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What are you looking forward to in 2021? This poll is closed. |
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| More Bowesette |
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86 | 29.76% |
| This poll being modified by the mods |
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23 | 7.96% |
| game industry unionizing |
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80 | 27.68% |
| less open world AAA games |
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21 | 7.27% |
| being one of cheetah's little pogchamps |
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1 | 0.35% |
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78 | 26.99% |
| Total: | 289 votes | ||
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Rarity posted:I'm confused is this for a gacha game where you collect girls or is this for girls into gacha games? yeah
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Jan 31, 2021 08:50
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| # ? May 18, 2024 21:21 |
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Taking away player agency is one of those things that can be done in a good way and a bad way I think. Like I get why people were annoyed about being forced to launch white phosphorus at civilians in Spec Ops: The line. It's still a pretty powerful and memorable scene, but something is definitely lost by forcing the player's hand. My favorite instance of this is in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. If you push back against LaCroix in dialogue enough, he will just use Dominate on you and all your dialogue choices change from "gently caress YOU DUDE" to "Yes sir I will do as you ask". It's literally a "But thou must" moment, and kinda funny in that way, but it also very effectively underlines the hosed up power dynamic going on in the vampire world. You're dealing with an antagonist who's literally capable of rewriting your mind at will, and it's humbling and horrifying. LaCroix is a really good villain.
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Jan 31, 2021 08:50
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Rarity posted:I'm confused is this for a gacha game where you collect girls or is this for girls into gacha games? it better be the second or I'll be really embarrassed about my new av
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Jan 31, 2021 09:20
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I mostly mean when it is used in the sense of like... Ok there's this indie game I watched a playthrough of recently, I think it was called Locke(d), it's a short visual novel and I'll just spoiler tag it but know that it is super short. It's some game about waking up in a room with a girl sitting in front of you and you talk to her about the stuff in the room. Basically the game has the lady tell you that you the protagonist never remember their conversations, that she remembers all the conversations, there is some talk about the Chinese room experiment, and the lady talks about how she has been stuck forever in this existence of being chained in this room to the protagonist with no way to escape because their creator has put them in a Prometheus type scenario where Prometheus is not free but neither is the bird who has to spend eternity eating him and that the real fault belongs to Zeus, and then the lady says she's gonna talk to their Zeus aka the player/developer/viewer for a bit and says that she knows whoever is playing this game is forcing them to exist for the duration of the game and that the player isn't actually free at all because they still played the game and therefore they're just as trapped as the people in the game are because the player could have stopped playing at any time and instead is letting the lady still speak. Then the lady tells you that regardless of your views, she hates you, then the game restarts. It's dumb and I don't like it because it feels like a lovely puppetmaster thing and I know there are games capable of doing that well but a lot of times I've seen it it just came off as very ham-handed, tedious, and patronizing. I guess the part that bothers me is when a game tries to get high and mighty about it not over the morality of the player's actions but rather the player's existence at all and idk what better way to describe it than lame attempts at puppetmaster poo poo.
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Jan 31, 2021 09:45
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Well Monster Hunter Rise is still not gonna convince me to ever like a mon hon game.
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Jan 31, 2021 09:57
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I might just upsetquit at the final boss of DQ Monsters because losing means you have to redo the entire final dungeon, including the walk to the final dungeon because there's only like four save points in the entire game
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Jan 31, 2021 10:07
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Can anyone recommend any books or texts that talk about video game design choices and/or mechanics on an artistic and analytic level? I've seen a lot of video essay type things on these topics, but I don't have any specific experience in the field myself, so I don't have any intimate understanding or knowledge of broader canon regarding the medium. I'm really interested in the theory of video game music at the moment, but I'll learn about anything. On a separate note, I recently revisited the old Dreamcast Ecco the Dolphin game I played as a kid and that game is still mad atmospheric. If anyone played the Genesis games, how different are those from the DC version? I definitely didn't expect the game to go from "cute" to "creepy and prog rock-y".
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Jan 31, 2021 10:27
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Just curious, does Policenauts have m/any branching paths?
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Jan 31, 2021 10:48
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Blue Labrador posted:On a separate note, I recently revisited the old Dreamcast Ecco the Dolphin game I played as a kid and that game is still mad atmospheric. If anyone played the Genesis games, how different are those from the DC version? I definitely didn't expect the game to go from "cute" to "creepy and prog rock-y". I didn't play the Mega Drive versions but from what I've heard that sounds fairly accurate
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Jan 31, 2021 10:58
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StoryTime posted:Taking away player agency is one of those things that can be done in a good way and a bad way I think. Like I get why people were annoyed about being forced to launch white phosphorus at civilians in Spec Ops: The line. It's still a pretty powerful and memorable scene, but something is definitely lost by forcing the player's hand. I liked that part in TWD1 where you can just choke the creepy dude out but most people I imagine end up killing him because of the emotional state of the scene and that there’s no button prompt telling the player they can stop now.
