POO: has peter molyneux ever made a good game?

so Fable got a lot of press for having the good/evil alignment system, which would affect the character's physical appearance and NPC's reactions to the character. but obviously alignments were used long before Fable, in videogames and D&D and the like. so why did he get a bunch of credit for that? for adding the physical appearance change aspect of it? that's it?

he didn't work on theme hospital?

he was "consultant" apparently, which could mean anything, but prob suggests minimal involvement

so Fable got a lot of press for having the good/evil alignment system, which would affect the character's physical appearance and NPC's reactions to the character. but obviously alignments were used long before Fable, in videogames and D&D and the like. so why did he get a bunch of credit for that?

never played Fable but the thing about alignments reminded me of how the Ultima games had made a big deal of the concept that NPCs would treat you differently if your play style did not embody the Virtues, or according to which virtues you'd practised more (NB the Ultima games I had most time for were the Ultima Underworlds, where the whole virtue thing was more or less ignored, so I don't know how much difference it actually made)

anyway I remain ILX's biggest Populous stan and will vote for that obv, though I concede it has flaws, including the control system

I'd be curious to know how much the tiny play area in Powermonger was due to technical restrictions and how much was due to... whatever the other option is

my brother and i both tried to go back to dungeon keeper recently. i found the controls in 2015 to be unbearable and unplayable but he went through the entire thing again. it's funny how certain ways of playing games + UI's make sense for the time but you go back to them and you've just become too accustomed to modern presentations of game to even enjoy it w/out getting a headache.

I had a CD with Populous II and Powermonger on it, but I couldn't get into either of them. P2 was one of those "look at all the shit we put in here!" things without much challenge. I didn't understand what was going on in Powermonger.

The demo for Dungeon Keeper was fun.

I haven't played his modern games.

Is there anything in the RTS continuum that has controls that feel tactilely good? is it a necessary failure of the genre?

thinking of pro Starcraft players and the RSI nightmare of the way they manipulate the keyboard

but like MOBAs in 2016 seem like they have zero feel to them. zero ~friction~

i think part of my hatred for Molyneux belongs within the context of a broader dislike of RTS games now you come to mention it

dungeon keeper 9/10
populous 8/10
fable 7/10

i probably played theme park more than any 2 of these games put together but reflecting back now it was just compulsion. i think i actually hated it.

one day you will look back and realize you felt the same way about those three games. one day. i promise u

I enjoyed Godus. The new one (The Trail) not so much, but that game is v smart about when to show ads.

i watched a 4-part documentary on this man in an effort to understand all the hate that gets thrown his way. i'm still confused. it seems to boil down to a handful of features that were promised and cut out of games. the prolonged nerd rage against him is baffling.

funny that this thread came up today, i have got stuck in my head that i really want to play mega lo mania.

no i dont think so

i played it like half of yesterday :/

what version? i loved the amiga (or poss c64) version but hard to find an easy-to-use emulator for it. pc version was too ugly and didn't fit my memories

pc version, just because easier. it is ugly.

I started playing the first Fable a couple of years ago... Of course at this point it's hard to see what (if anything) was originally so revolutionary about it, but it has pretty good controls and a fun battle system, a cool story, characters that don't feel like fantasy cliches, and great-looking visuals that are colourful and cartoony (in a good way) and not in the "reality is grey and brown" mode that more recent action RPGs seem to favour. It basically comes closer than any other games that I've played in capturing that magical feeling I got from the 1990s Legend of Zelda games.

As for the whole alignment thing, even Fable hardly pioneered it, the simple but effective way it's presented does work remarkably well. And it feels that choosing the "evil" option is often made into a more tempting and sensible alternative than in some other games, where choosing the "good" path is often too easy and too obvious (unless you deliberately want to play an asshole).