FOR TEENS: VIDEO GAMES vs. DRUMS

I don't know whether the question applies to me, however. I started drumming in my late teens, at the age of nineteen, to be exact.

I'm jealous that you had the passion for drumming from the beginning. ive been playing for the same amount of time, though started when was ten.
 
25. That's more than 20.

Whoops, my bad man, I just reread your post. I thought you said you started GAMING when you were nineteen, which apparantly was in the late eighties...I should learn to read better.

Oh, and I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means, but I still like to play old SNES RPSs from time to time.
 
Some of the old games are fantastic. The original Prince of Persia is just stunningly good (and INCREDIBLY hard). Old-school gamers will tell you that the new generation of games are far too easy - and they're right.

Old school gamers are idiots.
Try playing through Gears of war on insane, or maybe Halo 3 on legendary. Come back and tell me that they are not hard.
 
Old school gamers are idiots.
Try playing through Gears of war on insane, or maybe Halo 3 on legendary. Come back and tell me that they are not hard.

He's got a point though. I mean it took me literally years to come first place in the CMR world championship and i swear it just got easier and easier with every new release of the game.
 
Old school gamers are idiots.
Try playing through Gears of war on insane, or maybe Halo 3 on legendary. Come back and tell me that they are not hard.

Half Life on Hard.

Prince of Persia? Ever played it? Level 1 is a challenge and it gets harder with the one hour time limit. Please, don't insult your own intelligence by calling old-school gamers idiots.
 
Half Life on Hard.

Prince of Persia? Ever played it? Level 1 is a challenge and it gets harder with the one hour time limit. Please, don't insult your own intelligence by calling old-school gamers idiots.

I like both. I wake up. Play drums, Go to work, And come home and play video games.
 
Half Life on Hard.

Prince of Persia? Ever played it? Level 1 is a challenge and it gets harder with the one hour time limit. Please, don't insult your own intelligence by calling old-school gamers idiots.

PoP and Half Life's (admittedly very, very high) difficulty levels PALE in comparison to Ikaruga. I suggest you check that one out MFB. That game nearly brought me to tears...
 
PoP and Half Life's (admittedly very, very high) difficulty levels PALE in comparison to Ikaruga. I suggest you check that one out MFB. That game nearly brought me to tears...

No way of playing it I am afraid. No console, no Windows computer. Unless it works on DOS emulators...
 
As much as I love gaming, I will take my drums over them any day...besides I have to practically beat my kids down to get to any of the game consoles and my drums they are not lining up to play with...muhahahaha! My own toy...FINALLY! Well, my 2 year old boy loves drums, but that's all good with me.
 
Half Life on Hard.

Prince of Persia? Ever played it? Level 1 is a challenge and it gets harder with the one hour time limit. Please, don't insult your own intelligence by calling old-school gamers idiots.
Well if "old school" gamers think that todays games are easy, they need to wake up. Just because pacman was a hard game it doesn't make other games bad, because thats what you making them out to be. I know, I've played half life, I've played several old school games and I have to say that they don't hold a candle to any of the modern games. Yes, games like final fantasy (the first few anyways) are excellent but they don't even come close to Halo 3, Gears 1 and 2, GTA IV, oblivion, dead rising ect.
 
Well if "old school" gamers think that todays games are easy, they need to wake up. Just because pacman was a hard game it doesn't make other games bad, because thats what you making them out to be. I know, I've played half life, I've played several old school games and I have to say that they don't hold a candle to any of the modern games. Yes, games like final fantasy (the first few anyways) are excellent but they don't even come close to Halo 3, Gears 1 and 2, GTA IV, oblivion, dead rising ect.

That's just your opinion though. In actual fact i think to even compare the playability between old and new games is just silly because they're just so different. It's like saying "Chalk SUCKS compared to cheese!" I think new games are great, i love being able to roam around 3d open environments with stunning visual detail and complex storylines. However there is something really just plain fun about playing an old game such as Worms, GTA II and Super Mario.

