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Dirk the Average posted:Mario 64 does it well with the idea of the different stars changing the levels subtly, while still having the bulk of the stars accessible regardless of which option is chosen. It is a massive disappointment to me that the Mario series didn't continue in this manner. For what could be called the first game of the 3D platforming era - or at least the first good game (feel free to correct my massive mis-statement here!), it feels like they got a lot right. I really love the existence of multiple goals within a single arena, most of which are accessible from the start. Even the 100 coin collect-a-thon which can be a bit painful at times encourages you to explore the stages and find the secrets hidden within. Plus in the meta-game there were clear objectives (what were they - erm, 8 stars, 30 stars, [Dry Dry Docks], 70 stars) which you didn't need to complete any specific stars, but did have to complete a boss to advance further. Sunshine was a disappointment because every level was so linear - with I think only 2-3 exceptions you had to play each level from shine 1 - shine 7. Stuck on a given shine? Tough. No more progress for you! Then to win the game you needed to have basically beaten 85% (7 from 8 shines on each level) of the game, compared to 60-odd with Mario 64. Galaxy I think continued in that line, making more of a level exclusive to a given star... then Galaxy 2 which basically abandoned the hub-world (well, there is the face-ship but that's a bit Meh!) never excited me. So yeah - bring on s Banjo-Threeie or similar game which can recapture the fun of exploration which Mario 64 had and nothing has quite recreated!
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Dec 17, 2014 20:43
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Chimera-gui posted:Technically Crash Bandicoot was released the same year as Mario 64 though whether it came before or after depends on which release date you're looking at. Nevertheless, CB was successful enough to get two games before BK was even released. True, but Crash was a different style platformer; it wasn't a task-based collect-a-thon, it was more straight platforming to a goal. NeoAnjou posted:So yeah - bring on s Banjo-Threeie or similar game which can recapture the fun of exploration which Mario 64 had and nothing has quite recreated! I'd pay so much money for Mario 64 remade in the 3D World engine.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:20
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Evil Mastermind posted:True, but Crash was a different style platformer; it wasn't a task-based collect-a-thon, it was more straight platforming to a goal. Admittedly Crash was more like 2D platformers than a fully 3D platformer with its limited range of directional movement though it did have collectables in the form of Gems and later Crystals & Relics.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:16
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Update This weeks video teaches us that there is always a simple solution to your problems Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Part 4: Nutty Acres Act 4 & Logbox 720 Act 2 - [YouTube]/[Polsy] P.S I'm sorry there is no HD option available at the time of posting. I uploaded the video a full 2 and a half hours ago and I still can't watch it in HD so you'll just have to suffer standard definition or wait a little longer for it to process some more.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:37
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Wow, I forgot how many L.O.G.'s choice missions were in that area. The one helicopter mission was mostly there to say "oh by the way you really should use helicopters for this area" but the trolley that is good is great for getting around Logbox, so you beat the game to it.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:23
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Holy poo poo, this just got magical.  Also, it looks like the plane has some auto-aim going on.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:26
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Man, those nut puns really taint this game. Loving the LP. It cracks me up, and I always enjoy seeing people cut corners in games in creative ways.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:34
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The regular Egg Guns have a bit of auto-aim to them it's just only really apparent when on planes though. It's nice.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:36
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so for as much as you say you hate this game it looks like holy poo poo so much fun. I mean come on you took the nut vacuum and dragged it down to the field and you won. That's amazing outside the box thinking.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:00
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I feel like with the nut gathering challenge that that exact solution had to have come up during testing, but they liked it so much that they left it in. I hope there's more that can be cheated like that.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:46
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Pssst, press in the left thumbstick to cycle through the physics objects that the wrench will pick up.
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Dec 18, 2014 05:13
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On that Bottles Log's Choice flying mission in Part 4 there is actually an extra engine in a box right at the start of the mission. Makes it super easy.
Bondematt fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 05:46
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I've played this game a few times but never gotten very far in it, just because I keep getting distracted and vehicle building isn't really my thing. But man, that balloon drift you pulled at the end of the Piddles race was great. P.S. I also really like the sort of Truman-Show-Dome aspects of the nutty acres area that become much more apparent when you're flying. Roach Warehouse fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 06:00
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More like Mr. fuk? You mean to say you passed up an opportunity to use 'Mr. poo poo', and you DIDN'T take it? Edit: Wow, the par time for the plane mission is really tight. Samovar fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 07:39
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I like that the one Jinjo whining about being oppressed was the same dark blue as tumblr. I'd say it was intentional if not for the game releasing in 2008.
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Dec 18, 2014 07:57
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The aesthetic of Nutty Acres really reminds me a lot of Yoshi's Story, particularly the trees made out of inflatable leaves. It's kind of endearing Before the decade is out, we will land a bear on the clouds! "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Breegull has landed."
