Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

[Dhyerwolf]

It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.

Is this a joke?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.

Is this a joke?

Why would it be? The FPS genre gave us Deus Ex and Dragon Quest is fucking Dragon Quest, the Game of Reheating and Reserving.

[Meeplelard]

From a more objective view...

Look at modern gaming.  There's a shit ton of FPSes out there, and the biggest games are stuff like Call of Duty, Halo, etc.  There's a few stray Non-FPS Action games like God of War which are big, or some sand box games.  To find mainstream genres that aren't that, you basically have to look at the Nintendo Consoles, which have the Nintendo First Party games like Marios, Zeldas, etc.


Now, there are big jRPGs, the raw amount of big jRPGs compared to the raw amount of FPSes...really, a statement like "he's mainly been exposed to FPSes" is not a big statement.


As far as why Dragon Quests are popular, I believe I heard one reason is that people in Japan feel attached to the series cause it started jRPGs and they refuse to let go of it cause of tradition and respect or some such.  As a result, it jades their perspective of how good/bad a game is.  Its kind of like how when a new Legend of Zelda comes out, all the Zelda fans rush and buy it, and then its suddenly BEST GAME EVAR!!! for a few months until the hype dies down and they go back to their old favorites (whatever that may be), but will still hold dear that this game was indeed phenomenal.  At least, this is the case for the big releases like Twilight Princess (unsure about the "lesser" ones like any Portable Zelda games.  I figure Skyward Sword is going to get the same amount of hype as TP though)

[Shale]

Pokemon White Power Edition: I finally have a Completely Legitimate Copy™ of a Pokemon game. Weird, I know. Anyway, I picked Snivy at Hatbot's insistence, and although the art staff gets several million points for style, as far as combat goes I've been entirely underwhelmed with him. Or possibly her, I can't remember. Either way, Snivy's attack is naturally low, and even lower because I didn't notice it had a Calm nature (-attack, +SPDef) until I'd already downloaded my Victini mystery-gift. So it's completely outclassed on offense by everything on my team that isn't Audino, although it's only a few levels from picking up a special/Grass attack, which'll help.

Game's pretty easy so far - nice of them to hand you whichever monkey you'll need to steamroll the first gym leader - but I like how quickly you can put together an elementally varied team. Water, Psychic, Rock, Ground, Flying, Electric and Dark types this soon are a nice mix, if only because the Rock, Ground and Flying ones aren't from G1 anymore.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.

Is this a joke?

Why would it be? The FPS genre gave us Deus Ex and Dragon Quest is fucking Dragon Quest, the Game of Reheating and Reserving.

Huh, I agree with Rob here. How strange. Well, when he's right, he's right.

I like DQ and all, but yeah, it's not that innovative. At its best, it's polished nostalgia. It did popularize some landmark RPG conventions, but that certainly what I was trying to introduce to my Philipino friend. Hence why I was trying out more weird DS games like Rhapsody and Nanashi no Game with him.

[Magic Fanatic]

Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song - Started playing this at the recommendation of Tal and Jim.  While confusing at first, I'm pretty cool with the idea now that Jim has explained a lot of these things to me.

Started as Jamil.  His intro quest was done with only two battles, and they were each cake, since he learned both Impact Lunge and Cutting Slash or whatever it was.  In any case, cake.  Recruited Aisha, recruited Barbara, let Dowd go, got Sorcerer and Hermano to fill out my party for the time being.

First order of business: quest over in the Yassi Caves.  Bought Barbara Move Silently to go with her Lurk, and I've only needed to fight once in here so far.  With any luck, I'll be able to keep my ER down enough to get everything done.  Hermano learned Impact Lunge in that fight, which is a shame since I won't be using him when other characters become available.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I like DQ and all 

what

[Captain K.]

but I'm fairly certain Mario doesn't

Sales-wise, it does easily.

Bzzt!  Not even close.  This is data from VGchartz.com for the first 10 weeks of sales in Japan for each of the following games:

843,123  Super Mario Galaxy
721,828  Super Mario Galaxy 2

3,474,680  Dragon Quest VIII
3,887,903  Dragon Quest IX

3,546,530  Pokemon Diamond and Pearl (combined)
3,003,570  Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver (combined)
4,507,127  Pokemon Black/White (combined)

Dragon Quest and Pokemon are very comparable in terms of popularity, and Mario isn't even remotely competitive.

[Grefter]

How did innovation even get into this conversation.  Point is, dude is currently in Japan.  Thinks all games are FPS.  Clear data stating otherwise all around him.  The part of this is the only factor where DQ comes in..

Also you can find plenty of non-action mainstream games on systems other than the Wii.  Just because the Wii has like 3 on it doesn't mean they are the only mainstream games on the others.

This isn't mentioning how well things like Civilization 5 still sell.  There is mainstream genres that aren't action.  They just don't get nearly as much hyper focus or advertising presence.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Dragon Quest and Pokemon are very comparable in terms of popularity, and Mario isn't even remotely competitive.

Depressing stuff, man. Depressing stuff.