And yes i agree with MFB that new games have been dumbed down for more mass market appeal. Just look at the facts here, in the early days of computing, hardly anyone could afford a computer (a basic one would have set you back nearly £1000 back in te '80s) and those who could would probably be rich businessmen who used their computer for business. Then fast forward to the very last years of the 80s and computers came to a point where younger people could afford them and wanted to use them for games. So people made games for them. However, gaming spec pcs were still expensive and few people could afford them. Basically, if you wanted to play a game on the PC, you had to be serious about playing games. Now with the advent of cheap console gaming anyone can afford one which means that the game developers want to make games that anyone with a console might want to buy. That means making it a lot easier to play. It's a simple fact. The graphics also suck on consoles, too. You wouldn't believe how much better a game such as GTA or CoD looks on a PC compared to the console version. The graphical capabilites of a good PC are just so much better.
 
I know I'm not normal--I'm actually kind of girly. I don't play sports or video games. Just drumming, photography, videography, and skateboarding. To me, video games seem kind of dull, but I can understand why people like them.
 
Well if "old school" gamers think that todays games are easy, they need to wake up. Just because pacman was a hard game it doesn't make other games bad, because thats what you making them out to be. I know, I've played half life, I've played several old school games and I have to say that they don't hold a candle to any of the modern games. Yes, games like final fantasy (the first few anyways) are excellent but they don't even come close to Halo 3, Gears 1 and 2, GTA IV, oblivion, dead rising ect.

This is where I disagree.

Modern games are great as technological showcases - but I'm one to stand up and say whatever happened to the fun? Advanced graphics and immersive environments are great, but sometimes when you have sixteen buttons of control and a huge character map to remember; I just honestly wish for the days of Super Mario with two buttons and a pad. Those games were fun. Then suddenly, around about 1997 (I would've been about nine) games started getting more and more 'serious' and the fun element was lost. Just occasionally I come across a game that's really great and fun and most of the time I'll find that these are the simplest games of all. 'Braid' (on Xbox) is a great example of this. A simple concept that actually is a lot of fun.

Most games today are all flash and no trousers. They suck you in with (amazing, it has to be said) graphics, but underneath those graphics, the gameplay often outright sucks. It's all about flash with no bang. That's not true of all games, absolutely not - and there were rotten games in the 80's too - some really rotten ones, but generally the substance of mainstream gaming has been lost with this technical obsession. Just because it is possible for all this to be put into games doesn't mean it should. Hell, Space Invaders is a simple concept but play it for long enough and the sheer fun of it will suck you in. Same goes for PacMan, same goes for Tetris, same goes for Prince of Persia and the same goes for Doom, Lemmings and the same even goes for The Lost Vikings (which I was obsessed with as a kid - I spent a year trying to crack one level!).

I love the original Half Life series of games (Half Life is my favourite game ever - with Half Life 2 being somewhere nearby) but in my opinion this is where the gaming industry started going wrong. Everybody was out to create the 'new' Half Life and got the idea horrendously wrong - focusing on the wrong elements like the (then groundbreaking) graphics engine and the flashier stuff. The fun was in the gameplay and the challenge. I see no challenge in a game where you can get shot at, go and suck your thumb in the corner for five minutes and then recover, rather than doing it old-school and battling your way through a hoarde with only one point of health remaining. Halo - to me - has done the same thing with trying to copy Half Life, but getting some of the more essential elements right and whilst I can't pretend to be a fan of the series, when a game of actual substance arrives, it rightly gets lauded in praise.

There's just far too much 'me too!' gaming out there. The rubbish sells. Like Hollywood releasing endless sequels (which Saw movie are we on now?) with none of the innovation of the predecessor; I see the gaming industry going the same way. Notable exceptions notwithstanding, the game industry is sterile. For every Guitar Hero and Halo out today, there are dozens of Sonic Unleasheds and Blood in the Sands.

Oh. And for the best night in: check out Zero Punctuation. The man is a general hotbed of hilarity.

Incidentally, I was a massive Morrowind player for a good few years. If you trace back Oblivion to its roots, the game is over fifteen years old and survives largely in the same form. Oblivion is not a new game. It's very good, but it's a development of an old concept. Arena and Daggerfall were great (I played Daggerfall as a kid - scared the lights out of me, as did Doom (I was five and playing Doom, mind)) Morrowind ranks as second on my favourite games of all-time list, but Oblivion is nothing new. So sorry, that argument doesn't hold. Neither does GTA IV. Expansion of a decade-old concept. Halo - like I've said - is a very good Half Life-inspired shooter, but rooted in the nineties and Dead Rising is a direct homage to the George Romero zombie flicks - which date back to 1968! The only 'modern' game you've cited there is Gears of War - which is one of the better modern series. But sorry, you're just not getting your facts straight. The games you're praising there as 'modern' are in fact at least a decade old - with the one exception. The only really 'great' new games I've seen in the last five years have been Guitar Hero and Braid - both of which have utterly original concepts. Other than that? All treading old ground.
 
