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The real secret is you quit in frustration over starting at 30 health long before reaching norfsir
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Feb 7, 2024 02:21
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This was back when there was a 1-900 number to call to get hints. Get unstuck in the game, have your dad mad at you 3 weeks later.
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Feb 7, 2024 02:22
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lets hang out posted:i just rolled around dropping bombs on every title. did you have anything better to do as a kid Yeah thinking is a sucker's game 
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Feb 7, 2024 02:23
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Omnomnomnivore posted:This was back when there was a 1-900 number to call to get hints. Get unstuck in the game, have your dad mad at you 3 weeks later. Then sneaking one more phone call because you can claim it happened before you got a talking to
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Feb 7, 2024 03:16
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I've been playing Dread again. You know how some games, half the appeal is you get to be a badass? Samus' body language is so good, you can tell she's sick of this poo poo and none of the enemies really impress her. Love how you can parry a boss move and she immediately, fearlessly jumps on it and just starts pumping missiles into it
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Feb 7, 2024 03:19
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WHY BONER NOW posted:I've been playing Dread again. You know how some games, half the appeal is you get to be a badass? Samus' body language is so good, you can tell she's sick of this poo poo and none of the enemies really impress her. Love how you can parry a boss move and she immediately, fearlessly jumps on it and just starts pumping missiles into it Everything about how Samus reacts to and deals with Kraid is perfect because of this. She's been there, done that, and has better poo poo to do than deal with it again.
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Feb 7, 2024 12:20
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Samus’ extremely stoic badass vibe the whole game makes her rage face at the end all the more satisfying.
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Feb 7, 2024 14:29
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There are a couple places where you need to figure out what is the right one spot to bomb in Metroid 2. I also don't remember the details but there's an area with a lot of tubes that I'm not really sure how you figure out how that works. Metroid 2 can also be pretty harsh about wearing your health down, so getting E-tanks and finding energy recovery orbs is pretty important even if not strictly necessary.
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Feb 7, 2024 15:01
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WHY BONER NOW posted:I've been playing Dread again. You know how some games, half the appeal is you get to be a badass? Samus' body language is so good, you can tell she's sick of this poo poo and none of the enemies really impress her. Love how you can parry a boss move and she immediately, fearlessly jumps on it and just starts pumping missiles into it  ). everything from the way she looks over her shoulder at it to the lazy way she charges and aims her cannon just screams contempt, all without saying a single wordhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOwTYmqKbyw&t=40s 
Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 21:20
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I wonder if Samus is getting tired of having all her upgrades stripped away. Like, her demeanor in Dread is easily “I’m getting too old for this poo poo” as evidenced above. She’s already merc’d two whole planets by this point and even giant beasties like Kraig are old news. With the first boss, she’s all “If I had my OG abilities, I would have killed you in 3 seconds.”
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Feb 8, 2024 21:41
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Kraig, from accounting.
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Feb 8, 2024 21:44
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"I had fun doing things a bad way in a game, therefore there is no other way to have fun playing that game." - Every gamer about every fuckin' little thing. Leave Xenomorph alone. That game is inscrutable and different people enjoy different poo poo for different reasons.
