6 ms·

I got this with the Steam Indie Pack; it was one of my favorite entries. (If you're looking for games beyond this, let me also recommend Blueberry Garden, Braid

by unalone 17y ago

I got this with the Steam Indie Pack; it was one of my favorite entries. (If you're looking for games beyond this, let me also recommend Blueberry Garden, Braid, and Everyday Shooter.) I can't support the design trend of simple gameplay with elaborate detail enough. Most game design today strikes me as being ass-backward: Attention is focused on insane playtime and complicated systems, and not on the small details. The result had been a lot of games that look ugly and aren't fun to play without dedicating a lot of time to them. World of Goo and similar indie games are making gaming mainstream. Anybody can play them and enjoy them. Casual players get the fun distraction, and more hardcore players can appreciate the finer details and the more difficult challenges.

barrkel 17y ago
Hm. I can't go along with the general love-fest over World of Goo. I bought World of Goo for $20 in large part because of the hullabaloo around it, and completed it in an evening. It was basically a bridge-builder derivative, where it's fun to overcome all the challenges, but once overcome, the desire to improve on them with economizing / scoring is a lot less. I got about 6 hours at most play time out of it. If I valued the games I've enjoyed for replay value with a similar price / playtime equation, such as Far Cry or Far Cry 2, I'd have to conclude I should value them in excess of $500 apiece. First person shooters, when executed well, completely blow away puzzle games in replay value. I would rather value WoG at about $2 at most. I'm not sure I'm any better off for having bought it, other than knowing that I don't want to play it again.
- unalone 17y ago
  The desire that's built in is the online tower building. But I don't do it for that. I do it for the thrill of seeing how efficiently I can make my pieces. The graphics are beautiful. The soundtrack is incredible. The humor is perfectly executed. The feel of the controls I hope to one day equal. The physics engine's to die for. I don't know you, barrkel, so hopefully you don't take it personally when I say: You'd value that package at two dollars? Pathetic. This is what I hate about the gaming community. You said you got six hours of play out of it, and don't think that was worth $20? I pay $10 for a CD with 40-60 minutes of music on it. I pay $15 for a 3-hour movie. This masterpiece of a puzzle game you value at two dollars. Unbelievable. It's worth mentioning that I can't stand most first-person shooters. The Orange Box ones (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal) are the only ones I've played and liked. The level of workmanship on the average FPS saddens me. They strike me as gimmicky and cheap. I can't comment on how long it takes to beat World of Goo, because I haven't beat it yet. I'm on the second world out of, what, six?, and I've played it for a few hours. I spent an hour alone trying to hit the challenge records on each level. But the game isn't just about beating levels. It's about the joy of putting things together, seeing what works and what doesn't. All that was released by a team of two people. Far Cry was made by a team of five hundred people, and it's nowhere near as sleek as World of Goo. I think 2D Boy puts Crytek to shame. They're entrepreneurs and artists and I wish them the best of luck—and it really pisses me off when the tasteless slobs that call themselves the gaming community decide to shit all over a good thing.
  - bendotc 17y ago
    If the idea you're raging against is that there is no 6 hour experience worth $20, I'm totally behind you. But you take it a step further and accuse barrkel of being a "tasteless slob" for not valuing World of Goo more than $2, and that's just ridiculous. It's precisely as ridiculous as if I called you a "tasteless slob" for what you were saying about all non-Orange-Box FPSes, 'cause there are a bunch of real gems out there. What's my point? My point is that there's a question of taste. We can of course still talk about craftsmanship and aesthetics in games, but to criticise someone simply for saying they like games with high replay value and this isn't it, that's ridiculous. You said you don't like FPSes that aren't from The Orange Box, which shows to me that there are some damn fine games that you don't value, but it would be silly of me to criticize you for not wanting to pay market price for them.
    - unalone 17y ago
      I made a point to tell barrkel that I hadn't met him and that I wasn't intending my remarks personally. I don't feel comfortable judging somebody by what they write online. The friends I'm most in touch with from my hometown are gamers. By some standards I'm a gamer, though I'd disagree with the classification. So obviously I don't mean "everybody that plays games" when I refer to the "gaming community". That said: I stand by what I said to begin with. Does replay value matter in a game? Of course. Is a game without replay value worthless? Certainly not. If a game takes me six hours to beat and I willingly play through all six hours, I've spent as much time playing it as I'd spend on a two-hour movie if I'd watched it three times. So there's the first thing that I find offense in: The suggestion that something worth "only" six hours of time hasn't given me enough value. In the "gaming community" as I define it, having a game take up dozens of hours of your life isn't an offense. I've always disagreed with that. I remember having a conversation with a friend over Final Fantasy VII, which I played for an hour and then put away. "It takes a few hours to get good," was his mindset. I find that casual disregard for time appalling. The second thing I found offensive was the suggestion that World of Goo was worth only two dollars. Two dollars? I pay more than that for a fucking cheese steak! For five dollars I will pay a man to sizzle some meat for me and put it in a plastic bag. For two dollars I will pay a fast food chain for a plastic cup to pour syrup into. When two people spend $10,000 of their own money and countless months developing a gem of a puzzle game that takes a quarter of a day to beat—and it's taking me much longer than that, personally—I think it's worth more than 20 minutes' worth of minimum wage. Craft and finesse has become so devalued. I blame it on gamers, though "gamers" here is a category that includes a whole bunch of non-gamers, including a whole branch of programmers that I occasionally criticize here as well. It's this attitude that other people's work is meaningless, the attitude of FAIL and meh., where having twenty hours of gameplay is expected but making any of those twenty hours magical and beautiful is utterly disregarded. It's not every gamer, it's a specific sort of gamer, but it's a prevalent sort of gamer. The kind that argues that Bioshock is as valuable a contribution to society as the works of Joyce or the movies of Hitchcock. And it bugs me not just because it's obnoxious and tasteless, but because on the flip side we have a lot of tasteful people who argue that video games are not art, can never be art, and I disagree with them as well. I love video games. But it's hard to argue with those tasteful game-haters when the average gamer works to hard to convince others of his crippling tastelessness.

