[Iain Baker]

Hi everyone!

As some of you may already know, I have recently been taken on as a (paid) regular freelance contributor with Exclusively Games. It looks like all the hard work with https://www.nomadsreviews.co.uk/ and http://coin-drop.com/ over the last few years has started to pay off 

My first article with EG is this: https://www.exclusivelygames.com/top-7-game-franchises-that-radically-shifted-perspective/ The 'By ADMIN' is a glitch due to the web developer not getting me set up on their system before the article was published. No big deal.

My 2nd article with Exclusively Games was published recently. Feel free to take a peak if you are interested.
Let me know what you think, as feedback is always welcome. The title is: “3 Video Game Franchises that Devolved Over Time.”
https://www.exclusivelygames.com/3-video-game-franchises-that-devolved-over-time/

I also wrote a brief article with Coin-Drop.com a week or so ago. Link here if you are interested: http://coin-drop.com/video-game-outfits-that-make-no-sense/

Hope ya'all like 'em 

[0rph3u5]

Congrats, man.

My first article with EG is this: https://www.exclusivelygames.com/top-7-game-franchises-that-radically-shifted-perspective/ The 'By ADMIN' is a glitch due to the web developer not getting me set up on their system before the article was published. No big deal.

Re: Fallout
You think the gameplay change was radical? - How about a frachise that envisioned its antagonists as colonial conquerors threatening to exterminate a native population, suppendly became "isn't setting up colonies nice?"
EDIT: Not to mention the seriously ****ed up implications of the combination of the mechanics with Fallout 76 with its originally human NPC-less world ... it like the people in charge of the game never touched a ciritical analysis of the history of the USA

[Grizzly]

If you take a broader notion on the word "shifting perspective", you can go further then just Fallout. Yes, Fallout has radically shifted perspective depending on it's developer, with Fo1, 2, and New Vegas having a very different view on the world (going as to far to say that grimly even after the world has been reduced to ashes, humanity will still be both subject to the consequences of past and doomed to make the same mistakes) then Fallout 3, 4 and 76 did (nukes and biological warfare experiments are fun!). And I agree with Orpheus here: You are missing *a lot* of nuance inherent in the fallouts, especially the older fallouts, if you just talk about how they are 3d now.

But GTA is perhaps more interesting. GTA is still developed by DMA Design, now Rockstar North. Even though GTAV is now made by far more people spread across the globe, at the helm are still the same Brits that made GTA1. Look at how the stories change in perspective and tone just between GTA IV and GTA V, despite being made by the same people!

[Grizzly]

I'm scratching my head a bit about inculding Crysis in that franchises that devolved over time article tbh. Crysis didn't have "open world gameplay". It just had really big maps that got progressively more linear as the game progressed, culminating on you shooting flying enemies from a flat plane. All the changes that Crysis 2 made to it's aliens are because of the Alien part of Crysis 1 not being received well at all, in part because of the levels becoming a lot more on rails, in part because the Ceph AI wasn't capable of anything other then hovering in the air shooting icicles at you. A lot of "devolutions" you mention is just Crytek throwing out the parts that didn't work and playing to their strengths instead. You could argue that they should have instead worked on polishing up the parts that didn't work well and create a more varied shooter but your article simply lists a bunch of omissions and then says "oh they nerfed it" without going into anything substantial or nuanced. I'm very glad that you're getting paid for doing something you like*, but I don't really like your output. Sorry!

(If anything I'd go with Fallout's devolution in themes, story and RPG depth )

* If you aren't being paid for doing these, quit your job immediately.

[Aesaar]

Crysis 2 was narratively much, much, much better than Crysis 1, and I'd argue the moment-to-moment gameplay was better too.  The only thing that was a step back was the level design and the things directly related to that.

[darkdaej]

Crysis 2 was narratively much, much, much better than Crysis 1, and I'd argue the moment-to-moment gameplay was better too.  The only thing that was a step back was the level design and the things directly related to that.

That, and the graphics being worse than Crysis 1 because the damn thing was designed for Consoles first and PC second...

[General Battuta]

It looks miles better than C1 in a lot of respects and runs like a dream. There’s something to be said for optimization.

[0rph3u5]

There’s something to be said for optimization.

Like "it's a patch for an avoidable problem"

[darkdaej]

It looks miles better than C1 in a lot of respects and runs like a dream. There’s something to be said for optimization.

True, but it still feels like a console shooter and I couldn't forgive that.  it's also far too linear - the possibilities to get through a particular situation feel too restrictive compared to C1.  C2 Basically told you what your options were through your HUD.  C1 actually reduced HUD options as you increased difficulty.  I remember spending a good five minutes just observing the area when I got to the base with the school and gas station, trying to find a good way in.  C2 would just have something appear in your HUD and tell you that you could go through there by doing X.


