Forum Overview :: Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction :: It's agony from which I'll never recover.

[quote name="Casual observer"]Surely, the bink demographic was so important for me that I am now a devastated man, picked appart my the metaphorical Sea Snakes of Laoconte. However, I'm putting my foot down, that perception that a game is better because its newer -has- to die, and the case of MW2 vs MW4 is a clear example of this, and I'll make the Methuselanic attempt to illuminate you monkeys. First off, the arguments objectively summarized: MW4 is better because, since it's newer, it's a more refined experience, matured with the passing of the earlier iterations on inferior tecnology. On the other hand... MW2 is better because the game mechanics are more congruent and the game itself, even my today's standards, is a more organic experience, and thus a better game. Now, on to the all-exciting and infinetly stimulating sustentation phase! MW4 is indeed a 'prettier' game, even despite the renewal some seven years ago when they came out with the graphically nasty as anal sex after a year-old enchilada dinner Titanium version of MechWarrior 2. Yeah, it was 3d, it was textured, it was ugly. However, subjacent to that aesthetically sickening exterior, the core was still an organic game that had r0xz3rd the gaming world by the foundations. So much so that Interstate 72, Heavy Gear, Earthsiege (conceptually, and from which Starsiege and later Tribes was spawned), with other less memorable games riding in the wake. Already this can be taken as contrast between both games, MW4 did -not- spawn nor did it renew the genre, as a matter of fact it -killed- it. There won't be an MW5, this has been an official announcement made by Microsoft on the matter. No one will disagree that there couldn't have been an MW2 without an MW4, and I mean this in the sense that there wouldn't be a 'Mech' genre if it wasn't for that first game, for its quality and unbound success. Very probably, it's also what kept FASA alive before it was forced to become FASAi. This was also the game that developed a die-hard following that today is still trying to fix the game they were given, even if the game itself proved to be un-fucking-moddable as it was originally presented to the public. And certainly it's equally as obvious that MW4 had nowhere near as much impact as its grandfather; you could accuse the dilution of the market and the general apathy of today's gamers towards specific gems from the industry as the ones to blame for this, but there are equally as irrefutable arguments towards that posture : Halo, Half-life2, WoW. These games have changed the medium, anyone can see that, regardless on their own personal concept of them. So, exactly, what castrated what was heralded as the GOTY of its time? Why, exactly, did MW4 fail to meet the expectations set by MW2? Simple, they misused the technology they had available, they build a game -poorly-. Here's where we get to the guts of the matter, wrap it around a steel fork like those happy people from the Inquisition did. MechWarrior 4 presented the hardpoint system, which was fine in itself, the idea was to balance the game and prevent 'Gunbags' from stuffing large-caliber rocket-launchers into their crotches where it CLEARLY had an autocannon of meanger proportions. This change on its own wasn't a bad idea. However, they didn't implement it correctly, and it confluenced with other elements of this (clearly) undertested game to break gameplay irreparably. I won't go into the Clan vs. IS. argument, it exacerbates the problems, but they're not at the core. The core problem is that, given the ability to customize your rides in Multiplayer to your heart's desires, except for the limiter of the slot system, it boils down to this - There's a mech that's better than all the rest, unquestionably, along with a weapon that's better than all the rest, once more beyond any shadow of a doubt. So, the player's given the freedom to either comform or watch himself be screwed into the polygonized soil by an all too-loving Novacat pimp, swinging their hips with much gusto and flair; it's their choice, they can pick whatever they want to do amongst those two. This was not the case in MW2. Yes, you could tune up your mech to a far greater extent, which meant that, yes, tonnage was the only difference between one mech and the other (except for the Nova, no torso twist)but this also meant that no one Mech was better than any other in its class. Also, the weapons themselves, while far different from one another were still all useful depending on your play style. Small lasers by the dozen could be, at short range, just as good as large lasers by the pair at longer distances. The result? Already there's more variety in gameplay in MW2 than in MW4; you could choose how to play rather than have to play just like everyone else did. Similarly, when you look at other game mechanics, you find that this game was just half-implemented, and made entirely forgiving. Ammo doesn't blow up when hit, it just goes away, and Heat, the central balancing piece of the entire gamem doesn't really kill you. Behold the wonders of physics in the MW4 universe! No object can hold more than 10,000 Kelvin in heat, even when heated up even further! In MW2, there was a cut-off and a timer. If you were running hotter than a certain temperature for a short period of time, or if you went past the red line, boom. In MW4, you reached the aforementioned figure, and your screen wavered, your mech slowed down slightly. That's it. You couldn't get any hotter than the aforementioned figure because, precisely, the half-implemented feature didn't track heat above it. This is a broken game mechanic, it doesn't function as advertized, the self-destruction that you're warned about so tersely is an empty bluff. The rest of the game's inner workings such as hit-detection, lag compensation, topography, even the graphics engine is rife with similar problems. Do you want me to dissect every last one of them? So what, anyway? Why should MW4 be taken as inferior to such a much older game? That, in the end, is asking why Warcraft 3 should be seen as a game of lesser quality than Starcraft. MW2 was, while it ran, far more an organic an experience than MW4 because there were far more limits that you could push, the rules themselves were clear and goddamn unforgiving, but within them you could play whichever way you goddamn pleased, to the level of complexity that -you- alone would like. MW2 functions within its own rules congruently, it didn't cut corners, it didn't just focus on how the game looked but rather on how it played, and Fuck it played a lot better than the newer one. [/quote]