Okay, I played Halo when it originally came out. I was honestly a fan at the time. Over time I developed the opinion that it was good, but overrated. Despite playing it way back when, I never finished the campaign. I kind of missed out on the whole halo experience because I never got an xbox and never played halo 2, which was where the multiplayer was at. I was sent a video series on halo recently, and decided to give it a play, because it’s a classic. Overall, I think it’s pretty good. You have enemy variety, weapon variety, environment variety. It’s a very different type of shooter from what came before it, and what’s come since. It’s not a tight map with very controlled encounters like Doom or Quake, it’s not a linear corridor shooter like more modern console FPS. It’s content in many levels to open the space up, hand the player a vehicle or two, drop some weapons here and there, and let the player roam. This reminds me most of Giants Citizen Kabuto, a game from my childhood that I did complete, multiple times even (and probably need to replay some day), which had a very similar open sandboxy structure, similar weapon and enemy variety, similarly designed space suits, and even a similar goofy feeling to the cutscenes (it came out like, a year earlier, was it an inspiration?). Continue reading
Hand-Holding
What do you think of hand holding in games?
Okay, hand holding, it can be a pain, especially in Nintendo games, double especially in Zelda Games.
I think Hand Holding is primarily a User Experience issue. Like, if you use photoshop, or microsoft word, or another such program, it won’t constantly stop you to tell you how to use it, it’ll maybe pop up a tip of the day at the start, which you can disable, and have a separate manual, plus little tooltips reminding you of functions when you hover over things and their key shortcut.
In games, we’ve come to build tutorials into every game, because manuals went the way of the dinosaur.
Old games didn’t need as much tutorialization, because they were simpler. You could figure out the functions really easily through simple experimentation. Continue reading
Games with Conveyance Issues & Intentional Lack of Affordance
What do you think are some games with conveyance issues?
MGR, Parrying. I honestly didn’t get this without guides and the ingame tutorials were not very helpful.
W101, knowing you should buy unite guts and unite spring from the store, knowing you should use unite guts to reflect projectiles, knowing to use the whip to pull spikes off enemies, a lot of things.
God hand, pretty much everything, the basic method you’re supposed to be playing. Continue reading
Issues/Joys of Parrying
I’ve been thinking over parrying a bit passively and here’s some more thoughts on it.
The issue with parrying is that it is its own system by itself, which can beat anything the game throws at you.
In games where parries can beat any attack, the only system you need to learn is parrying. Parrying in most games has no element of spacing, only the element of timing, so you tend to lose out on a lot of the dynamic spacing challenges that go on in a game, reducing the game to just a timing challenge. A tough timing challenge, but just a timing challenge. Continue reading
Dark Souls for a Wider Audience
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
Celia Wagar's CritPoints 