w.r.t the "good part", there is a difference between games as toys and games as a story.
a lot of games today are "story games", even if there isn't a fixed story, there is some progression and different parts of the game open up at different times and result in different emergent gameplay. even something sandbox, toy-like like cities skyline and minecraft has a progression.
i am reminded of gta V, which i thought had a really good story, where the game jumps you into a bank heist in the first scene of the game, it was a huge scenario with lots of set pieces, a lot of mechanics are introduced right away, it's pretty intense, and thwarts the RPG baby-crab-killing trope, thank goodness.
games as toys, like pong i guess, where you begin the game immediately having access to every single feature of the game, still exist - apex legends, cs go, rocket league. but you still won't be able to jump into it at a decent competitive level right away. in most popular competitive FPS games, you will be rocked for a good first 20-50 hours of gameplay until you build understanding.
w.r.t to what nolan means when he has to go through an hour of things before he can start playing the real game, sadly that's a historical era. games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away. a lot of games today need some amount of practice, whether 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 months.
I wanted to jump right into exploring the city and driving cars around, but instead it threw you into this scene full of terrible characters and forced you to murder a bunch of people. There is literally no way to start playing the game until you prove you know the shooting mechanic by executing a dozen police officers.
I’m normally fine with violent games, and I had a blast with Vice City and San Andreas, but this intro was so awful that I just put the game down and didn’t come back.
gta's sandbox is the most "famous" part of the game to non-gamers, but the series since the beginning when it was a top down shooter has always been story driven, now more than before. if you want the sandbox experience, it is in GTA:O, not the single player mode.
Ironically, the reason I picked it up was to play the online version with some friends. The only was to unlock online mode was to go through that mission.
>games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away
That's demonstrably false! Have you never picked up and played a game part-way through with a friend?
Can you demonstrate it? Games that are accessible to the average non-video-game-player to just jump in and play are the exception rather than the rule. Fall Guys, maybe Mario Kart? What else?
> Have you never picked up and played a game part-way through with a friend?
never games that i'm not familiar with. it seems downright unfair to the person who is half-way through it.
i have seen my friends who've mostly played J-RPGs try to jump into a coop Gears of War at a party and it wasn't good at all, in fact, it was extremely embarrassing.
a lot of games today are "story games", even if there isn't a fixed story, there is some progression and different parts of the game open up at different times and result in different emergent gameplay. even something sandbox, toy-like like cities skyline and minecraft has a progression.
i am reminded of gta V, which i thought had a really good story, where the game jumps you into a bank heist in the first scene of the game, it was a huge scenario with lots of set pieces, a lot of mechanics are introduced right away, it's pretty intense, and thwarts the RPG baby-crab-killing trope, thank goodness.
games as toys, like pong i guess, where you begin the game immediately having access to every single feature of the game, still exist - apex legends, cs go, rocket league. but you still won't be able to jump into it at a decent competitive level right away. in most popular competitive FPS games, you will be rocked for a good first 20-50 hours of gameplay until you build understanding.
w.r.t to what nolan means when he has to go through an hour of things before he can start playing the real game, sadly that's a historical era. games today have so much more features, so much more complications, a mix of meta thinking, hand-eye coordination, and mechanical practice that it's hard to simply jump into a game and be comfortable right away. a lot of games today need some amount of practice, whether 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 months.