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I think Paper Mario and Superstar Saga are the pinnacle of the Mario RPGs. Thousand Year Door is good too but I really, really dislike how every chapter in that game is overly transparent how you are essentially walking left and right to activate plot triggers. There's nothing to actually do in its "levels", they feel like extremely small pathways. Like, the twilight place is walking to the right and then back to the left, and then right again. The train level is walking left and right. Sure the plot is interesting in them, but the level design itself is really subpar. The game literally pads out forced backtracking when you need to find the bomb-ombs. There's just not much to explore in that game besides the starting town, especially compared to Superstar Saga and Paper Mario. Compare exploring the Jungle Island levels of the two paper mario games. On the flip side, TTYD improved the combat system and made the partner characters actually have personality beyond the ones in paper mario being stuff like bombette, who is a female bomb-omb and uhhh, or whatever personality you would describe to partners like Watt and Kooper. On the flip, flip side, TTYD had the "a computer has a crush on peach" interlude stuff which was just awful. The problem with Super Mario RPG is the final fantasy-ness of it all despite being in a non-final fantasy setting. Like, in the other mario RPGS, if a shy guy attacks you it will jump on your head or something else that feels organic to the mario world. In Super Mario RPG, it would cast spells like "Drain" or "Meteor Storm" or "Sandstorm" or some other final fantasy type magic, which is as weird as it sounds to be in a mario game. Like, in Super Mario RPG, Bowser uses attacks like summoning a giant rock from the ground, or summoning a giant mechakoopa, its almost anachronistic for lack of a better word. When you fight him in Paper Mario, he breathes fire and swipes his claw or butt stomps.
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Jul 26, 2015 00:37
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:15 |
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Song For The Deaf posted:Not to build it up too much, but the WOFF! about Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is one of my favorite episodes this year. Really enjoyed this episode. I am much more in Gary's camp about that game and it was nice to hear someone articulate all the problems I had with it, which can mostly be summarized as the tendency to overexplain and repeat things that I basically associate with Japanese writing at this point, unfairly or not. The game is sooo much longer than it needs to be, I doubt I could even finish it if I played it today versus 5 years ago.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:28
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If Gary ever really wanted to torture himself, the Golden Sun games are the classic example of Japanese writing that is absurdly wordy to convey extremely basic information and plot. http://lparchive.org/Golden-Sun/ is one of my favorite LPs. I think I have a soft spot for listening to people tear apart things I didn't enjoy (but still played for some reason; ah the joy of being a kid and having low standards and endless time and patience). Quovak posted:In case 70,000 words somehow seems low, I'll refer again to my thread title. The original Metal Gear Solid game script is about 36,000 words. Metal Gear Solid 2, as in the game that has a 45-minute conversation about meme theory between the penultimate and final bosses, is about 47,000 (both of these are for all the mandatory cutscenes, not including optional CODEC calls. Likewise, the GS count doesn't include NPC flavor text). Golden Sun is chock full of characters constantly repeating themselves (and each other). Also, every single dungeon is a maze with random battles to fill up your time for when you turned left but there is a locked door down the path and you should have turned right 2 random battles ago haha.
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Aug 7, 2015 22:58
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I hate Golden Sun's writing so much that I have no qualms transposing its sins against the entire Japanese culture. Kraden: I have nothing further to add to the preceding post, but since this is Golden Sun here are some extra words by me, Kraden, renown scholar. So It Goes fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Aug 8, 2015 |
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Aug 8, 2015 14:05
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The release of Everyone's Gone to the Rapture got me wondering, have people like Gary and Kole or Idle Thumbs ever done a show on a "interactive novel"/"walking simulator" game? I mean stuff like Dear Esther, Gone Home, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Everyone's Gone to the Rapture etc.? I just finished Everyone's Gone to the Rapture and adored it, but I also enjoyed stuff like Dear Esther and its hard to find much critical thought put into those games besides the tiring and never-ending debate of "is it even a game!?!?", which has never interested me as a discussion to have about something.
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Aug 13, 2015 00:30
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al-azad posted:I'm glad Persona 5 was delayed because if it released in 2015 I don't know how I'd balance anime military sim over anime nightmare highschool sim. And Fallout 4 is coming out in 2-ish months, fuuuuck. To add to all the popular good games out, anyone who liked earthbound should play undertale and anyone who liked shovel knight should play plague of shadows as well. I don't expect either to get much coverage but they are excellent games in their own ways.
