The "Currently Playing..." Topic

2018-06-16 01:04:54 am

One shall stand, one shall ball.

Also you can talk about being focused on gameplay all you want but NES style pixel art looks really bad if you aren't very good at it. Please hire an artist who knows how colors work and not just get your buddy to do it my eyes are dying.

arkarian

2018-06-16 01:57:20 am

red chamber dream

Quote from Serris:

I have similar complaints about many games including God of War 4 which cost like 500 billion dollars

Indies are just focused on gameplay so it's no wonder they do nothing for you

you just complained about how hollow knight's gameplay is shallow lol...

triple a games at least look pretty. that counts for a lot

arkarian

2018-06-16 01:58:08 am

red chamber dream

also fuuuuuuuck pixel art

i was tired of it in 1996 and haven't changed my mind >_>

arkarian

2018-06-16 01:58:58 am

red chamber dream

but yeah my problem with indies is that they're ONLY focused on gameplay. and that's like, the worst kind of game

arkarian

2018-06-16 02:02:35 am

red chamber dream

especially when a game is developed by one person

you just know it's gonna be shitty in most aspects

Glenn Magus Harvey

Edit history:

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-16 05:57:06 am

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-16 05:56:27 am

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-16 05:54:42 am

2018-06-16 05:49:21 am

> up late
> bored
> go beat up Pharaoh Man with mega buster
whee
also that is an irritatingly precise jump at the beginning of the stage to get the Balloon.

Quote from Serris:

Indies are just focused on gameplay so it's no wonder they do nothing for you

Indies are quite a diverse lot, to be fair. Not all of them are gameplay-focused.

Quote from tomatobob:

The problem is indies are not super good at figuring just for how long their gameplay is interesting.

Quote from tomatobob:

Or they do things like bolt antiquated trash mechanics onto their games because video games were best when the devs were twelve and if you point out it's bad you just don't understand man.

I know tastes differ and all that, but I personally enjoy familiar and reasonably simple/intuitive mechanics because they don't take long to learn and thus let me enjoy the experience (which often means the story/narrative) of a game. I personally value immersion, and indie games just so happen to cater to control schemes and presentation formats I'm used to (e.g. 2D platformers), so I enjoy them for that reason.

For me it's really that simple -- if "AAA"s hadn't largely abandoned 2D or otherwise made stuff I wasn't interested in, I'd probably have stuck with whatever they were putting out. (Meanwhile, I basically just never really got into FPS games which gradually became all the rage over the past decade or two...)

I know some people enjoy innovation/"freshness"/novelty/etc. in gameplay mechanics. That's cool and all, but I personally don't care that much about it as far as games I enjoy. (In fact I tend to complain when JRPGs get into crazy-complicated mechanics.)

Quote from tomatobob:

Also you can talk about being focused on gameplay all you want but NES style pixel art looks really bad if you aren't very good at it. Please hire an artist who knows how colors work and not just get your buddy to do it my eyes are dying.

Honestly, it's not like older games were necessarily all that great at this either. I may be a huge Castlevania fan but I actually consider NES Castlevanias to look kinda cruddy.

That said, it is something that one can make look nice without spending several fortunes on it.

Quote from arkarian:

also fuuuuuuuck pixel art

i was tired of it in 1996 and haven't changed my mind >_>

Gotta disagree with you there I guess. I'm still quite fond of it. In fact I consider it better than "2.5D" stuff where they just use 3D models for 2D gameplay, because with pixel art I feel I can tell some things more clearly, e.g. judging jump distances and hitboxes.

> up late
> bored
> go beat up Pharaoh Man with mega buster
whee
also that is an irritatingly precise jump at the beginning of the stage to get the Balloon.

[quote="Serris"]Indies are just focused on gameplay so it's no wonder they do nothing for you[/quote]Indies are quite a diverse lot, to be fair.  Not all of them are gameplay-focused.

