Article defending linear games and why player choice and freedom isn't necessarily the pinnacle of video game narrative.
The friendly folks over at Razer recently sent us their full size Kishi Ultra mobile gaming controller, and this thing didn't disappoint.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Upon finally finishing Devil May Cry 5 recently - after it spent several years on my “I’ll play that soon” list - I considered giving it a fittingly-named Late Look article. However, considering that this was indeed the final piece I was missing in the DMC puzzle, I decided to instead take this opportunity to take a look back at the entirety of this genre-defining series and rank the entries. What also made this a particularly tempting notion was that while most high-profile series have developed fairly evenly over time, with a few bumps on the road, the history of Devil May Cry has, at least in my eyes, been an absolute roller coaster, with everything from total disasters to action game gold."
3,1,4,5 to me, never played 2. 5 gameplay is amazing but level design was really disappointing to me, just a bunch of plain arenas, the story felt like a worse written rehash of the 3rd and the charater models looked weird ( specially the ladies ). Another problem with 5 was that there was not enough content for 3 charaters so I could never really familiarize with any of them
The Epic Games Store continues to dish out free games and you can add two more to your library this week.
I'm in agreement that linear is not a dirty word. Like free-roaming games, there's a place for linear games as well. Each style has its own strengths and weaknesses. When I played Call of Duty I don't class its linearity as a negative, because it's trying to be linear, that's the style it's going for because, as the article says, it's a Micheal Bay type of game, a rollercoaster ride.
it's really simple
not every game should be open world
and not every game should be linear
that's why we need both ...not just one
Every game is linear if you think about it.. You cant make the game your own... It has a story already laid out... Making choices is just a smoke screen or a gimmick the company promises you to buy it.... I had to learn that the hard way with the Mass Effect trilogy.
Linearity is an interesting complaint. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but there is an art to making a linear game feel big.
Half Life 2 is obviously the blueprint for phenomenal linear game design that feels large. You seemingly always know exactly where to go, despite the fact that there are no objective markers to tell you where that might be.
3 of the most important linear story factors? PACING, PACING, PACING. You get the pace and momentum of the game right (Uncharted 2 hombre), you can't stop playing. Good story beats, intertwining suspense, explosive action, catch breath, do it all again.
I will say that certain games feel RESTRICTIVE *cough* FFXIII. Games that needed to branch out. Linear titles that weren't ambitious enough.
I recently made a post stating 'When people play videogames they don't necessarily want the same linear structure that they get in a book.
Even in a light gun game people like to see branches that they can choose from'.
and I got 3 disgarees and no agrees.
Figure that out! So what the disagreers are saying is that when people play videogames they do NECESSARILY (i.e. everyone, every single time) want the same linear structure that they get in a book. So they're saying that EVERY single person can't stand games with even a small amount of choice. In that case they must hate practically every videogame made for the over 3s.
They're also saying that people prefer their linear light gun games to be as linear as it is humanly possible to make a game. No branching paths. Probably auto aim for them too- what could be more linear? Heck, make the game play itself and make it entirely linear to please these 3.