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Feb 12, 2024 00:52
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LividLiquid posted:"I had fun doing things a bad way in a game, therefore there is no other way to have fun playing that game." The corollary to "different people enjoy different poo poo for different reasons" is "different people dislike different poo poo for different reasons"
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Feb 12, 2024 00:58
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There is an even worse corollary: some people (like me) really, really like picking apart and analysing video games and examining in detail, where they are or are not enjoyable to someone's determination, why and how they are that way, by what means they are rendered that way, to what extent they were intended to be that way, and what the way they are says about video games. I love nothing more than to scrutinise the failure points of game design, where the rubber met the road, so to speak, and didn't quite hold, where factors the developers thought they had accounted for didn't measure up to the enormity of real life context, and to what extent the developer is or isn't to blame for it all. Take this Metroid map thing. A thing I actually don't know but I imagine someone here can tell me is whether or to what extent the lack of a map in Metroid 1 was a deliberate design choice from the outset (ie, "we want the player to be lost most of the time") or a compromise of some kind ("we think there should be a map, but [probably for technical reasons] we can't have one, so instead we'll lean into not having one"), or did it simply not occur to the designers to have one at all?. We would be hard pressed to call Metroid a failure overall given, y'know, it has half a genre named after it now, and yet it is a fact that quite a lot of people do not like that it does not have a map, and express this when they play it, and often consult external maps while playing it. Metroid 2, released on a technically even less capable system, is quite obviously designed around the lack of a consultable map. Then, every Metroid from Super onwards has had a map, including Metroid 2 when it was remade (did Zero Mission? I'm not familiar with Zero Mission). So is the lack of a map in Metroid a failure? If it was it has certainly been learned from. A thing I've come to believe is that games should have answers of some kind for any possible player frustration. I say answer and not solution because sometimes the answer is "no, gently caress you, git gud" and sometimes it's "this game just isn't for you". Maybe those answers in a wider context may be bad but if the developer intends for you to be stumbling around lost and you are stumbling around lost and you think there should be a map then that's a case of that kind of answer. But if the developer doesn't intend that, then they have no answer, and that's a failure. I had my whole post earlier (e: my bad, that post was actually in the Metroidvania Megathread, not this thread) about how I don't like the map in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and I think it's this kind of failure; I have the impression that the developers think it helps players with various tasks that I don't think it actually helps very much with. It has features that they seem to believe there is a widespread demand for because they believe it significantly eases common metroidvania frustrations, and it has consistently been my finding that it does not ease those frustrations at all, the developers have misunderstood what they even are, even as they boast that they have solved them. Meanwhile over in a different game, Hollow Knight has quite an oddball of a map system which is ultimately reactive and detailed and contains quite a lot of information but delays the addition of that information from the usual instantaneousness upon the player learning it until they next reach a checkpoint. This creates somewhat of a frustrating experience in which you are often lost and directionless when exploring new areas until you've made a pit stop, which some people don't like, but this is exactly the intended experience. This system also has some flaws; you can't record your own map of a new area until you've purchased a partial one from an NPC you have to find in that area, which is somewhat incongruous with the idea of being able to record your own map at all and means you're in for a lot of frustration until you find the guy. But the game anticipates this frustration and has somewhat of an answer for it; through level design and some environmental cues, you'll generally always be channelled towards him, there's only one area where he's hard to find (IMO anyway) and I think that's deliberate. Hollow Knight also generally has a pattern of passively recording map information in secret and revealing it to you later; a lot of features that aren't marked on the map by default actually just need you to buy upgrades for your map, but when you buy those upgrades, the features are added to your map instantly. All in all the play experience is exactly as intended, and you can hold (convincingly, perhaps) that they should instead have intended something different but it's much harder to hold that the system in the game is a failure. Fedule fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 01:59
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Metroid 1 couldn’t even come up with tiles that looked different I doubt they could do a map. But the best evidence they could introduce a map is they eventually introduced one the first chance they got The power of the Super Nintendo
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Feb 12, 2024 02:08
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I think there's a bit of a tendency to just assume that old games are just bullshit and that they just don't work quite right, either because of technical limitations or lack of design experience; when in reality, there's a lot of clever design in the classics that is just different than modern games, and it's a tragedy to just instantly assume it's worse because it's not something we do anymore. Like, I hear Castlevania 3 described as 'bullshit' constantly, when I think in reality it's designed as a pseudo-puzzle game where you're supposed to figure out which of your tools gets you through a sticky situation over multiple attempts. It's not sightreadable like a modern action game, so by the rules of modern design, it's kinda bullshit, but it's not even trying to play by those rules; it's playing by a whole different set of rules. And if you walk into the game just assuming it's old and bad and designers of the era just didn't know any better, you'll confirmation bias your way into missing something special and cool. This isn't really about 'git gud' (though Bleck was just insultingly posting git gud), but more about 'give it a shot; I'm assuring you from personal experience the game is less inscrutable than you might expect.' And on another note, the idea that maps are just an automatic inclusion and the only reason someone might not include one is technical limitations or simply not thinking of it is not really true. Like, on the subject of maps specifically, the Souls series was mapless up until Elden Ring, and even then, ER only has a world map, not dungeon maps. This is definitely not a technical issue; they could have easily put in maps if they wanted to. In conclusion, I encourage anyone playing Metroid 2 for the first time to try it without a map.