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Jan 31, 2021 11:01
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https://i.imgur.com/aWRVyaJ.mp4
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Jan 31, 2021 11:10
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Blue Labrador posted:On a separate note, I recently revisited the old Dreamcast Ecco the Dolphin game I played as a kid and that game is still mad atmospheric. If anyone played the Genesis games, how different are those from the DC version? I definitely didn't expect the game to go from "cute" to "creepy and prog rock-y". The ecco games go places man, especially that second one, poo poo gets hosed up I remember being so excited to show my granny Big Blue
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Jan 31, 2021 11:22
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My city's announced its first case of community transition in 10 months, so we had a lockdown commence 20 minutes ago. It's only meant to be for 5 days, but I could see it stretching further. We've definitely gotten lucky re: the impact of COVID so far so maybe I shouldn't complain, but I am not excited by the prospect of a long lockdown since I live alone and struggled with isolation in our initial shutdown. On the bright side, I've just started Yakuza Kiwami 2, so that should keep me going for a while.
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Jan 31, 2021 11:23
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Another full evening of 13 Sentinels and I'm still not done... I finished all the stories but there's still more RTS to go and I'm tired... The last level I played had so many enemies that it was noticeably slowing down, and when I did missile Rain + emp burst it felt like it was gonna crash with how many particles there were lol
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Jan 31, 2021 11:35
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Yeah, I love the mayhem of that one.
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Jan 31, 2021 12:07
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Jan 31, 2021 12:47
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"Are these gimp masks or balaclavas?" "Yes"
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Jan 31, 2021 12:57
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Blue Labrador posted:Can anyone recommend any books or texts that talk about video game design choices and/or mechanics on an artistic and analytic level? I've seen a lot of video essay type things on these topics, but I don't have any specific experience in the field myself, so I don't have any intimate understanding or knowledge of broader canon regarding the medium. I'm really interested in the theory of video game music at the moment, but I'll learn about anything. I don’t have any specific books or texts, but there’s a podcast called Game Studies Study Buddies that discusses that kind of stuff from an academic perspective. Poking through their catalog might find you something interesting.
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Jan 31, 2021 13:08
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tag urself I'm Grumpy Tom
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Jan 31, 2021 13:12
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Tiger boy Dick the shield Bearer
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Jan 31, 2021 13:17
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I love that in that lineup, 'Red Hair' is an adjective on the level of Creepy or Cranky.
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Jan 31, 2021 13:22
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Rinkles posted:Just curious, does Policenauts have m/any branching paths?
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Jan 31, 2021 13:47
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FirstAidKite posted:Is that the thing where what's going on in gameplay doesn't match with what's going on in the story, because if so can we at least all agree that it is dumb when a game only gives you 1 form of input and then tries to take the moral and philosophical high ground and insults you over taking that one input i disagree, i think its a very useful narrative tool, its actually one of the strongest things a game can do with its medium thats unique to games. i also feel like in most cases it isnt even insulting the player at all, whats happening is the game is condemning the character but people assume all game characters are on some level player inserts, which is also why they then complain they couldnt make the character do something different. sometimes the character is the character, and youre simply controlling them, and that might include making them do stuff you wouldnt choose to do and the game then judging the characters actions as wrong. making the player play through that is used to strengthen the response you then have, again leveraging the medium. if a character in a movie does something bad there is some distance for the audience to judge from, if the main character in a game does something bad then the audience is put into an uncomfortable closeness to what happens. edit: saw your example and thats a bit more meta, but i would say that even if there are games that handle something extremely poorly, it doesnt make the narrative choice itself flawed. its just a bad game, its not down to taking a legitimate narrative choice simply because it was executed extremely poorly. its much more useful to talk about what individual examples do wrong rather than to broadly mark an entire approach to writing as absolutely incorrect. Stux fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jan 31, 2021 |
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Jan 31, 2021 14:35
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memes have gone too far
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Jan 31, 2021 15:39
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I played a few stages of Cyber Shadow and while the music is awesome, it has one of the biggest personal dealbreakers any video game can have, which is to say 1-hit kill spike pits with knockback enemies. Hated that poo poo 25 years ago in Ninja Gaiden, still hate it today!
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Jan 31, 2021 15:45
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Professor X has really let himself go.
