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FirstAidKite posted:Ok, both of you won a copy of Enter The Gungeon Sent you a friend invite - thanks! 
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Oct 21, 2016 04:22
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FirstAidKite posted:I like rum I prefer whiskey, but rum is my second favorite liquor.
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Oct 21, 2016 04:22
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Enter the Gungeon: so far I like it better than Nuclear Throne. NT feels better to play, but goes way too fast for me to keep up with it and thus I die easily and don't have any fun with it. EtG meanwhile is slower and feels easier to control and enjoy - except I am noticing that ammo seems to be incredibly scarce and um, I don't want to have to hoard my shotgun or crossbow for bosses or something, so hmmm. I may have to break out the cheat engine sooner than I thought. In short, Thank you FirstAidKite!
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Oct 21, 2016 04:54
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I drink twice a week. During my pinball league and maybe on the weekends. I play video games everyday. If I can find someone to sell me weed that doesn't involve driving an hour both ways, I enjoy a hazy smoke with my gaming regimen, but since I bought a house, more and more of my time has been occupied with general upkeep and what the kids call "adulting". I what I'm trying to say is that I'm very excited for Final Fantasy XV next month.
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Oct 21, 2016 05:03
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ImpAtom posted:I was honestly hoping for a real answer. You mentioned you're a dev and a freelance writer so I was wondering what your gold standard was. I wasn't looking for a "gotcha" thing, I just wondered where you were coming from. Sorry I took so long to answer this, I wanted to make sure I was well-rested and not playing a dumb zombie game while I answered it. It's actually pretty tricky to determine how good a video game's writing is, because of a belief I hold very strongly, that video games allow you to fill in the blanks more than any other medium. Something like Final Fantasy IV, when looked at as a script, does not have very good writing at all. It's barely coherent at times. But just like a player is able to fill in the blanks of this  and see a sword swing, they're able to take a few stunted lines of dialogue and really poorly conveyed action and get the emotional meaning of the story. This is a power no other medium really has. Consequently, the more you fill in those blanks yourself, with longer dialogue, more lavishly produced cutscenes, voice acting, etc., the less the player is able to meet your product halfway and the more the writing, acting and voices get judged at face value, as if it were a film, or book. And this is where many games fall flat. It's a gap more powerful than the allowance one gives depending on a movie's tone or goals (a drama's writing will always be judged more harshly than a comedy or action film, something tongue in cheek will always get more wriggle room than something serious, etc). It's things like this that can let people feel like Paper Mario or Earthbound is a better-written game than The Walking Dead Season 2, when directly comparing their scripts would disprove that entirely. This sort of thing is why people feel newer Final Fantasy games have much worse writing than the old ones, because they're forced to take the writing at face value, with no narrative or emotional blanks left up to their imagination. This is where something like The Last of Us fails, for me. It very badly wants to be a netflix miniseries, so I evaluate its writing that way. And it gets judged more harshly because it abandons its medium's strengths when it comes to telling its story. Games that are objectively written worse feel better-written because they deliver their story in a more palatable way, in a way that lets me meet it halfway. They don't stop dead in their tracks and try to be TV shows. But having said all that, an example of a game that I feel is genuinely written much better than The Last of Us is Saints Row 2. All of the game's themes, narrative goals and sense of humor are placed on the table in this short cutscene that plays on the title screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHEKsQweMfM The game is a story about class warfare and street crime, a story about a Citizen Kane/Scarface style rise to power and corruption, a comedic continuation of the story of the first game, which saw your character climb the ranks of the Saints while losing sight of what the gang was supposed to be about. In between the hilarious and repetitive mini-games that make up the majority of the gameplay, you meet and defeat other gang leaders that are worse people than you, and slowly take over the city back from faceless corporations and crooked cops. But even though every step along the way feels like a justified victory, every villain feels like someone that deserved what they had coming to them, your character, a joy-riding sociopath, becomes revealed for the biggest, darkest threat to the city yet. Despite the brilliance of making Urban Renewal the final villain in a game about rising from poverty and grimy city streets, The Boss is unequivocally the true villain of the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uagmsJ8xKtE The story of The Boss is told perfectly through the game's main story, and the story of Stillwater is told perfectly through every piece of dialogue coming from minor NPCs you meet on the street or during mini-games. It's a game that has a twisted sense of humor, is full of obvious social commentary, and manages to still technically be a tragedy. It's darkly funny but never feels mean-spirited the way Rockstar games always do. It's a game where the main character's goals and your own line up perfectly: he or she is a violent weirdo who wants to take over the city, have fun, and protect their friends. None of that weird narrative dissonance like GTA4 had where the main character's a well-meaning good guy and the player is a joyriding psycho. And the game lets you have the stupidest, most violent, most mayhem-inducing fun you want, and never guilts you for it, but it also reminds you exactly what kind of person would do these sorts of things. Despite how blatant it is with so many of its jokes and themes, Saints Row 2's writing has way more depth, nuance, and emotional resonance than The Last of Us. And despite being kinda janky as hell, it manages to marry its gameplay perfectly to its writing. 