by unalone 17y ago

barrkel 17y ago

Hm. I can't go along with the general love-fest over World of Goo. I bought World of Goo for $20 in large part because of the hullabaloo around it, and completed it in an evening. It was basically a bridge-builder derivative, where it's fun to overcome all the challenges, but once overcome, the desire to improve on them with economizing / scoring is a lot less. I got about 6 hours at most play time out of it. If I valued the games I've enjoyed for replay value with a similar price / playtime equation, such as Far Cry or Far Cry 2, I'd have to conclude I should value them in excess of $500 apiece. First person shooters, when executed well, completely blow away puzzle games in replay value. I would rather value WoG at about $2 at most. I'm not sure I'm any better off for having bought it, other than knowing that I don't want to play it again.

unalone 17y ago
The desire that's built in is the online tower building. But I don't do it for that. I do it for the thrill of seeing how efficiently I can make my pieces. The graphics are beautiful. The soundtrack is incredible. The humor is perfectly executed. The feel of the controls I hope to one day equal. The physics engine's to die for. I don't know you, barrkel, so hopefully you don't take it personally when I say: You'd value that package at two dollars? Pathetic. This is what I hate about the gaming community. You said you got six hours of play out of it, and don't think that was worth $20? I pay $10 for a CD with 40-60 minutes of music on it. I pay $15 for a 3-hour movie. This masterpiece of a puzzle game you value at two dollars. Unbelievable. It's worth mentioning that I can't stand most first-person shooters. The Orange Box ones (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal) are the only ones I've played and liked. The level of workmanship on the average FPS saddens me. They strike me as gimmicky and cheap. I can't comment on how long it takes to beat World of Goo, because I haven't beat it yet. I'm on the second world out of, what, six?, and I've played it for a few hours. I spent an hour alone trying to hit the challenge records on each level. But the game isn't just about beating levels. It's about the joy of putting things together, seeing what works and what doesn't. All that was released by a team of two people. Far Cry was made by a team of five hundred people, and it's nowhere near as sleek as World of Goo. I think 2D Boy puts Crytek to shame. They're entrepreneurs and artists and I wish them the best of luck—and it really pisses me off when the tasteless slobs that call themselves the gaming community decide to shit all over a good thing.
- bendotc 17y ago
  If the idea you're raging against is that there is no 6 hour experience worth $20, I'm totally behind you. But you take it a step further and accuse barrkel of being a "tasteless slob" for not valuing World of Goo more than $2, and that's just ridiculous. It's precisely as ridiculous as if I called you a "tasteless slob" for what you were saying about all non-Orange-Box FPSes, 'cause there are a bunch of real gems out there. What's my point? My point is that there's a question of taste. We can of course still talk about craftsmanship and aesthetics in games, but to criticise someone simply for saying they like games with high replay value and this isn't it, that's ridiculous. You said you don't like FPSes that aren't from The Orange Box, which shows to me that there are some damn fine games that you don't value, but it would be silly of me to criticize you for not wanting to pay market price for them.
  - unalone 17y ago
    I made a point to tell barrkel that I hadn't met him and that I wasn't intending my remarks personally. I don't feel comfortable judging somebody by what they write online. The friends I'm most in touch with from my hometown are gamers. By some standards I'm a gamer, though I'd disagree with the classification. So obviously I don't mean "everybody that plays games" when I refer to the "gaming community". That said: I stand by what I said to begin with. Does replay value matter in a game? Of course. Is a game without replay value worthless? Certainly not. If a game takes me six hours to beat and I willingly play through all six hours, I've spent as much time playing it as I'd spend on a two-hour movie if I'd watched it three times. So there's the first thing that I find offense in: The suggestion that something worth "only" six hours of time hasn't given me enough value. In the "gaming community" as I define it, having a game take up dozens of hours of your life isn't an offense. I've always disagreed with that. I remember having a conversation with a friend over Final Fantasy VII, which I played for an hour and then put away. "It takes a few hours to get good," was his mindset. I find that casual disregard for time appalling. The second thing I found offensive was the suggestion that World of Goo was worth only two dollars. Two dollars? I pay more than that for a fucking cheese steak! For five dollars I will pay a man to sizzle some meat for me and put it in a plastic bag. For two dollars I will pay a fast food chain for a plastic cup to pour syrup into. When two people spend $10,000 of their own money and countless months developing a gem of a puzzle game that takes a quarter of a day to beat—and it's taking me much longer than that, personally—I think it's worth more than 20 minutes' worth of minimum wage. Craft and finesse has become so devalued. I blame it on gamers, though "gamers" here is a category that includes a whole bunch of non-gamers, including a whole branch of programmers that I occasionally criticize here as well. It's this attitude that other people's work is meaningless, the attitude of FAIL and meh., where having twenty hours of gameplay is expected but making any of those twenty hours magical and beautiful is utterly disregarded. It's not every gamer, it's a specific sort of gamer, but it's a prevalent sort of gamer. The kind that argues that Bioshock is as valuable a contribution to society as the works of Joyce or the movies of Hitchcock. And it bugs me not just because it's obnoxious and tasteless, but because on the flip side we have a lot of tasteful people who argue that video games are not art, can never be art, and I disagree with them as well. I love video games. But it's hard to argue with those tasteful game-haters when the average gamer works to hard to convince others of his crippling tastelessness.