[HN Gopher] From Mechs to Mopar
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From Mechs to Mopar
Author : doppp
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-08-18 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| dakotasmith wrote:
| Interstate 76 was an amazing game and lead to me having a chance
| to volunteer with Activision as an external tester. It was high
| school, and the chance to test games before they came out, even
| for free, seemed very cool.
|
| I wasn't there in time to test I'76, but was able to work on a
| few games and see my name in the credits before I moved into a
| more traditional software QA career and beyond. Truly a life
| changing game for me!
|
| Thanks for the link
| nocoiner wrote:
| Damn, cool story. I never had a chance like that at that age,
| but I definitely would have thought that was the greatest thing
| ever. What a great experience.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I really wish there was something that caught the simple magic of
| interstate 76, today. as i recall interstate 82, the official
| sequel, was a total honker.
|
| Never really did the story stuff; just the deathmatch. the bots
| were amusing enough but getting a couple others on a lan got to
| be riotous fun.
| dakotasmith wrote:
| Deathmatch was always a blast! I remember playing with
| headphones on, the sound design was good enough to pinpoint
| where other players were hiding, and you could even shut off
| your engine to coast around silently.
|
| I would recommend the story if you have a chance. It's a good
| revenge story and John de Lancie is a great sounding villain.
| The presentation is incredibly cinematic, which I feel was
| enhanced two things:
|
| 1) in-game cut scenes within the engine, good dialogue and
| voice acting, as well as the "car movie" camera angles 2)
| choosing to have even the pre-rendered cut scenes match the
| mostly flat polygon style of the engine avoided the gap between
| gameplay and cutscene. Not exactly the uncanny valley. The "why
| doesn't it all look like that?" valley perhaps.
| b33j0r wrote:
| I've played all of them. For some reason completely irrational
| warfare with giant robot exoskeletons is the only thing that
| makes me want to enlist in a land-war.
|
| It was also Voltron, but we seem to have lost the fantasy of
| boarding your component mech on a freaking zipline!
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| For all the completely deserving bad rep Bobby Kotick has accrued
| over the years, the MechWarrior 2-era of Activision was _fucking
| magical_. Bobby clearly squeezed the fruit beyond recognition but
| boy was the juice magnificent.
|
| The fertile lands that bore the _Interstate_ games, I fear, are
| no longer. I can 't imagine a name stay like Activision
| experimenting like this today. Though, the odd one leaks out,
| like Hi Fi Rush.
|
| In many ways, the gaming industry (and the tech industry along
| with it) have already had their 60s-70s auto industry moment that
| Interstate monopolized so well. Now so much of what we see is
| boilerplate, repeating year after year because it works, rather
| than because it is good.
|
| (We have indies and they're great, I love them dearly, but the
| net dilution effect can be tiring. If only companies could take a
| successful game like Baldur's Gate 3, and be somehow forced to
| spin out new fresh IP in short order, reusing as much tech as
| possible. Sadly the constraints simply aren't there. Engines are
| too powerful and flexible, perhaps. The genericism we experience
| appears to be a direct decedent of the genericism of the elements
| involved in their creation.)
|
| ((Don't get me wrong, I would not willingly travel back to this
| era and give up the modern comforts of gaming -- it's the best
| it's ever been in so many ways -- but boy does thinking about MW2
| and I76 evoke a nostalgic, unscratchable itch in me that is
| simply infuriating.))
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Some indies are great, but they suffer from the same problem;
| there's a lot of copying happening.
|
| One developer may put out an early version onto Kickstarter
| hoping they can go full-time on it, an established game studio
| picks up on the idea, copies the concept and beats them to the
| punch.
|
| ConcernedApe makes an hommage to the old Harvest Moon games,
| runs circles around an established franchise by making a game
| 10x as large and good, and suddenly dozens of farm games pop up
| left right and center, all cute, some 3d, some with waifus,
| idk.
|
| Pixel art has a revival. Suddenly pixel art everywhere. Some
| really good and stylish, mind you.
| bombcar wrote:
| ConcernedApe was willing to take the "risk" if it can be
| called such, of Harvest Moon on PC.
|
| He was lucky in that he "won" but many indy games, even
| relatively well done ones, don't get anywhere near the
| reception.
|
| It's often a bit of a safer gamble to copy something else.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is true, and for every success story like Stardew
| Valley, there's a hundred failed attempts of equally
| passionate developers - a bit like startups.
| bombcar wrote:
| Thought to be even more fair, there's also a thousand
| failed attempts that are absolute crap, too. Being
| "indie" doesn't make it good, but being "big commercial"
| at least _usually_ ends up in something playable (though
| there have been exceptions to this!).
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(page generated 2023-08-18 23:01 UTC)