[quote="tomatobob"]The problem is indies are not super good at figuring just for how long their gameplay is interesting.[/quote][quote="tomatobob"]Or they do things like bolt antiquated trash mechanics onto their games because video games were best when the devs were twelve and if you point out it's bad you just don't understand man.[/quote]I know tastes differ and all that, but I personally enjoy familiar and reasonably simple/intuitive mechanics because they don't take long to learn and thus let me enjoy the experience (which often means the story/narrative) of a game.  I personally value immersion, and indie games just so happen to cater to control schemes and presentation formats I'm used to (e.g. 2D platformers), so I enjoy them for that reason.

For me it's really that simple -- if "AAA"s hadn't largely abandoned 2D or otherwise made stuff I wasn't interested in, I'd probably have stuck with whatever they were putting out.  (Meanwhile, I basically just never really got into FPS games which gradually became all the rage over the past decade or two...)

I know some people enjoy innovation/"freshness"/novelty/etc. in gameplay mechanics.  That's cool and all, but I personally don't care that much about it as far as games I enjoy.  (In fact I tend to complain when JRPGs get into crazy-complicated mechanics.)

[quote="tomatobob"]Also you can talk about being focused on gameplay all you want but NES style pixel art looks really bad if you aren't very good at it. Please hire an artist who knows how colors work and not just get your buddy to do it my eyes are dying.[/quote]Honestly, it's not like older games were necessarily all that great at this either.  I may be a huge Castlevania fan but I actually consider NES Castlevanias to look kinda cruddy.

That said, it [i]is[/i] something that one [i]can[/i] make look nice without spending several fortunes on it.

[quote="arkarian"]also fuuuuuuuck pixel art

i was tired of it in 1996 and haven't changed my mind >_>[/quote]Gotta disagree with you there I guess.  I'm still quite fond of it.  In fact I consider it better than "2.5D" stuff where they just use 3D models for 2D gameplay, because with pixel art I feel I can tell some things more clearly, e.g. judging jump distances and hitboxes.

Da Dood

2018-06-16 06:36:55 am

Dood Trigger™

Quote from Glenn Magus Harvey:

also that is an irritatingly precise jump at the beginning of the stage to get the Balloon.

Yeah, I just use Rush there.

Da Dood

2018-06-16 10:31:33 am

Dood Trigger™

Day 14 - Skyblazer » Done!

Skyblazer appears in pretty much every 'SNES Hidden Gems' list, to the point where I don't think it's so hidden anymore. And for good reason IMO.

It plays sort of like a melee Mega Man X, with a similar feeling character, wall climbing and powers earned from bosses. The studio that made this also developed Hook, and you can tell Skyblazer is a faster and more refined version of that game. The stages are varied and they encourage using your guy's abilities in creative ways.

The usual criticisms about Skyblazer are the low difficulty and how it's way shorter than it looks at first. I think the difficulty is fine... the stages are designed to be moderately challenging, it's just that there's items and lives everywhere, and the checkpoints are very generous. Length definitely feels strange, though. Not that there aren't enough stages (17 or so, not a bad number at all), but the SMW style overworld map makes it look like the game is enormous. And when you think you're about to move on to the next continent or whatever, the credits roll all of a sudden.

Still, I think it's a great game that every retro fan should try.

Clear time: 1:20

Day 14 - Skyblazer » [b]Done![/b]

Skyblazer appears in pretty much every 'SNES Hidden Gems' list, to the point where I don't think it's so hidden anymore. And for good reason IMO.

It plays sort of like a melee Mega Man X, with a similar feeling character, wall climbing and powers earned from bosses. The studio that made this also developed Hook, and you can tell Skyblazer is a faster and more refined version of that game. The stages are varied and they encourage using your guy's abilities in creative ways.

The usual criticisms about Skyblazer are the low difficulty and how it's way shorter than it looks at first. I think the difficulty is fine... the stages are designed to be moderately challenging, it's just that there's items and lives everywhere, and the checkpoints are very generous. Length definitely feels strange, though. Not that there aren't enough stages (17 or so, not a bad number at all), but the SMW style overworld map makes it look like the game is enormous. And when you think you're about to move on to the next continent or whatever, the credits roll all of a sudden.

