[comments] Value for money... ? Feature

[charlesr]

Value for Money... ?

Thanks to Pat for the words.

[VR46]

A nice easy read while drinking my coffee.

[abigsmurf]

I have to say, I thought that Half Life 2 was a bit over-rated. The plot was nothing but loosely linked set pieces, the AI was unimpressive compared to FEAR, Max Payne 2, although it didn't have the gravity gun, implemented physics as a gameplay device first and ultimately the game was too short. Was a good game but not groundbreaking.

As for value for money... It's hard to really define it.

A good 10-15 hour action game that is incredibly cinematic and not stretched can feel like your getting your money's worth. God of War is an example of that. However taking simplistic games and filling them to the brim with content is also something that really makes you feel you're getting your money's worth; Nippon Ichi SRPGs do this and it's a strong point of the SSB series where they do as much as possible to keep a fun but shallow beat em up as interesting as possible for as long as possible single player.

However there are things that can spoil this sense in otherwise good games. God of War 2 felt too short for me, this could possibly be because of the lack of an ending, you didn't feel like it was a full game in itself. Bioshock felt artificially lengthened by the dull, cliched, 'abandoned apartment block' bit near the end.

Sometimes it's just down to quality. Resident Evil 4 is better value for money than RE5, despite RE5 having better production values and an online co-op purely because it's more fun to play. RE4 is the only game I've played through more than once in recent years

[_y_]

This was, for me, a very poor article. I don't have the time to fully dissect it but briefly:

- Why are you talking about Edge in the intro? Surely their review scores are irrelevant to an article written on NTSC-UK.

- You take 5 paragraphs to arrive at this conclusion: "My point up to this point is simply this: you need to pick and choose your games in order to satisfy your particular desire of the moment." Which is basically just saying "play what you like". Which obviously doesn't need saying at all.

- The previous paragraph about narrative seems completely out of place to me. What are you saying? That people who read books and go to the theatre will derive more satisfaction from Half-Life 2's plot than those who don't? I'm not really sure what the point of this whole section is.

- In a few paragraphs' time we arrive at the point that you don't like online play. Great - so don't play it. There are plenty of oneplayer-dominant titles available.

- The whole paragraph about the Orange Box is misplaced and ridiculous. Assuming your problem with games tacking on multiplayer is that it doesn't sit well with the oneplayer component (it's not something I think is a big problem, but fine) - that just doesn't apply to the Orange Box. It is nothing like "examples of game-elements which sit uncomfortably with their stable-mates" because they are different games, not elements of one.

- "And that is my point: games are becoming increasingly unfocused" Again it is ridiculous to apply this to the Orange Box because they are different games. Just because you didn't particularly like Half-Life 2 does not make the Orange Box poor value for money. It's phenomenal value for money, even if you don't touch Team Fortress 2.

- "These were simple games with simple objectives" - see, that's exactly what the games in the Orange Box are as well. You can't accuse those titles of being confused or complicated or messy. They're well-designed, elegant pieces of work. And they are separate games. How have you not grasped that, and used the Orange Box as your central example in this piece?

- "More importantly, why do I have to pay for all parts of the product when I only want the parts I'm interested in?" You could buy the components of the Orange Box separately. If you're referring to games that offer oneplayer and multiplayer modes, then are you saying the prices of all games are too high? Because surely offering an online mode doesn't automatically make a game worth less money?

- "The first problem is that reviewers are giving an overall score based on a 'package' when, in reality, the various parts of this grouping fundamentally fail to cohere." So just read the review then. If the text explains the score has been given for the outstanding online mode rather than the lightweight oneplayer campaign, stay away.

- "A) developers would stop bundling games together." Again, are you talking about the Orange Box or games which have online and offline modes? This isn't clear. And I think you must be the first person I've ever heard regard the Orange Box as poor value for money and a bad idea to bundle together.

- "I'm tasting a sort of bland, meandering, marketable toothpaste" Toothpase does not meander.

[Matt]

Yeah, I wasn't impressed with the article at all. Sorry guys. The writing was poor, the point of view poorly thought out. Lack of focus, you were all over the place.