This is where I disagree.

Modern games are great as technological showcases - but I'm one to stand up and say whatever happened to the fun? Advanced graphics and immersive environments are great, but sometimes when you have sixteen buttons of control and a huge character map to remember; I just honestly wish for the days of Super Mario with two buttons and a pad. Those games were fun. Then suddenly, around about 1997 (I would've been about nine) games started getting more and more 'serious' and the fun element was lost. Just occasionally I come across a game that's really great and fun and most of the time I'll find that these are the simplest games of all. 'Braid' (on Xbox) is a great example of this. A simple concept that actually is a lot of fun.

Most games today are all flash and no trousers. They suck you in with (amazing, it has to be said) graphics, but underneath those graphics, the gameplay often outright sucks. It's all about flash with no bang. That's not true of all games, absolutely not - and there were rotten games in the 80's too - some really rotten ones, but generally the substance of mainstream gaming has been lost with this technical obsession. Just because it is possible for all this to be put into games doesn't mean it should. Hell, Space Invaders is a simple concept but play it for long enough and the sheer fun of it will suck you in. Same goes for PacMan, same goes for Tetris, same goes for Prince of Persia and the same goes for Doom, Lemmings and the same even goes for The Lost Vikings (which I was obsessed with as a kid - I spent a year trying to crack one level!).

I love the original Half Life series of games (Half Life is my favourite game ever - with Half Life 2 being somewhere nearby) but in my opinion this is where the gaming industry started going wrong. Everybody was out to create the 'new' Half Life and got the idea horrendously wrong - focusing on the wrong elements like the (then groundbreaking) graphics engine and the flashier stuff. The fun was in the gameplay and the challenge. I see no challenge in a game where you can get shot at, go and suck your thumb in the corner for five minutes and then recover, rather than doing it old-school and battling your way through a hoarde with only one point of health remaining. Halo - to me - has done the same thing with trying to copy Half Life, but getting some of the more essential elements right and whilst I can't pretend to be a fan of the series, when a game of actual substance arrives, it rightly gets lauded in praise.

There's just far too much 'me too!' gaming out there. The rubbish sells. Like Hollywood releasing endless sequels (which Saw movie are we on now?) with none of the innovation of the predecessor; I see the gaming industry going the same way. Notable exceptions notwithstanding, the game industry is sterile. For every Guitar Hero and Halo out today, there are dozens of Sonic Unleasheds and Blood in the Sands.

Oh. And for the best night in: check out Zero Punctuation. The man is a general hotbed of hilarity.

Incidentally, I was a massive Morrowind player for a good few years. If you trace back Oblivion to its roots, the game is over fifteen years old and survives largely in the same form. Oblivion is not a new game. It's very good, but it's a development of an old concept. Arena and Daggerfall were great (I played Daggerfall as a kid - scared the lights out of me, as did Doom (I was five and playing Doom, mind)) Morrowind ranks as second on my favourite games of all-time list, but Oblivion is nothing new. So sorry, that argument doesn't hold. Neither does GTA IV. Expansion of a decade-old concept. Halo - like I've said - is a very good Half Life-inspired shooter, but rooted in the nineties and Dead Rising is a direct homage to the George Romero zombie flicks - which date back to 1968! The only 'modern' game you've cited there is Gears of War - which is one of the better modern series. But sorry, you're just not getting your facts straight. The games you're praising there as 'modern' are in fact at least a decade old - with the one exception. The only really 'great' new games I've seen in the last five years have been Guitar Hero and Braid - both of which have utterly original concepts. Other than that? All treading old ground.

