Imagine a a dystopian future where From Software is bought out by a Western developer and Souls was subsequently dumbed-down to reach a wider audience. What would this new game play like?
Skyrim. Continue reading
Ys Franchise Overview
I heard Ys is a good franchise but I don’t know shit it. I don’t know where to start and which ones are the best. Some look really dated too. Can you tell me what the franchise is, why it’s fun, and which games are worth playing?
I barely know shit about it, apart from playing Oath in Felghana and Origins. Both of those are great. The ones I’d recommend are those two, Ark of Napishtim (haven’t played, but same engine), and Ys I & II Chronicles+. Continue reading
Bloodstained E3 Demo Review
Can you elaborate more on the shittiness of Bloodstained?
Here’s a playthrough for context:
Kicks have startup, so you can’t spam them as much as short swords in previous games. Too short of a hop and you won’t get the kick to come out. Though you can totally spam the sword, so whatever. I actually beat the demo with just kicks, for some reason I didn’t realize there was a sword, That probably would have made it even easier than it already was.
I mean in terms of enemy design, just look at how many times he gets hit in this demo. It’s not many. The dullahammers are the most dangerous enemy here, but only because you can’t spam attacks at them and actually need to back up after they spin the hammer. So move in, attack, move out, wait, move in, etc. Super super simple and disappointing. Continue reading
What makes an enemy well designed?
On a broad level, my 4 criteria for depth fit basically everything. Not going to repeat those.
Well designed enemies are good at performing multiple functions. They’re good at engaging with the player directly, they’re good at blocking the player’s path, they have ways they can be exploited to deal damage to them, and they avoid falling into repetitive patterns.
Good enemies are aggressive enough to threaten the player sufficiently, and passive enough to fit their function in the level, like barring the player’s path, or simply making a section as challenging as it should be. Ideally an enemy is both difficult to engage and difficult to bypass. Continue reading
Stealth Without Guns
1. Is Thi4f worth playing? I”m not really experienced in the stealth genre but I know you are supposed to be god-like at that game. 2. Agree/disagree with the thesis of this post? https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/52seai/stealth_games_need_to_stop_giving_us_guns/
1. No. Really no. Unless for some reason you really want to see how the swoop works, because I thought that mechanic was pretty cool and totally worth stealing for a worthwhile game, don’t bother.
I heard when the game was released that there would be custom difficulty modes and leaderboards based on who could beat the game with a custom difficulty setting, and that whoever got to a certain rank would sit there forever, instead of getting dethroned by someone playing on the same difficulty with a faster time. My intention was to download the game, beat it with every modifier turned on, and then write a review being the permanent best player in the world. In practice, I could not accomplish this, because beating the whole game in one go is fucking insane. I got glitches that would randomly kill me in a late level, you were supposed to press space to do a context sensitive jump, but it wouldn’t register sometimes and you’d swoop off the ledge and just die right there. I was number 1 in the world when that review went up, but not with the maximum possible rank. I was rushing to complete the review, and I actually had a thesis project I was putting off to work on it, so I didn’t have additional time to try to get the maximum score possible and wreck that game permanently. It was a good accomplishment for the time though and makes for a good story. How many journalists have literally become the quantifiable best player in the world for their review? Continue reading
Games Ruined by Bad Balance
Can you name some games (single player and/or competitive) that you feel were ruined by poor balance?
I can’t think of any multiplayer games that are that way, except maybe TF2? An Arena shooter would get hurt by that too, but I don’t think any current arena shooter has a balance problem. Balance in those games affects the number of viable elements of play within a single game, bad balance effectively makes them simpler games to play overall, it doesn’t just excise certain characters.
As for a single player game, Nier. Absolutely Nier. Nier was fucked in the ass by balance. Nothing is balanced in Nier. Weapons aren’t balanced, attacks aren’t balanced, spells aren’t balanced, companions aren’t balanced. Dodging and blocking aren’t balanced. The only things in the game that are balanced are the standard attack combo, dark blast, dark lance, and dark hand. Continue reading
Nerfing Fox
Lemme cite Leffen really quick:
I don’t approve of Scrumpy’s balancing style for multiple reasons. First is, no balance patch exists in a vacuum. If you nerf the top tiers, then you turn away people who previously enjoyed those top tiers. Nerfs are occasionally necessary, and I agree that Fox could use a nerf, but I do not think these are the correct nerfs, especially because they change what fox is capable of and his options, making the character less deep.
I think the Project M fox nerfs were much more appropriately considered, especially the changes to shine and laser. Laser shouldn’t be limited to a single laser, players enjoy using double laser. It should be nerfed in damage instead. Sure this will keep its ability to reset scaling the same (though theoretically that could be jury rigged to count less often in the staling buffer, or be excluded from it completely) Project M went the extra mile and had its damage decrease over distance, while nerfing its base damage to like half a percent. Continue reading
Project M Intro & Overview
A friend of mine said that Project M isn’t very good because most characters are up there on Fox level and because of that they don’t have any match ups which tends to be a bad game (such as Squirtle gimping out players). I don’t know much about fighting games, what do you think?
Alright. Lemme explain a little. Basically, in Melee, Fox was the undisputed best character. There’s a lot of reasons for this, he’s fast, can combo people really hard, can run away and shoot lasers at them forcing them to approach, has really easy setups to kill people, has a great recovery and several different ways to recover. If you want the full lowdown, you can check a lot of different guides.
Project M originally aimed to make Brawl more similar to Melee. To be Melee 2.0. To that end they recreated a ton of extremely subtle melee mechanics. Things so small most people feel them, but don’t realize they’re ever there. Continue reading
Fighting Games are Too Hard?!
Not the video but scroll down to Suika Ibuki’s comment. What is your opinion on that? Continue reading
Pacing and Games
What are your thoughts on pacing and structure in videogames? (Not when it comes to cutscenes, but based on pure gameplay)
Okay, I’ve been thinking about pacing, and the obvious observation is that pacing in a video game is way different from a movie or an act of theater. The instinct perhaps is to think of pacing in terms of how developers laid out their content, like here’s a fast section, here’s a slow section, here’s a variety section. I think it’s worth investigating rather the different modes of interaction and how fast those are perceived as. Is the player reacting to an enemy? are they allowed to proceed at their own pace? Are they controlling a character or sitting in menus? Are they allowed to trigger a different phase of interaction? I think more consideration should go to the literal pace in terms of action frequency too. The other major factor is of course the difficulty curve. Continue reading
Celia Wagar's CritPoints 