Aren't all computer games the same?

[cracauer@]

I should have added on to my question. Skills at doing what? Running between rooms and shooting objects? Which is my question. Aren't they all the same? Haven't we seen this movie before?

Well, now it depends on your definition of shoot-em-up games. If you make it narrow enough you will of course see more similarities.

If you are actually playing the differences are obvious. Just the specific weapons are one.

 

[Espionage724]

I should have added on to my question. Skills at doing what? Running between rooms and shooting objects? Which is my question. Aren't they all the same? Haven't we seen this movie before?

Hand-eye coordination and reaction-time for stuff like:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivip0sNnyhM&t=6s


It's also useful for OS and hardware testing:

• Low-latency checks (Xorg vs Wayland)
• Audio/video sync (anything "off" is immediately noticeable)
• Input handling checks (floaty-feel vs 1:1 connected)
• Graphics API checks with above (OpenGL vs DirectX vs Vulkan)
• Cross-OS checks (above on Windows vs Linux/FreeBSD Wine; FreeBSD handles it good)
• Oddity checks (disconnecting the USB drawing tablet after osu! used to crash GNOME on Wayland )
• Wayland sessions wouldn't allow true fullscreen resolution switching (above would stretch to native res and mess-up full-area tablet conditions; osu!'s circle area is 4:3 and I did that vid native 1024x768 on a 4K screen but the tablet area shrinks at widescreen res)
• I can do that with a mouse too (checks for accel vs flat and high-Hz mice; carries-over to shooters, and general OS UX interactions

That carries-over to VR (Oculus runtime vs SteamVR, inside-out vs sensor-tracked for the 1:1 feel vs controllers predictively floating to new locations)

View: https://youtu.be/Fr3h2Oh1q-0?si=2gV4Y2ht8kQgcjBX&t=181

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Any OS/hardware that can handle that sort of stuff without stuttering can probably handle anything! And having the low-latency experience from music games allows knowing what to look for for good-conditions with an OS and how to configure it (why I'm not the biggest fan of higher-latency abstraction like Wayland/libinput and running through Flatpak; everything matters including the root filesystem for shader cache/texture loading)

If OS/software conditions are good, it also allows getting right into unique stuff (Ghetto Voltex bootleg SDVX)

 

[bgavin]

I prefer the Infocom (zork) games.

 

[SirDice]

A number of people here are into shoot 'em up computer games.

What you are describing is not a shmup.

You get placed into a battle zone of some kind, you run around trying to find bad guys, you shoot bad guys and avoid getting shot. And that's it. The only difference among games is the look of the battle zone.

These are arena shooters

Are all arena shooters similar, or are all platformers similar? Yes, that's basically the point of the characterization, you look for commonality and group them by their common characteristics.