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Feb 12, 2024 02:32
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CharlestheHammer posted:Metroid 1 couldn’t even come up with tiles that looked different I doubt they could do a map. Again, Zelda 1 (which predates Metroid 1) has a map, and Link's Awakening GB has a map (although this is later than Metroid 2), so it's not some kind of technical limitation preventing maps from existing on NES and GB.
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Feb 12, 2024 02:51
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Metroid was a very early Famicom game; I think it was within the first year. Was definitely a pioneer in the genre in many ways. If I were to make a baseless guess as to why it didn’t have an in game map, I’d say they just didn’t think to include one.
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Feb 12, 2024 03:05
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CainFortea posted:The corollary to "different people enjoy different poo poo for different reasons" is "different people dislike different poo poo for different reasons" I'm not the one insisting that somebody enjoy a thing they don't enjoy. They're playing the game the way they find the most fun.
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Feb 12, 2024 03:22
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It can simultaneously be true that old school game designers made careful, thoughtful decisions and also that their works are not flawlessly perfect beyond all criticism. Making Metroid 2 work at all is quite an achievement; a straight clone of Metroid 1 with the Gameboy's color limitations and screen size would have been pretty terrible and you can trace a lot of very clever adaptations they made. If you want to zoom out and look at the big picture, I think the broader issue is less about the map and more about the metroid hunting just not being interesting. The first two dozen metroids are the same two extremely mediocre boss fights, which you reach by slogging through very empty and repetitive areas. For the first two-thirds of the game the game's nominal raison d'etre is presented as a tedious collectathon that provides little in the way of challenge or rewards, not even so much as a random missile tank to discover in most of the metroid lairs. There's a reason most players wear out their patience trying to hunt them all down and want a map to get it over with faster. The ruins segments by contrast present delightful puzzles that reward your perseverance with huge, immediate (even excessive) payoffs and I agree that solving them without a map is a great experience.
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Feb 12, 2024 03:38
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Metroid was on an SNROM cartridge using the MMC1 mapper, which had 128KB total storage on its ROM chip. It also used 8KB of CHR RAM which means that it could change which graphics were available to draw by loading up to 8KB of graphics data from ROM. Super Mario Bros had 8KB of static CHR ROM, dedicated storage for graphics that couldn't change. Because Metroid had CHR RAM, that meant that the 128KB of ROM available had to store both game code and graphics. If you wanted more graphics or functionality, you had to decide if there would be enough room for both or if something else had to come out. And as it turned out, they crammed the 128 KB of Metroid's ROM full up.  If they did want to put a map in, that's both the logic for a map screen and the graphics for a map screen that'd have to get inserted somewhere. There could have been ways to find extra space by optimizing code or compressing graphics through nebulous means, but at the time there just wasn't the room for it.
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Feb 12, 2024 03:46
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Don't forget that it was originally an FDS title in Japan, which means that aside from the enhancements the Disk System itself had, there was no option for a better mapper chip.
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Feb 12, 2024 03:58
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cheetah7071 posted:I think there's a bit of a tendency to just assume that old games are just bullshit and that they just don't work quite right, either because of technical limitations or lack of design experience; when in reality, there's a lot of clever design in the classics that is just different than modern games, and it's a tragedy to just instantly assume it's worse because it's not something we do anymore. I mean, nine times out of ten, we stopped doing things because they were worse, or at least more difficult to make work. My go-to here is the original Armored Core control scheme. Brilliant, but made mostly obsolete by the progression of technology. Back in the day, people didn't have the design shorthand from later games, and had to keep trying new ideas to make something work. It's fascinating to see, but often not as fun to play. Not having a map was an awkward limitation of Metroid 1, not some design masterstroke, and and treating it as one doesn't do the game any favors.
