Feeling of Speed

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What makes for a good “feeling of speed” in racing games? that’s one of those terms reviewers use a lot but I’ve never really understood exactly what it consists of

That’s okay, they don’t understand what it consists of either.

I haven’t done much study on this, but I’d say it relates most heavily to the scale of the camera, it’s position relative to the vehicle (how close or far it is), the scale of the vehicle relative to its surroundings, the scale of detail in those surroundings, and particle effects. Continue reading →

Gitting Gud with Scrub Tier Characters

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Can’t a person get good enough with a mid-to-low tier character in a fighting game and compete on par with those who excel with higher tiered characters? Like how you say Fox is the most demanding and powerful character in Melee but we see people like Gimpyfish with Bowser or AMSA with Yoshi?

It depends. Gimpyfish can’t compete on a national or international level because bowser honestly sucks. Amsa can because yoshi has potential beyond his tiering.

The thing with mid and low tiers is they thrive on people not knowing the matchup. A person can become really good with those characters and maybe take higher level players by surprise with them, but this advantage fades as they come into contact more. Leffen was originally a yoshi main, but moved to fox not because there was a deliberate tier advantage, but because he wanted to prove he was the best without any sort of gimmick. He wanted to hit people honestly and fairly with the character everyone has the most experience fighting. Amsa had a good run against the gods initially, then fell off as everyone got used to the matchup and his style of play, but he recovered as he genuinely improved more, but hasn’t reached the heights he originally did since. Continue reading →

High Tier Abuse

Celia Wagar4 Comments

Do you have a main in Guilty Gear?

Not really. I don’t play the game as much as I’d like. I sort of faff around with Sol, Ky, Slayer, Bridget, and Ramlethal. Ramlethal was nerfed bad and I don’t play her anymore. I hope Bridget returns because I actually played him unlike a lot of memers. I tried developing a Leo briefly but never played anyone with him.

I play multiple characters in every fighting game except Melee and SFV, where I only play Marth and Cammy. I just can’t make any other character work for me in those games.

You admitted that you only play one character in Melee and SFV because you can’t win otherwise. Could it be that your support of imbalance and only playing one character is self-serving rationalization?

I don’t support imbalance. I just think small viable casts are okay, as long as that cast is fairly balanced amongst themselves. Also, I sometimes play Bowser in Melee and beat them. I once beat someone’s Jigglypuff in bracket with Bowser. That’s a 10-0 matchup. I also narrowly won a small round robin Melee tournament, then beat the two next best players with Bowser as they played Fox. I’m no stranger to playing low tiers for fun, and being moderately successful at it. Continue reading →

Twilight Princess Boss Review

Celia Wagar1 Comment

What do you think of the boss fights of Twilight Princess?

They suck.

Diababa. Use the dungeon item in a very clearly telegraphed way. Then do it when you have a moving target that you snap onto and mash on the boss’s weak point for a while. Occasionally does easily avoided attacks.

Fyrus, shoot boss’s head. Press A near interaction point then equip dungeon item. Unequip dungeon item and mash on weak point. Do this 3 times.

Morpheel, midna gives you a hint to use the dungeon item. Auto-target grab boss’s weak point. Slash it a little, repeat. Occasionally fish get sent at you, these explode after being hit. Second phase it starts swimming around, so you do too. It doesn’t damage you on contact. Auto-target grab the weak point when you’re close, then mash. Continue reading →

Critiquing Control Schemes

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What do you think is the best method to critiquing controls?

That’s complicated. I think criticizing controls sits somewhere between User Experience and Game Feel. Also controls can mean a number of things. It can mean the actual buttons that each action is bound to, and it can mean the way the game responds to input. It’s a matter of figuring out what feels good in terms of how the animation responds tightly to your input (like nero’s shuffle or calibur). And it’s a matter of figuring out how to make it easy and understandable to input the actions the player is trying to input.

