|
This is the best game I've played in the last year, easily. It's amazing how good it feels to have a non-antagonistic relationship with a game. Like, this is the anti-Getting Over It (or the anti-I Wanna Be The Guy, or the anti-1001 Spikes, etc.). And speaking as someone who has a tendency to see games as mostly just a collection of mechanics (see also: my username), this game does a great job of showing how plot and presentation can make a material difference in how the player feels about the game.
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2018 22:04
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:10 |
|
|
What happened in the most recent patch?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2018 20:01
|
|
|
Lazy Bear posted:Iteration time is a major factor in creating tough-but-fair games. The faster you go from failstate back into play, the less punishing those failstates seem. That's why people don't grouse(too hard) about Hotline Miami, because 20 deaths will just run together. Iteration time and also room length. I don't want to have to repeat the first 15 seconds of a room over and over again because the last 5 seconds are really hard. Super Meat Boy got pretty bad about that. Fortunately most rooms in Celeste either pose little threat of killing you or are short. The postgame starts having rooms that break that rule more, but not to the extent that I remember Super Meat Boy doing so.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2018 20:25
|
|
|
Lazy Bear posted:Someone else pointed this out in the Youtube comments too, but the squash and stretch to animations in the game is really expressive and brings a lot of life to the movement. I find it unreasonably amusing that Madeline's duck animation is literally just her shrinking down to half-size.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2018 18:31
|
|
|
On top of being a great game, Celeste's "voice acting" is the best I've ever heard in this style. It's rare that a game's able to convey emotion so effectively with wurbles.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2018 23:24
|
|
|
Oshiro does a few really important things for the game. Where we see Madeline's struggles from the inside, we see Oshiro's from the outside. He really does need help, but he's not able to admit it to himself or not be a jerk about it when people help him. It's easy to imagine that Madeline has behaved similarly in the past, but we as the audience wouldn't be able to view her past issues objectively (were they presented to us) because she's the viewpoint character. Theo's advice is also really important here:
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2018 21:35
|
|
|
Waltzing Along posted:Man, I wish you two were right. I couldn't stand Oshiro. He's emotionally manipulative, clinging desperately to a charade that he has his life together, pretending he doesn't need help when it's offered, and prone to blowing up at you when you confront him with the truth. These are not generally traits of likeable people.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2018 15:45
|
|
|
Y'all're forgetting the most important thing here, which is that Celeste is the mountain. Madeline is the woman. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2018 19:25
|
|
|
Oh yeah, I meant to thank you for linking that. It was an interesting talk! In particular I found it amusing how in this game where dying is meant to be as encouraging as possible the devs still set up intentional deathtraps in order to teach you about game mechanics (The specific example given was a traffic light positioned to hurl you into spikes, to teach you about momentum transfer).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2018 02:38
|
|
|
Also notice that he picked up on Madeline's growing fears really quickly. Like, as soon as she started getting worried, he tried to redirect her towards taking a selfie. It didn't work, but that's some impressive awareness.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2018 18:56
|
|
|
NinetySevenA posted:Does the game have an actual scoring system or are the 1000s when you pick up a strawberry just a design choice? There's no score beyond collection percentage and level times.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2018 05:53
|
|
|
Man, you just rolled on through that escort section like it was nothing. I died a lot there. And the worst of it was? I spent a few dozen deaths trying to get that strawberry during the escort section, finally managed to get the gate open, and then an exploding/reviving eyeball monster (which I'd been using as an ersatz springboard to get enough height to toss Theo into the gate button) tossed me and Theo through the door to the next area.  And like you said, there's no backtracking during that section, so I had to replay the entire escort sequence to get that one strawberry. Oh well.We get some interesting insight into Madeline and Badeline here. Badeline says that she has to play babysitter all the time, looking out for Madeline's welfare. Madeline, meanwhile, seems to have a lot of inner demons that don't wish her well at all. Notice also Madeline's reaction to Badeline saying that she couldn't climb the mountain. From a quivering wreck to indignant and angry in no time flat. EDIT: vvv huh, okay. Never mind then. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Apr 10, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2018 02:17
|
|
|
I played with an XBox 360 controller, and had a similar "accidentally did diagonal jumps" issue even though I was using the D-pad. I think the game just requires you to do rapid and precise inputs and it's easy to accidentally tag the up/down directions while pressing left or right if you're trying to change directions rapidly. I'm absolutely not convinced that the game is failing to read input correctly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
pointlessone posted:B Sides. Holy gently caress! This game went from chill with a challenge to Meatboy levels of spikes. I deeply appreciate that the B-Side music for Mirror Temple is some smooth jazz, because if it were anything that wasn't super-chill that place might have upset me.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2018 03:47
|
|
|
Waltzing Along posted:I've heard of video games as art, but never video games as psychotherapy. Which is I think a big part of what makes Celeste so impactful for many people: it's doing something that hasn't been done before, and indirectly giving therapy to a lot of people who may not realize that they need it. Everyone has problems that they could use some help addressing. And there are tools for addressing those problems, but if you don't know about the tools, then the problems may seem unsolvable -- something that you just have to live with. One of the things the game does is show us someone learning to use some tools (like the feather, but also just generally introspecting and trying to understand and accept who they are) to help them cope with their problems. People are inevitably going to draw comparisons between themselves and Madeline, and try to figure out what "their" mountain would be and how they might go about climbing it. And like Granny says, the first part of solving a problem is confronting it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2018 15:53
