syntheticgerbil

Simba looks a bit mangy there.

Let's get this thread to 60 pages!

Ico is super short (one of the trophies is a less than 2 hour speed run) so I recommend you give it a shot sooner than later. I certainly enjoyed it more than I'm currently enjoying Colossus even though Ico has a lot of similar problems with lack of polish in the control and gameplay department ("YORDA FUCKING STAY ON THE SWITCH!").

I think really it seems that it's coming down to how you have and are wording things, Rxanadu. It's easier to be kind of dismissive on forums, but I think just being as respectful but critical as possible in the workplace is key. I mean I'm saying that, but it's tough for me, because I tend to not care much about how I'm wording things at work sometimes (not always for playtesting) but people tend to get their feelings hurt when the criticism is damning and negative, which never works out. However, sometimes they get their feelings hurt when criticism is completely legitimate and constructive, which is bad on them.

Thanks for writing this up. I sent it over to a couple of people who are approaching this stage or need help with it.

Yeah for sure. Is it weird that this post actually makes me wish I could take more art history courses?

12 and 13 down. I could have sworn I traveled to that lake already when I had to find 12. It was really throwing me off. I loved fighting these guys, but I had to cheat to find out how to "steer" 12. Unfortunately they didn't come without their annoyances. Both involved long stints of me moving slowly around on the ground trying to catch up. If I made a mistake, even more frustrating as it meant I had to repeat a sequence to get back to the hit spot yet again. I really wish they had streamlined this kind of tedium, especially when mistakes that may happen where I'm through off seem to be a failure of R1 to connect every time. I have had this problem the whole game where Wander grabs something in mid air for a second, like he's found a ledge, but falls anyway even if there was an actual ledge he should have been gripping on when I held R1. Erhg. Anyway, I guess the home stretch is coming soon. I might just finish it by the end of next week.

Part of why I keep putting this game off is because it really annoys the piss out of me every time I play. I finished giants 10 and 11 last night and hopefully I can do 12 and 13 tonight. They were fine enough, nice to look at, fun to take down, but it's always the same where I'm fighting finicky controls and not always having a clear idea what to do even when I am trying to do it. The collision always seems glitchy and inconsistent no matter what boss fight. Also getting knocked down in the middle of battling a Colossus and the controls, if I ever get knocked down, I have to sit around with my face on the ground for way too long. I'm not even sure if I completed Colossus 11 correctly. After luring him off the cliff, he was just kind of running around sporadically and didn't seem very intent on attacking me. I kept trying to jump on his back by running around him and just having my character hit some invisible box and fall back down. Sometimes he would briefly grip on to mid air and then fall or sometimes he would just slide along the back of the Colossus to the other side, not grabbing the hair. Was I doing this wrong or was this just poor design? It seemed pretty obvious I had to grip the hair on the back, but actually getting the game to acknowledge I was doing that was most of the battle.

This doesn't need to be a thread in "video gaming," but I'm glad it is a thread in "video gaming."

It could possibly be build up of grime on the top screen, but I've tried wiping it with a bevel cloth and no luck getting rid of them so I figured they were scratches.

Does anyone else have problems with scratches on the top 3DS screen from from the lower 4:3 screen? It's really pissing me off and I wish I could buff them out.

Haha, yeah it's emulated. I think copies of the damn thing go for $400 and up on Ebay. Even then it would be pointless for me to legitimately own the packaging since it would all be in Japanese. But yeah I finished it years back just to see the readded dialogue from the disk version I never played, hear the extra music, and see all of the VGA close up portraits.

Ah I guess I left out that that is the only version that has voice acting however.

Okay then, opinion deleted because my logic is complete malarkey. You're assuming "everyone knows" what you know and have the prescience to forsee what happens to a creation in all cases in which it is sold. Your analogy becomes very long winded and starts to not even apply to the situation, so I'm not even going to bother with you, Mr. Rude.

I don't know if this carries over to the disk version or not, but the FM Towns version tends to have music playing constantly. The Redbook audio stuff from the CD version you played meant dialogue had to be cut and longer music removed, so it's maybe not the best way to play?

Saw Trance last night and boy was that disappointing. I usually like Danny Boyle films a lot (even the ones most people dislike), with only a few misses from the guy, but Trance was straight garbage cinema. I wanted to walk out because I was so annoyed and uncomfortable by the time the plot twist came around. The film wasn't actually convoluted but seemed to want to be by presenting a bunch of false leads and explaining nothing until a ridiculously long and cringing exposition scene near the end. The first 30-40 minutes were engaging and it looked really pretty but what a crappy clunky story.