Look at modern gaming.  There's a shit ton of FPSes out there, and the biggest games are stuff like Call of Duty, Halo, etc.  There's a few stray Non-FPS Action games like God of War which are big, or some sand box games.  To find mainstream genres that aren't that, you basically have to look at the Nintendo Consoles, which have the Nintendo First Party games like Marios, Zeldas, etc.

Dragon Age 2 just moved its 3 millionth unit, and that game is mainstream to the point of it being detrimental. Oblivion is probably, in all fairness, a sandbox game, but it moved a lot of hardware in its time. There's WoW and Civ 5 and the Fallout games on PC. MvC3 is huge right now around here. Yadda yadda. There's a lot more big games that are not FPS that you are skipping over here.

[Dark Holy Elf]

but I'm fairly certain Mario doesn't

Sales-wise, it does easily.

Bzzt!  Not even close.  This is data from VGchartz.com for the first 10 weeks of sales in Japan for each of the following games:

843,123  Super Mario Galaxy
721,828  Super Mario Galaxy 2

3,474,680  Dragon Quest VIII
3,887,903  Dragon Quest IX

3,546,530  Pokemon Diamond and Pearl (combined)
3,003,570  Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver (combined)
4,507,127  Pokemon Black/White (combined)

Dragon Quest and Pokemon are very comparable in terms of popularity, and Mario isn't even remotely competitive.

I see your "bzzt" and raise you one in return. 3D Marios fail at sales in Japan pretty hard (and even in North America lose pretty decisively to 2D Mario). So, we stroll over to 2D Mario and we see...

DS   New Super Mario Bros.   5,187,000
Wii   New Super Mario Bros. Wii   4,281,869

While we're here, it's worth noting that a couple other DS games sold comfortably more than any DQ:

DS   Brain Age 2   4,865,000
DS   Animal Crossing: Wild World   4,654,000

And this is just sticking to games released in the past decade. The best-selling DQ game ever is pretty much a tie between 7 and 9 (aside: oh man, that does not help my respect for people's tastes) but Pokemon and Mario have certainly hit greater heights in the past which DQ doesn't even approach.

GB   Pokemon Red/Green/Blue   10,077,000
GB   Pokemon Gold/Silver   7,961,000
FC   Super Mario Bros.   6,810,000

(Sources: NSMBW is from VGChartz, which I don't like to rely on since they're not known for being trustworthy, but I did find several other sources confirming that Japanese sales of the game topped 4M, so in this case the numbers at least seem plausible. Other figures are from a quote from Famitsu found here.)

[Dhyerwolf]

It's notable that Dragon Quest isn't exactly a shining example of innovation in games either. His primary exposure to games was still FPSes.

Is this a joke?

Why would it be? The FPS genre gave us Deus Ex and Dragon Quest is fucking Dragon Quest, the Game of Reheating and Reserving.

Huh, I agree with Rob here. How strange. Well, when he's right, he's right.

The joke was that anyone would even remotely associate Dragon Quest with innovation enough for them to be mentioned in the same sentence.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I like DQ and all 

what

Well, it's not like it's a favorite, but DQ4 and DQ8 feel like they justify their existence, if not their popularity. Toriyama vomit aside.

[hinode]

For the record, here's the best site to go to for Japanese game sales since roughly the PS2 era started:

http://garaph.info/gamesearch.php

For instance, we can see that NSMB DS is over 6 million now, because it's *still* selling a couple thousand pretty much every week since release, and more during December.

[Fudozukushi]

Demon's Souls: Screw you Tendency!

[Rozalia]

Parasite Eve The Third Birthday: Got this on release day and finished it quickly as the game is criminally short (5 hours or so) and after enduring that horrible plot I have to say Toriyama needs to get fired/demoted for his pathetic writing. The amateur plot holes are just inexcusable. I can overlook plot holes if there was some thought into the story and the writer just got overambitious and everything is a silly mess as in all that text its easy to make a mistake but Toriyama doesn't have that. Its a simple story and yet he gets some of the simplest things wrong.

Lets see the ones I can think off the top of my head.

1: Its a wedding and yet the guests are all outside locked out of the church except the big bad who is inside chilling out on bench enjoying the proceedings. According to the game Aya didn't know the big bad at that point so why is he in the church when her "friends" aren't?
2: So Aya is getting married yet no sign of Daniel, Rupert and the rest of her friends she'd trust with her life? But those other dudes she knew for all of 10 seconds (and the villain she'd never met) can attend? Makes no sense.
3: Who hired the Swat (!?!) team? Now this while kick starting the plot is overall a minor detail however it most simply be addressed. Even a throwaway line in the datalog such as "Ark corp hired them to kill Aya in revenge as their army of super soldiers were too crap to do the job themselves" would have done perfectly. Instead nothing so why did they do it? Some like to spin the big bad did it but he was a good guy at the time so that doesn't fly.
4:Hunter "boss" Owen. That cut scene at the end of chapter 2 seemed to set him up for a big scene and then *POOF* magically dead and never seen again or referred to.
5: Cray's daughter.

