EGM scores. Some pretty big games.

[A Black Falcon]

You're projecting again. That's all you can do. Project.

Mario and Zelda are linear games. It does not matter that there is little story in Mario because you follow a set path and have to interact within bounds. If you added two hours of cut scenes between levels in Mario 3 the gameplay would be no different. Your idiotic argument is that MGS2 is bad because there are non-controllable cinemas in between gameplay. I just tore your argument to shreds. You can't stand that, so you project. You are a very pathetic person, Brian.

You did not "tear my arguement to shreds" because that was not my arguement. I did not mention MGS in that quote because I was not thinking about MGS when I was writing that segment. Disbelieve me if you wish, but it is true. I was not thinking about MGS. I was thinking about what I stated: your comments about Mario and Zelda.

As you say about my comments about your posts, you take what I said to mean what I most certainly did not. I am NOT saying that MGS2 is a bad game. I am NOT saying that I disliked the game. I said just yesterday that I liked it! No, that had little to do with MGS's quality. It was merely talking about what games should be, ideally, and that this is what tha developer thought should be done in games to better achieve what should be the goal in an interactive medium: more time with you controlling your character and getting more options that "affect the game" while doing so.

So no, that was not an 'attack' on MGS in the sense that I disliked the game a lot because of it or something. Was it a criticism? Yes, I guess you could take it to be that. But there's nothing wrong with some games being more like films and some being less so, so there's nothing wrong with there being some MGSes out there... MGS may have long cutscenes, but it keeps them interesting so it's not really a problem. MGS is an extreme, but it's okay to have some things on the extremes so I'm not saying MGS should be dramatically different.

As for Mario and Zelda, you are saying exactly the same thing I was as far as Mario: the lack of story is irrelevant because the point of the game isn't story, it's doing things. An adventure. And you don't mention Zelda.

No, it does not! So if I create a game that's mainly influenced by grass, does it change it's classification as a medium?? Idiot.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here... "does it change it's classification as a medium"? Huh? You don't make enough sense for me to reply with a definite sense of what you meant.

My best guess is that you're saying that I would say that if a game was influenced greatly by grass that the game's classification should change to 'grass-influenced' instead of whatever previous classification it was in. Which is a pretty vague statement.

Classification for the type of game should be determined by the final product, obviously. But when influence is the subject, the classification of the final product isn't really the point anymore I think... the point is trying to decide what made it into that final product. Saying 'it was greatly influenced by grass' would not, then, be saying that it changes its final classification, unless the final product resulted in something greatly different from what would be expected with other products in that class. I doubt that that would usually be the case.

The story isn't even told well. Compared to BG's atrocious method of story-telling it's good, but that's not saying much.

The point is it effectively gives you choices about how to act as you play through the game. This is good game design as it lets you more mould the character to be how you wish it. Now, are there two schools of thought on that? Yes, sure. You can either say "this you your character and you should try to be like them" or try to say "you are the character and you can do things to make it be like you (or how you want)". The first implies more linearity and the game setting a character more strongly. The second is, most of the time, the better approach, as it allows more people to connect with the character. Not always certainly, because there are plenty of games where the game would not work if the character was a "You" instead of a specific personality, but on the whole that should be the ideal. And even in games with characters with a set personality, it's not impossible to give the player a degree of control. That Dreamfall preview is a great example of a game designer explaining how giving the player control is good and how it is done even in a game with strong character designs.

Again, not every game needs to be this way. It is definitely something that makes games harder to develop and is not needed everywhere. But as an overall trend... I'd love to see it.

And you know what? Leaving ego aside, I think you would too. Why? Because of how often you talk about liking non-linear games. It is pretty strange to see you arguing AGAINST adding even a structured form of non-linearity to (some) games, given how strongly you are usually arguing FOR it...

With anybody else I would, but since you can't even understand a single one of my easy-to-understand sentences, there is no point.

You might be surprised if you tried.