|
|
|
FeyerbrandX posted:Yeah there was some sort of chanting sound going on. Was wondering if something being spoken backwards was happening again. As far as I can tell, it's just someone saying "Hey-yeah!" over and over again. It's providing reinforcement that hey, you're doing the right thing! Keep doing that!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2018 20:43
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:The mortality rates are artificially inflated because everyone's dying multiple times. You can't see it because of the low-resolution graphics, but the monument at the end of chapter 1 is carved with letters that are only about a millimeter high. Also that's only the top of the monument; like a moai statue, most of it is buried underground.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2018 17:56
|
|
|
The Summit is a masterpiece. Unlike pretty much every other game climax I can think of, it's emotionally a victory lap. The music is triumphant and encouraging. Madeline's posture is straighter now that she's not weighed down by her backpack any more. There's still interpersonal conflict (or well, I guess, intrapersonal conflict), but Madeline's not just talking about it instead of trying to run away; she's also listening. In the post-Temple section, after she says that she'd be OK with failing to reach the summit and is just glad she's making the attempt, the level starts off with that intense downward wind, as if to test her resolve. And then once she makes it through that, there's the upwards wind, which more than anything else in the game made me feel like the game really wanted Madeline to succeed. At the epilogue, if you head right from the starting screen, there's a screen with a big nest and the multicolored birds from chapter 1, which fly away when you get close. Celeste is never very subtle about its symbolism, and this is especially blatant. This is only the beginning for Madeline.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 17, 2018 02:00
|
|
|
GirlCalledBob posted:I think it also depends how you see the end of the story, in terms of how much of a 'solution' Maddie has actually reached. Personally, it felt pretty true to me, because she doesn't banish her depression or her negative thinking, she just learns a different way of 'communicating' with it, like a coping strategy. The dark Part of Her even points out that things are going to be hard and scary moving forward, and Maddie agrees, but she feels more able to deal with it now. I don't see this as her finding a fix for her depression, just realising that maybe there are things she can do to make things feel more managable. Yeah, this was my interpretation as well. In a sense, the game did a fakeout on Madeline: she thought that climbing the mountain was "figuring out how to not be depressed any more" (how to get away from the negative thoughts and emotions she's been struggling with), but it was actually "learning to live and cope with depression". Madeline isn't healed, but she's in a much better place now that she understands her injuries. Under that lens, the chapters work out as: 1) Making the decision to try to fix your problems 2) Running away from your problems 3) Taking a look at someone else who has problems 4) Learning a coping mechanism for your problems (the feather) 5) Getting a deep look at your problems 6) Understanding and accepting your problems 7) Accomplishing something great even though you have problems 8) Something related but we haven't seen that chapter yet
|
|
#
¿
Apr 18, 2018 15:59
|
|
|
I listed interpretations of the themes for the first seven levels earlier. Here's my much more wishy-washy interpretation of chapter 8: it's about Madeline learning to love herself, in her entirety (i.e. including Badeline). Symbolically, of course, we've been collecting hearts all this time; they're a symbol of love (Strawberries are also reasonably heart-shaped, for that matter). We also see the same platforms here that we saw before chapter 6, leading up to the time Madeline thought she had everything figured out, right before she fell. The implication (supported by the fact that here, it is literally impossible for her to fall because she just loops back to the top of the screen) is that this time she actually has figured herself out. She's at peace as a whole person, unseparable by the Mountain. This again does not necessarily mean that her depression is cured. It just means that her inner conflict has been resolved.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2018 22:38
|
|
|
I appreciate that the hotel B-side has a room whose sole purpose is for you to bust open the ceiling again so you can piss off Oshiro.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2018 15:31
|
|
|
God, that temple B-side room where you have to lure an eyeball monster into destroying blocks for you, then hop off it and dash to the next block, took me for-freakin'-ever. It's a good thing the music was so downtempo smooth or else I might have gotten irritated.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2018 16:22
|
|
|
Lazy Bear posted:Having to split-second react after hitting Badeline and the glitch-effect marring the screen is frankly unfair. Mm, I don't remember the "react after hitting Badeline" parts being that unreasonable. You do need to pay attention and anticipate, but the game is pretty good about setting up only one way in which it would make sense for Madeline to get thrown. The falling and switch-hitting sections are worse IMO; as mentioned, you can't look ahead, so you have to gradually build up a strategy on the basis of seeing the screen for a half-second and then dying.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2018 21:16
|
|
|
Man, watching those levels, I found it hard to believe I'd actually beaten them. I don't remember this at all.  I had nearly 5000 deaths all told clearing the A- and B-sides. When I saw the postcards, I laughed, fired up the first level, basically immediately died, said "yep, I'm done", and put the game down.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
It's Internet slang. The C-sides all take place at the beach.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2018 22:56
|
|
|
Thanks for the LP! I'm glad we had an LPer capable of doing the game justice.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2018 17:02
|
|
|
MachuPikacchu posted:For anyone who loves masochism, Here is a "speedrun" of Celeste by TGH, the current world record holder, where he gets all A-Sides, B-Sides, and C-Sides, and every strawberry, including the golden strawberries, for all levels. Cripes. I cannot imagine maintaining the level of intensity and skill required to pull this off, especially since the hardest challenges are saved for last, when you're the most tired.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2018 21:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:10 |
|
|
cant cook creole bream posted:There was a cool AMA by the creators in Reddit at some point. It might be worth linking if you can dig it up. One quick googling for celeste reddit ama later...
|
|
#
¿
May 3, 2018 16:40
|
|