Bastard's Notebook

Right. That does it, you lot.

I am fucking sick and tired of your "it's like a sandbox" videogames. Sick of game designers too busy to come up with things like interesting characters, dramatic tension, or even, god forbid, enough plot to last through even just twenty hours of playtime.

Open-ended sandboxes do nothing but bore the fuck out of me, and when the only intensity level in your game is "Oh fuck, I'm gonna die!" the the actual feeling of intensity kinda drop out after the first straight hour of it. And learning endless button-push combos to activate more powerful moves is not my idea of "game rewards player for success."

But giving me a virtual sandbox does no good- nope, nothing. I play to be entertained, goddamnit. Instead of making me hunt around endlessly for the fun, why don't you actually provide some in your game from the get go?


Here's some ideas, most of which I find lacking lately:

Plot (both having one and having one with some depth beyond kill everyone before they kill you.)

Intensity (chibi's nice and all, but can we do with less of the kyoot? Or maybe a balance between cute and "I'm so hardcore my teeth have tattoos"?)

Characters. With motivations. Maybe even backgrounds, or at least decent dialogue. And no, giving the character 10-15 different unlockable outfits does not count as "depth."



Sigh... how much longer do I have to wait for another Final Fantasy? Or a Shin Megami Tensei? Or to just even find an older game that's actually decent on the shelves?

Brought to you by:

Bujingai: The Forsaken City

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

Unlimited SaGa

Anything with the combination of "Elder" and "Scrolls" in its title

The entire GTA franchise

The entire franchise of GTA clones that are just covered over with superhero (or anime, or horror, or anything) licenses.

Every last one of the damn platformers that attempts to masquerade as an RPG.