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Jan 31, 2021 15:49
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exquisite tea posted:I played a few stages of Cyber Shadow and while the music is awesome, it has one of the biggest personal dealbreakers any video game can have, which is to say 1-hit kill spike pits with knockback enemies. Hated that poo poo 25 years ago in Ninja Gaiden, still hate it today! I agree with you, the music is very rad (not surprising after Shovel Knight’s OST) but the 1 hit kills are pretty rough. Thankfully you have infinite lives and respawning takes like 2 seconds, and you don’t lose anything. You actually keep any currency you’ve found which is a nice change. I liked feats/challenges and how the dialogue changes a little if you engage with them. For example, there’s a feat for the first boss for not attacking his back. If you do hit his back, his end dialogue talk about you having no honor or spine. If you don’t he’s more accepting that he lost to you fairly. Just kind of nice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scTmmJOE2ic
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Jan 31, 2021 16:14
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exquisite tea posted:I played a few stages of Cyber Shadow and while the music is awesome, it has one of the biggest personal dealbreakers any video game can have, which is to say 1-hit kill spike pits with knockback enemies. Hated that poo poo 25 years ago in Ninja Gaiden, still hate it today! Games really good tho but yeah ive gone huh what no! A lot
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Jan 31, 2021 16:15
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Stux posted:i disagree, i think its a very useful narrative tool, its actually one of the strongest things a game can do with its medium thats unique to games. i also feel like in most cases it isnt even insulting the player at all, whats happening is the game is condemning the character but people assume all game characters are on some level player inserts, which is also why they then complain they couldnt make the character do something different. sometimes the character is the character, and youre simply controlling them, and that might include making them do stuff you wouldnt choose to do and the game then judging the characters actions as wrong. making the player play through that is used to strengthen the response you then have, again leveraging the medium. if a character in a movie does something bad there is some distance for the audience to judge from, if the main character in a game does something bad then the audience is put into an uncomfortable closeness to what happens. Fair enough. I think Night in the Woods did it pretty well with the stuff where Mae gets super drunk and your dialogue options are all perfectly coherent but everything she actually says is a drunken mess. I'm just not a fan of when the dev of a game tries to act like they've pulled one over on the player and start getting super smug about it.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:23
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FirstAidKite posted:I'm just not a fan of when the dev of a game tries to act like they've pulled one over on the player and start getting super smug about it. When has this ever happened though? Like Stux says the only examples I can think of involve the game judging the character, not the player. e: Oh right lol. That seems like quite a wildly pretentious edge case stev fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Jan 31, 2021 |
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Jan 31, 2021 16:27
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the example fak gave up at the top of the page seems to be exactly that lol
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Jan 31, 2021 16:28
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stev posted:When has this ever happened though? Like Stux says the only examples I can think of involve the game judging the character, not the player. SpecOps has some fourth-wall breaking stuff like the loading screen tips directly addressing the player that I think kind of undermine what they were going for.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:29
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Making you complicit in the mistakes and crimes of the character you play is a major part of how video game storytelling works. One only needs to look at examples like Metal Gear Solid 3 forcing you to personally shoot The Boss in its ending scene.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:32
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Cardiovorax posted:Making you complicit in the mistakes and crimes of the character you play is a major part of how video game storytelling works. One only needs to look at examples like Metal Gear Solid 3 forcing you to personally shoot The Boss in its ending scene. I don't think "complicit" is the most accurate word here, especially in games that don't offer you any way to choose differently. Playing a video game to me is more like, you actively participate in the retelling of a story.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:36
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exquisite tea posted:I don't think "complicit" is the most accurate word here, especially in games that don't offer you any way to choose differently. Playing a video game to me is more like, you actively participate in the retelling of a story.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:39
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I think it comes down to how much you feel the game is addressing the characters actions versus yours. Its the difference between watching a regular movie and Funny Games Crimminy I don't even like Funny Games but its so pertinent to this discussion its crazy
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Jan 31, 2021 16:39
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I have my own personal biases since I had to read undergraduate writing for five years, but fourth-wall breaks are on their own the lamest most eye-rolling thing in existence, the coward's way out of attempting to emotionally invest the reader in the fiction that you have created. Which, despite thousands of years of human storytelling, is really loving hard to do well.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:49
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Jan 31, 2021 16:51
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For the story telling example, it feel like the difference is between the storyteller telling you a story and the story teller passive aggressively whinging at you that you made them tell this story.
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Jan 31, 2021 16:53
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| # ? May 18, 2024 21:21 |
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it's almost as if AAA development has spiralled totally out of control alongside the rest of capitalism
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Jan 31, 2021 16:54
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