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Comments
ME is pretty iffy plotwise, but I think it has great characters, particularly Tali, Garrus, and Thane.
As much of a problem I have that entire cutscene of kung fu, it was pretty awesome to see Thane again from an action-movie-fist-pump standpoint.
Also, I'll say this for ME. It's very good at making me -want- to choose renegade options.
YARR HARR HARR HARR HARR
KIRBY'S GETT'N AN ANNIVERSARY GAME
Beat Lich in my FFI Four White Mages run. Now for some sequence breaking!
Speaking of a "Four White Mages run", I think it's interesting how some gamers add additional rules for themselves within games. Pokemon strikes me as the most obvious example in terms of video gaming, but it's essentially an extension of the house rule concept from tabletop games. It's pretty cool in terms of video games especially, though, because it requires players to "extract" the game from its medium and modify it psychologically. I don't think I've actually ever done this apart from theming (like not using magical options in games that provide them), but it's very interesting to observe, even from a distance.
Care to provide any commentary on the "why" of this and what led you to make that choice? Everyone's contributions are welcome.
Often, it's done because the game could use additional challenge- like, one thinks that the game is too easy, and thus wants to make it harder, or they are skilled enough to finish the game, so they wish additional challenges upon themselves (See: Running any Touhou game without dying or bombing.)
Other times, especially in blank-slate games like Pokemon and many strategy games, it's done to further the story one is creating in their head.
It's also done when you're so good at a game that it gets really really boring, and you want to prove that you're still the best.
@Eelektross.
I hope it's more like Metroid Prime Trilogy and less like Super Mario Anniversary Collection
For example, Zelda has Three-heart playthroughs(or in the case of Skyward Sword, six hearts), which are done by dedicated fans who want a bigger challenge out of the games. When the games have some sort of hard mode(like Master Quest mode on OOT 3DS and Hero Mode), it becomes an even bigger challenge for them.
Nuzlocke nuzlocke nuzlocke!
RE: ME3 debate.
Also, thoughts on this, Alex?
That's less a Touhou thing and more an every game ever thing.
Not in a game with multiple lives, like Mario.
I used Touhou because it's really difficult to do in that game.
malk don't look at the name of the videoooo
This video essentially sums up my major problems with the theory, and gave me a bunch of stuff to think about. (Primarily, I should watch Star Trek.)
so, bluh, triplepost because i swear i will watch all of this guy's videos before I go to bed because he states his points in a way that I can understand them. It's like if Alex talked instead of typed and had an engaging voice and used little words that I can understand. wait. alex, tell me the truth: are you the guy who makes these videos and/or are you the guy who listens to them?
So, the video I just watched is about Dark Souls. In the first three minutes of the video, he explained a new concept to me; the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. Now, aside from the hilarity inherent in trying to pronounce this, this is a concept that I've always almost understood. It's the sort of thing that you half-realize, but you can't quite get it together in your head.
Basically, Gesamtkunstwerk means 'All the pieces of the media you are currently experiencing fit together to create an experience that is greater than the sum of its' parts.' I've always figured that- music helps to set the scenes in movies, for example, and the pictures help me to see what's going on. Without the music and the videos, movies would suck.
What the video pointed out to me, though, is that games have an additional element to them; gameplay. And this element is something unique to the medium, and is what differentiates it.
This was hard for me to figure out, by the way, because I've never thought of all the various components of media as separate. But the way I figured it was, gameplay is like writing. It's something that no other genre really has. Oh, sure, other media has dialogue, and little notes you can read, and stuff. But no other medium has you piece together a scene through the artful use of simile and metaphor, and so on, so forth. In the same way, no other media has direct audience input, and so on.
The direct player input can mean a lot. For example, within a movie, you can be shown a room, and that room sets a stagepiece- but in a videogame, you can interact with that room by looking around.
Now, does this really mean all that much? Well, apart from costing artists a lot extra in having to draw a lot, it doesn't really mean all that much. It's just an expression of how games differ from other forms of media, and the potential that that could have.
Now, the video itself talked about Dark Souls, and how the gameplay supports the concept that you are just kind of a guy trapped in a world that doesn't really give a shit about you and you just kinda have to survive so you can kill more shit so you can survive for a bit longer and kill some more shit so you can survive even longer.
So, don't get me wrong; I still stand behind my earlier opinion that Dark Souls isn't that great, although it is a great game. It doesn't have much of a story to support it, which is a shame, if only because that means that there is a lot of narrative lacking that could be used to create a greater emotional investment within the game. And the combat is kind of unnecessarily bullshit, even if that does support the overall experience.
I mean, basically, I agree with the guy in the video when he says something like "Now, I'm not saying that Dark Souls is for everyone. Its' gameplay can be frustrating, and you shouldn't force yourself to finish a game out of some sort of moral obligation." The game is really not for everyone's tastes; while the mechanical experience supports the game really well, it will also naturally repel a lot of potential customers simply because they don't want to play a game that frustrating, which is more than fair enough.
But yeah. I guess I get what Alex means now. Which means I can debate more with him now.