Also, the Korean soldiers had better reactions to you playing as a "Predator" using cloak.  Picking off a whole squad one by one while never being seen, leading the soldiers to panic and fire in every direction (and even shooting each other because one made a noise) were things that just did not happen in C2/3.

[Colonol Dekker]

I loved them shooting each other!!

[darkdaej]

I loved them shooting each other!!

Seriously, did you ever see another game where stuff like this would happen without it being scripted?  C1's first half was some of the best gaming I've ever done.

[General Battuta]

There’s something to be said for optimization.

Like "it's a patch for an avoidable problem"

I don't know what this means.

C2 lost a lot of C1's sandbox depth, but it was a much better flow shooter. The guns actually felt like they could hurt people!

[0rph3u5]

There’s something to be said for optimization.

Like "it's a patch for an avoidable problem"

I don't know what this means.

Then you and I remember the original Crysis having a very different claim to fame - in my mind the game has always been overshadowed by the its presence as the then benchmark of who PC-gamers were identifying as during its heyday, by the fetishistic worship how big the numbers of your graphics card are. You know, the whole "Behold, I get 40+ frames per second out of Crysis"... which the original public facing side of Crytek actively courted.

It's almost good enough to make you embrace Critical Theory without reservation. Almost.

[darkdaej]

Then you and I remember the original Crysis having a very different claim to fame - in my mind the game has always been overshadowed by the its presence as the then benchmark of who PC-gamers were identifying as during its heyday, by the fetishistic worship how big the numbers of your graphics card are. You know, the whole "Behold, I get 40+ frames per second out of Crysis"... which the original public facing side of Crytek actively courted.

It's almost good enough to make you embrace Critical Theory without reservation. Almost.

Well, you have to admit that the original Crysis was miles ahead of what any other game was doing at the time.  I built a new rig specifically for Crysis and thanks to that targeted investment, my rig could max out everything for almost five years.

It still ran Crysis only on High settings (Very High was just too much for my Core 2 Quad Q6600 + 8800GT Combo )

[0rph3u5]

built a new rig specifically for Crysis and thanks to that targeted investment, my rig could max out everything for almost five years.

It still ran Crysis only on High settings (Very High was just too much for my Core 2 Quad Q6600 + 8800GT Combo )

"My car, my house, my wife ... my insurance company."


EDIT: Quote filled in because now I am at my PC; also added quotation marks to make it clearer that I was referrencing something else for my mockery

[Iain Baker]

I loved them shooting each other!!

Seriously, did you ever see another game where stuff like this would happen without it being scripted?  C1's first half was some of the best gaming I've ever done.

The original Doom 1 and 2 had a more primitive version of this. If a demon was caught in the cross-fire of another demon's projectile attack it would start attacking said demon. With lots of demons in a tight space this could lead to escalations whereby all but a few demons were left standing at the end. Then its just mop up duty. Standing back and watching the carnage was always fun :-)

[Iain Baker]

I think people are reading too much into the article and expecting too much from it. The whole article was about franchises changing their viewpoint/player perspective and how this affected how the games played, nothing more. It was never intended to be a deep dive into any particular franchise. EG wanted listicles to be light hearted and fairly short, so that is exactly what I gave them.

(NB - I couldn't do a deep dive into Fallout anyway since I have very little first hand experience with the franchise - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is my go-to radioactive post apocalyptic wasteland, and I have already done my deep dive into that.)

Articles like this pay $30/£25 (it was $20/£15 but I got a pay rise) so I'm not going to be writing 5K word-count essays for that sort of money. 'Featured' articles pay $100/£80 so I will go deep for those. The upcoming 'Emulation - a post mortem' is a featured article so that will be more 'weighty'.

The days of my writing multi-part deep dive article series for free (like the BP one I did) are in the past. (Consider that one a favour to the HLP community.) 

I have three children with complex care needs to feed and look after and an ex-partner (their mother) who has several life limiting illnesses to think about since if she passes away or becomes too ill to look after them I will have to do so full time. I am starting a new job next week which involves a complete change of career and a relocation. As such, my time is limited and I need all the money I can get. If writing two-to-three light-hearted listicles a week can bring in an extra couple of hundred pounds a month then that is what I am going to do.

[darkdaej]

I loved them shooting each other!!

Seriously, did you ever see another game where stuff like this would happen without it being scripted?  C1's first half was some of the best gaming I've ever done.

