You probably liked the reboot because it is aims for the lowest common denominator( as most AAA games today do ). It is made to be really easy to play, since the obligation to keep the player playing, takes priority over gameplay.
The goal is to prevent player getting stuck by Any Means Necessary; keep them always occupied so they don't get frustrated and quit. For example:
You always now where to go thanks to the always present directions and the minimap, quick-time events replace sequences where skill mattered, there is a tutorial for everything, treasures and trinkets keep players, who have hoarder inclinations, occupied.
The original has None of Those. You were presented with a level and that was the obstacle. The satisfaction was deeper, you felt good because you actually had to suffer and persevere and choose to not quit. When you finally you solved the level you really accomplished something.
I personally enjoy games for characters & stories. I don't need to "fight the game" for a sense of accomplishment. Not sure why that's "worse" than playing games that are hard to master. I played hard games in the past. I don't feel a sense of accomplishment. I feel like a wasted an hour learning an entirely useless skill.
It's fine to like a certain kind of game. There are plenty of games that are hard and if you want to play them - good for you! But it feels kind of weird to say that the quality of a game is relative to how frustrating it is to play. Games are a form of entertainment after all.
I did play the original. It was not without its flaws. The controls were very fiddly. It was easy to die or fall down and lose 5 minutes of intricate jumping progress. You might call that skill, I call that mindless busywork. I did not find the satisfaction deeper.
The reboot did indeed have quicktime events, which are generally lame, but it used them sparingly—I never felt like I was playing Dragon's Lair. The thing it did better than the original was present a cohesive world. The island felt like every location had a real sense of place.
Everyone has a their own sense of what "lowest common denominator" means, but if yout think it means "reasonable controls, no horrific and misplaced difficulty spikes, good visuals, and an engaging story", then I agree.
It's fun to be challenged in skill, in interesting fights or puzzles. But getting lost or not knowing where to go all the time, that's just a time-waster. Like the whole category of "fetch" quests.
Especially when you quit a game for a week, and come back having forgotten the map and your latest goal.
If you make a dungeon crawler for the express purpose of making a dungeon crawler (Grimrock?) it can be fun to lack directions, have no minimap, take notes, draw maps by hand... but not every game means to be like that, and it isn't the only valid way to make a game.
Sometimes the "on-rails" approach is actually the most fitting. Mirror's Edge, anyone? The best part of that game was getting into a groove and feeling the flow as you dash through levels. "The grind" is antithetical to the point of the game.
Remember, it's just bits- games are for enjoyment. Suffering isn't the point (unless that's what you enjoy)
"Suffering isn't the point (unless that's what you enjoy)"
I don't think it was about suffering, as it was about how challenging it is. Think about other (non-gaming) experiences. The best are the challenging ones, that require your full attention. Games work the same way, and on the other end are those that hold your hand and make you sleep or quit before a tough game will.
seeing old tombraiders with rose colored spectacles are we? The game gave us fresh memorable and fairly satisfying and reliable movement mechanics and trying to traverse a complex landscape could be fun, music was amazing and some areas were for the time quite striking, but finding the hidden switch is often just a pain and to me cheapens the game with arbitrary challenges. Everyone raves about revelations but it was really bad for getting lost and requiring lengthy runs to find what the heck is around. I get to the point where I didn't even trust the level design to be fun anymore.
You were downvoted but I agree. The new Tomb Raider reboot is a good Uncharted clone but it's not a good Tomb Raider game IMO. They simplified out all the things that made the original games interesting to me. They got rid of puzzles and exploration and automated the platforming. The only thing I found an improvement in terms of gameplay is the combat.
In the first Tomb Raider series 1-5 (&6) by CORE the gameplay was about exploration in tombs, ruins and other popular spectacular places, solving puzzles, precisely timing jumps with instant death, and a few enemies like wild animals and a handful human enemies.
With the first Tomb Tomb Raider reboot, the gameplay got easier, the jumps were a lot easier and one got a second chance to unrealistically grab the edge to prevent a fall, there were still a lot of puzzles, more combat and some fantasy elements like a second Lara as enemy.
Tomb Raider 2013 reboot was a superb game. Though its new survivor theme was very different from the older game series. It was more action oriented (one had to kill about 800 enemies in the whole game, most of them human style zombies), had only 6 optional hidden rooms each with a single puzzle to reach the other end. The first two chapters were a tutorial and slow paced, but then within one hour Lara turned from a naive girl to a warrior - a bit too fast. Tomb Raider 2013 reboot changed a lot during the development phase, as one can see in an early development video "Tomb Raider Ascension", that one of the devs posted on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbJjcBC2rnc
The upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider has a story about supernatural(?) and is more about hunting, sneaking and scavenging materials. Hopefully they can integrate more tombs with (non optional) puzzles and less enemies.