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Oct 21, 2016 05:15
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chumbler posted:It was her polite way of asking why you want your whiskey ruined. I lived a large chunk of my life in the South, whiskey and water is tradition  Now people who put soda in their whiskey, those people are subhuman
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Oct 21, 2016 05:29
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Lurdiak posted:None of that weird narrative dissonance like GTA4 had where the main character's a well-meaning good guy and the player is a joyriding psycho. Great post but I will always take issue when people say this because there is a weird presumption that, since all players can go on ludonarratively dissonant murder rampages, all players do, which is a disingenuous position. GTA4 was, for a few reasons, the first one where I actually played the game out "as" Niko and I didn't run over old ladies or gun down random civilians. It kinda feels like, when people bring that up about GTA4, that they're saying that giving the player an open sandbox to play in somehow cheapens the story that's there when I think the truth is that both can exist in the same space without either being devalued.
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Oct 21, 2016 05:38
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Yeah the only person I ever went on crazy rampages while playing as in GTA 5 is Trevor, the one they give you to do that with because of the dissonance with Niko in 4. edit: Also Saints Row 2's tone is all over the place but the characters are pretty well written CJacobs fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 21, 2016 |
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Oct 21, 2016 05:51
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That's kind of a problem, though, because GTA as a series encourages you to rampage through the gameplay. I never got into 4 or 5 because, and this is an extremely unpopular opinion, I hated the game once the protagonist had a character and was voiced. Both Vice City and San Andreas made me hate the person I was playing, and they both felt littered with weird mini-games which were not particularly well designed when compared to the basic shooting and driving. GTA3 was glitch as gently caress and, to me at least, please don't start a huge thing over this, it felt like the most misogynist game I'm willing to play, but there was something about the silent protagonist with almost no backstory that allowed for me to layer reasons for all of his murderous stuff, whereas the rest of the games made me feel like I was participating in Rockstar's story, which I think, for GTA, has always been pretty bad. GTA 3 felt like some kind of weird, magical realism thing while the other games felt like a really terrible mob war movie layered onto a game that didn't support that story.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:00
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precision posted:Great post but I will always take issue when people say this because there is a weird presumption that, since all players can go on ludonarratively dissonant murder rampages, all players do, which is a disingenuous position. GTA4 was, for a few reasons, the first one where I actually played the game out "as" Niko and I didn't run over old ladies or gun down random civilians. I brought it up because previous GTA games, especially Vice City, were all about the insane rampages you could go on, and that's what people enjoyed the most about those games. GTA4 gives you whiplash in that sense. It's very odd to take a game series known for crime and mayhem and give you a mild mannered protagonist who just wants to make his way into the world. There's a similar issue in Red Dead Redemption where the game is very obviously about making up for past misdeeds and redeeming yourself, but there's still this strange option to put on a bandit mask and act like a huge dickhole, simply because it's a Rockstar game. Y'all can feel free to disagree with me on this, it's just how I view the situation.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:01
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Bicyclops posted:That's kind of a problem, though, because GTA as a series encourages you to rampage through the gameplay. I never got into 4 or 5 because, and this is an extremely unpopular opinion, I hated the game once the protagonist had a character and was voiced. Both Vice City and San Andreas made me hate the person I was playing, and they both felt littered with weird mini-games which were not particularly well designed when compared to the basic shooting and driving. 5 very specifically discourages the random mayhem by way of making 2 out of the 3 protagonists relatively sensible people instead of sociopaths edit: and they still have one that is a sociopath so that you can do that and have it make sense from a story perspective GTA 5 is not a well-written game but it does kick that complaint right out of the door from the very beginning CJacobs fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Oct 21, 2016 |
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Oct 21, 2016 06:03
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And I definitely agree that the writing in FFIV is bad but you can sort of get the emotional core of the story through the way the gameplay makes you experience the dialogue. It's just Star Wars, basically, but that's all you want it to be. There's kind of a mix of three things: 1) the high concept for the story. 2) the written dialogue for that story. 3) the way the "gamey" aspects of things support the latter two things. Then there's kind of an invisible fourth thing, which is "How good are the gamey aspects of the game when considered as a giant board game?" GTA has bad dialogue and a bad story, but GTA3 had such a good way of connecting the gameplay with its skeleton story that it sort of forced me to layer a better story on top of it. i'd say the hallmark for a game that has a good high concept for a story but both terrible dialogue and terrible gameplay integration is To the Moon. i'm not sure that there IS a game whose actual word-for-word writing elevates it to the point where we can accept flaws in its other two major things yet. maybe there's one out there i just haven't played. then there's like, strategy games and puzzle games where the first three things are irrelevant and its all just mechanics. there's a lot of taste involved as to which thing you prefer, and the "gameplay integration elevates the rest of the story" is so weirdly personal that it's even more subjective than other stuff, i think. i dunno.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:08