The original Doom 1 and 2 had a more primitive version of this. If a demon was caught in the cross-fire of another demon's projectile attack it would start attacking said demon. With lots of demons in a tight space this could lead to escalations whereby all but a few demons were left standing at the end. Then its just mop up duty. Standing back and watching the carnage was always fun :-)

Oh I remember doing this often.  But that's still just an aggro script   If you attack the demon again it'll come after you.  It was just more...real in Crysis *eg*

[0rph3u5]

I think people are reading too much into the article and expecting too much from it. The whole article was about franchises changing their viewpoint/player perspective and how this affected how the games played, nothing more. It was never intended to be a deep dive into any particular franchise. EG wanted listicles to be light hearted and fairly short, so that is exactly what I gave them.

You are not the first one to fall victim to an inprecise headline. From second hand experience I can tell that this will happen again and again, accidentally and sometime maliciously.

Articles like this pay $30/£25 (it was $20/£15 but I got a pay rise) so I'm not going to be writing 5K word-count essays for that sort of money. 'Featured' articles pay $100/£80 so I will go deep for those. The upcoming 'Emulation - a post mortem' is a featured article so that will be more 'weighty'.

The days of my writing multi-part deep dive article series for free (like the BP one I did) are in the past. (Consider that one a favour to the HLP community.) 

I am not unsympathetic to difficulties that arise from the economics of games journalism - which is a faster and harder microcosm of journalism in the digitial age generally.

BUT I don't consider it reason to not bring the challenge to whatever the underdeveloped discourse about games in general represents. You know as part of a collective action approach. (It isn't that I don't have a clue regarding the "whatever", but considering just how overeducated I am it would be a lenghtly ride, even if I involve a can of soup)

 True, that I would rather do it through putting out my own content, but you can appricate that economics there are .... even more disheartening. Not to mention that you can sometime find yourself before an artistic challange that needs some "three steps back, two to the side and then five foward" (like Vega Must Burn), so you can make a point better than just by shouting it from the rooftops - which doesn't always work well with economics circumstances of having to have to cover costs from an advance investment.

And of course, Fallout is particular pet-peeve of mine; esspecially following Fallout 4 when it was initially pretty hard to find alternate persepectives on its most "hmmm, that's stupid"-points, e.g. how it draped its Blade Runner-premise and into the language of the politics of slavery in the pre-civil war USA (which you will find in some reviews in a half-sentence summarized as "not working").

[Iain Baker]

I think people are reading too much into the article and expecting too much from it. The whole article was about franchises changing their viewpoint/player perspective and how this affected how the games played, nothing more. It was never intended to be a deep dive into any particular franchise. EG wanted listicles to be light hearted and fairly short, so that is exactly what I gave them.

You are not the first one to fall victim to an inprecise headline. From second hand experience I can tell that this will happen again and again, accidentally and sometime maliciously.

Articles like this pay $30/£25 (it was $20/£15 but I got a pay rise) so I'm not going to be writing 5K word-count essays for that sort of money. 'Featured' articles pay $100/£80 so I will go deep for those. The upcoming 'Emulation - a post mortem' is a featured article so that will be more 'weighty'.

The days of my writing multi-part deep dive article series for free (like the BP one I did) are in the past. (Consider that one a favour to the HLP community.) 

I am not unsympathetic to difficulties that arise from the economics of games journalism - which is a faster and harder microcosm of journalism in the digitial age generally.

BUT I don't consider it reason to not bring the challenge to whatever the underdeveloped discourse about games in general represents. You know as part of a collective action approach. (It isn't that I don't have a clue regarding the "whatever", but considering just how overeducated I am it would be a lenghtly ride, even if I involve a can of soup)

 True, that I would rather do it through putting out my own content, but you can appricate that economics there are .... even more disheartening. Not to mention that you can sometime find yourself before an artistic challange that needs some "three steps back, two to the side and then five foward" (like Vega Must Burn), so you can make a point better than just by shouting it from the rooftops - which doesn't always work well with economics circumstances of having to have to cover costs from an advance investment.

And of course, Fallout is particular pet-peeve of mine; esspecially following Fallout 4 when it was initially pretty hard to find alternate persepectives on its most "hmmm, that's stupid"-points, e.g. how it draped its Blade Runner-premise and into the language of the politics of slavery in the pre-civil war USA (which you will find in some reviews in a half-sentence summarized as "not working").

EG is strictly a-political, so articles discussing topics such as "Slavery and colonialism in Fallout" or "Most character creation screens default to a white straight cis male character. This is unconscious racism and needs to stop" will never be covered there. There are plenty of 'mainstream' video game media websites that tackle such issues. If you have topic suggestions along those lines I recommend getting in touch with them.