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Feb 12, 2024 04:37
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chiasaur11 posted:I mean, nine times out of ten, we stopped doing things because they were worse, or at least more difficult to make work. My go-to here is the original Armored Core control scheme. Brilliant, but made mostly obsolete by the progression of technology. well, metroid 1 is not a good game imo; this is about metroid 2. And it's less that it's some genius masterstroke, and more that, in this case, they made it work. I think it's a disservice to old games to just sort of assume they didn't know what they were doing. As you put it, a lot of these shorthands are more about making it easier to design good games, rather than about making good games possible. And if you go into it with a preconception, you'll miss the games that do make it work. I think that in general, including a map in an exploration game will make it easier to produce a non-frustrating game. It neither guarantees a lack of frustration, nor does the absence of a map guarantee it will be frustrating. In terms of the mood they evoke, both have advantages and disadvantages. For Metroid 2 in particular, I think the elements of the game which are oft-derided (the lack of the map, the way the camera zooms way in on Samus) combine to create a strong mood of delving deep into a hostile, uncharted world where you're never really sure what's coming up next. And notably, I think both of the remakes completely whiff on this mood. In generally, I encourage people playing retro games--especially classics--to give them a chance to prove themselves as the times that made it work. These games are usually beloved for a reason!
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Feb 12, 2024 05:35
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Developer interviews suggest that, for the majority of Metroid's development, the people making it didn't necessarily know what they were making beyond "a game where you run around a huge environment shooting things", and it took the final all-hands-on-deck push and the inclusion of Sakamoto for them to figure out the structure and tone of the game, so it seems likely that they simply didn't have time or forethought to implement a map, even if they'd wanted to. Nintendo was also sub-contracting the programming to Intelligent Systems, which made it difficult to implement last-minute changes or features. Metroid did get a conversion for the dual-monitor PlayChoice 10 arcade machine, which included a rudimentary map on the upper screen:  My issue with Metroid 1 and 2 wasn't that I found them difficult to navigate, but that the environments were so repetitive that I never felt compelled to play them for long because, like, why? So I can run through eight hundred more identical rooms, or fight the same couple bosses a zillion more times?
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Feb 12, 2024 07:12
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cheetah7071 posted:well, metroid 1 is not a good game imo; this is about metroid 2. And it's less that it's some genius masterstroke, and more that, in this case, they made it work. I think it's a disservice to old games to just sort of assume they didn't know what they were doing. As you put it, a lot of these shorthands are more about making it easier to design good games, rather than about making good games possible. And if you go into it with a preconception, you'll miss the games that do make it work. I think I can understand that prospective. That said, I feel like there's an interesting thing in old games where some decisions feel like they were made for a specific purpose, and others are more to compensate for a weakness that modern games have pretty much grown past. Metroid 2's lack of a map, unlike a lot of the other parts of it, feels more like a coincidental weakness than a deliberate decision, even if it reinforces the game's strengths in some ways. Causes more problems than it provides benefits. But then, it's the old fence rule. Don't move it until you know why it's there. Once you know why a game did something, you can better know if the game benefits by removing it.
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Feb 12, 2024 09:20
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They are beloved for nostalgia which is a reason but not exactly what you were going for
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Feb 12, 2024 14:09
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The original Zelda was designed around a straightforward grid system that was a lot easier to transfer to a map. The original Metroid is packed full of endless corridors that are a bit more complicated to track. The original Blaster Master also lacked a map. I guess technically there was a sort of map in Metroid's manual. 
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Feb 12, 2024 15:59
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Fedule posted:Take this Metroid map thing. A thing I actually don't know but I imagine someone here can tell me is whether or to what extent the lack of a map in Metroid 1 was a deliberate design choice from the outset (ie, "we want the player to be lost most of the time") or a compromise of some kind ("we think there should be a map, but [probably for technical reasons] we can't have one, so instead we'll lean into not having one"), or did it simply not occur to the designers to have one at all?.