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Sep 19, 2015 02:45
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I've been off this month and have had time to play and complete pretty much all the new releases lately and I'm still waiting for worthwhile podcasts that talk about them. Does anyone know if someone has talked about Undertale at all? I'm also interested in SOMA discussion, but that just came out so I don't really expect anything yet. I myself finished it not that long ago. And when I say talk about, I mean in a substantive way, not the typical gaming podcast thing where someone talks about their first non-spoiler impressions of a game and never talks about it again.
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Sep 22, 2015 19:08
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Undertale is a good game with a fun and unique battle system, excellent writing, an outstanding soundtrack, and an obnoxious community that only dumb people actually let bleed into the game and influence them in anyway. Overalll, the game is really charming and anyone who disagrees with any of those assertions can fight me IRL.
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Nov 13, 2015 01:09
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Gary might need to put a trigger warning on the podcast. e: Is WOFF's biggest controversy bomb still the metroid prime one? So It Goes fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 01:15
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Opposing Farce posted:Undertale is one of those games where someone not liking it as much as you like it is almost frustrating because on the one hand you almost certainly have a good reason why you personally think the things they don't like about it are actually great but on the other hand you know that no amount of explaining your reasons is going to change their mind and you'll only make them resentful if you try. I just want people to like things that are good People are too obsessed in gaming with people liking the same things as them, especially stuff like Undertale which is pretty niche to begin with. A quick glance through Gary's twitter shows it came down to he legitimately sucked at the game and died a lot which then reasonably frustrated him. This is not the type of experience I could ever relate to since I thought the game was pretty easy and almost never died (including original blind pacifist playthrough), but that doesn't invalidate his experience nor should it affect anyone that someone else had a hard time with a game even if they did not themselves. One of the most annoying aspects of the Souls community is the way they wear playing it is some weird masculine badge of honor that validates their identity as a gamer.
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Nov 13, 2015 01:42
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I legitimately never even heard Undertale was considered a difficult game before. The idea of someone dying 23 ties on the final (normal) boss is crazy to me, but such is life. The whole reason most games have difficulty options is it is incredibly hard to "balance" a satisfying experience for a variety of gamers of widely disparate skill levels. Most people would look at a mario video like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWdnPd3avR8) and think it would never be fun to play, but a minority of people prefer something of such an extreme challenge. The beauty of a game like Mario Maker is the ability to appeal to such a wide range of people. Most games could really use a difficulty level modifier (that can be changed mid-game), and especially rpgs that are just modifying numbers. Stuff like Dark Souls is harder to say if the game would actually be better if it had an "easy" mode to be selected but avoids the whole issue by only appealing to "hardcore" gamers to begin with.
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Nov 13, 2015 06:22
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Undertale was kickstarted and made by some random nerd completely by himself who obviously never expected his game would be anything more than an extremely niche game that appealed to a select group of people, much more akin to Lisa than Final Fantasy. While it wouldn't hurt the game to have difficulty modifiers, it seems kinda disingenuous to act like the developer should have specifically catered his quirky indie anime game to such a widespread audience coming from disparate skill levels and backgrounds.
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Nov 16, 2015 01:31
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bobservo posted:Can someone roast me for one of my controversial video game opinions? I know this wasn't Gary's intent but I'm jealous of all the attention he's getting Well what are they? If you were to say, for example, Super Mario World (or Super Mario World 2) is a bad game, I'll be happy to get outraged. I can only assume that isn't true though because what type of loser doesn't like Super Mario World? Despite Gary apparently being hilariously bad at dodging white dots arranged in simplistic patterns, he (and Kole) get a lifetime pass from me for I swear being the only Dark Souls fans besides me that think Dark Souls 2 is actually a really good game. It will never cease to amaze me just how many people think some random elevator connection is a game ruining atrocity that shall never be forgiven or ignored.
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Nov 17, 2015 00:04
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Anybody who's listened to WOFF pretty much already knows how exactly a psychonauts episode would go anyways. Stuff like the humor and settings would be praised. The collect-a-thon elements (I'm pretty sure they detest stuff like that) and gameplay in general would be criticized. There's probably over a hundred games that would be more worthwhile to make an episode for in terms of having a discussion that isn't just repeating the standard zeitgeist.
