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Comments
What's Monster Monpiece?
Monster Monpiece is a card game RPG like Z/X but with the added element of the cards powering up when you undress your cards (who all happen to be monster girls).
PEGI still gave it a 12+ though.
And rubbing the screen to level up the characters.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/20/introducing-vitas-new-card-battling-jrpg-monster-monpiece
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate coming soon, including to North America in 2015.
Meanwhile, in MH3U, I just unlocked high-rank quests. On a scale of 1 to "look for the nearest 3DS repair service ASAP", how hard are they going to be?
So GOG.com is doing a time machine sale.
If System Shock 2 or Deus Ex appear on the sale, then prepare for a LONG wait.
Lance and Gunlance: Using the dodge button dodges in the opposite direction of movement.
All other weapons: Using the dodge button dodges in the same direction of movement.
o<-<
I have found a comic that I figured I'd rather post in here than in Images:
Fucking. Awesome.
SORRY NOTHING
I lol'd at Pepsi.
Been playing Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Antasma has the most intimidating attacks (appearance-wise) since N64 Bowser (King Boo in Dark Moon is a runner-up). How does being dragged into the pit, falling into floating gears in a dream within a dream, sleeping forever sound? Or being trapped by a ring of dark energy mines circling around you as you run for your life, ending with them closing in for a massive shadow explosion?
Though N64 Bowser blanketing the entire field in flames or altering the very battlefield itself was pretty frightening back in the day, and still looks awesome even if the battle itself isn't that hard nowadays and N64 graphics have aged badly. I mean, his motif even references Freddy Krueger. Back to Dream Team, it does restore some of that fearsomeness that had been dimished with Bowser becoming a brutish oaf.
I'm surprised I haven't tried more survival-horror games. The actual kind, not third-person shooters in disguise.
@RedEyedAbyss:
ZombiU is an excellent survival horror game if you have a Wii U, mainly because it actually remembers the "survival" part. Nothing makes you want to survive better than permanent character death.
what the FUCK just happened
http://zeboyd.com/2013/09/10/why-games-like-the-wonderful-101-are-a-poor-fit-for-the-gaming-press/
This article's an interesting read. For that matter, the whole blog contains a number of interesting articles about the game industry, even if you're not a fan of any of Zeboyd's games. Hat-tip to @Monsoon for pointing me to this.
This article also highlights different styles of gaming, which leads me to a few interesting observations:
First, the point of the blog post is that reviewers are probably best with "experience" games, or mechanics-focused games that do well with leading the player along and gradually teaching the mechanics.
Second, I've noticed that there's a lot of gamers who are really interested in games' mechanics. More so than me at least; I know a lot of people can get really excited about high scores or beating challenge levels/bosses or putting together wicked cool combos. Whereas for me, I'm usually more interested in how the mechanics form part of the narrative (a combination of mechanics, story and script, visual presentation, and music (if any)) -- for example, I think that some bosses ought to be easily while others ought to be frustrating and difficult, as justified by the narrative. There are some games, though, for which I do seem to be more mechanically than narratively interested in them; Magic the Gathering is one.
I don't yet know what makes me focus more on narrative or mechanics. Maybe it's theinitial presentation of the game. Which one's easier to understand. MtG lore seems to be a complicated ton of backstory but the mechanics are intuitive. In stark contrast, I think that if not for the script, story, art, and music of Fortune Summoners, I would probably have put that game down very quickly, because I completely suck at its gameplay. (I play Sana. AI gets to be Arche the Pwn Machine.)
It's also interesting that, at least for me, narrative enjoyment and mechanical enjoyment are two noticeably different things. Narrative enjoyment gives me those deeply emotional feels that make me feel like I really enjoyed something, while mechanical enjoyment rarely gives me that feeling of fulfillment. If anything, mechanics can give me a sense of satisfaction -- of accomplishing a goal, which I may have put in lots of hard work planning and executing. But it's still noticeably different. And I seem to have a higher appreciation for those emotional feels than that execution satisfaction, which probably informs my choice of games. (Maybe. Not sure if I actually think that far in picking a game...maybe it informs whether I keep playing a game.)
Another interesting post: http://zeboyd.com/2013/07/01/lessons-from-our-previous-rpgs-and-their-impact-on-cosmic-star-heroines-design/
Replying to one of the key points in this post:
At the risk of sounding a little disdainful (which I don't mean to be since the rest of the commentary on this blog is really meaningful), I'm surprised that "story is important" is a "lesson". Maybe this has to do with my perception/belief that the JRPG is a genre where story ought to be most important aspect, with gameplay being something that serves the story. Or maybe this has to do with my being more of a narrative videogamer than a mechanical videogamer (as I pointed out above). To be fair to the poster here, he/she does say that for him/her, "story is usually a nice extra and not the main attraction". But my ideas for how I would design an RPG is to come up with plot concepts and setting concepts and key events and connecting them logically, and then using that to inform game design -- making the players' experience with the mechanics mirror the characters' experience with their circumstances -- rather having than mechanical or other non-narrative features inform the design of a story.