Yay?
I disagree with that. I had a very strong emotional investment in the game when I played it, and I really don't think that having a more explicit narrative would have done anything to help that. In fact, it might have actually been harmful. Focusing more on the narrative would just distract the player from the really important part of the game, which is already deep and engaging enough to earn their emotional investment because they care about progressing in the game and getting better at it, not about being told a story.
It's not "unnecessarily bullshit." It's certainly not for everyone, and it definitely can be frustrating at times, but there's a reason I keep comparing it to Castlevania. The combat is a return to an older style of gameplay that has become far less common as games became more and more focused on accessibility and creating a cinematic experience, but reinterpreted in a more modern way (i.e. what Capcom failed to do with Megaman 9 and 10, and what Arc System Works did effectively in Hard Corps: Uprising).
Similarly, I didn't have a very strong investment at all when I played it. I mean, the mechanics of it were certainly interesting, but after a while, there was nothing to keep me playing apart from a few small character pieces, and the gameplay itself. While the gameplay and the character pieces certainly supported the story (such as it was- I'm still not quite sure what's up the fire. is it like a metaphor or something, or what. why does humanity feed it? what?) and that overall made for a great experience, an experience alone isn't enough to keep me playing. I want to know what's going on, I want to be doing something, working towards something, having a goal in mind beyond 'kill the next boss'.
I recognize that this isn't the same for everybody. This is just how I feel.
also i guess that's not really all that similar
No, it is. It does work for it, and I feel the game would be lessened without the bullshit, though.
There is no reason for rats to be able to chew right through my shield, for example. I mean, like, chew right through it and poison me. (I died seven times to those damned rats before I just ragequit the game.) Well, there is a reason- they're, you know, magic rats. And it would be boring to just have normal rats that you just step on and die. Does that make it any less ridiculous/annoying, though? Not really.
The game wouldn't be the same without its' giant magic poison rats though.
Then it isn't unnecessary.
The game would be considerably worsened if the combat was easier, considering that that's pretty much the whole point of the game.
I just killed the Genie dude.
IJBM: When I add something to my Backloggery as unfinished, I mean to declare that I'll get around to it eventually, but its result is that I am more likely to put it off further.
Oh, that. As opposed to guilty pleasures of a different kind--say, the Valis series.
Oh, them. I just didn't know who you were referring to with "they". I think a few posts were edited out so I was confused. Yeah, I heard what happened to them.
So are you playing ZM or Prime?
Sounds like the Mega Man ZX kind of metroidvania.
Was it XII or XIII that has the real-time battle system?
I think much of the hate is directed toward the FF series (which has actually made some attempts at innovation) and games that follow in the general tradition/style of either the older FF games (particularly IV and VI) or FFVII, which have been relatively cheap and easy to produce, especially the 2D sprite kind.
I hypothesize that platformers have already gone through a similar phase (they've since progressed to the "everyone is now making quirky platformers" phase) and FPS games are starting to go through this phase too.
Neither of them have a real-time battle system in the sense of it being like an action game. XII is probably the one you're thinking of though, but it still pretty much feels like the ATB system of older Final Fantasy games, just with movement.
I don't want to play Okami anymore and I've hardly even played it so far, I feel like such a JRPG weaboo.
It's great, it's amazing, it has a great paintbrush mechanic, but the combat, the characters who aren't Amaretasu herself and exploration bore me to death...
I'm not sure how you can say both of these things in the same sentence...
First comment: that guy really sucks at making videos. The intro is overly long and he talks really slow, drawing out the length of the video. And then, when he starts actually listing his objections, he says them all at the same time. I guess the idea is to demonstrate how confusing it is, but not telling your audience what all of your complaints are is a bad way to make a point.
Then he shows a scene from Star Trek just because, and it's only vaguely relevant.
He then claims that none of the claims of the theory have any actual basis, which...isn't true, and I honestly found kind of insulting. For example, he claims that
He then talks about how an ending that needs to be fixed by DLC is bad. And yeah, he's right about that, but that criticism applies independently of whether IT is true. He then says that IT being true would make it worse because it means that they intended to have DLC to fix the ending, which I'm...skeptical of. Not saying it's definitely untrue, but it's just kinda an assumption.
Are there problems with the IT? Well, sure. For one thing, it means the game doesn't actually have a complete ending. But I'll take the possibility of a well-thought-out ending that can happen in the ME setting, but was poorly executed over
Anyway, as for Dark Souls:
Really, Dark Souls' combat is less difficult than that of a lot of other games I've played, ones that don't have a reputation for difficulty. In fact, I would hesitate to even call the game difficult at all, moment-to-moment. It's just that if you screw up, rather than rewinding thirty seconds to let you try that again like most games do, it actually penalizes you for it.
^^ First sentences are Objective, the other is Subjective.
One can think of something as great and yet abhor it.
Zero Mission.
(dammit I forgot the gravity suit and now I'm stuck on Mother Brain)
Then what was the meaning of Meta-Ridley's theme?
Meta-Ridley's theme is still Ridley's theme
But Ridley has a ZM theme.