For Honor: Combat Trailer Analysis

Celia WagarLeave a comment

Review the combats:

Okay, from its announcement I was interested in For Honor, but also hesitant about it, because it’s hard to tell what’s going on exactly. Like there’s 3 attack stances, controlled by the right stick (what controls the camera when you’re not locked onto a human opponent? What allows you to switch your lock-on between human opponents?) that clearly do different attacks, but the animations don’t have very clear arcs to them, and the UI here clearly indicates your opponent’s block stance as well as your own as a means of compensating for the unclear animations.

The npc rabble appear to go down in one hit, much like enemies in a dynasty warrior title, but also seem to be able to damage you. There are 5 segments of health on each player character, each sword blow seems to deal 1 segment of health, some abilities can deal partial damage to a segment, and some character classes lose partial segments on successful blocks, as seen near the end of the first commentated section of footage. (which makes sense, as they said the assassin’s class doesn’t have good defense)

There appear to be guard breaking moves, and things that have combined animations between both players that move them around, and I have no idea what triggers those or what they really do.

I don’t know how the hit ranges are determined, or whether the attacks are magnetic or not, or how attack animations are determined, and regrettably, that’s what this kind of comes down to. Attacks might be randomly chosen out of a bag for all 3 block zones, they might have predetermined looping sequences for all 3 block zones (preferable). There might be additional actions possible depending on the buttons you press that trigger those extra actions. It’s honestly hard to tell right now.

The other thing that is up in the air is the relationship between the block zones. In 2d fighting games, there are 3 possible properties an attack can have, high, mid, or low. You have 2 block zones, back, which blocks mid and high attacks, and downback, which blocks mid and low attacks. Mids and Lows are allowed to be fast in 2d fighting games, so downback is the default block zone, highs must be slower to allow for reaction time. In 3d fighting games the relationship is different. There are still high mid and low attacks, but a high block in a 3d fighter will block high and mid attacks, an a low block in a 3d fighter will block low attacks, and high attacks will miss, but mids will hit. In 3d fighters, mids and highs are allowed to be fast, but lows are the slow ones.

In this game, all 3 block zones seem to be totally exclusive, so is there a relationship between attack speed and block zone that prioritizes any of them? Dunno. If there isn’t, then it’s a 3-way guessing game, which sucks, but if the attacks are animated well/consistently and you can play the range game footsie dance, then it might work.

If you can’t consistently produce attacks, it’ll suck, guaranteed. It pretty much hinges on that. Can’t tell yet.

What’s Deep as a Fighting Game?

Celia WagarLeave a comment

I’ve seen you claim that fighting games are probably the pinnacle of depth. How much of that would you say is related to them being multiplayer–depth being squished out by players themselves? what about strategy games or good competitive shooters? Any SP game you consider to be as deep as them?

Dante from DMC4 is more deep than any individual fighting game character ever. Maybe not more deep than an entire fighting game, but more than any single character in one. The number of options and ways he can combine them are absolutely tremendous. DMC3 dante with the style swapper might be even more deep than that (considering he has more styles, more moves in individual styles and more weapons, he’s almost inarguably deeper), though, shit, something about the way he’s animated manages to make his style swap combos look less impressive. Maybe the lack of color flashes and hud notifications.

Some speedgames are ludicrously deep, like Mirror’s Edge, Half Life 1 and 2 (amazingly in completely different ways), Mario 64/sunshine, Dark Souls 1, ocarina of time (I say reluctantly), Ori and the Blind Forest, Ratchet and Clank, Super Monkey Ball, Metroid Prime, at least one castlevania game, at least one sonic game, F-Zero GX. Though I’d be hesitant to put them on the level of a fighting game.

RTS games absolutely go toe to toe with fighting games, they might be even more deep than fighting games, I don’t really want to make a call there.

Go is up there with fighting games, no doubt, probably chess too (though you could argue that the development of the meta has shifted the relevant field of depth into a smaller range).

Quake 3 and UT 2004 are close, but I think fall a bit below fighting games, less options, less complex neutral.

But I mean, there’s a reason I play fighting games, and it’s because they’re the best games around. They’re games that I can put more research into than any other and have more to verifiably show for it. They’re games that I can confidently say I don’t understand completely and have a lot left to learn, where Dark Souls is one I think I do understand completely.

