Or good combat systems? Seriously. I don't get it. I DON'T GET IT. Western devs have had more influence on the game industry for far longer than Japan, yet they act like they're making first year school projects while games like Dark Souls are masterclass and have half the budget. The problem with American devs and bosses came to a head with the Mass Effect franchise. "Why do you always need a boss???"... because it's the ultimate test of the games mechanics? Jesus christ, western devs.
I'm more than halfway through Dark Souls and I can declare it's a masterpiece before I even beat it. Can't even think of something that could happen that could lower my opinion about it, the bosses and weapon based combat is brilliant and there's so many to describe it, it's like Ninja Gaiden Black meets Legend of Zelda - it's like Diablo (or ARPGs in general) but actually good.
So to figure this out, I've included the four horsemen of the western dev apocalypse. The four games that are a reflection of modern western design as a whole. My post about them coming up
>Arkham Asylum and Arkham City The series so toxic for the industry I had to include it twice. I don't feel like Batman, despite claims as such, and it's bad enough you don't have real bosses, but instead you get gimmicky shit like the Poison Ivy fight or an entirely scripted sequence like Killer Croc, both of which were in Arkham Asylum, and as the series went along, this never improved. What's worse about the Arkham games is their influence. Arkham Asylum was popular, but Arkham City was a megahit. I couldn't even look at western made games for a couple years because they'd all be inevitably an Arkham clone.
>NuGod of War Back in the day, we used to raise our noses up at God of War 1 and 2 on the PS2. "Ho ho, square square! What simple games not as good as our precious Devil May Cries!" Now? They're absolute character action game classics, and nuGod of War is the ultimate backstab and casualization of a franchise that ultimately didn't deserve a fate this horrible.
>Half Life 2 The odd one out, sure, as FPSes are still the only genre western devs can deliver on, but HL2 represents a regression of the amazing combat system introduced by Duke Nukem 3D and its engine (which subpar games like Blood would use, and great ones like Shadow Warrior would take advantage of). The scripted sequences in HL1 were impressive for the time because there was nothing like them, truly, but by HL2, only a retard would be impressed by these 20 minute long cutscenes you can't skip.
They can when they want to. Darkwood for example shits on any Japanese horror game.
Alexander Gutierrez
>Top down No
Charles Nelson
It's scarier than any SH/RE
Parker Young
The west lacked a strong arcade culture that would inspire the best action developers and its even worse now when most of the big Western developers are basically failed filmmakers who get into video games for the wrong reasons. I partially blame Kojima for this but he can actually make engaging game systems, something that most people forget
Moreover western gamers seek escapism in games over challenge which is why they’re stronger with RPGs and world building over the Japanese.
Challenge backed by sublime action mechanics runs in the dna of Japanese games. The west can’t even begin to make good action games until they can understand how fighting games work, which will never happen because most of them are absolute soys who can’t even play their own games. I doubt Corey Barlog ever played Give Me God of War or anything like that. They just don’t have that level of talent when it comes to action design
Nolan Hughes
That hasn't happened because nobody has any ground to stand on when trying to criticize my image doe.
Easton Bennett
Oh look, its this same thread again
>THEIR ARGUMENTS DON'T COUNT CUZ I SAY SO that is what happens when someone calls out your image, Beeporz
Oliver Stewart
>complaining about story is only okay when I do it
Western action games that had good combat came out during the PS2 era and that's it.
Jeremiah James
>they’re stronger with RPGs and world building over the Japanese but they aren't. wrpgs are janky garbage with terrible gameplay. their "worldbuilding" is always copied from d&d, star trek or mad max.
The poles made ONE good game and suddenly they are gods, i don't get this meme.
Anthony Peterson
I find a lot of Japanese stories to be a bit stilted, with obvious exceptions of course - other than that, the gameplay matters ya simp and Japan wins at that.
Benjamin Stewart
The funny thing about the Arkham games is that it reflects the western design philosophy: making something look amazing with little skill involved. It paved the way for rhythm games disguised as action games.
Western shooters haven’t been fundamentally relevant since Doom. Shooters since then have relied on spectacle to get on top, and maybe some play forming.
The Japanese changed shooters forever with RE4, whose campaign still hasn’t been beaten and whose mechanics still haven’t been revolutionized. Even nuDoom took cues from RE4. How many third person shooters added new and interesting mechanics? The only other game I can think of is Vanquish, and that was made by the same guy who made RE4.
The Japanese will always have better gameplay. The west simply has deeper roots in world building, doesn’t matter if they’re inspired by Star Trek or D&D. I could say that every action game from japan is a rip off of Final Fight or old beatemups. Great Japanese stories are far and few, and a majority of them pale to western stories and that has to do with each culture’s philosophical traditions
Justin Richardson
The animation on the right was made in America.
Adrian Moore
The main complaint is that Western games have cutscene like gameplay Naughty Dog, is especially guilty of this when you consider TLOU and UC4 Gameplay where you just talk and walk, you can't actually do anything apart from slowly walking and listing to the MC and NPCs talk Even heavily story driven Japanese games like the MGS games never do this, there is a huge separation between cutscene and gameplay, cutscenes and codec calls are rigidly separated from gameplay
Tyler Phillips
Japanese people def did a good job with their outings in TPSes - but wheres the FPSes? There have to be Japanese people that can stomach the camera
Gabriel Hughes
What kind of autism compels you to keep posting this? Throw yourself into a wood chipper weeb
William Martinez
Okay what do the games on the left have in common and especially why are they being compared to the games on the right while they are an entirely different genre.
Jackson Lee
I once heard that Call fo Duty World at War was very popular in Japan. We probably just have to wait until young people in the industry get their chance
Jack Sullivan
RDR2 and GTA5 play like absolute dog shit due to the OBSESSION with animation. Compare them to the Yakuza games and those are way better.
Joshua Garcia
Rockstar runs laps around peasant shit sega
Ryder Allen
The Arkham games and NuGOW represent the absolute STATE of modern character action games in the west.
HL2 is just a regression from superior 90's FPSes.
Landon Murphy
The gameplay of ALL of those games is still shit if you're so willing to defend the presence of the cutscenes. If you loved the games, you would feel violent hatred and sickness at even 0.0000000001 seconds of cinematics. If the game even tried to go to a cutscene, you should feel a pure violent tendency to rip out the console and throw it out the window. How fucking dare this game take me out of the action just so it can jerk itself off with cgi graphics and voice acting and cinematography?
Only a gameplay purist can be considered a good judge of gameplay quality. Cinematic pretenders need not apply.
Camden Fisher
Even Dark Souls lets you skip cutscenes, and they're usually only 30 seconds to a minute. Can't say that about western games.
