Reviews/Overviews

SUPERHOT

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think of Superhot?

Basically the same thing as super bunnyhop. It’s an interesting experiment without enough content. There could stand to be more weapons, more enemy variety, more levels.

Also less bullshit between levels.

Cool experience otherwise.

I’ve read your reasoning for disliking Super Meat Boy dozens of times, could you tell me why it doesn’t apply to SUPERHOT?

More options in every given encounter. You can move in a lot more directions, you have tools that can be used a bunch of different ways. All your weapons can be thrown, enemy weapons can be picked up, bullets can be dodged, there’s cover in the environment, katanas can slash through bullets.

I mean, I like Hotline Miami for much the same reason, and have stated such before.

Super Hot isn’t repeating the same few actions until you get it, there’s enough variation that you can perform levels significantly differently in many cases, unlike super meat boy.

Here’s the elevator level done really efficiently:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20elevator.webm

Here’s a guy beating the elevator level without firing a single bullet:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/Super%20Hot%20pacifist%20elevator.webm

Elevator with a katana.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20elevator%20katana.webm

Here’s a guy beating the ballroom with only a katana:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/super%20hot%20ballroom%20katana.webm

and another efficient path through a level
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/416986/webm/Super%20Hot%20Superplay.webm

My big complaint with the game was, there wasn’t enough content, and they didn’t go as crazy in the level design as they could have gone. The hotswap ability was great, but they only barely introduced it before the game was over. Hotline Miami was able to go a lot crazier with its level design before they wrapped up, like the hot and heavy level was awesome.

I’d give superhot like a 7/10 for that reason.

Dark Souls 3 Review & Roundup

Celia Wagar2 Comments

Once you finish Dark Souls 3, what’s your opinion on it as a whole?

First half of the game is really easy. Like, did From decide to put in an actual difficulty curve this time? Starts getting hard at the cathedral of the deep or the catacombs of Carthus, and gets legitimately hard at Irithyl. Also way too many bonfires for the first half of the game. Cathedral of the Deep is where they start reusing bonfires and they do it to amazing effect, with one central bonfire and tons upon tons of shortcuts. Continue reading →

Xrd thoughts

Celia WagarLeave a comment

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/730873-guilty-gear-xrd-sign-/70952891 This thread. Oh Lord.

I was discussing Xrd last night with that friend who’s way better at fighting games than I am.

His sense is that the new characters have a skewed ratio for effort versus reward, except for bedman who is as hard as a guilty gear character typically is. Leo is okay, because he’s easy, but not great as a character, where Sin and Elphelt are just derp.

His other remarks are that Daisuke Ishiwatari being put in charge of Xrd after another guy did AC lead to a lot of dinosaur-like decisions designwise, like danger time being put in because Daisuke liked the button mash sequences in Samurai Shodown. Also the general reversion to a lot of #reload moves which aren’t as versatile and cool as the AC moves.

His other remark is that he hates the Roman Cancel slowdown, because it makes the game more positional, set-play, knowledge based rather than reads and footsies.

His comparison is between how YRC is used in Xrd now to how FRC was used in GG AC: YRC is used to force respect and both players can react to it trivially, FRC is used to create opportunities that you must act on RIGHT NOW. So one creates mixups, one shuts down your opponent’s options and gives them a chance to react to yours.

Human reaction time is a constant we have to design around and consider carefully, both the average (18 frames), and the upper limits of it (13 frames).

That’s the unique thing about fighting games, frequently occurring unreactable decisions multiple times a second. You don’t really get that in other genres. In RTS, you have hidden information and micro, so there’s counterplay, but in actual encounters, most micro maneuvers don’t really counter your opponent, they’re more about efficiency. You focusing on a fight raises the efficiency of your troops, which helps in critical encounters. In FPS, it seems like there’d be a stronger opportunity for counterplay, but the counters are also soft. Because both of you can shoot and hit successfully at the same time without impeding each other, it’s again about efficiency. The counters are soft, based on terrain and weapon choice. About getting your opponent into a range where you can DPS them really well but they can’t DPS you as well.

And in fighting games, that stuff is a delicate balance, to make a game that has it all and makes it all work. His base point is, the current designers don’t really know what they’re doing and the game is only good because it’s built on top of a rock-solid foundation.

The thread is whatever, a lot of ad hominem insults towards Mike Z, but some people make legitimate arguments for and against his points, and that’s pretty alright. I disagree with some parts of Mike Z’s post, but that’s alright. I mostly cite it in my articles as where games criticism could be. It’s making intelligent evidence-based arguments, which is way better than a lot of other stuff. People won’t agree with all of it, but that’s fine. At least we’re having an intelligent conversation about game design.

Ratchet and Clank Review

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What do you think of Rachet and Clank?

It’s alright, not great. 5/10.

The control style is really unique, not like the modern third person shooter we’ve come to know. I’m amazed they didn’t compromise on this even into the PS3 titles, or the modern remake of the first game.

I’d say a big issue with the enemies is that a TON of them walk straight at you and damage you when they get too close, and can’t reliably be pushed back. So you gotta shoot them before they get to you, unload a ton of ammo until they drop dead. Continue reading →

Nier Notes (Review)

Celia Wagar4 Comments

I’m genuinely surprised you liked Nier enough to give it a 7/10.

I wrote up a full summary right after I finished it while watching the speedrun of the game to help refresh my memory. I hope it has everything. Nier was a hotbed of good ideas executed well, between poor execution of a ton of tiny and not so tiny things, long-ass cutscenes, pointless sidequests, and a couple stupidly long unskippable sequences (like Fyra). I think the game fell short of its potential on many levels and goes to show both what’s possible for a 3rd person action game with projectiles, and what not to do. In the hands of a better developer it could have been something really amazing, you can see that there are so many clear balance issues between the weapon types, the different magic powers, poor enemy design in many areas, and other huge faults. Continue reading →

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines Overview

Celia WagarLeave a comment

Thought’s on Vampire the masquerade?

Okay, I played this game like 3 times, having to restart for various reasons. A ton of dialogue is recycled between different dialogue choices, with minor minor differences. This is especially noticeable with Therese and Jeanette.

I really like the backstory to VTM (mostly gleaned from the whitewolf wiki), but the game is crap overall. The fighting is crap. The dialogue choices are crap. The stealth is crap. The fighting is like, it changes what attacks are performed based on which direction is held, and somehow that affects whether enemies block, I think. In general just mash the attack button and directions and you’ll be fine. As the game progresses you need to fight more and more.

You need to run around back and forth a lot for all sorts of boring reasons. It’s built on the source engine, so there’s bunny hopping. I’m not very good at bunnyhopping, you can apparently go twice as fast that way.

It’s a pain to figure out which way to go some times, some areas have some cute set pieces like the ocean house hotel, whatever place does the mannequin trick, and a couple others.

There’s a bunch of useless skills, because whoever made the game wasn’t very careful. There’s also a bunch of bugs because it was probably rushed. The animations are silly as all hell.

I got to almost the end, and got stuck by a bugged door that refused to open because I didn’t install the fan patch. Installing the patch at that point didn’t fix it and I wasn’t seriously replaying the whole thing again.

There isn’t much to comment on, I don’t think there’s much to defend. It doesn’t seem to succeed even at the things people typically laud the game for. The interactive things at least. Though I guess it’s kind of faithful to the universe in terms of writing and content.