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CJacobs posted:5 very specifically discourages the random mayhem by way of making 2 out of the 3 protagonists relatively sensible people instead of sociopaths And not having played it, I'm not disagreeing with you but besides through what they say or how they are defined as characters, is there anything that discourages you from murdering passers-by in the gameplay? Is it harder to do with the non sociopath characters? I don't think character development is enough to discourage a person from engaging in the kind of gameplay that made a series famous, but maybe I'm wrong.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:11
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Bicyclops posted:i'm not sure that there IS a game whose actual word-for-word writing elevates it to the point where we can accept flaws in its other two major things yet. maybe there's one out there i just haven't played. I think LA Noire was that game for me. While its writing is hardly award-winning, seeing where Cole's character arc takes him was what kept me playing through the unfun action and the janky, unsatisfying interrogation mechanics.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:13
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CJacobs posted:5 very specifically discourages the random mayhem by way of making 2 out of the 3 protagonists relatively sensible people instead of sociopaths Trevor is a blatant sociopath but Michael is pretty much diagnosed as a one during the game and Franklin kills people for money so I don't know what this 2 out of 3 stuff is.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:13
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Going on rampages in GTA isn't rewarding in the least, i wouldn't say the games encourage you to do so at all (minus the rampage challenges, those are goofy) It's possible that's the just the way I play the games, about 90% of my play time is doing story missions and the rest is doing ambulance and pizza delivery jobs, there's no room to go up to a rooftop and start sniping people for pleasure
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Oct 21, 2016 06:14
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tap my mountain posted:Wait, people were actually buying shark cards? Shark Cards were the whole reason we got all of the content updates that we do. GTA Online still gets new content and one just happened a few weeks ago.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:15
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actually, i think i take most of that back. Like, when i played GTA3, in my head, the guy was this dude who had made deals with the Seven Deaths, which was a thing i made up, in order to keep himself alive, and it required him to do things like rampage, or saving lives in ambulance and fire missions. i played a different game than everyone else probably did, and it's maybe the only reason it was tolerable to me. and Civ 3-5 really are just board games with a computer to do the numbers, but when i play it is always the story of an immortal science adviser, who, over time, discovers all technology to unlock the secret of why he is immortal and other people are not. that kind of "Fill in the blanks" storytelling is going away for games, and it's probably good; it just makes the flaws in video game stories a little more obvious and makes me engage with some of them less. i'll always have Mario to overlay my own weird story onto the game. thanks, mario, and thanks, thread, for reading all of my rambling words.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:18
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I should specify that when I talk about the player being a psycho in GTA, I don't necessarily mean going on a 5-star rampage for the hell of it, I mean minor things like jacking a car just because you need it or killing a cop who follows you in an alley because it's quicker than trying to lose them.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:19
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Jay Rust posted:Going on rampages in GTA isn't rewarding in the least, i wouldn't say the games encourage you to do so at all (minus the rampage challenges, those are goofy) It's real nice to rack up stars and get a garage full of FBI cars sometimes. it can be rewarding.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:21
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Lurdiak posted:I should specify that when I talk about the player being a psycho in GTA, I don't necessarily mean going on a 5-star rampage for the hell of it, I mean minor things like jacking a car just because you need it or killing a cop who follows you in an alley because it's quicker than trying to lose them. I don't get how allowing you to do those things takes favor away from the game. You're right, it doesn't gel with the story they're trying to tell when you use your agency as a player to break it. But even if you do count that against the game, overall (especially in GTA 5) they tried to balance it between letting you be a real shitpile and making the people you steer around be shitpiles to justify varying levels of shitpiling you can do while playing as them. TF2 HAT MINING RIG posted:Trevor is a blatant sociopath but Michael is pretty much diagnosed as a one during the game and Franklin kills people for money so I don't know what this 2 out of 3 stuff is. They're different kinds of crazy, I guess. Trevor is the kill-em-all kind of crazy, is all I'm saying. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Oct 21, 2016 |
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Oct 21, 2016 06:32
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Playing open world games for the story is kind of crazy, though I'd say the same thing for 99% of games. The good 1% are because of player agency and not cutscenes.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:38
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Unrelated: It's weird that navigating conversation trees isn't considered gameplay to most gamers when almost everything else is.