And is being multiplayer part of why fighting games are so deep?

Being Multiplayer is a part of that, a lot more fine interactions are tested in a multiplayer environment that can’t be tested in a singleplayer environment. Player psychology is a very real thing that can be played with and experimented with to produce favorable results. In a singleplayer game I don’t have to consider my opponents adapting to me, I don’t have to consider common habits that some ice climbers players have and others don’t. I got 2nd place at a tournament last monday, facing an ice climbers player twice, probably the third best ICs in the state. The first time I beat him 3-2, the second time I beat him 3-0. I realized between those games that if I stayed on platforms, he’d eventually get the climbers out of sync, as his offense was too weak to overwhelm me and that was my chance to attack, separating them, and that he loved to shield to bait me into a shieldgrab, but I could run up to him and grab him, usually getting a free followup and there wasn’t a lot he could do to stop me, and he definitely couldn’t wobble me. So the game changed from me poking him a lot and getting wobbled, to preying on split up climbers and fthrow fsmashes. In a netplay match I lost in marth dittos the first round, then won the next two by counterpicking to snake, pure intuition that the player was unfamiliar with the character despite it being an amazing matchup for marth. In street fighter I recently realized that I need to just walk into their range and hit them with mediums sometimes, I need to start comboing into spiral arrow off my light jabs, because I usually get a few of those for free off my pressure setups, but the grab afterwards is less free, and they don’t do much damage by themselves. In multiplayer games, it’s a constant cycle of improvement and thinking about common player tendencies.

This is why icyclam’s claim that bots are better because they’re harder is such bullshit, because human tendencies create depth in the form of bringing game states into relevance that normally wouldn’t be, and computers simply cannot recreate that.

Local top PM players Kysce and Flipp went to Shots Fired 2 recently, teaming in doubles, and Flipp’s Snake plants C4 all the time, leading Kysce to say, “Got ’em!” whenever he does. However Kysce knows Snake well enough to know that sometimes he doesn’t have the stick, but it looks like he does, so he says “Got ’em!” even when the stick isn’t on them, and this occasionally confused the other guy, even enough to make them kill themselves or irrationally shield or airdodge when they weren’t really in danger, opening them up to attacks. I played a friend in third strike, and jumped when I hear him do the fireball motion. AI doesn’t have that sort of internal model of self or other, and Desk’s video on SFV survival shows it. Survival mode itself shows it.

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 →

Bayonetta is a Bitch (to learn)

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Bayonetta doesn’t have a large move list, most of the weapons are pretty same-y. A bit of experimentation will let you figure out which combos are suitable for a given situation (e.g. do you want to launch the foe, do you want range, do you want something quick). And the moveset is pretty flexible so it’s more about understanding the fundamentals of movement and approaching various enemies than memorizing an entire list of combos. I mean, DMC has more moveset memorization than Bayo for sure. Also, none of PG’s other games have much memorization. MGR has a dial-a-combo moveset, but once you understand move properties, you’ll quickly realize which ones are worth using in a given situation. The rest are for showing off.

The trouble is that they’re rather samey despite having so many, and you get punished score-wise for repeating them. I’ve been meaning to give Bayonetta another shot since I beat it the first time.

MGR has more dial combos than I want to memorize, and I did memorize them at one point. It was disappointing because they were so samey (and also useless).

I think dial combos are alright in moderation, but more than 3 on a given weapon in a given stance is overkill. Nero hit the sweet spot there. He has a basic mash combo, then he has 2 special combos, one for AOE, one for damage. Both of those can be extended with good timing.

http://bayonetta.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Combo_Attacks
Bayonetta has 19 ground combos and 6 air combos!

And you can only see the list of these during training mode, or by pausing during gameplay! (Unless there’s a menu option to enable the training dialogue during gameplay)

The only way to realistically learn all these combo chains is to sit in training mode and try each combo listed one by one until you memorize by rote. The game doesn’t feature a natural process for learning these combos. You aren’t introduced to them one by one and expected to become acclimated to them over a long period of time before more are introduced (the others don’t even have to be locked off, you could have all the moves from the beginning, but guided exercises using specific ones would have sufficed).

The level of complexity here is made very high, but the game does not gain a lot of depth from it, because combos need to repeat moves from intermediary combos, so the more useful moves are functionally chained to the moves that come earlier in the combo.