OB represents astonishing value for money. There's a title in that for everyone! And for everyone who actually likes gaming, there's 5 quality titles in there

I agree the first Halo has a good, unravelling story; and the third was a fanboy serving mess.

[Papercut]

I have been working as a sub-editor at NTSC-UK for the last year, and the writers here have become ? in my mind ? a major rival to EDGE's opinion on what constitutes a good game.

A rival to an opinion... yeah, this is not very good is it.

As an opinion piece its all over the place, as well as being full of terrible clunky phrases. And I like a good bit of clunky phrasing.

There are many divergent forms of game that people are after, and many different satisfactions that they hope to procure from them.

That last sentence has three terrible things all happening at once.

In the case of Mirror's Edge, I found myself arguing from the point of view of someone who desires intellectual stimulation and relaxation or 'fun'.

What is the point being made here? That fun is intellectual stimulation and relaxation, or that these are the things that represent fun to the author, which is entirely subjective? Only the latter makes any kind of sense, but the text seems to be suggesting the former. It is very ambiguous, and they are two very different possible viewpoints. Eh?

Will stop now before brain hurts.

[merf]

I'm glad you all said this, I read it once, then again, and couldn't really tell what the point was being made as its not very coherent.

clunky is a good word.

2 totally different games gets compared for VFM, then there is a moan about devs putting too much into titles, then a bit of an online content rant.

shame as there is a good article to be written regarding the title, just don't think this targets it.

[Darwock]

See, you shouldn't have gotten torn into Mirror's Edge... you've struck a nerve

I personally don't think games are changing into an indistinct blob of similar features, all the games I play are quite different from one another.

Again I suspect this point of view comes from not being selective enough in what you buy/play and just going through the motions with every title that comes along (a personal bugbear of mine).. that way you are sure to come up against lots of derivative and similar titles. Or should I say the similarities become far more obvious and the individual strengths of a title don't.

[Matt]

Sorry, I've tried it for a third time. I can't get on with the writing. Jumping straight to your "conclusions":

The first problem is that reviewers are giving an overall score based on a 'package' when, in reality, the various parts of this grouping fundamentally fail to cohere

So your first problem is reviewers score the game rather than the offline/online elements. That's a fair enough point. I think some mags are starting to do both now.

The second problem I have is that developers and publishers are selling me more than I want for more money than I want to spend.

I can see this point, but if they split the online game out of Gears 3 and sold it seperately, do you really think you wouldn't end up paying for two full price products?

If you want to argue about value for money, pick on recent, relevant examples. Surely for your point, Halo ODST is the most relevant example - single player low budget game bumped up to full price because it contains the H3 online game. You could have written a great article about that, making what I think is your point.

Talking negatively about OB's value is frankly bizarre. HalfLife2 is worth full price alone! Look at Portal. An amazing game, but surely at what, 4, 5 hours long, too short for a full price game? So they bundled it together with one of the best rated games of all time. Then gave the 2 expansions as well. And a staggeringly popular online game. Those BASTARDS!

What you should have done, is compare ODST's potential single player game length with Portals, and drawn, well, completely different conclusions about OB. Logic seems to be lacking.

This article following the R6V review? Yikes

[merf]

plus there is negative mention in an article titled 'value for money' about GTA IV, fine discuss the merits of it elsewhere as to whether it is good/bad or indifferent but for a narrative led game of its type its amazing VFM, whereas the likes of GoW weigh in at 12h plus multiplayer this is 40-50h +, with multiplayer. it may be many things but poor VFM it isn't.

i concur on the Orange Box vibe, not much around that offers better value, providing these games types interest you !

