a beginners guide
love ’em or hate ’em games are literally everywhere. everyone plays video games, and it doesn’t matter what’s there age or their habits or their taste. you as an individual might like to beat up characters in a fighting game, there is a whole series for that. you might like to get extremely scared and you love horror, there is a game for that, you like war, there is a series for that, space? no problem. there is everything. the industry is just so vast that you can’t explain it all. but what if you just want to get to play a video game for the first time? what is the good video game? or maybe your just a parent that cares for his/her children and what they play, but you don’t know how to protect your child. well, i’m here for ya. i’m not a pro but i am a seasoned player, i have played many games and i can tell a good game and a bad game from a mile.
why is there violence in video games?
first things first, a good game for all of your worried parents is NOT, a game were there isn’t bloodshed. you shouldn’t restrict your self to only games that does not contain bloodshed because now a days all of the video games feature violence and gore. and believe me, it doesn’t have a negative effect on the player ( the violence i mean, some games that i will talk about later do effect you in a negative way ). a game that features violence most if the time has a negative effect. video games like Grand Theft Auto or GTA actually show that crime isn’t a good thing and that a life with crime features a lot of death and a lot of loss. Mafia is another video game series about crime, and the thing is that this series almost shows a totally different thing than most critics who call themselves ” protectors of the children” acclaim it to be, it literally shows how much of a messed up life a member of mafia has, the character continuously loses his house, his money, loses many of his friends and family and many more. it simply shows you that life of crime isn’t good. and that is how most of the current games that contain gore and violence show the world of crime. because us gamers want realism, and in real life, a criminal is always being punished, but it is still really fun to just be there in those action moments with those characters. so now i think i made you understand that unlike how many people think of video game’s violence, it doesn’t have a negative effect, crime and violence in video games encourage gamers to never want to do those stupid things in their lives because they have already experienced what sort of misery it really is. i also need to tell you that first of all, make yourself or who ever wants to play this video game aware of the fact that this is only a game, it can’t be real, you can’t do those stuff in real life. and now you are like, ” well, of course i know the difference between a video game and real life” and most of the people who are claimed to do stuff because of video game violence say the same thing. make sure that you understand that. you can, never, ever, be like a character inside a video game. never. and for all of you who are reading this and actually do believe that a video game can drive a boy or girl crazy enough to kill, please think again. killing people is not a simple thing. a sane person cannot kill someone with ease and without emotion only because he or she did it many times in a video game. and second thing, you don’t need a video game to teach you how to kill. everyone who saw a gun in their life knows that by pulling the trigger you can shoot a bullet that can kill. everyone knows that a heavy object can be lethal and it can be used as a weapon. everyone knows how to kill another but they wont do it; you know why? because there isn’t any reason for it. you can’t just kill someone only because you did it inside a video game. and if you do actually think about killing someone just because you can, well the problem is with you.
what is a good video game?
a good video game put simple is a game that gives you a roller coaster ride. you play it, have your fun, experience the life of a character, and in the end learn something. a occlusion. for example a game, that makes no sense at all, and contains action and fun only for the sake of being there is not a good game, it’s only a good waste of time. a good game makes sense, has a moral, and everything inside of it is for a reason. not for the sake of being there. so this logic basically says that if a video game has violence, gore, sexual content and many more, FOR A GOOD REASON, it’s a good reason. if not, just forget about it. games like Mortal Kombat have no moral in the end of them, no story, the fights don’t even make any sense ( seriously though, do you think a fight between the Alien and Jason Vorhees makes sense? ). they are only there for the sake of being there. while in the other hand, Witcher video games, that do contain many many mature content, from gore, rape, violence, sexual content and …, are actually pretty great because everything inside of it is for a reason. it’s the explicit truth that it is showing and nothing more. everything is sensible and it has a moral at the end of every small story inside of it. so a good game always makes sense and has a good reason.
what is a good point, moral … in a video game?
this one is extremely subjective but we can all agree on some points. for example games like Hatred AKA ‘genocide crusade’ at the end you wont get anything good from it. the story has no moral at all. but video games like Far Cry 5, have an extremely beautiful moral at the end of the story and it has such amazing twist at the end of the story that you can learn something really great from it. a good moral is the one that requires thinking and can be used in real life. a good point is the one where you learn something from it. these video games are not easy to find but after playing a few examples you will get the “eye” to find them really easily.
but sometimes the point of making a video game is usually to know the idea of gamers about some new features in video games. there isn’t any franchise based on this simple test like genre where they add new features to the game just to see if people like it or not, however there are many video games that are made only for this purpose. GTA V, far cry primal, assassins creed unity, are only a few examples. but sometimes a video game franchise is only there to change the industry for ever. for example metal gear solid franchise was only created so that with each new game they would change the entire industry for good. for example MGS4 for the first time ever had a drone inside of it that let the player do stuff like recon, distraction and many more. MGS4 was released in 2007 and right now in the year 2018 we have video games like watch_dogs_2 who are still using the same technology and features that your drone had in mgs4. so you might be asking yourself : “why the hell is this guy turning this post into a review?” i’m simply not. i’m only saying that sometimes a video games point might be financial, or sometimes like the whole metal gear series, it’s there to change the industry, not the amount of income or salary for the developers. you should know the difference to get your hands on some great quality game.
in the end, what sort of features should a good video game contain?
so the most important question is this one. a good video game as said above needs reason and logic, it needs a good point and a good moral, but what about features? that is none of mine or any critics business to judge if a feature is good or not. if it’s not executed correctly, well, that is another story. for example video games like assassins creed unity, have a great idea, but poor execution. the features in unity are good in general, but their execution needs more work. critics are allowed to call those cons of a video game but if a video game doesn’t have a feature that there isn’t any empty space for it, why to judge? what i’m trying to say is that; if the feature is not executed poorly, or if the feature is not missing. then that is totally fine. you can’t judge a game for what it doesn’t have. and by things that it doesn’t have i don’t mean a good plot or stuff like that i mean features. a game like Undertale doesn’t feature great animations, it doesn’t feature a good combat, it doesn’t have a good graphics either. but it never tried to be any of those. Undertale was never meant to have an engaging combat. it never wanted to have good graphics. it only wants to have a good story, good characters and good music, and it executed those perfectly. so it is 10/10 in my opinion because it did what it had to do perfectly. so what is a good feature? it is something that is done correctly. if a video game has tons and tons of things to do but there isn’t any good quality to it, then it definitely isn’t a good game. that is why most of the people would rather play a walktrough game than an open world. because open world has more quantity than quality most of the time. but if done correctly open world can also be very great. so as a starter buying a walktrough game is way better than an open world. at least until you know some good franchises that never fail you.
Shady Writes 