Caltrops - Reviews





	[quote name="Jerry Whorebach"]From <a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=23949">gamesindustry.biz</a>: [quote name="Colin Anderson"]<img src="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/images/Colin-Solo.jpg"> At least that's the theory. That was the brave new world offered when Microsoft first unleashed Live Arcade upon an unsuspecting and appreciative public. In practice we're already beginning to see the traditional games publishers flood these new channels with re-hashed versions of the same tired old products. They don't even appear to be 'sympathetic re-interpretations', they're just knock-offs of familiar products, uncaringly converted with just enough 'enhanced' features to plausibly deny accusations of not caring about the product or audience. What's worse is that Microsoft appears to be permitting this. Perhaps not deliberately, but whether through choice or simply a lack of long-term vision they appear to be trivialising their service.[/quote] I think I know which games he's talking about (hint: <a href="http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?action=viewPost&sid=1&pid=58513">most of these</a>), and I can't say he's too far off base. This is especially troubling to me, as I'm the sort of hardcore casual gamer who eats, sleeps and breathes casual gaming. Much like the games industry, I used to be mainly interested in serious, artistic games. But recently my changing demographics (hair where there was no hair before, etc.) have forced me to branch out in search of satisfaction. What I've found has been largely disappointing, possibly due to pre-conceived notions like these: [quote name="Colin Anderson"]<img src="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/images/Colin-Solo.jpg"> Ultimately, developers are going to have to face the fact that casual gamers are different. They are predominantly female, over 30, and don't want to spend time learning new game mechanics or control systems. The titles performing best in the casual games market are the shape-matching games, the word puzzles, the card games - there's no Gears of War lite.[/quote] Haha, Gears Lite, who would ever want to play a score-based game of limited scale about spacemen blasting aliens from the second dimension? Except, you know, everyone who got into gaming 15+ years ago when that was the whole point. Speaking of what's wrong with games, I recently finished God of War for the first time. For some reason I started a game on Normal and, despite being asked if I wanted to switch to Easy every time I encountered some kind of whirling blade, I couldn't figure out how to increase the difficulty without restarting. By the time I realized the game wasn't going to get any harder on its own I had already slogged through about a million fucking zombies (breaking about a million fucking urns along the way) and really didn't feel like doing all that again. The whole experience, while not exactly fun, was still pretty inoffensive and that's more than I can say about most of what I play, so if I were a games reviewer I could certainly see awarding it a 9.1 out of 10, maybe even a 9.3.[/quote]