Just because games are "treading old ground" it doesn't make them worse than their predecessors, yes the some of the ideas may be essentially the same but the content of the game differs greatly (with the exception of ww2 and1 games). Take Mass Effect for example, you actually decide what you do, you can end up in many different positions at the end of the game, you can kill certian characters, also making the storyline different.
Old school games (tetris, pacman ect) don't even have a storyline at all, thats what makes them (in one aspect) inferior to madern games.I love Pacman, supermario, warrio, luxor, but they are just good for some mindless fun once in a while. They lack the depth that most modern games have got. If you play Mass Effect all the way through (which I reccomend you do) you will see that the level games are at today are amazing. You actually feel sorry for the people that die (I know thats sad, but a lot of other people think that aswell). That is why I would take modern games over old games any day.

Have you ever played an Xbox live or PS3 network game? That is a serious thrill, playing (in most cases killing) "real" people from around the world. It really gets your heart rate going sometimes, when you pull off a massive kill streak. Do old games have this? I don't think so, you can have a few players at once, but not the thousands upon thousands of people that play Xbox live and PS3 network. There is yet another reason why modern games are better.

Also, have you seen the graphics on some of the old games, about 3 pixels (or whatever the termanology is) to someones face. Yes, sometimes the simple things are better but that is another reason to love modern games. You can immerse yourself in a game and feel like your standing right next to them or actually being that person.

So what have we got so far, better, non linear storylines, massive multiplayer capabillities (the PC is the master if MMORPGS) and better graphics. I would say, overall, modern games have outdone the oldies by a mile.
 
Graphics to me are irrelevant. It's all about gameplay. Gameplay is the way forward - not flashy graphics.

And open storylines are nothing new either, 'Elite' had this feature and it was released in 1984 (or earlier) I know this, I have it on the BBC Micro (I also have a BBC Micro). I was an avid PC gamer for years - FPS mainly (and Jedi Knight II) so I know and appreciate online gaming, and yeah, I'll agree - that extends the life of many games to the point where you're playing it for years. StarCraft had this feature in 1998 and is STILL played. Same goes for CounterStrike and that is THE game for many online PC gamers. So the online feature is nothing new, it's just near-enough ubiquitous now.

What I've effectively just said is the same as what I said earlier. These concepts are nothing new, all that's changed is the hardware. The inventiveness hasn't gotten any further and the ideas are old. Open-ended play? The early 80's, expanded with Arena in 1993 (IIRC). Online? Old concept, just more common now. Graphics? To me, utterly irrelevant. So really - new games aren't any 'better' - they're still re-treading old ground with more flash. Nothing for me there I'm afraid.

Play Braid. It's awesome.
 
Have you ever played an Xbox live or PS3 network game? That is a serious thrill, playing (in most cases killing) "real" people from around the world. It really gets your heart rate going sometimes, when you pull off a massive kill streak. Do old games have this? I don't think so, you can have a few players at once, but not the thousands upon thousands of people that play Xbox live and PS3 network. There is yet another reason why modern games are better.

I think it's quite funny how people bitch on about the XBOX live and PS3 live as if it's the most amazing new thing ever when PC gamers have been doing it for years. In fact everyone on the consoles was taken in by the mulitplayer version of GTA IV when in actual fact PC gamers have actually made their own online multiplayer versions of previous GTA games since i think the first one.
 
Half Life on Hard.

Prince of Persia? Ever played it? Level 1 is a challenge and it gets harder with the one hour time limit. Please, don't insult your own intelligence by calling old-school gamers idiots.

PWNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
gaming vs drumming?!?!

well Drumming for the win, but after 9 pm out of courtesy for the neighbors i stop drumming and then I generally hit the interwebz (drummerworld) and if i`m still awake I`ll sometimes play on my 360. I just don`t feel like my day is productive if I`m on my xbox all day. unless I have a friend over which is fun every now and then. I`d rather spend several hours a day leveling up real skills (drumming) instead of how well my mage can cast spells. lol

-Jonathan
 
well Drumming for the win, but after 9 pm out of courtesy for the neighbors i stop drumming and then I generally hit the interwebz (drummerworld) and if i`m still awake I`ll sometimes play on my 360. I just don`t feel like my day is productive if I`m on my xbox all day. unless I have a friend over which is fun every now and then. I`d rather spend several hours a day leveling up real skills (drumming) instead of how well my mage can cast spells. lol

-Jonathan

Ha, very well put, very well put indeed, and is very true.
 
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