Still, I think it's a great game that every retro fan should try.

[hidden][img]https://imgtc.com/i/703wRJk.png[/img][/hidden]
Clear time: 1:20

arkarian

2018-06-16 11:36:14 am

red chamber dream

i like pixel art when it's good. it's never good in low budget indie games though

arkarian

2018-06-16 11:37:05 am

red chamber dream

the problem with indie games is that unlike every other form of entertainment, you can't really do much without a decent sized team and a nice budget

arkarian

2018-06-16 11:39:26 am

red chamber dream

an indie band can crank out great songs quickly, and there's a lot that indie filmmakers can do nowadays with not much of a budget

games will always require a shitload more time and people, and that's why almost every indie game i've played feels half finished, too short, or half baked

arkarian

2018-06-16 11:39:47 am

red chamber dream

i think this will slowly change as programming gets more abstract

arkarian

2018-06-16 11:40:41 am

red chamber dream

but we're decades away from that i think

ryu

2018-06-16 12:54:48 pm

yeah i bought hollow knight for switch and am disappointed so far. i thought people praised it to hell and back and expected a great game, but what i got feels reaaaaally stale so far

ryu

2018-06-16 12:57:20 pm

combat is super simple. and that usually means the game compensates with rpg elements - but the enemies drop so little money it takes ages to get even basic items to show your location on the map

Glenn Magus Harvey

Edit history:

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-16 01:44:13 pm

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-16 01:27:27 pm

2018-06-16 01:27:03 pm

Quote from arkarian:

games will always require a shitload more time and people, and that's why almost every indie game i've played feels half finished, too short, or half baked

They do tend to be of a smaller scope, though my perception of this may be tempered by the kinds of games I play (2D platformers have always taken roughly several to twentysomething hours to complete a first playthrough of, even since the NES days, and aside from simply getting more levels).

Within the realm of 2D platformers (just so I can compare apples to apples), my approximate experiences are that...
* If the game is about featuring a specific novel gameplay mechanic, then for people who are like me who don't really like puzzle games as much, keeping it "short and sweet", completable within a few or several hours (i.e. <10) is probably a good length. If it turns out to be a smash hit, try going for the approach below.
* If the game isn't about unique mechanics, or doesn't primarily rely on this as a gameplay feature, then aiming for a 10-20 hour completion time seems to be the relative standard. For comparison, I recently watched someone's archived stream of his first-time playthrough of Super Metroid -- it took him about 15 hours real time, 9 hours in-game timer. I'd say this is, very roughly, the proper length for a good "full-size" 2D adventure, give or take several hours obviously. Thing is, when you make this kind of "full-size adventure" game, you do need to make sure you don't just have mildly novel gameplay mechanics, but a strong story or other narrative to back that up -- or else, if you just have levels upon levels, you can end up with a game but it will have relatively niche appeal, since people will have to be engaged by the mechanics and the mechanics alone.

Incidentally, I don't like using playtime as a measure of game scope or "size", because it's nowhere near a perfect correlation (at best, it's still highly genre-dependent, to say nothing of alternate game modes and multiple built-in win conditions), but it is what it is.

Quote from arkarian:

i think this will slowly change as programming gets more abstract

I think there are packages that allow people to make semi-competent games that have a standardized mechanics relatively easily, e.g. Game Maker and stuff like it, though these in turn get criticized for not "standing out" sufficiently, for what it's worth. The usual criticism is that they look "generic", to which my usual thought is that whoever makes them and doesn't use unique mechanics as a draw should at least aim to use narrative/aesthetics as a draw, and that requires, at the very least, picking out a coherent set of sprites from asset packs and tweaking them where necessary to make them make sense together in presenting a cohesive fictional setting rather than just "looking about right for a game". Custom scripting some mechanics (that match the narrative) may also help.