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Dec 5, 2015 04:05
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Regardless of what one thinks of the Witness puzzles, playing it with a walkthrough in hand is an absolutely terrible idea. I'm not exaggerating that you might as well not play the game at all if you are going to do that.
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Feb 8, 2016 17:14
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FractalSandwich posted:I feel this way about every game. I can't stand how many video game podcasts do a "what you have been playing" segment which involves detailing the first couple hours of whatever new game, and then the game will never get talked about again until game of the year episodes. There's no substance to any of it. A game like Bloodborne gets described as "pretty cool so far I have played" and then people have nothing more to say because next week (when they have presumably played more), it just moves on to the next first three hours of whatever game. I've almost completely stopped listening to video game podcasts that aren't retrospective focused because of this. I just want to hear actual game discussion, not super general first impressions that are less in depth than a review. Those podcasts also desperately need time stamps so you can find specific topics and almost none of them do them. So It Goes fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Feb 10, 2016 |
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Feb 10, 2016 19:43
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Gary and Kole were just saying the other day in the Titan Souls episode how none of the heavily "souls inspired" games have ever been any good, but I guess that's streak is finally over. Salt and Sanctuary is quite good and I think most everyone agrees.
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Mar 16, 2016 21:51
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Souls style definitely means more than just "difficult" if it's not being thrown around randomly by internet nerds. S&S, for example, has an extremely similar aesthetic, lore through item descriptions, dropping souls (I mean "salt") at death and having to pick it back up, bonfires (I mean "sanctuaries") etc. Lord of the Fallen was obviously "souls style" as well, although Titan Souls obviously is not, despite its name.
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Mar 16, 2016 22:52
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Why do people roll their eyes if you call a roguelike game a roguelike? It seems like a perfectly fine word to convey to someone that the game has permadeath where you restart the "run" over. I don't understand what's more wrong with that word or "souls-like" than calling something a metroidvania or MOBA or something. I feel like you are saying roguelike games are over-saturated or something, but I don't see anything wrong with how it accurately describes a certain subset of games. So It Goes fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 23:41
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Do people have examples of the word being applied to the "wrong" games, so to speak? I only ever hear it applied to games like Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Crypt of the Necrodance, Rogue Legacy, Darkest Dungeon etc. I don't hear it applied to any given "procedural" game like Minecraft or Terraria. I guess I've never viewed roguelike as a marketing buzzword. I just thought it was a genre descriptor that accurately conveyed to me how all of the above games involve doing "runs" through procedurally generated content with death permanently ending the run. If one wanted to stop using roguelike specifically as a word, it would definitely be helpful to replace it with something that still accurately conveyed that genre. Similarly, if enough "souls-like" games were actually made, it seems like it would be a helpful word to use. If Bloodborne was made by a different developer, calling it "souls-like" would succinctly and accurately convey to me that it is an action game that plays more akin to Dark Souls than God of War. I don't think there is anything wrong with having short phrases that describes a games genre in more detail than "action".
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Mar 16, 2016 23:56
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I guess I have successfully avoided the sperg-ier part of the internet for games because I have never in my life heard anyone argue about what a MOBA or metroidvania entails or what games they are properly attributed toward. Not that I seek out that sort of stuff so I don't know if that stuff is mostly contained within steam comments or reddit threads or what. On the flip side, I have heard enough dumb music and book genre semantics to last a lifetime, and a lot of that was in real life. I feel people harping over genre labels is something that gets more and more annoying the older you get (along with ranking things).
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Mar 17, 2016 03:55
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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:This next season of Bonfireside Chat is going to be amazing. I've been playing Dark Souls 3 on Xbone all weekend (thanks to the Japan store trick) and here are some very vague, spoiler-free thoughts on it for those wondering but who are avoiding the main threads for fear of said spoilers. I've finished the game and, at its best, it's probably the best Soulsborne content I've played. I have plenty of problems with it though, which I won't get into in this thread for obvious reasons. I'll be curious to see it reception after the initial release and people have had time to fully digest its package beyond first impressions.
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Mar 29, 2016 15:28
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:15 |
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In-depth final fantasy would be cool. I really liked the WOFF FF7 series.
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Apr 15, 2016 21:57
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