Month: March 2017

Nioh Post-Release Thoughts & Review

Celia Wagar3 Comments

So how’s Nioh treatin’ you my boy. Is it everything you’ve ever wanted or not? Are there any problems with it?

No issue. I thought it was getting a bit too easy, or maybe I was getting too good, or overleveled, so I decided to skip all the sub-missions for an area and only do the main missions, and that made it a lot harder.

Many of the early game areas had enemies removed to make them more easy, which is disappointing, but the difficulty is curving back up in the later game, we’ll see if it gets back to the demo levels. Continue reading →

Nioh’s Ki Pulse and Stances

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What makes execution barriers like Ki Bursting fun?

It depends on the action. It’s different for every one.

Ki bursting is fun to me because it means being very mindful during fights of my stamina, and the state of the enemy. Beyond that it means being mindful of the stance I’m in, and the stance I want to go to. Ki Bursting means I need to absolutely not miss the window of time during which Ki fills, or I wait even longer for stamina to regen. Ki bursting also introduces decisions, like do I want to cancel my attack and instantly gain back a little stamina so at minimum I’m safe and haven’t lose all the stamina I just spent? Do I want to commit to a combo while I have the opportunity to attack and potentially get hit, but also be able to regenerate almost all the Ki, or wait and see if the enemy is still vulnerable after attacking to do another attack at the expense of the Ki I spent? Do I want to attack once at a time and burst each time to regenerate the Ki back to where I had it, or commit to several attacks for more damage, but at the cost of some of the maximum ki I’ll regenerate with each attack? Do I want to do a super powered dodge instead of Ki burst? Do I want to block and sacrifice the ki burst completely? Do I want to switch stances in order to regain more Ki? Which stance do I want to change to, and what is the left over stance that I need to switch through to get the maximum boost? Continue reading →

What Makes a Dynamic Platformer?

Celia Wagar1 Comment

You’ve criticized the shallowness of super meatboy for basically being an execution challenge, but where would you say a pure platformer can get depth from, If there isn’t a dynamic element that responds to player input, such as enemies? multiple paths don’t really add dynamism necessary for a game.

Okay, so a lot of this depends on your definition of “pure platformer”. Is Mario a pure platformer? Is Mirror’s Edge a pure platformer? Castlevania and Megaman probably are not. Is Ori and the Blind Forest? It kind of straddles the middle, but also not really.

Mario has dynamic elements that respond to player input. Mirror’s Edge does not in most parts of the game. Super Meat Boy has a few (like the homing worms, and disappearing blocks, which you’ll notice aren’t duplicated in replays).

Multiple routes don’t have much dynamism, true. The idea is more routes on top of routes, on top of routes. Rather than totally distinct and separate routes, you make every little part have overlapping means of execution that have different results/tradeoffs. Continue reading →

Balancing FGs & SFV Season 2

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What is the art of balancing a multiplayer game properly, like Street Fighter for example. What is the process that goes into evaluating what needs to be nerfed and what needs a buff, and how they go about improving those characters or mechanics? Is it simple as stat changes or an animation change?

It’s a matter of figuring out what’s actually good and bad about the character. What’s supposed to be good and bad? Like all this shit with Juri: Continue reading →