I've read it again and it comes across a bit like an extended version when you read first-play threads and people say something like 'I don't like football or football games and this latest Pro-Evo is rubbish'

[MisterBubbles]

cant really see why the reviewer is complaining about The Orange Box, ok lets split them all up and charge 20 quid for each , now Valve fans would be outraged, plenty of 1 player games with good narrative and story MGS4 (PS3), Deadspace (Multi) ,Bioshock (Multi), Infamous (PS3 ), Uncharted (PS3 ), i think the OP needs to be more selective in his games plus read 1st play more, i didn't buy Mirrors Edge thought the demo was frustrating trying to get over beams with sixaxis ( gimmick ) look how infamous handles this much better. i feel Flower is the only game to handle sixaxis well and not just stuck in there as said gimmick

[kernow]

First think I did was click on the name of the author thinking 'Who is Patrick Graham' and got this: http://www.ntsc-uk.com/aboutus.php?profile=pagr

errors ahoy!

now to read the article.

edit: Gave up reading, I can't be bothered. 'My point up to this point is this'



I kinda don't get the front page for this site, I don't mind reading the reviews, but does anyone really care what some 'ntsc-uk writer' has to say about something like this. not really.

[rmoxon]

Considering The Organge Box was the price of a single game upon release I find it hard to belive anyone would not consider it value for money. Plus it was recently £5.99 on steam!

At the end of the day, a games value is down to wether the reviewer feels, as a whole, whatever package they are reviewing is worth 40 quid. You cant say "i dont like multiplayer so the games not as valuable to me", becuase its part of the game. Yet at the same time I don't play alot of games online, besides Left 4 Dead, but my personal feeling is that most games I buy offer enough value from the single player alone to warrant their purchase.

These days prices of games seem to often fall very quickly too if you arent sure of a game... Bionic Commando has only been out a few month and according to the Bargins secton of this very forum some places are already selling it for as cheap as 18 pound...

[Brats]

Sorry, I didn't like the piece . It read like some random thoughts posted on Twitter than an article.

I thought that the title 'Value for Money' might pick up on some the points that have been discussed recently on the forum, but it didn't.

I do think there is a place for a discussion purely on value. I said in the ODST thread that there wasn't enough intelligent discussion on this and I still stand by that. Imo, a lot of people mix up value with what they believe is fair for the publisher to charge (largely based on effort), but the two are different things.

The Orange Box is often held up as tremendous value, but that's not always true. What is true is that Valve charged a very fair price, but I've never been a fan of HL2 so the only games I were interested in were Portal and TF2. Thankfully those games were great so I was happy to pay full price, but clearly the value for me is less than it might be for someone else. And for the writer of the article, the value was very low.

Value has nothing to do with the amount of effort it takes the developer to make the game, what's included in the box, how many levels they include or whether it is using a new engine or not. It's based on how much fun I get out of it. EA could release a game that took them five minutes to program in Visual basic with one level, but if I love it and play it all the time, then I'd gladly pay decent money (say £50) for it. You could argue the idea has more value than the effort to make it.

In this example, EA might be making a massive profit on every game sold, but that's just the way it works. There are other games that cost them millions to make and I can pick up for a tenner because no-one bought them and they hit the bargain bin. Some you win, some you lose. I'd have gladly paid over £50 for Banjo Kazooie, I picked it up for £15. Yay me.

Value is never about effort. You can argue that fairness is, but we live in a society where price is based on demand and supply, not fairness. If we had fairness, we'd have to pay more for some stuff than we currently do.

I'm making this point because I see many people making the comment 'the price for this is way too high....but I'm going to buy it anyway'. If you're going to buy it, then you value it at that price. Don't worry that you think it's unfair, you can't control it anyway and you can pat yourself on the back when you pick up that other game for much less than you were prepared to pay.

Why deny yourself a game your going to really enjoy just because you think the developer should have made more effort? Ultimately, it's irrelevant.

[_y_]

"the value for me is less than it might be for someone else"

I think there's a difference between value to an individual and what can be considered basic value for money. Otherwise there is no difference between value and personal taste.

The Orange Box is phenomenal value for money because it contains what is generally regarded as one of finest games ever made, two expertly-crafted expansions, one of the most original and vibrant multiplayer games in years, and a fascinating piece of design in Portal. That, surely, has to be considered better value than a regular full-price release with a 10-hour campaign and multiplayer mode. If you don't like any of the games then obviously it won't represent good value for you, but surely we should be able to look past that and appreciate good value regardless of personal taste.