a little. From what I know of “THI4F” concepts being bounced around, it bad… it’s like everything I hate about console games ganging up and dragging Thief into “modern gaming” before beating it to death with a Marketing Department. And I have no doubt when something more definite emerges, it will exceed my worst expectations.
While I would love a remake of the classic games, I really wish they won’t as none of these “spiritual successors” have produced something beyond a mediocre disappointment. I’ll rather GOG do just enough work to get the good games running on modern OS with less hassle and go replay the likes of Underworld or SSHOCK again.
I can hardly wait for the First Person Shooter version of Tetris!
Tetris 2: Revenge of the cubes
A facility is being invaded by mysterious zombines made of blocks of cubes (Yes, cubes. This is tetris 3D). In order to destroy the cube zombiues, the player would be given a set of guns that shot a series of cubic objects, and would need to fill up a hallway with cubes so that the zombies formed a complete square
And this idea is getting less an less coherent as I type it out, so I’ll leave it there. :)
(Any resemblance to first person shooters is merely from reading this blog, TV tropes, etc. The only one I’ve played is Team fortress 2, so hopefully I’ve covered all the important gameplay conventions)
If you play any FPS, you have covered all the important gameplay conventions alredy..
Also, don´t forget it will have some kind of traitor sub-plot that is obvious and stupid, or nonsensical and stupid.
Don’t worry Shamus. They’ll remake Thief.
They’ll just go the X-Com route and make it an FPS about a guy stealing things.
I’m getting pretty sick of numbers in names of games, TV shows, and movies. I always make it a point to pronounce the number when I see it.
– KNOW1NG: “Knowun’ng”
– TR2N: “Tr’toon” (Fortunately changed to “Tron Legacy.”)
– NUMB3RS: “Numbthreers”
– F3AR: “F’threar”
– THI4F: “Thiforf”
– SE7EN: “Sesevenen”
Maybe you should’ve called it “FFviille.” How is that pronounced? Beats me.
I do that too.
They don’t worry me too much. Only time they do is when they use the wrong number. I.e. Thi4f. I can only wonder “Why are they writing “Thiaf””. Don’t they realise 4=a, not e. >_< Same thing with Tr2n. 2 != o. :/
Well there’s always the possibility of Thief 4 getting a new Hero(ine) and being treated more or less as a remake.
Imagine the horror if Bethesda made Thief 4. You’d have to manage your massive inventory of things you stole (everything that wasn’t nailed down), none of which are all that interesting and look like cheap knockoffs of what they’re supposed to be. It would be set 200 years after the previous game but everything would seem like it was only 20 years. Organizations from previous games would show up and be horribly warped versions of themselves. Oh yes, and all enemies would scale with you. And maybe VATS with crossbows. Not to mention what I think they’d do with story and dialog.
And this time you have to look for your uncle!
And after you find him he dies.
And than you die.
And than you are ressurected by the holy powers of the DLC!
AMEN!!
And then you are the zombies.
Please write ****SPOILER**** before comments of this nature.
You completely ruined my Thi4f experience.
Thank you very much, sir.
Sorry, I assumed you knew, since you demonstrated knowledge of the Resurrection DLC pack.
OR. You could go and play T2x or CoSaS and be happy. Please leave my Thief alone. T1 and T2 were brilliant. T3 was ok as far as it went but the consoley feel of the whole made me cringe (though no Thief mission with the exception of the Return to the Cathedral came close to the Shalebridge Cradle so it definitely had its high points). But no. Please. KNOW WHEN TO STOP!
Please.
That is all…
a slab of beef with a auto-fire crossbow
That actually sounds pretty cool. I wouldn’t want a Thief game like that, but a medieval themed FPS like that could actually be loads of fun and lulz.
Sounds like Hexen.
“While I don’t really think Square Enix would chase after Zynga, I do expect that some of the large and medium sized publishers will try something like this.”
Shamus, you are too slow! Civilization is already coming to Facebook as Civilization Network.
http://www.facebook.com/civnetwork?v=info
Wow.
Think of the things yo can do with such a game (FFVII-ville):
– Buy the best weapons with real money, instead of collectiing tons of gold or defeating an impossible boss (ULTIMA-something).
– You will have to play the game for 15 minutes every 2hours or aeris will die.
And many more (that don’t pop into my heada right now)
There are now cardboard stands with buyable cards for zynga games in my local 7-11. The resistance, it is futile. Which is why I would not be at all surprised to see FFVII-ville. FFVIIIE?
Also, if anything needs to be re-made, it’s the bad games. Maybe something like Deadly Towers. Take its theme, its better elements and make the gameplay actually good. That would be cool, and a good way to generate “fresh” franchises.
Heh. Deadly Towers. Wow, those were the days.
And man, that comic was awesome. Awesomely PAINFUL, too, but that’s ok.
You know, I thought you were kidding about the whole slab of beef, cover based shooter thing until I saw this concept art: http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4381/thiefconcept.jpg
Do you think they’ll have health regen?
If you’ve tried running games made by Looking Glass about that time on a modern computer, they don’t work so well. According to someone I know who worked on them, the physics is done in fixed-point and on fast computers it underflows. In other words, when you multiply the acceleration by the time between displayed frames you get something which rounds to zero.
It’s a method which works well on a variety of processor speeds, degrading nicely as your processor slows down or gets spent handling graphics.
I also liked System Shock’s music system (relevant because it’s by the same ex-company). Different creatures and events had themes which it actually worked into the soundtrack when they came close. Why haven’t other games done this?
(or have they, and I didn’t notice?)
I know they’ve done the “integrating monster themes into the BGM” thing a few times on games that I’ve played before, but I can’t remember what the games were.
I know there was at least one which was good (for a certain value of “good”; I remember being tired of it by midgame), but the rest of the game was not so good.
Also, there’s the usual attempt to just override the current BGM (or, more usually, silence) with musical stings and themes when you come across something or other. It got to the point where in Dead Space, I picture the monsters actually shouting those ominous chords.
My first LoL at Stolen Pixels in a while. Well done on this one. Sadly, I can see myself playing this, or at least starting to do so. I played a FF-themed tower defense game released by SquareEnix, because, hey, I like FF and I like Tower Defense as a genre.
Bad idea.