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Dec 18, 2014 08:17
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Stallion Cabana posted:so for as much as you say you hate this game it looks like holy poo poo so much fun. That's the thing - there's a hell of a lot of stuff that this game does right, but it falls flat far too often. Look at the hub world, for instance. There are a ton of different collectibles in the hub world, and you're encouraged to roam around and explore every nook and cranny to get more parts, and since more parts are more fun for the player because the vehicle customization is good, it's a thing that the player is naturally inclined to do and will have fun doing. Contrast that with the levels. You have a half dozen or so points of interest, each of which provides a self-contained challenge that might as well not have a level built around it. Exploring the levels feels hollow and pointless since not only is everything already marked on the map for you, the only thing you can get are notes. And while yeah, notes can translate directly into parts, you don't seem to need that many notes to get the parts you need, and each individual note doesn't have enough of an impact to make players feel like they should hunt down each and every last one of them. Compound crappy level design with an abundance of "gently caress you, use the intern's vehicles instead of your own custom stuff that you spend the rest of the game unlocking parts for" scenarios, and the whole thing just drags. Are there any other games like this that are single player? Robocraft on steam looks somewhat similar, but it's a free to play mmo thing, and I have had bad experiences with those in the past.
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Dec 18, 2014 09:09
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I feel like a better way to do the L.O.G.s choice missions would be to provide a pool of predetermined vehicle parts, and/or a maximum-part cap, but allow free reign within those limits. I like the idea of limiting the tools the player has access to for a task, but not to the extent it was done. Maybe give the option of the intern's vehicle for those that aren't super into construction.
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Dec 18, 2014 09:20
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I really want to like this game, but every time I look at it all I can see are the leagues of wasted potential.
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Dec 18, 2014 15:03
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Roach Warehouse posted:I feel like a better way to do the L.O.G.s choice missions would be to provide a pool of predetermined vehicle parts, and/or a maximum-part cap, but allow free reign within those limits. I like the idea of limiting the tools the player has access to for a task, but not to the extent it was done. I have a reasonable amount of sympathy for it - It makes a lot of sense for tutorial missions - this is how you use the trolley... this is how a plane/boat/helicopter works... it would be better if that only applied the first-time you played the mission, then you could use whatever you liked to S-rank/Trophy-Thomas it. It kinda makes sense in races against other AI opponents in the same vehicle - we're going to place restrictions on you, but they apply to all your opponents too, so it should be fair. However, it's not the best game-design - we're going to intentionally worsen our control scheme to increase the challenge... It's a bit cheap. It doesn't really make much sense in other missions. It's just making things more difficult for now real reason... and also kinda not given that you can just jump into the garage and alter the vehicle anyway. Log's choices should be suggestions of mediocre vehicles which will, with good play, complete the mission within the time-limit/other limit (i.e. in the red), which you can modify or replace at your leisure. You should need to either be excellent at driving, build a well-designed vehicle for the task, or cheat to get TT times/whatevers.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:18
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That plane mission is a good example of when Log's choice is appropriate: it's supposed to be the point that the game teaches you how to fly and give you a general pattern of a good, working plane. Although as Dex mentioned, the flight is wicked good, largely because the game actively and blatantly cheats physics in your favor. Basically anything with propulsion can fly, and sometimes you don't even need that. It seems a lot of Log's choice missions are there just because the mission would be trivially easy with a helicopter or a weapon. Which is really a problem that should have been solved by either tweaking the mission design or introducing a mechanic to exclude certain parts. Fortunately I'm pretty sure this video is anomalous. I only remember there being like twenty Log's choice missions in the game (which I agree is way too many), and some of them (like Bottle's plane mission) are that way for a good reason. And as mentioned, a lot of the time there's a Mumbo box with an extra engine lurking around.
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Dec 18, 2014 18:01
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Alternatively, introducing flying Gruntybots that specifically target planes and helicopters would do well to dissuade players from using them. It'd also help to create more enemies in a game where there are maybe 7 different ones across the entire game.
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Dec 18, 2014 19:23
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I can't really say anything bad about log's choice, since in the end that kind of a mission is designed to test your skill, and not how well you can break the game or how efficiently you can complete an objective with your own device.
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Dec 18, 2014 21:05
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Simsmagic posted:Alternatively, introducing flying Gruntybots that specifically target planes and helicopters would do well to dissuade players from using them. It'd also help to create more enemies in a game where there are maybe 7 different ones across the entire game. Anti-air emplacements that you can destroy on foot to make the skies safe for later.
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Dec 19, 2014 03:36
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NeoAnjou posted:Sunshine was a disappointment because every level was so linear - with I think only 2-3 exceptions you had to play each level from shine 1 - shine 7. Stuck on a given shine? Tough. No more progress for you! Then to win the game you needed to have basically beaten 85% (7 from 8 shines on each level) of the game, compared to 60-odd with Mario 64. The worst part of requiring you to beat shine 7 in every zone to beat the game is that it made all the secret shines and blue coin shines meaningless. Blue coins wouldn't have been so terrible if your shine count meant anything, since then they'd have a reason to exist rather than making people wonder why there aren't just more secret shines.
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Dec 19, 2014 04:29
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I feel like the music in this game is lacking. It just doesn't feel fun.