The average person sees this and probably doesn’t want to put up with memorizing so many sequences. I’ve learned skullgirls B&Bs that are less of a pain than this, because at least every single move in the combo is something I can perform by itself and I know has a functional purpose in the combo. In Bayonetta and games like it, these are completely arbitrary sequences that have no sort of aid or tutorial process for committing them to memory.

In fighting games, there are a bunch of different combos because there are a bunch of different openers and resources that can be spent, as well as different states of advantage the combo can end in. In Bayonetta, those same tradeoffs don’t exist, combos are expected to fulfill the role of functional moves, but because they need to go through all the lower moves to get to the last one that is functional, they end up being samey.

Option Selects are Kinda Lame

Celia Wagar2 Comments

I don’t play fighting games but, option selects seem lame. Are they?

Yeah, kinda. I mean, you can cover multiple options with one input, lets you hedge your bets really hard. 3-way option selects are even crazier. For example, the command throw YRC/air throw option select in Guilty Gear Xrd is basically an unblockable, which is bad because unblockables are bad. Continue reading →

Abstract on Tradeoffs

Celia WagarLeave a comment

What do you think of tradeoffs in games (like trading all your meter for a melee attack in Vanquish, or trading off tankiness for mobility in the souls series, etc.)

If you don’t have tradeoffs, then elements that overlap in niche literally don’t work. This is a rather weird question, it’s kind of fundamental to games that everything needs to have a tradeoff in some way. Tradeoffs are what differentiate design elements. I mean, this is super broad. It’s hard to say anything.

Nier which I reviewed recently is probably a good example of a game that lacks tradeoffs between its elements. You have charge attacks, a ton of magic types, multiple weapons, but you never need to really trade off between them, because it’s always better to not charge attack, to use only dark lance, dark fist, dark blast, and to always use the stronger weapons.

I mean, tradeoffs between things with similar roles (things that make you move fast, deal damage, inflict hitstun, etc), are what allow multiple of these things to exist in the system, they have differing functions because they trade off. Simple.

Adding a cost to things, spending one thing to get another, helps prevent you from doing that one thing all the time, if that is the most efficient thing to do otherwise. Yeah, you might have a powerful rocket launcher, but you can only use it 3 times, so then the skill is in using it at the right times.

If you lack tradeoffs then people will only use the strongest thing. Balance between elements promotes diversity in play style, makes it a lot harder to win using any individual thing. Tradeoffs are what make elements themselves different from other elements, and what reinforce their use.

Not much else I can say.

Comparing Zelda to Souls

Celia Wagar6 Comments

Is it fair to even compare Zelda to Dark Souls? I hear comparisons between the two alot, but it never really makes too much sense to me.

I think it’s a fair comparison because they’re both third person action games featuring sword combat. Zelda visibly lost something in translation to 3d, so people think dark souls might have that element zelda lacks, nonlinearity, tight enemy combat, no cutscene bullshit.

Dark Souls gives a glimpse of at least some of what zelda could have been. Obviously zelda has its own established canon of mechanics sine the first game, so there’d be differences in how a lot of the mechanics worked, but a lot of fucking stuff was possible on the N64 and had been done in other formats that zelda could have taken inspiration from. It could have used fixed camera angles to make up for its weakness there as an interim until dual analog came along (playing ratchet and clank and nier back to back, it’s funny how it took until the 3rd 3d gen that cameras got good, considering it’s actually simpler to code a camera like nier’s probably)

Dark Souls in a big way feels like what I originally came to the zelda series for, what I was always looking for, but couldn’t find satisfaction in zelda games. I think this is something a lot of people feel.

To add onto this: Zelda and Dark Souls are superficially similar, being 3rd person action games centered on exploration & secret finding through fantasy settings with primarily Melee combat.

Dark Souls is as hard as Zelda used to be. Zelda was a cultural phenomenon with the very first game (which sold the best proportional to the population of its time, meaning it had the biggest cultural influence of any Zelda game).

In Zelda Ocarina of Time, Eiji Aonuma became the enemy and dungeon designer. Aonuma is a person who did not like the original Legend of Zelda. He never finished it, quitting after fighting octoroks and failing to progress.
http://www.ign.com/…/26/gdc-2004-the-history-of-zelda…

So suddenly he was in charge of designing enemies, and he made them all really easy in Ocarina and they’ve continued to be really easy ever since.

