MALADROITHIM'S PROFILE

I'm looking forward to it but I probably won't download the demo. Devil May Cry 4 falls under that broad category of games I will buy anyway so I'd rather not spoil the experience by playing a demo or looking at too much media online.

I think that Karsuman's revised list is really good. It's very clean and organized and seems to include all of the really important categories. I also agree that individual and community awards are not really relevant and that we should focus on the games -- community awards tend to degrade into a very strange sort of popularity contest.

However, music and sound design are extremely different things and removing the award for Best Use of Sound (I recommend changing the category to Best Sound Design) is in poor taste. I would very much encourage that you not remove the award for sound design.

author=rcholbert link=topic=569.msg7993#msg7993 date=1201237515
It's still there. It was just renamed to "Best Original Musical Score". Also, you were one of the two people. That is kind of like self-nominating!

To be fair, it wasn't my idea. <3 I was kidding around anyway because I thought it would have been pretty ridiculous to have the BlindMind award and the Brickroad award etc.

author=myersguy link=topic=569.msg7998#msg7998 date=1201239312
Off topic for the thread, but can I just ask why exactly people call Brandon Abley "Him"? It's bugged me since I've seen it

Yeah, MaladroitHim was my old alias years ago before I thought it was classier to just use my real name. It's still my AIM name and my alias at some forums that I have been at for several years, so some people still call me that!

I definitely recall seeing a category called The Brandon Abley Award nominated by more than one person. Why isn't it in the contest??

author=harmonic link=topic=588.msg7887#msg7887 date=1201034179
Peach has 1.3 billion dollars?

I wonder if she's still single.

Dude, leaving your fiance for Princess Peach is so sleazy.

author=trance2 link=topic=573.msg7800#msg7800 date=1200863872
I will admit, however, I think the game that most typifies "new-school," at least my definition of it, would be Mass Effect.

I'm not getting why the RPG-loving-I-haven't-upgraded-to-a-new-console-and-therefore-have-not-played-Mass-Effect crowd has this sort of attitude toward the game. It really is completely like KOTOR, except you have a crosshair and the battle system follows the now very well-established third-person shooting system used in every game from Gears of War to Kain and Lynch. There's nothing "new-school" about the game, unless, that is, you are talking about its completely useless inventory system. It's probably the most useless reference item I've ever seen in a video game aside from Mega Man VX's map system.

Though that depends on your definition of "new school". What exactly is your definition?

author=trance2 link=topic=573.msg7800#msg7800 date=1200863872
It still utilizes the old LMBS (with modifications, of course) and couples it with amazing characterization.

I would just like to comment that there is something fundamentally wrong with a ridiculous name like "Linear Motion Battle System" that is unintentionally very germaine to this topic. See Canuck's post:

author=Canuck link=topic=573.msg7833#msg7833 date=1200913924
I think I wouldn't mind new school games originality if they could do basic things right. Or if new school games just gave focus some of the "core" elements in their games that almost seem to have no focus whatsoever. For example, new tilesets versus knowing how to place tiles, new battle systems versus knowing how to balance one out, outlandish religious plot using Abel and Cain versus knowing how to tell the simplest of stories effectively.

Another issue is this desire for new battle systems as opposed to perfecting one. If you compare video games to art (which is a debatable) then most art takes years of studying technique in order to do anything original, and styles are perfected over many different people. RPGs have a lot of styles that are half-assed and not perfected in the least. This applies to commercial games, and all the rpg maker games I played when I still played them.

Except Dragon Quest VII. It's perfect. Dragon Quest V too.

As a footnote, I hate Dragon Quest VII so much but I have played through it three times. It is probably my favorite and most-played game by default even though it does awful things to you (such as taking characters away from you after 40 hours of playtime and replacing them with other characters that may or may not be anything like your prior build and being really, really, ridiculously long and not even having an antagonist). I also plan on playing it again soon on my PSP.