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Dec 19, 2014 05:25
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Unfortunately there won't be an update this week, what with it being the Christmas week and all we've both been extremely busy. I tried my best to get something together for today but it hasn't panned out that way I'm afraid! don't fret though we will update as soon as we can next week! see you all then 
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Dec 24, 2014 21:36
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How about some Holiday fanart then? Edit: Cleaned up the picture a little. 
SystemLogoff fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Dec 25, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 23:45
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Shouldn't there be tiny versions of him burning in the fire?
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Dec 25, 2014 00:10
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SystemLogoff posted:How about some Holiday fanart then? Hahaha yesss. You have no idea how much this pleases me. Seeing that smug rear end TV face burning is like everything i've wished for. Honestly, I kinda am growing on this game, but im not playing it. Like, some things it does SUPER WELL and the flying ! But everything else is.. just.. why?
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Dec 25, 2014 00:31
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Vilemoon posted:Hahaha yesss. You have no idea how much this pleases me. Seeing that smug rear end TV face burning is like everything i've wished for. Because someone at some point (probably Microsoft's fault) decided that platformers were old and outdated and new modern games needed customizable vehicles as the primary gameplay element. They were very, very wrong.
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Dec 25, 2014 02:55
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I can't remember where I read this, but the first concept for Banjo-Threeie was that it would be a remake of the original, but with some new stuff (for example, Mumbo's Mountain would have a boss fight against a termite queen.) Then they went with a game where Grunty would get the same powerups that Banjo and Kazooie got and they'd have to fight her in boss battles where she used them. Then they realized they had made the levels too big to traverse on foot, and Microsoft decided that the bottom had fallen out of the platformer market and we got Nuts & Bolts.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:07
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Which is really goddamn depressing because Rare were one of the last bastions of good platformer games and every time I look at Nuts and Bolts I can't help but imagine what could have been if Rare hadn't gotten Microsoft'd. The worst part is that the whole vehicle system could actually be a super fun addition to the 'exploration platformer' school of game design as having various vehicles synergises super well with the exploration aspect and would let a clever level designer do all kinds of interesting things, but the vehicle system should be an addition to the platformer gameplay, not the core mechanic.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:16
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Microsoft's assessment that the bottom had fallen out of the platformer market wasn't wrong at the time since the market had at that point been saturated with games which just weren't selling well. As much as people here hate to admit; there is a reason that Crash is now in permanent limbo, Spyro is now a member of the Skylanders, and the sixth-eighth generation of consoles doesn't have a mascot platformer at the same level as Mario.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:25
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What I dislike from the game is how every time you go into the missions you have to go through the whole conversation/menus combo. It really cuts the flow of the game, when you are constantly interrupted from your traveling around the world in whatever goofy vehicle you have designed to listen to the problems of Generic Red Jinjo N° 6.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:26
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Chimera-gui posted:Microsoft's assessment that the bottom had fallen out of the platformer market wasn't wrong at the time since the market had at that point been saturated with games which just weren't selling well. The thing is that the reason platformers havn't been selling well recently is because they've all been bad. I think this is actually a level design problem at heart; one of the things I noted while studying games design was that creating a good 3D platformer level is an entire order of magnitude more difficult than creating an FPS level and the obsession with 'realistic' graphics makes platformer level design even harder because realistic graphics and navigating complex platform environments do not work well together at all. Basically it's just harder to do a good 3d platformer level than it is to do almost any other kind of level and level design is often overlooked because people often forget just how important it is so the result was a glut of really lovely platformers that ruined the market. But asking Microsoft execs (or really almost any execs at all) to notice and understand all of that is asking a bit much, unfortunately.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:33
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It didn't help that the first experiments with bringing fifth-gen mascots into the sixth gen systems, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly and Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, were pretty abysmal failures by all accounts and not a promising omen. I'd say there are some underrated gems like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (which is actually being LP'd right now) and Mario Sunshine but otherwise there was a lot of garbage.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:52
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Chimera-gui posted:It didn't help that the first experiments with bringing fifth-gen mascots into the sixth gen systems, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly and Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, were pretty abysmal failures by all accounts and not a promising omen. Maybe I was too young to appreciate Ty, but I never thought it was particularly great. Although it did teach me some ridiculous Australian gibberish. Sly Cooper also stuck around, and considering Sony keeps Sly around as one of its token console mascots we'll probably see another one soonish.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:24
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I really want to see a platformer done in windwaker style cell-shading. The nature of cell-shaded graphics and how they appear to the eye makes them pretty much perfect for a 3D platformer.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:29
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Ghost Stromboli posted:Maybe I was too young to appreciate Ty, but I never thought it was particularly great. Although it did teach me some ridiculous Australian gibberish. Sly Cooper also stuck around, and considering Sony keeps Sly around as one of its token console mascots we'll probably see another one soonish. Admittedly, Ty wasn't amazing compared to say Banjo Tooie but it was one of the better series to come out of the sixth generation. Sly Cooper is an arguably better series overall than Ty but like with the Jak series, it became less about the platforming in and of itself and more about the story and completing missions. In-fact now that I think about it, a lot of the good platformers at the time were more story-based aside from maybe Mario.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:56
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