We did not really consider gambling ‘fruit machines‘ (aka slot machines or just slots) when it came to defining the Agoners review criteria. They clearly aren’t designed to be any kind of challenge or competitive game at all. The best fit they would have to our criteria would be under the “Toy / Experience” category – for those that enjoy the thrill of betting against the odds to try to win money, or of calculating the odds correctly. Of course [...Full Story...]
Well Halo 4 has gone one worse than Halo Reach even, and launched without any kind of skill-based ranking system, and now has a gameplay affecting grind exploitationware system too rather than a purely cosmetic one. These are absolutely horrible decisions for competitive gamers everywhere and make me wish I could go back in time to Halo 2′s release again! Reach eventually got some semblance of a working ranking system, but it was too little too late, confined to one [...Full Story...]
We’ve written so much here on Agoners about competitive gaming, as per our definitions, that I thought it might be useful to re-state a few things in a single article. A bit of a re-statement of our beliefs; a competitive gaming manifesto if you like. Gaming design for competitive gaming should always mean these three things: 1. As level a playing field as possible. This means that as much as possible everyone is playing the same game with potential access [...Full Story...]
I completely missed out on playing Guild Wars the first, because I thought it was just another MMO. Years afterwards when I got more into PC gaming I discovered it actually had a potentially decent competitive game hidden underneath the BS grinding veneer. So Guild Wars 2 is definitely on my agoners radar this time around. Although I missed out on any beta access, this latest update on the game really is saying all the right things for agoners: We [...Full Story...]
Korea prohibits trade of online game items. This is a great piece of news as far as Agoners is concerned. Whilst their motivations are rather different, this does seriously hinder the money making options for any game design that is rewarding labour over other skills – ie: giving options to “grind”. Hopefully the rest of the world will eventually catch up with South Korea and it may help turn the tide against this horrible type of game design. Labour>Skill designs [...Full Story...]
Interesting news tidbit today about DOTA 2.. Dota 2 will not be a pay-to-win game. All the items in the store are cosmetic, and don’t affect gameplay. All of the heroes will be available free of charge. We believe restricting player access to heroes could be destructive to game design, so it’s something we plan to avoid. (read more detail on their FAQ too here) Now I personally have quite a few issues of competitive gaming taste with the whole ‘MOBA’ [...Full Story...]
Title: Bullet Witch Format: XBox 360 Reviewer: Remy77077 Approximate Time Spent playing at time of writing: 9 hours Modes of play: Single Player, Online Leaderboards. Bullet Witch is a single player “3D action adventure” challenge title. It’s immediately and obviously comparable to Bayonetta due to it’s stylistic similarities, however Bullet Witch is the originator that was released years before it’s imitator Bayonetta, although it itself apes stylistic elements from a lot of much older material, manga and anime in particular [...Full Story...]
Title: Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Format: XBox 360 Reviewer: Remy77077 Approximate Time Spent playing at time of writing: 29 hours Modes of play: Single Player, 2-4 Player Split-screen Offline Competitive, Online 2-8 player Competitive, Online Leaderboards At some point playing Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing I realised exactly why I’ve never been able to get into most driving games. It’s because they are almost all about rote-learning of the perfect route through a course, and pure execution skills. There’s [...Full Story...]
Agoners has now posted up it’s entire review method and criteria for when we critique games. It’s found under our Reviews section at the top, you should definitely check it out here!
As soon as I see people selling pre-levelled up characters and gear, or selling in game gold and the ilk then I know something has gone badly wrong with a game. If a portion of a game is so bad and boring that people are willing to buy their way into not playing it, that’s a red flag for me to stay away. After Navan’s seminal videogame categorizations, it’s even clearer to explain how I generally play and judge videogame titles almost [...Full Story...]
‘Real war’ style simulations in any gaming genre generally have about as much appeal to me as a candyfloss covered turd. They might sometimes look nice from a distance, but on closer inspection I can see that the flavour is so obviously going to be wrong I really don’t want to take a bite. The lack of appeal is because despite the fact I enjoy a good bit of aggression, gore and warlike competition in my games, I’d rather have [...Full Story...]
Kongai‘s a really good game in it’s own right, and I was pondering why I don’t play it more than I do. Part of the reason as mentioned on previous posts is that the method of collecting cards still slightly wrankles me, which is offputting. But I’ve now got a big enough collection that it’s not really an issue – I have more card combinations available to me now than I’ve been able to use as it is anyway. One [...Full Story...]