hi Tom.
I'm afraid you seem to be putting together too issues here, god mode and
unrealism.
take a game series like mega man, which has imho some of the best balanced
and best designed weapons of an imaginary game series.
In the Mega man x games, hidden in each stage was a heart tank which
extended x's life bar, and allowed him to carry more life, to the point that
if you got all 8, you'd have twice as much energy.
You could also find subtanks, which you could keep and which could hold more
energy so that when you activated them they restored you to full
health, ---- though you could only have four.
then, you got the 8 boss weapons. then, you get x's armour power ups which
let you do things like temporarily hover in mid air, charge up your weapons
to produce more powerful shots, or help you find items with a radar system.
Yet, inspite of all these items, even if you have all of them, the game is
stil! hard, due to the speed, clever placement, and difficulty of enemy
attacks.
This is a game which gives you man unique itmes which in another series
would be like a godmode, yet which aren't due to the general difficulty of
the game.
for instance, you might have double health with all heart tanks, and four
bonus health restores waiting with the subt tanks, but one hit of sigma's
beam sabre and you can kiss good bye to a third of your health.
And bare in mind you don't just have to fight sigma alone, first he sticks
his robotic wolf velgwader on you, then you fight him, then his head
attaches to a large wolf battle body which you then have to destroy as well.
so in this case, the instantly acting restoring energy energy tanks are
actually all part of the stratogy, ---- do you use one when fighting sigma's
wolf? do you save them for later? If they functioned more realistically,
releasing health over time, they simply would be of no use in that fight.
likewise, sinse Mega man x has no close range weapons, all weapons fire out
of his arm cannon. Some may not fire too far, some indeed, ---- like the
silk shot in mmx2 may be very close range, but all have a minimum range
sinse they all come out of his gun.
One gun, firing all these weapons, ---- indeed the idea of the hole weapon
copy system in the first place, is pretty ludicrous when considdered in the
light of realistic weaponry.
but in the context of the mega man series, put against the physics and
mechanics of each boss and the stage design, it works perfectly well and
fits in with the general style of the game.
to take another example. the other day I was playing marrio 2 and fighting
the boss birdo (and before any confusion results, I mean the traditional
marrio 2 where you can sellect from marrio, tode princess or luiji and kill
monsters by chucking stuff at them, not the direct sequal to marrio bross
originally only released in japan).
Anyway, for those who don't know, birdo is a large pink creature who
repeatedly spits eggs at you which fly along a vertical plane and go off
screen.
to defeat her you need to jump on an egg, pick it up in midair and chuck it
back at her.
later on in the game, this becomes harder sinse Birdo starts chucking
fireballs, or fighting you over pits, or firing eggs extremely fast.
Realistic? ---- hell no! I can't think of one real world creature who has an
infinite supply of it's own eggs to chuck at you, let alone firebreath.
However, in the context of marrio 2, with it's rockit ships that you can
pull out of the ground, it's walking bombs and mad explosive mice, ---- it's
a great addition.
I'd personally say rather than realism, games need to have a self-consistant
world and structure independent to that game, and balanced within that
games' world according to difficulty and consistant item rules.
for instance in marrio 2, some bombs walk around, while others you can pick
up, but all will explode the same way and will damage either you or an enemy
if your close.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
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