I think you could ask the same thing about any piece of art/entertainment that falls from a celebrated status—does this movie just suck, or did the mentality of the audience change? What about this book? And so on. Or, in other words, I think that there’s no such thing as a product that exists in a vacuum; whether it’s “good” or “sucky” is a function of how relevant audiences and critics find it.

If the majority of the audience at large thinks it sucks, it’s no longer a popular favorite. If the majority of critics and experts think it sucks, it’s no longer a critical success. The best you can say for it then is that it was a “formative” or “seminal” work, like a book that nobody reads anymore but everyone credits for having been the first of its kind.

so, is it the game that sucks or just the mentality of the gamer? i think it might have a lot more to do with the gamer than it does with the game itself.

As for games w/ story, I can only recommend ps2 games, so let’s say Disgaea and even Phantom Brave (which does suffer from poor gameplay)

Disgaea is off the wall and great to play through, suffers from some level crunch, but overall for a gameplay that’s tried and true (but perhaps outdated), it’s still the game I can easily go back to again and again (new game + helps)

For Phantom Brave, it suffers from failed mechanics in gameplay, level crunching, and an unbalanced system. Despite that, I still played to the final stage because of the story that actually made me care slightly for a cartoon character and was colorfully presented.

Right now, I’m convinced that developers threw the ‘story’ part of games under the bus at some point. They made them a lot longer without letting the story elements get any more compelling. A lot of the “length” of RPGs seems to come from tedious leveling, tedious side quests, and tedious plot (leveling, side quests, and plot can all be good things, as long as they are not tedious).

Jason – I’d be interested to see what you think of the first 6 or so hours of chrono trigger (via emulator, I suppose).

Also, in case anybody else is interested, I figured I might as well share my Amazon wish list so you know what I meant when I said there was a “deluge of promising releases” this fall:

Too Human (Aug 12) Star Wars: Force Unleashed (Sep 16) Fallout 3 (Sep 28) Left 4 Dead (Sep 30) Resident Evil 5 (Oct 1) Prototype (Oct 28) Fable 2 (Oct 30) Bionic Commando (Oct 31) Splinter Cell: Conviction (Nov 11) Gears of War 2 (Nov 30)

Hopefully I will get a lot of videogames for Christmas again this year.

I was just talking to someone tonight about how it sometimes takes a few seconds in Mass Effect for the textures to catch up with the models. He called that unforgivable (or something to that effect). I was perfectly willing to forgive it just because the rest of the game was head and shoulders above what other game stories have been like—but then again, I suspect that I’ll have a lot less patience for that in five years, when that kind of thing has hopefully become more scarce (and game stories are even more super awesome).

Also, I just started Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth tonight, and I’m finding it really great.

But maybe this was just because I wanted so badly to live in the Star Wars universe and KotOR was the best thing I had come across. I’m hopeless (apparently).

Trying to think back on the story (or any other elements of the game) I can’t really figure out what made it good. So I’ll assume my enjoyment came entirely out of the immersion aspect, entirely separate from the story.

Running around, attacking, manipulating the UI were all poorly-done but it was still enough for me. Maybe people like me were what the game was banking on.

Also: I am finding the game really, really choppy. The dialog keeps stuttering, and nearly every time I enter a new room, the camera angle changes completely so I suddenly have no idea where I’m facing. Is this a common problem, an issue with playing on the 360, or an issue with a used game?

As far as other games worth mentioning for their stories, I would like to throw out Killer 7 on the Gamecube. It is however one that prizes story over gameplay (which isn’t terribly interesting, or even very good for that matter).