I like the first TR because it doesnt hand hold, but its still fluid and fun.
I like the latest TR because graphics are good, its fluid and fun. The hand-holding and cut scenes were still annoying, but bearable for once. Obviously didnt follow tutorials or gathered trinkets, i just ignored it, as in every single game these days.
Its quite hard to be stuck in the games these days even without the hoarding. The games are rather easy most of the time.
I remember there's a part of tomb raider chronicles where if you don't pick up a single piece of ammo at one point you end up getting stuck and it's not recoverable.
Engine sound is amazing. This is the first time I have heard tire screech in a race. I wonder why. :-)
The problems seems to be battery capacity. They have to switch cars. Since the racing is usually done on a closed circuit they could implement inductive charging in the future( and perhaps power-ups ). Who wouldn't want to watch that?
Color me old-fashioned, but I think this sounds horrible. The noise is annoyingly like a high-pitched screech. Grating on the ears.
Then again, F1 cars have terrible sound as well. Too high rev to have a nice sound.
edit: I find it interesting that they have a Senna and a Prost. Coincidence?
edit2: their top speeds are apparently also over 140km/h lower than F1 (225km/h vs. ~360km/h). I wonder why they decided to limit the cars to that and if it's ever getting raised?
It'll only get raised with additional battery technology, I think. Around a normal track, where an F1 car will get up to that speed, it will use about 1.7kg of fuel per lap, and this corresponds roughly to about 8kWh per lap, taking thermal efficiency into account.
Formula E cars have about 200kg of batteries (a Tesla has >500kg), and these provide about 28kWh - which would run out a little after 3 laps, or perhaps less than that if the incredibly high rate of discharge caused it to catch fire. You couldn't feasibly add too much more battery capacity without weighing the car down too much.
You can get an appreciable fraction of the speed of an F1 car with a fraction of the power, and the difference is even less noticeable if you're on a street circuit; for example around Monaco an F1 car will use only 1.2kg fuel, with a much higher drag aero package.
The Formula E driver lineup is a bit embarrassing, in that almost exactly half of the drivers are failed or retired F1 drivers.
Also, F1 drivers since the turbos returned are much lower pitched, since they rev only up to I think 12000rpm now - you might be surprised!
Bruno Senna is Ayrton's nephew. Nicolas Prost is Alain Prost's son (and Alain is visible in some of the shots cheering on his son from the garage). There are a number of other close ties to F1 in both the car hardware and technology and many of the drivers.
Most of the limits on the cars are due to battery technology.
I read that in the article. I'd also like to read why a five-speed transmisison is beneficial on these cars - I suppose the motors still have a RPM-based powerband, even if it isn't as drastic as gas engines?
Electric motors do have a constant power region and its ideal to operate there. I would expect teams to modify their transmissions to better fit their motor as more parts of the car are opened up for modification.
The engines do have a fairly flat torque curve however, so you can get away with a constant speed reduction, which gives a decrease in weight (like the Tesla). One reason they might run a transmission is so that they constantly run the engine in the most energy efficient zone, giving them a longer battery life.
A flat torque curve means you get more power at higher revs. Power = torque x revs.
If torque is the same at 5k revs vs 10k (to pick numbers from thin air), when you downgear 10k 2:1, you double the effective torque over 5k at 1:1, for the same output revs.
It does not work like that. To run twice the speed, you run twice the voltage so you run half the amps. Torque scales almost linearly with amps. With the same power input, the power output is all about the motors limits versus your conversion efficiency.
The battery layout and chemistry will limit the actual power that can be delivered to the powertrain (discharge rate). A faster electric car is not one geared higher, but one which converts the most of this energy into motion.
Formula E is mostly street circuits, so there's a limit to what can be done in terms of inductive charging.
FWIW:
> The next regulation progression – scheduled for season three - will see manufacturers extend their efforts to the batteries, with the objective being the use of a single car per driver during races from the fifth season.
I think a general education in reasoning, criticism and logic, that would happen along with the typical primary/secondary courses( math, english ) would help not just in this case, but also in many other areas.
You probably liked the reboot because it is aims for the lowest common denominator( as most AAA games today do ). It is made to be really easy to play, since the obligation to keep the player playing, takes priority over gameplay.
The goal is to prevent player getting stuck by Any Means Necessary; keep them always occupied so they don't get frustrated and quit. For example:
You always now where to go thanks to the always present directions and the minimap, quick-time events replace sequences where skill mattered, there is a tutorial for everything, treasures and trinkets keep players, who have hoarder inclinations, occupied.
The original has None of Those. You were presented with a level and that was the obstacle. The satisfaction was deeper, you felt good because you actually had to suffer and persevere and choose to not quit. When you finally you solved the level you really accomplished something.