Quote from ryu:

yeah i bought hollow knight for switch and am disappointed so far. i thought people praised it to hell and back and expected a great game, but what i got feels reaaaaally stale so far

I haven't yet played Hollow Knight, though meanwhile I keep on thinking of Shovel Knight when I hear its name.

Speaking of Shovel Knight, I still haven't played that either. Though I have played Castle in the Darkness, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

[quote="arkarian"]games will always require a shitload more time and people, and that's why almost every indie game i've played feels half finished, too short, or half baked [/quote]They do tend to be of a smaller scope, though my perception of this may be tempered by the kinds of games I play (2D platformers have always taken roughly several to twentysomething hours to complete a first playthrough of, even since the NES days, and aside from simply getting more levels).

Within the realm of 2D platformers (just so I can compare apples to apples), my approximate experiences are that...
* If the game is about featuring a specific novel gameplay mechanic, then for people who are like me who don't really like puzzle games as much, keeping it "short and sweet", completable within a few or several hours (i.e. <10) is probably a good length.  If it turns out to be a smash hit, try going for the approach below.
* If the game isn't about unique mechanics, or doesn't primarily rely on this as a gameplay feature, then aiming for a 10-20 hour completion time seems to be the relative standard.  For comparison, I recently watched someone's archived stream of his first-time playthrough of Super Metroid -- it took him about 15 hours real time, 9 hours in-game timer.  I'd say this is, very roughly, the proper length for a good "full-size" 2D adventure, give or take several hours obviously.  Thing is, when you make this kind of "full-size adventure" game, you do need to make sure you don't just have mildly novel gameplay mechanics, but a strong story or other narrative to back that up -- or else, if you just have levels upon levels, you can end up with a game but it will have relatively niche appeal, since people will have to be engaged by the mechanics and the mechanics alone.

Incidentally, I don't like using playtime as a measure of game scope or "size", because it's nowhere near a perfect correlation (at best, it's still highly genre-dependent, to say nothing of alternate game modes and multiple built-in win conditions), but it is what it is.

[quote="arkarian"]i think this will slowly change as programming gets more abstract [/quote]I think there are packages that allow people to make semi-competent games that have a standardized mechanics relatively easily, e.g. Game Maker and stuff like it, though these in turn get criticized for not "standing out" sufficiently, for what it's worth.  The usual criticism is that they look "generic", to which my usual thought is that whoever makes them and doesn't use unique mechanics as a draw should at least aim to use narrative/aesthetics as a draw, and that requires, at the very least, picking out a coherent set of sprites from asset packs and tweaking them where necessary to make them make sense together in presenting a cohesive fictional setting rather than just "looking about right for a game".  Custom scripting some mechanics ([i]that match the narrative[/i]) may also help.

[quote="ryu"]yeah i bought hollow knight for switch and am disappointed so far. i thought people praised it to hell and back and expected a great game, but what i got feels reaaaaally stale so far[/quote]I haven't yet played Hollow Knight, though meanwhile I keep on thinking of Shovel Knight when I hear its name.

Speaking of Shovel Knight, I still haven't played that either.  Though I [i]have[/i] played Castle in the Darkness, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Glenn Magus Harvey

2018-06-16 11:40:07 pm

i played hyper metroid then i played super metroid rotation then i have been playing super metroid arcade then i played vanilla super metroid and now i want to play a super metroid rando

what is happening to me
help

Da Dood

2018-06-17 06:56:02 pm

Dood Trigger™

Day 15 - Dino Crisis 2 » Done!

aka the most action-y classic survival horror ever. Interesting how many ideas in DC2 went on to appear in RE4 in some form... a shop with all sorts of weapons and upgrades, dedicated sub-weapon button, set pieces galore, and the combo system that basically made Mercs what it is. It's really fun building combos and farming points to get powerful ASAP.

Skipped the Solid Cannon, which was probably a bad idea because you still do a bit of backtracking before the Third Energy Facility. But I did okay without it. Killed every Allosaur in my way, which gave me mad points (10K if you do it damageless). I didn't farm the Loch Ness Monsters much, but I still killed as many as I could while crossing the rooms and still got massive exp.