Oh yeah I found out about the ASMR thing recently as well, since I guess I was wondering why I get those weird sensations in my head when people are quiet or cut my hair. My recent haircut made me remember that I should probably look it up one day, as the internet is always beckoning to look up useless obscure things. Turns out I have it I guess? Usually comes from being lulled into relax mode by customer support agents on the phone. Trying to get it to work from anything online trying to target it does not work. I doubt listening to any kind of book on tape or something would do it either. I think it requires another active human in every case for me.

I think a lot of what made Link's Awakening more enjoyable to me than LttP was the humor instilled within the characters. It was so much more playful not only in terms of the NPCs, but also the little side scrolling levels with nods to the Mario games by the reuse of enemies. Also the tone with much of the storyline was just kind of weird and trippy, sharing a lot in common with Majora's Mask.

I play Four Swords Adventures with my girlfriend long ago. It did involve me buying a second GBA and bugging her a little bit, but we ended up having a lot of fun. The game felt super long. Maybe we'll do it again one day.

I still think this game looks super bland. But fuck, I love this thread title!

Are those blue and purple Doritos?

I think the copyright stuff was just a rumor if I'm correct. Is there any solid proof of threat for copyright issues?

I think the announcement turned out to be yet another version of Link to the Past. Oh well. EDIT: Nevermind, didn't see the 2 after it. Either way, doesn't look very good.

I guess I can give my playtest experiences even though I have never been employed as a playtester. Since I've done art and animation on video games, it usually leads to me playing for a day or two at some point mostly looking for bugs on the art side. However, in every situation I have been encouraged to give my feedback on the game design and how it plays. I don't know exactly what you said and how, but this quote is probably a factor in you being let go, sorry to say. I'm sure there's a part of unfairness and people not having a thick skin or wanting to hear negative criticism out of pride, but this is not exactly a productive comment unless you were specifically asked if you would buy the game. Also as others said, generally I don't think designers want to hear all of the possible solutions to their gameplay issues. I actually do find that a bit backwards though, since QA and playtesting are stepping stones to design. But here goes my experiences: My last job was in the edutainment market consisting of research motivated focus group games actual fun educational games. The focus group games were garbage and pretty much no one in the studio was in charge of design and it was just an acceptance of, "this is crap I know, so lets just make sure the game runs with very little bugs." The edutainment games I generally enjoyed and could see kids having fun with them, so I didn't really need to get too hard on the games. It was especially encouraging when they would be brought to a kiosk in the city's children's museum and kids were genuinely loving them, so they tended to be the true playtesters. My second game industry job which is my current is just a mess of office politics, overbearing free to play garbage, and people with heads up their asses. I've written up a page or two of the four games I've worked on so far on them being unplayable, weak design, and horrible polish. It often doesn't matter how good I make animations because they'll most likely be implemented wrong and no one will give a shit on changing them to work as intended even if it is acknowledged. I've actually been forced to start constantly playtesting our newest game for about 4 weeks now because I've had very little tasks, sometimes a complete week without anything to do. I should be laid off for being dead weight they pay for, but I guess when I get animation tasks, I produce better quality quicker than the Chinese and local outsourcers they pay. It also costs them less hourly because my pay is well below median standard. When it comes to playtesting, no one wants to hear my feedback though as I tend to make it a point to be brutally honest and don't really have to worry about my job or how I explain the feedback since it's not my actual position, but a cheap way to get around hiring actual QA. This tends to have an inverse affect on anyone in the office (who are also not QA) because they want to feel good about the games they wasted months on and offer very little in the way of criticism. So the design leads in every game tend to have excuses why something is bad or just want to think the game they thought up is amazing since it's their baby. I understand to a degree because it's upsetting to hear extreme negative criticism when you do a piece of art work or animation you put a lot of care into. But in the end, every time I have gotten a good degree of specific negative criticism, the draining emotional effect leads to me really paying attention and fixing my current piece to the best of my ability and keeping my grave mistakes in mind for future projects. But maybe my situation tends to be similar to yours as most of my criticisms when it doesn't come to polish are shrugged off as, "Well you aren't the target audience for this game" or, "You don't normally play this genre." Besides that I believe most people serious in games can appreciate multiple genres and how the play and offer feedback based on what they know of as a smooth gameplay experience, it kind of makes no sense why I'm tasked with giving my feedback of the fun in the game when I'm not considered a contender to actually give it.