Then for the simply retarded bits:

1: TIME TRAVEL
2: THE TWISTED
3: THE HIGH ONES
4: KYLE
5: EVE
6: THE WHOLE ENTIRE ENDING
--------------------------------------
Now for the non crap bits.

1: He actually explained why Aya is now suddenly so weak and it wasn't the memory loss.
2: Maeda is looking good and I get laughs out of his rapist like dialogue and voice. He is also now Japanese Dr Klamp.
3: Gameplay while generic for the most part I found funner then most games of this type for some reason. Not sure why.

The bad outweighs the good by quite a large margin which is a shame as I really wanted the game to be good. PE2 wasn't exactly a masterpiece and it received a fair bit of slagging off but I quite like it personally as it isn't offensive and it makes complete sense for the most part. Third Birthday is just jibba jabba.

[Captain K.]

DS   New Super Mario Bros.   5,187,000
Wii   New Super Mario Bros. Wii   4,281,869

So noted.  I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".

============

Blazblue CS:  Hmm, lots of changes to characters compared to CT.  Jin is much harder to combo with.  Arukune's curse mode takes a long time to activate (but on the plus side, his distortions are much better).  Noel is just... bad.  But then there's Tager.  Wow, he's so much better than the first game.  His moves just flow together now like buttah.

Spent 2.5 hours trying to beat Unlimited Hazama on Normal with Noel.  Finally (after getting in a fight with my wife over my yelling) just gave up and restarted on Beginner difficulty to beat him.  I feel emasculated. 

Radiant Historia:  Started.  Feels a lot like Avalon Code, minus AC's aesthetics.  Graphics are terrible, GBA quality at best.  But knocking enemies into each other for combos is highly amusing.

[Dark Holy Elf]

So noted.  I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".

No, we have established that the idea that Japan loves DQ far more than any other series is indeed, an "urban myth". So if there is indeed insanity surrounding the buying of DQ games (which I still suspect may be exaggerated), the interesting question is why DQ and not demonstrably more popular video games?

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So noted.  I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".

No, we have established that the idea that Japan loves DQ far more than any other series is indeed, an "urban myth". So if there is indeed insanity surrounding the buying of DQ games (which I still suspect may be exaggerated), the interesting question is why DQ and not demonstrably more popular video games?

The particular audience it panders to maybe?

[Dark Holy Elf]

Well, I won't pretend it doesn't amuse me to paint DQ as the game of choice for obsessed otakus while refined, tea-drinking gamers possessing the virtues of patience and restraint prefer New Super Mario Bros. and Pokemon.

[Luther Lansfeld]

So noted.  I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".

Did anyone actually say this? >_>

[Nephrite]

So noted.  I think we have established, however, that the popularity of Dragon Quest in Japan is somewhat more than an "urban myth".

No, we have established that the idea that Japan loves DQ far more than any other series is indeed, an "urban myth". So if there is indeed insanity surrounding the buying of DQ games (which I still suspect may be exaggerated), the interesting question is why DQ and not demonstrably more popular video games?

Probably because a game like New Super Mario Brothers can be played by people of all ages and appeals to a huge generation. Dragon Quest games, by and large, and not played by adults I would imagine, so the turnouts for Dragon Quest-related events tend to be much more overwhelming.

Basically what I'm trying to say is adults don't really care if a new Mario game is released, they'll buy it whenever they want to, whereas a Dragon Quest fan will probably want to be there right away to buy it, leading to the "Dragon Questapalooza" we see in pictures all the time.

[Niu]

Parasite Eve The Third Birthday: Got this on release day and finished it quickly as the game is criminally short (5 hours or so) and after enduring that horrible plot I have to say Toriyama needs to get fired/demoted for his pathetic writing. The amateur plot holes are just inexcusable. I can overlook plot holes if there was some thought into the story and the writer just got overambitious and everything is a silly mess as in all that text its easy to make a mistake but Toriyama doesn't have that. Its a simple story and yet he gets some of the simplest things wrong.

This is an understatement. After reading the supplemental material, I can say 3rd Birthday is bordering CC level failure. In that things sounds even dumber when you try to explain it.
Toriyama needs to be fire, SERIOUSLY.

[Cotigo]

Hey look shut the fuck up who even gives a damn GAWD

Minecraft - I HAS A DOGGIE.  MY DOGGIE HAS A HOUSE.  I LIVE IN A LAVA TOWER.  YOU LOSE I WIN.

SC2 -  In the past 4 months, I've gone from straight-laced Bronze Leaguer to a borderline Gold-Plat leaguer.  I win pretty consistently when placed against Gold leaguers, and win sometimes against Plats but lose to them (especially when their team rankings imply that they're better than plat).   Still, not quite there.  Improving my macro game is going to be the next step.  But more importantly, I have more points than Eph.

You hear me?

MORE.
POINTS.
THAN.
EPH.

That makes me better. QED Shut the fuck up.

[Lord Ephraim]

SC2 - 

4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE
4GATE

WSSSSSSSSS

I'm sorry, I can't understand what you're saying.