Comments on: God of Bore

By: JoeBob

JoeBob — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 02:00:50 +0000

The guy proves he’s a genre snob, he told us like three times he loves driving games, well dont play other games if you know you’d rather be driving. Next he forgets the laws of diminishing return, you can only play games of a similar genre so often before you start hitting diminishing returns on your enjoyment of the game, this happens in all games, even our favorite genres.

I mean seriously, if you dont like games with particular combat mechanics, stay away from them!
That’s your beef with god of war because 90% of the games out there revolve around violence and combat, how you can go on complaining about the combat with its variety of moves is pretty lame, especially since there is only so many ways you can implement combat in a game thats fun for the people playing it. There is only a finite amount of ways to implement moves inside a real-time combat game.

Combat mechanics is exactly the reason I wont play any MMO RPG, because the computer plays the friggin game for you, its great for newbies and people who have the reflexes of an epileptic retard, but for anyone who wants to participate in the game and be in full realtime control, its a snorefest because you’re so passive in every MMO out there and not an active participant, some games are becoming games you watch rather then play, sorry but I’m the type of gamer that likes deriving my enjoyment from control and interactivity, rather then passivity that currently passes for gaming in some circles.

By: me

me — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:22:26 +0000

Re: cut off pages

Though the individual blogs are viewable, some pages with multiple days’ worth of text do get cut-off in mid-blog. (I’m using IE 6.0)

Categories:
http://www.tgr.com/weblog/archives/cat_games.html
http://www.tgr.com/weblog/archives/cat_culture.html
http://www.tgr.com/weblog/archives/cat_food_and_drink.html

Hope this helps.

By: Robert 'Groby' Blum

Robert 'Groby' Blum — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 15:44:09 +0000

For what it’s worth, I mostly agree with you. The boss battles in GoW are horrible and a prime example why “boss battles” should be banned by the Geneva Convention. (I did have to read the walkthrough for the first one two, so I’m relieved to see I’m not the only one..)

However, taken as a five-minute entertainment to let off steam, the game is quite nice. And it was interesting in that it at least didn’t completely mutilate greek mythology. I take it as a sign that there’s hope – at least it was a rip-off of a non-Tolkien mythology…

On a completely unrelated note: Have you considered typekey instead of “guess-the-numbers” to prevent comment spam?

By: peterb

peterb — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 21:00:02 +0000

The ones I spot-checked look OK. Could you give me an example of one that’s broken?

By: arlo

arlo — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 18:24:38 +0000

Is there something wrong with your archives? They all seem to cut off toward the end of the page, making finishing certain “blogs” impossible.

By: Joe McDonnell

Joe McDonnell — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:24:14 +0000

Quite frankly, I don’t particularly care about God of War…

But the Cartoon History of the Universe books are awesome! Some of the funniest books I’ve ever read, with the fact that they are really informative and interest you in vast swathes of history is almost incidental. Highly recommended, with the version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in vol 2 my particular favourite.

By: Andrew Plotkin

Andrew Plotkin — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:13:41 +0000

Heh. While I enjoyed the game a lot (see my comment on psu’s review),
I agree with you on every point. Aside from the combat, which I found
pleasant enough, even that boss battle you disliked.

(Possibly I have become immune to stupid reviewers, or rather the
hyperbole of stupid reviewers. I don’t remember going into it
expecting brilliant combat innovations.)

If you want to see Greek mythology done *really* wrong, play _Rygar_,
a PS2 game from several years ago. Well, don’t, because you won’t
enjoy it either. But I was awed at the interpretation of Greek myth as
seen through the filter of Japanese demon-fighting game/anime tropes.
And by “filter”, I mean “brick wall”.

“And then Aristotle drank the blood of a demon, so that he could live
forever and continue to learn science, but it corrupted him and he
turned into a demon named Icarus…” You wish I was kidding.

By: mobit_man

mobit_man — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 01:42:47 +0000

While I don’t always agree with Tea Leaves’ opinions on games, and especially not what appears to be your preference in terms of difficulty, I stand with you in most parts of this review.

What I especially hated was the combat. The only thing worse than a button-masher is one that weakly tries to make you feel good about mashing buttons by exclaiming BRUTAL! SAVAGE! and having impressive finishing moves (which, btw, suffer horribly from the FFVIII repetition disease). I’d rather spend my time playing a much finer 3D-action game like Devil May Cry 1, which required skill but wasn’t cheap (the camera was horrible though).

By: Troy Goodfellow

Troy Goodfellow — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 21:14:21 +0000

On the whole reviewing thing, I’ve been criticized for giving a game only 4 stars out of 5 because I thought that the graphics were blurry at certain zoom settings. Apparently, this made me a graphics whore or something. And I’ve been criticized for being part of some grand subconscious media conspiracy to hype Darwinia undeservedly because I gave it 5 stars. So good reviews can get grief if you like a game too much or if you merely don’t like it enough.

But by and large, the really hostile comments come when a widely accepted “good game” or highly anticipated title gets slammed. I’m all for people criticizing my reviews and giving me stuff to think about – reasoned discourse about a game is fine. But the fanboys who, above all, think that calling you gay and stupid is the height of erudition, are the most fun.

By: Mike Collins

Mike Collins — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 05:34:31 +0000

Whoo; given the current hullabaloo over the the GTA:SA patch, I’m trying to imagine what the reaction to “God of War: Now With Catamites!” would be.