Handheld ports.

(Auzner) #21

That’s called casual gaming. You want to sit down with and come and go like it’s a crossword puzzle or Sudoku. You’re asking for complex immersive games to be placed into a casual setting which makes no sense. The formality Brink requires in multiplayer naturally doesn’t go with casual gaming. I’m not going to argue about single player. You can either understand my point or not because I’m not sure about elaborating on my 3rd and 4th sentences right now.

(Nail) #22

“The formality Brink requires in multiplayer naturally doesn’t go with casual gaming”
shift between on and off line at will, permanent unlocks from offline transfered to online, sounds fairly casual to me

(Auzner) #23

If it’s that simple to you there’s not much I can say.

(Nail) #24

oh good, we found the switch

(Auzner) #25

No, you don’t know what you’re talking about and still think video games are children’s toys.

(Nail) #26

must get lonely up there

not to worry, I find you quite amusing

(SockDog) #27

WTF Auzner? I regularly find periods where I’m on a couch with the missus and forbidden from sneaking off to game. I have a M11x laptop but it’s uncomfortable for gaming on the couch. Having a handheld that is capable (and capable is my key criteria here) of playing full game experiences without major compromise would be totally fantastic.

I understand where you are coming from in the “come and go” type gaming that portables promote but that isn’t, IMO, their sole function. TBH, and we’ve discussed this before, but it’s likely that consoles may just end up being portable machines that hook either directly into TVs or some sort of home hub. Perhaps those devices will even converge into phones.

In short I think you’re allowing a narrow view of portable gaming cloud something that could allow us more options.

(Herandar) #28

660 hours on a single game sounds casual to you?

I get your point, but just because you wouldn’t dare look at a small screen without surround sound (because when you play a game on your PC, you forget that you are sitting at a desk playing a game) doesn’t mean that everyone else requires that same level of sensory overload to effectively play the game.

(Auzner) #29

I think this thread relates to the societal paradigm shift of multitasking. People try to do a bunch of things at once and are just feeble at a lot of things. These habits relate to learning and cause a less intelligent population.

As for the “copy/paste it to a gameboy” idea… look at it like television vs film then. Films are shot much differently than a tv show. The typical tv show is 4:3 and generally has eye level full shots. Films will have panoramas, close ups, oblique angles, etc. They know people’s tv screen is small and they’ll be sitting far back so tv shows naturally have different methods of shooting. They make sure everything is seen and apparent. “The following film has been modified from its original format to fit this medium.” Of course HD is making all that go away but there’s a chance someone can relate to what I’m saying. Wanting all games to just be something we can flip through will diminish their quality and attention. The fancy hardware money can buy is not my primary point in this. “The Mona Lisa should be done in crayon.”

(SockDog) #30

Nobody is doing multiple things at once, they are utilising their time more effectively because there are now tools there to do so. I don’t want a poor Brink port to be on a handheld but if it can play as well as the PS3 version and I can do it in places where I couldn’t normally play, like anywhere but a room in my house, then why not?

Honestly, your argument is like saying the Sony Walkman was a bad idea because it’s not a awesome home stereo system. Or that home computer games and consoles were a bad idea because they couldn’t compare to the arcade games they’d be based off of.

(Auzner) #31

Why do you need to play a video game outside of your home? Home vs. arcade is still the same. You’re destined to go play games at either place, they’re both a determined action. Portable gaming is choosing it on a whim. What are you doing wandering about if you need to game so badly? There’s nothing left out there to do and there has to be a full fledged top tier game in your pocket for emergencies? If I’m bored standing in a line some place or in a waiting room or on public transit I’d rather have something that takes very little commitment like tetris. I can still pause or interrupt it with ease to analyze the surroundings or react to the public. But I normally don’t carry games with me anyways. I don’t care for gaming laptops either because without external power they last less than an hour.

(Nail) #32

PC Advocate, sounds like a new age “voodoo card kid”

not that it’s a bad thing, I remember when MiniGL was released, all the Quakers went nuts

(Mad Hatter) #33

[QUOTE=Herandar;263681]660 hours on a single game sounds casual to you?

I get your point, but just because you wouldn’t dare look at a small screen without surround sound (because when you play a game on your PC, you forget that you are sitting at a desk playing a game) doesn’t mean that everyone else requires that same level of sensory overload to effectively play the game.[/QUOTE]

That’s nothing, I’ve got well over a thousand hours on my Pokemon Pearl, and close to that many hours on Monster Hunter Unite.

There are a ton of great portable games. I don’t know if Brink would make for a particularly good one, but to dismiss portable gaming as just something you do while waiting in line is…I don’t know…just wrong.

(.Chris.) #34

On a train, on a plane, on a boat, in a hotel, visting elderly relatives, lunch hour, motorway services, boss is out all day, I can prob think of more if I wanted.

(Auzner) #35

My point was while amidst those things the experience of the story of Mass Effect, competing online in Brink, testing the SC2 ladder, hitting headcrabs with a crowbar or MAXIMUM ARMOR would be greatly diminished and almost pointless. But go ahead and pick the sentence you favor most and ignore the argument, that’s what everyone else is doing. None of you seem to think of video games as art, just a children’s toy.

(Herandar) #36

So you are an art snob too? :wink: It’s interactive art for the people, to be enjoyed however the person wants. Just because it is on a small screen doesn’t mean that the handheld player appreciates it any less than people with 3D monitors and 1080p, the current high-end.

Next you’ll be saying that people that watch movies on DVD players are trivializing the movie by not watching it on Bluray Discs. That’s what Hollywood seems to want us to think too, though.

(system) #37

Seems you have a very broad definition for the word play.

The question is not if it can be pulled off, it’s if they’ll make any money out of it.

(.Chris.) #38

Like the time you find out the world around you and all the people you have met and grown to like are all but a dream and like all dreams must end which is made more poignant with Marin’s wish to leave the island. I’m refering to Link’s Awakening here, probably one of the better stories told in a Zelda game, it was released in 1993 on a monochrome handheld called the Gameboy.

(Auzner) #39

And portable games continue to be that kind of simplistic style.

Either I’m too stupid to relay my point to anyone, or everyone is just refusing to understand what I’m talking about. I feel like I shouldn’t have to be arguing this at all since the fact that none of this exists already supports my side. Everyone is assuming this whole time we haven’t been technologically capable and I’m trying to explain that is not the reason. No one wants to consider the big picture and all sides to the implications of this. “Just do it because it sounds good!” Portable is like its own game genre. Let’s make anti-games targeted at people who won’t buy them! It’s like asking for the Wii to play more M rated games rather than realizing you bought the wrong console.

(SockDog) #40

Your point seems to lie at an extreme whereas everyone else is seeing an evolution and middle ground. Nobody wants a sucky port or have people switch off mid game but that is a developer and user education issue not a hardware problem. As said by Chris and myself there are many instances were a portable is just a much better means to play than on a home based system, the airplane being a good example as is also the need to be in proximity to the other half.