Fedule posted:Hollow Knight also generally has a pattern of passively recording map information in secret and revealing it to you later; a lot of features that aren't marked on the map by default actually just need you to buy upgrades for your map, but when you buy those upgrades, the features are added to your map instantly. All in all the play experience is exactly as intended, and you can hold (convincingly, perhaps) that they should instead have intended something different but it's much harder to hold that the system in the game is a failure.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:21
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The charm system in HK is great because it gives extra overhead for speedrunners. It rewards system mastery while still giving casual players tons of ways to make their own lives easier.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:36
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DoctorWhat posted:The charm system in HK is great because it gives extra overhead for speedrunners. It rewards system mastery while still giving casual players tons of ways to make their own lives easier.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:43
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I think it's disingenuous to treat things like in-game maps that are clearly part of game balance as a respect/disrespect issue wrt accessibility. Games are art. Artists are not obligated to accommodate every individual challenge each member of the audience might have. It's wonderful when games are able to offer features like colorblind/low vision rendering, time scaling, etc, to make that art available to a more complete audience. But Michelangelo wasn't obligated to personally provide a text/audio description of the Cistene Chapel while also painting the drat thing. Frankly, he might be the least qualified to do it. Audio description can't always convey every aspect of visual information in a film, but that doesn't mean cinematographers have an obligation to narrow their scope to better accommodate what audio description can capture. Which is to say that I agree that there shouldn't be a colorblind-friendliness charm, or a closed captioning charm (unless the game is a very specific multisensory experience). But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a compass charm. Potential individual's challenges with navigating a game-space shouldn't preclude game designers from constructing deliberately challenging environments.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:05
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I mean I quit out of Hollow Knight entirely on the first run because I didn't have a map and didn't have any clue of where I was going or what I was doing. Turns out, with my best friend giving me hints on where to go, it's probably my favourite game in the entire genre. (Because, for me, the combat is incredible) I understand an artist's desire for their art to be challenging, but I do think that as much can be lost in the audience driven away as is gained for the audience that remains.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:09
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DoctorWhat posted:I think it's disingenuous to treat things like in-game maps that are clearly part of game balance as a respect/disrespect issue wrt accessibility. Some people are better at spatial location recognition than others. Hell, we just had like a three page debate on this wrt Metroid II.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:16
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ExcessBLarg! posted:Some people are better at spatial location recognition than others. You could say the same thing about every single aspect of the game requiring player input in any way, though.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:30
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Snake Maze posted:You could say the same thing about every single aspect of the game requiring player input in any way, though. The compass isn't integral to the play mechanics of the game or the atmosphere, even in the way the actual map is. At best, it's a useless item, and at worse it's punitive to the players that benefit most from it.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:40
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ExcessBLarg! posted:At best, it's a useless item, and at worse it's punitive to the players that benefit most from it. Is every charm punitive to the people who benefit from it, by forcing them to use a charm slot on it? Is the charm that makes you heal faster punitive, because now people who get hit more need to wear an extra charm to make up for it? I don't think this is a very useful way of looking at the system.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:49
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CharlestheHammer posted:They are beloved for nostalgia which is a reason but not exactly what you were going for This kind of attitude is exactly what I was talking about. If you go into an old game assuming it must be kinda poo poo and that people only care because of nostalgia, you're mentally preparing yourself to miss what makes it good
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Feb 12, 2024 18:58
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one of the charms (amulets) in prince of Persia the lost crown shows you enemy health bars and that one is truly hosed up when you're playing on hard and regular enemy encounters take time and strategy, you absolutely have to have it I think these systems tend to suck in most games TBH. Momodora V had some ridiculous ones that trivialized combat so hard that they are basically mandatory. I feel like most Metroidvania games don't even end up having a coherent way to do builds or stuff, there's just like 5 objectively broken ones you need and then a handful of contextually-useful ones like elemental resistance or whatever that you'll probably still never use
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Feb 12, 2024 18:58
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Even if it's "just" a quality of life feature it's still a pain point. "I can squeeze in an extra charm point, but only if I want to spend extra time squinting at the map trying to figure out if I'm reading the landmarks correctly" isn't a particularly interesting balance trade-off. You can design a game to evoke different feelings and they're not always meant to be entirely fun or pleasant, but just because you can create a specific experience does not mean that experience is worthwhile. A game being hard and having frustrating and time-consuming experiences is not itself a problem, but it needs to feel like it's worth it. If a common reaction is to an experience is "I wish I had spent less time doing that" then you've probably missed the mark.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:03
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