Here’s something recent for binds: Nero’s controls in DMC4 are just fucked. There’s 3 buttons you want to be holding like, all the time, Lock-on, Gun, and Devil Buster. Holding onto an enemy with Devil Buster is optional, it’s not the most useful feature in the world, but the other two you want to be doing rather frequently. In the default control scheme, charging the gun is ridiculous. Everyone I know rebinds the gun to a trigger. Even with the gun bound to a trigger, it’s a pain in the ass to hold the trigger and also pump the shoulder button to get EX-ACT. Maybe a better configuration might be having the exceed bound to the button gun used to be on, but devil buster is just completely fucked. It gets worse when you want to juggle an enemy, summon swords or stay in the air longer by shooting the gun repeatedly. That’s difficult on a trigger. Continue reading →

The Educational Value of Games

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Do you think people overstate the educational value of games?

Depends which people. When violence in video games comes up I see a lot of people say, “Video games might make our children into violent killing machines but games do at least help hand-eye coordination,” which is a clear undersell, but then a lot of people reacting to that go, “blah blah, but they’re so interactive, they can engage kids on a level that books and lectures can’t. Video games are the future of education.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-video-games-are-the-future-of-education/

Why video games shouldn’t freak parents out

http://www.acsd.org/article/the-effect-of-videogames-on-student-achievement/

Video games clearly have an influence, some video games can certainly be considered educational, but video games categorically do not have all of these properties. Categorically there is a broad increase in ability to analyze and solve problems, to find solutions from what’s available, but more specific benefits are unknown, or rare. Continue reading →

Are High Execution Top Tiers Fair?

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How do you feel about characters like Crimson Viper who are purposely powerful but have a high execution barrier? I hear people who hate her say that execution doesn’t matter in high level play and that she isnt balanced just cause she’s hard to play.

I’ve been dealing with Fox my whole life.

I think that just because a character is hard to execute with isn’t an excuse for making them better than the rest of the cast. There’s certainly something to be said for having a reward for execution, but eventually in a game’s life, someone will overcome that execution hurdle and the tables will turn, and that character will dominate.

Having a character like that be the best character in the game is tolerable. If you’re going to have a top tier, it might as well be the hardest characters in the game to play. However ideally you want to prevent any one character from dominating over others.

So basically, it makes sense to give characters a bit more for doing something tricky, like 360s on grapplers, however this shouldn’t be used as a license to make all the high execution characters top tier and super strong. Continue reading →

Is Street Fighter Made Obsolete by Smash?

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Have traditional fighting games been rendered obsolete by Smash? How would you convince someone who thinks like that to try out, say, SF? Someone who thinks SF is the same thing every match.

Not a chance in hell. I’ve been meaning to make a post/video on the differences between Street Fighter and Smash Bros. The games emphasize totally different things. They have different forms of blocking, hitstun, combos, damage, moves, movement, knockdown, footsies, zoning.

In my opinion a lot of it stems from 1 really innocuous core change. In Smash Bros, you are allowed to grab someone during hitstun or blockstun. In Street Fighter, you are not. A basic issue that came up during the first version of Street Fighter 2, and Smash 64 was, if people are allowed to get advantage on block, then they can throw instantly, and that’s a guard breaker. So in SF2 World Warrior, you could jump in at someone, hit them with a roundhouse on their block, then just throw them. Easy unblockables. Similar stuff is possible in Smash 64, like shieldbreak combos, and unblockables off higher shield stun aerials. Continue reading →

Dishonored vs Thief

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How does Dishonored compare to the OG Thief series?

Blah, I’m upset and frustrated with Dishonored, and I don’t have total confidence that Dishonored 2 will solve the core issues with the first game.

Dishonored and Thief are extremely different games overall. They can’t be directly compared, because a lot of the thief-like elements were stripped from Dishonored in development.

Basically, Thief is all about detection. They have different sections of floor with varying light levels or sound levels, and you gotta try to balance between staying in the dark and staying silent. It’s about paying attention to how visible you are, and avoid guards investigating sounds. You can also use sounds to lure guards around. Continue reading →

Intricacies of Pac-Man

Celia WagarLeave a comment

Why don’t people circejerk over pac-man as much as tetris? pac-man seems more interesting to me, although not as fun to watch at a high level

Because Pac-man is about a character and Tetris is about shapes. Tetris is about something supposedly universal. Also because Tetris is the best selling game ever, and Pac-man is not.

I think Tetris has more depth overall personally, but explaining how is complicated. Like, there’s a lot of ways to handle individual situations, a lot of philosophies for how to build overall, and what to do if you’re in trouble. Then there’s playing for score instead of just pure survival, which TGM generally requires. Continue reading →