I find DC1 and 2 equally exciting despite being very different experiences. The first game is more polished, though, for sure.

Clear time: 2:58

Glenn Magus Harvey

Edit history:

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-18 04:08:09 am

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-18 04:07:22 am

Glenn Magus Harvey: 2018-06-18 04:05:45 am

2018-06-18 04:05:06 am

finally broke into the six digits scorewise on SMet Arcade (arcade, auto, non-time-attack)

glennmagusharvey 105550 53 0/0/0/0/0 0:18:28 FAD7

If only I hadn't gotten greedy in trying to get that one far east Norfair e-tank.

Da Dood

2018-06-18 07:05:34 am

Dood Trigger™

Day 16 - Ninja Gaiden Shadow (blind) » Done!

There had to be a Ninja Gaiden in the marathon! This is like a (much) easier and slower paced version of the NES games. It's also really short, but that's okay.

Ryu has the shortest jump I've seen, but he makes up for it with a grapple hook that's pretty fun to use. He also only has one ninpo (fire wheel). The level design is fair and sometimes kind of ingenious for a B&W, tiny screen game. There's even a section where the lights go out. And a pretty rad version of Unbreakable Determination.

Still prefer most other NGs, but I enjoyed it!

Clear time: 40 minutes

Glenn Magus Harvey

2018-06-18 10:03:26 am

Quote from Da Dood:

Day 16 - Ninja Gaiden Shadow

Oh hey, that Ninja Gaiden game that wasn't meant to be a Ninja Gaiden game in the first place. (It was originally meant to be part of the unrelated Shadow of the Ninja franchise, which had its first game on NES.) It's also the only Ninja Gaiden game I've played, haha.

The music is absolutely rockin' awesome.

Da Dood

2018-06-18 06:00:24 pm

Dood Trigger™

Yeah, I love Shadow of the Ninja (and Natsume), and both games do feel pretty similar.

Da Dood

2018-06-19 06:59:06 pm

Dood Trigger™

Day 17 - Sonic the Hedgehog » Done!

When I was a kid I owned mostly Nintendo systems, but some of my friends had a Genesis and I couldn't wait to get invited to play Sonic. I was pretty obsessed with this game (and now I own like 4 versions of it!).

I know people aren't so into Marble Zone, but I think it's a cool level. You do all these Indiana Jones bits, and there's some decent variety in how you interact with world (makeshift rafts, deactivating traps, jumping on those chain crusher things). I also like the shortcuts in Labyrinth 1 and Scrap Brain 3. If only there were shortcuts in Labyrinth 2 and 3 as well, then you could skip all boring water levels... >_>

This game still has enough going for it IMO, even if it's not as refined as the sequels (3 acts per zone is a bit much). I still play it fairly often.

Clear time: 55 minutes

Da Dood

2018-06-20 04:43:29 am

Dood Trigger™

Day 18 - Double Dragon » Done!

Best strategy for this game as far as I'm aware: learn elbow ASAP, spam elbow. By far the most abusable move in the game, and it's pretty fun. Getting it early involves a lot of punching, though, which means trading hits over and over. That's my least favorite thing about DD1.

I found sort of a trick for the infamous walls in mission 4... if you wait right before each "column" of blocks and walk under the very top one, you can usually survive unscathed. But you gotta stop before the next column, or else RNGsus will smite your sorry butt.

I lost an attempt to freaking Jimmy. :\ That wasn't great. At least the game is like 15 minutes long, so getting a game over or two isn't too bad. And it helps that the music is unbelievable.

Clear time: 1:20 (over four resets... the run itself took 18 minutes or so)

arkarian

Edit history:

arkarian: 2018-06-21 09:55:27 am

2018-06-21 09:55:07 am

red chamber dream

just about finished mario + rabbids. i was expecting to like this game, but i enjoyed it even more than i thought i would. the mechanics are just so fun, and the overworld is a brilliant way to change up the pace (and make it feel like a "real" mario game)