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Comments
I've been playing Rose and Carmellia for the past hour or so. Holy shit, as cathartic as this game is, it gets me salty like nothing else.
The fact that Dark Souls isn't The Witcher is its most glaring failing. Why developers continue to make this mistake is beyond me.
I also have good memories of Holy Magic Century, somehow.
Bastion Souls.
Dark Witcher
the perfect Alex game
all swords, all the time
Just finished Silent Hill 3 for what I think is the fifth time. It amazes me that it can still unnerve me and make me jump.
Also Heather is my favorite SH protagonist, even if she isn't the deepest.
There should be a device in the future that allows you to splice different video games into one, seamlessly.
Nothing good would come of that. It'd be like splicing books or films into one-another.
Nevertheless, Alex not liking or finishing Bastion means that he is a heretic.
And we should all shun him.
SHUN THE NONBELIEVER
I still don't like Jude's VA. I'm getting used to Milla's, though she sounds somewhat flat.
In other news, FFX-2 will be included in the PS3 version of the FFX remake and will be getting a seperate Vita release. I might actually get a Vita now.
Tales of Graces F had really weird voice acting. The main party characters ranged from "good" to "very damn good" (Hubert's voice actor is some kind of amazing individual, I expect), with some side characters being of similar quality, with the rest being a large sea of awful. Another strange thing is that they either hired someone pretty green for Richard, or gave the guy awful voice direction. For such an important character, you think they might've ensured he was well-expressed vocally.
Tales of Symphonia was also pretty odd like that, except in that case, not even the main party was always particularly good. Tales of Graces F, at least, has a bit more believable character in the voice work. It might also be that the voice work in Graces isn't limited to cutscenes, but also occurs in the skits, allowing a degree of interpretation that allows the voice actors to apply some creativity.
I actually liked Symphonia's voice acting for the most part. Partly because Cam Clarke and Jennifer Hale are great.
I have no idea how JRPG battles work anymore.
Tales has always used a real time system. Although it varies from game to game, with certain design teams having certain styles. (See: The CC system in the Team Destiny games.)
The general gist of it, though, is that you're basically playing a reasonably simple fighting game with moves keybound as you like (to an extent). Plus you can press a button that pauses the battle and opens up a standard RPG menu, where you can select spells, items and whatnot to use for the characters you're not directly controlling. Said characters will act according to their AI if you don't give them any commands, the behaviour of which can be customised.
The nitty-gritty details change from game to game, but you're always playing a mashup of JRPG and fighting game. If only the Tales games would take a break from being so hyper-linear, they'd be in a league of their own.
That's pretty cool.
I should probably look into it.
It's Alex. Of course he's serious. (No he isn't)
That said, I loved Bastion but I totally understand where Alex is coming from. At the same time, I feel that Bastion is great in pretty much every single way that Shadow of the Colossus is, so I kinda disagree with him about it being a weak game because it doesn't reinvent the wheel or whatever.
I dunno man. I feel that you could easily splice different movies into something new entirely and come on top. Hell, reality TV's entirely based around that.
And even if you consider that an irrelevant example, I have two words for you: Superman II.
Bastion seemed interesting when I played it, though I put it down (intending to pick it back up) after I got that first achievement (I think the first two are effectively the same FWIW) for the end-of-year 2011 Steam sales event.
Haven't picked it up since. It's still somewhere on my to-play list.
Edit: Hmm, it's not. I should probably put it there...
So the other Walking Dead game is out, and it's as terrible as everyone expected.
Most hilarious thing I've heard about it: cutscenes in the 360 version have a mouse cursor visible.
Relevant:
So, it turns out that that Deus Ex port I mentioned is revamping the boss fights so it isn't a typical arena boss fight that doesn't gel with the rest of the game.
This actually makes me want to buy it.
Why Console Specs Don’t Matter
You could, potentially, but it requires much more than slamming together stuff from multiple, independently good sources. This is an even bigger issue in video games because of how critical it is that the individual game systems work together and form a cohesive whole. A good example is in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's got that cover-shooter thing going on, but the cover button doubles as a stealth button that allows you to hind behind objects. Given that the optimal solutions to your problems usually involves at least a little bit of stealth, it's a good way to simply the game in terms of the controller as a medium. The splicing of mechanics is, in itself, a solution to a problem.
Perhaps the best example of mixed mechanics used to good effect is in Chrono Trigger, though. Like in most SNES JRPGs, your characters have normal attacks and special attacks ("techniques"), but characters can also combine their turns for special special attacks called dual techniques (or triple techniques in some cases). This reinforces the theme of unity that runs throughout the entire game, which is a nice touch, but the cleverness of the combat system really comes into focus considering the way turn order is resolved. Chrono Trigger uses the ATB system, which was new at the time. If you've forgotten, the ATB system shows you how close a character is to having their turn by filling up a bar in real time. Which is especially clever given that one of the major themes of Chrono Trigger is time, and there's a real to wait for turns to match up rather than just letting your attacks rip -- the aforementioned dual techniques.
So Chrono Trigger uses a mixture of mechanincs (one of which was previously established in Final Fantasy) to reinforce the themes of its story -- unity and time. You have to harness both of those elements to succeed mechanically, which I feel is a subtle but important element of its long lasting success.
The only thing that Chrono Trigger needed was a way to move your character around.
I haven't played Chrono Trigger but... probably not. Moving around multiple characters in real time sounds annoying and micromangement-y. Unless it was something like Grandia where characters did move around and position was important, but you didn't control your characters' position directly (I think they moved around randomly unless they were doing an attack where they need to be near the enemy).
First, it's turn-based.
Second, position is important; some of your attacks are location-based and enemies get to move around as well. They also get to move you around, and have some location-based attacks.
Your character, if not moved by enemies, revert to the same location after attacking, though sometimes they will move to position themselves automatically upon entering certain battles.
I'm talking about a little movement time along with a smooth, hitbox-based simple tactical system for things like area magic. And regular attacks if you really want.
ATB isn't really turn-based. Well it is I guess but different.
And anyway, if that's the case then I don't really see why you need to be able to explicitly move at all. I guess it like... could matter but if it's how I imagine it is then it's probably unnecessary complexity for not really a whole lot of benefit.
Also "I'm talking about a little movement time " just makes me think of Quest 64 which isn't really a good thing to be compared to. Alternatively, Eternal Sonata although that's probably different from what you're thinking and still not really a very good game.
Radiant Historia's battle system did the "Turn Based/Position Based" idea pretty well.
Well it could make for a bit more gameplay depth from things like how you position yourself when you enter battle, and such.
Related: You should be able to target ground, with area-targetting attacks. So you can hit those two enemies with one Napalm spell that you can't by just targetting each of them individually.
And it's active-time and turn-based; when the bar fills up, you can take a turn. I guess it's a middle ground between fully turn-based and fully action-based.
Heh. I think the part that jumped out at me in the Extra Credits video was when they briefly mentioned that the PS3 was slightly more powerful than X360, but you don't notice because their API sucks so badly that most developers can't crank it right.
It's totally true. The PS3 API is a drunken labyrinthine mess, and their SDK is...unhelpful, to be charitable. Working on 360 was like a choreographed dance in comparison.
Well
yeah
that's editing 101.