In 3d zelda games, your slashes are really fast, while the enemies are really slow. In Dark Souls, both you and the enemies are slow at the same pace, so you need to either act preemptively, or punish their whiffed attacks. You need to judge your ranges more carefully before deciding to attack.

3d Zelda games are about key-finding more than anything else. You need to find keys to open doors in the dungeons, which give you items that function as additional keys for getting through rooms in the dungeons. There are very few “Interesting choices” in Zelda, meaning choices where you won’t always pick the same thing, where you need to choose carefully and think about what you’re doing, where different options have advantages and disadvantages which change situationally. 3d Zelda is very much about just doing the thing they want you to do. See a peahat? Boomerang it to cut off the propeller, then slash it to death with A buttonmash. Oh, you have arrows? Instant kill. Deku Scrubs? Octoroks? Hold up your shield, you literally cannot do anything else, and have no real reason to not pick this choice because it will always work.

In 3d Zelda’s combat, you really only need to mash A versus most enemies, or use the item that they are weak against. In 2d Zelda, you needed to move around the enemies as they moved and shot projectiles, and find a place to attack them safely from. It was like a Shmup where both you and the enemies could attack in 4 directions. They would pair up different enemies to be more effective against you and pair those with traps or features like walls or water sometimes too.

In other 3d action games, you have a variety of moves to use, but in Zelda, you only really have slashing and jump slashing. There’s also crouch stabbing, but your slashes are already fast, and apart from the exploit where it copies jump slash damage, it’s not really useful.

The puzzles in zelda, the other major element with 3d zelda (one which was mostly absent in 2d zelda, even a link to the past) are really easy and simple in comparison to actual puzzle games. They almost all use different mechanics from one another, instead of a shared system that is built up over time. This is another major problem with 3d zelda, they keep introducing new shallow mechanics that see only a few uses instead of iteratively improving a core set of mechanics like combat or puzzles.

Everyone suddenly got really harsh on Skyward Sword, and it was certainly the worst 3d Zelda, but everything everyone hated about it was in the previous 3d Zelda games. All 3d zelda games have long unskippable cutscenes. All 3d zelda games have bad combat compared to 2d zelda games, to Ys games (Oath in Felgana and Origin have combat similar to 2d zelda), to Dark Souls, to Witcher 3, to Severance Blade of Darkness (2001). 3d zelda could have had better combat design, both in link’s moveset and in the enemy design. It should have considering combat is the core gameplay (if you don’t think combat is the core gameplay, then please tell me what is).

Games that are harder than Dark Souls

Celia Wagar6 Comments

You’ve said in the past that souls games aren’t that hard, they’re just hard in contrast to current standards. So what games would you consider to be really hard? God Hand in hard maybe? DMC at a high level?

God Hand on Normal is harder than Dark Souls. Maybe even on easy.

DMC3 on normal I found harder than dark souls, though I replayed on hard with vergil and breezed through, so maybe it was just unfamiliarity with the game. DMC4 is definitely easier until the higher difficulties though (though it’s also weird because you get enemy handicap when you die which makes it easier if you continue).

Vanquish is harder, Bayonetta too (played both on hard on my first go).

Quake is harder (assuming you don’t use savestates and always restart the level when you die, also I played on nightmare only).

Doom is harder (on ultraviolence).

Half Life 1 on hard is harder. HL2 as well.

I’d say Super Mario Bros 1 is about the same difficulty because of world 8.

Ninja Gaiden gets harder around world 5 or 6. Modern Ninja Gaiden is definitely harder.

Metal Slug (any) is harder.

Contra is harder.

Shatterhand is harder.

Nioh is harder.

The original Legend of Zelda is harder.

Castlevania 1, 3, Harmony of Dissonance, and Order of Ecclesia are harder. (Not sure about the latter two, haven’t played them in a while)

Any megaman game is harder.

I mean, Dark Souls is probably harder than any other game on normal difficulty last gen, but there’s a lot harder than it in the past and on higher difficulty modes. I don’t like people going, “pssh, dark souls is easy,” because it’s clearly hard, but it’s also not the pinnacle of difficulty in games, even in 7th gen. A TON of NES games will give it a run for its money or easily outclass it.