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Oct 21, 2016 06:40
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TF2 HAT MINING RIG posted:Unrelated: It's weird that navigating conversation trees isn't considered gameplay to most gamers when almost everything else is. Who says that?
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Oct 21, 2016 06:42
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Old Rasputin stout is pretty good. Thanks to the kind soul who mentioned it.
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Oct 21, 2016 07:04
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Jay Rust posted:Who says that? Oh, you know. "Them". "Most gamers". "People". Bicyclops posted:And I definitely agree that the writing in FFIV is bad but you can sort of get the emotional core of the story through the way the gameplay makes you experience the dialogue. It's just Star Wars, basically FF4 is Star Wars in reverse. You play as Darth Vader, for one thing!
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Oct 21, 2016 07:08
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 color splash is real good
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Oct 21, 2016 07:50
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 A+ video game writing
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Oct 21, 2016 07:56
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I cannot decide whether shy guys, boos, or Bowser are the best Mario characters.
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Oct 21, 2016 08:14
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Looper posted:
Petey Piranha wears underwear with his own face on it, that's pretty cool.
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Oct 21, 2016 08:25
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chumbler posted:I cannot decide whether shy guys, boos, or Bowser are the best Mario characters. Color Splash makes a very strong case for shy guys, but Bowser's evil plan this time around is a Rolling Stones reference
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Oct 21, 2016 08:33
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Is there a 100ft Robot Golf thread?
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Oct 21, 2016 08:38
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Looper posted:
Is it actually good or Super/Sticker Star 'good'? Is there a steam train, is what I'm asking.
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Oct 21, 2016 09:04
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Somehow I was unaware of the fact that Taito tried to update Space Invaders into a story-driven urban shooter in the PS2 era. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IETQOtviZWo The fact that the gameplay is still more or less classic Space Invaders only with a different camera angle and aesthetic makes it all even weirder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdznSMK1e9s
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Oct 21, 2016 09:10
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Oh poo poo, I only just read that RDR is coming to PS Now so people will actually be able to play it on PC.
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Oct 21, 2016 09:17
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chumbler posted:I cannot decide whether shy guys, boos, or Bowser are the best Mario characters. I was gonna make some smug comment saying "it's obviously..." but now I realize I don't have an answer for you. Hmm.
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Oct 21, 2016 09:32
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Shyguys, for sure. Their o.o faces are very cute
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Oct 21, 2016 09:35
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I was always wondering what's up with shyguys because to me they always looked like cute psycho killers out of Friday the 13th or something. Why do they look like this and why there's so many of them?
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Oct 21, 2016 10:13
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Black Lodge Palpek posted:I was always wondering what's up with shyguys because to me they always looked like cute psycho killers out of Friday the 13th or something. Why do they look like this and why there's so many of them?  like Bane, they wear the mask because they are shy guys edit: "If I take off-a the mask, will you die?" "it would be very embarrassing" "You're a shy guy!" "for you" CJacobs fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Oct 21, 2016 |
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Oct 21, 2016 10:16
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chumbler posted:I cannot decide whether shy guys, boos, or Bowser are the best Mario characters. Trick question - the answer is toad(ette)
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Oct 21, 2016 12:40
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