Incidentally, I think this might have to do with a general sense of "not taking plot/story seriously" that I don't really like with some western RPG releases. Yeah, there are some RPG Maker works take it seriously but do so badly, but there's right ways to do a story focus, versus avoiding it altogether. And I feel like part of the retro RPG mini-boom lately has been based on making folly/parody/satire of traditional JRPGs and their tropes, rather than trying to take (what I see as) the strength of the medium -- that being narrative/story -- and pushing that further and better.
(I have a slight hunch, based on my experiences, that japanese indie JRPGs are more likely to be story-focused than western indie JRPGs. Dunno why.)
That said, I haven't personally designed a game before, so maybe I'm hitting some other pitfalls that using my design idea.
Also, yet another interesting post but I don't have enough to make a big triple-posting reply to it so I'll just leave it here: http://zeboyd.com/2013/06/24/why-i-dont-think-our-next-game-will-have-a-normal-difficulty-setting/
These are some interesting thoughts, and I'd definitely enjoy having the option to independently adjust multiple aspects of the game's challenge. As someone who hasn't designed a game yet, I don't know how hard it is to playtest all these scenarios, but if this is possible it might be ideal.
Well, yes. That's how it should be. As a game designer, the players' enjoyment is your responsibility, not theirs. This is the entire point of designing a game in the first place as opposed to just letting the player imagine one.
Yeah. I usually default to "normal" as "this is probably how the game was intended to be". Only a few times have I been dissatisfied with the result:
* Fortune Summoners (too hard for me)
* An Untitled Story (too hard for me)
* Star Fox 2 (too easy; expert mode was the best; keep in mind this game wasn't even ever officially released)
"for example, I think that some bosses ought to be easily while others ought to be frustrating and difficult, as justified by the narrative."
There is one fundamental problem with that; the capacity of gamers to outsmart the programmer. What seems difficult to you may end up being trivialized by players finding an exploit in the AI or similar depending on the genre. And deliberately making a difficult or easy boss usually resorts to cheap design as opposed to simply just making an obstacle that can be easy or hard depending on player ingenuity. It's essentially a form of railroading which takes away what makes games unique.
When I see "story is important", I interpret it as not trivializing its role in games, not so much that games should be more story-focused. But then again, you seem to be arguing from an RPG perspective. One of the major examples that comes to mind is Metroid Prime vs Other M. One primarily uses its setting as the vehicle to deliver its story, the other uses a linear narrative. Metroid Prime's story despite being more understated is regarded as much better, and it all comes down to how the story is told rather than how much focus is put on it. Though it also depends on how you define "narrative"; the original Alien movie was similarly more setting focused than character or plot focused.
As an aside, I do feel like story needs to be taken more seriously if video games are ever going to get more respect, but that's not going to happen if they remain trapped in adolescent male power fantasies (R.I.P. survival-horror).
That's partly why I was trying to use the term "narrative" rather than just plain "story" -- you can have a narrative without explicitly telling a story or specifying some sequence of events.
Anyway, really cool idea: replace Super Metroid's Lower Norfair and (specifically) Ridley battle themes with Metroid Prime's Magmoor Caverns and Meta-Ridley themes. Not possible on cartridge but can be done by muting music for those two points and then adding background music post-recording.
Tried to play Danganronpa PSP version with fan patch, since I don't have a Vita and thus can't buy the export.
PSP version: Wrangle with my PSP-1000's horrendously out-of-calibration nub.
PPSSPP: Game freezes when I try to save.
So instead I'll just burn myself a copy of Ridge Racer Type 4 and get on that.
...which didn't work. Burning a copy onto a CD-R and using the swap trick doesn't work unlike with my imports and some bootlegs, and it's easier to emulate a PlayStation 4 than to set up ePSXe. I was fine finding the necessary files for ePSXe, but configuring controllers is impossible due to a bug and I just gave up right then and there.
This seems like a very apt description of non-indie JRPGs.
And actually, I'm not sure how much that even applies to the Western indie RPG scene, given that it's dominated by RPG Maker games and nearly every RPG Maker game uses similar mechanics.
The sad truth is, at this point, the best way to emulate the Playstation is on the Ouya (by sideloading the Android version of ePSXe, not by using FPSe, because FPSe is shit).
I once rented this game, as a kid.
The controls are intuitive. The premise is not.
Okay, Kevin locking up the family valuables (such as money and candelabra) in the safe makes sense.
Kevin locking up his toys in the safe makes less sense.
Kevin locking up the pets in the safe makes even less sense.
Most hilariously, everything -- even the pets -- makes that loud "KUNK" noise when they drop down the safe deposit shaft. Somewhat disturbingly, the pets stop moving once they pile down there. I don't have to explain that last one.
That looks like a profoundly unfun game.
Also for a long while I thought Kevin had a real gun. That would have made everything in the movie easier.
It was reasonably fun for about two levels or so. Then it got tedious.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/253750/
Ikaruga release date on Steam: 18 Feb 2014
YES!!
whoo i can't wait to hear 1 CHAIN 1 CHAIN 1 CHAIN ad infinitum on my laptop
and occasionally, 2 CHAIN