I_smell

I got pretty far into DarkSiders 1 and I got SO bored of fighting groups of the same enemy, and finishing them off with the same slow-mo fatality animation every time. I could re-make that animation from memory, I saw it like 200 times. It's really reminiscent of an early PS2 game or a game based on a Disney movie or something. It really taught me what "sleepwalking through" a game is.

Well I was the only person talking about that in the Mark of the Ninja thread n I've not played Dishonored, so so far it's just one circle. It's probably the opposite people.

In generally looking up videos about this XCOM game in the passed couple weeks, I saw Jake Solomon in enough interviews to actually recognize who he was. I've seen a load of interview banter with the guy, but I'm thinking "I bet this guy REALLY knows what's up when it comes to designing games." So thanks! I shoulda known this is where I'd get that.

I'm making a shoot-em-up beat-em-up, and I came to the slow and painful realisation this week that "space-egyptians" is a boring and well-covered aesthetic that has apparantly been done a million times, and isn't as cool or fun as I thought it was. If I release my game where the enemies are robot pyramids, nobody will care. I think. So I splashed around looking for a new theme, and I THINK the closest thing to what I already had, and what makes the most sense, is "space-cops". For a dozen reasons I won't list. So here's me slowly re-building what I had: Some embarrassingly bad ones, but y'know, that's the point! At first I was getting really frustrated because I was thinking in terms of bullet-vests and Robocop and SWAT teams, and they all look really bulky, and I hate fat robots. So I started looking at like space FBI, and higher government police stuff, and that seemed more slick, but wavered over into Men In Black territory. Then I got really happy with these old blue n white country police, and I gave em a little belt and a little gun-holster sihlouette, and I'm KIND OF happy with where I am now. It's a lot more fun and has less baditude. Moving forward into making all the animations and re-designing the dozen other guys is scary though, cos it's kind of a big decision that changes everything. Like this is a thing I have to work with, and wear, and talk about for the next year. So I'm TENTATIVELY, slowly moving forward with this, and switching all the enemies over from space-egypt to this blue/white toy-cop style. I don't have a second person to bounce this off or anything.

I stop to think in everything, I stop to think in regular podcast episodes and TV shows. I guess I'm just very slow and easily distracted. I would LOVE to pause actual conversations with people to think "oh woops, I've been letting these words just wash over me for the passed 20 seconds, let's get back into this." I really often re-start the paragraph I'm on after realising I've phased out. Or sometimes if there's a hint that something smart's happening I'll stop to think about what the author's trying to communicate, like when a TV show zooms in on a flowerpot for 10 seconds, I'd probably pause to piece things together. HOWEVER I watched a movie last week where I decided to not do that, because I figured I'd more enjoy watching it twice, and to pause every 2 minutes might ruin it. But I guess that's not as big of a deal with books.

Whenever I talk about Achivements, that Ravenholm one is the one I bring up. I literally did not see the point in achievements, and then suddenly got it while playing that. It's not even really that difficult, it's just a wacky spin on the game. Geometry Wars also did this really early on, and back on the PS2, the Ratchet & Clank games had this side-thing called "Skill Points" that were basically nutty challenges. Of course most achivements are just a shitty number-crunch badge, like "Completed Mission 01" or "Halfway there..." I guess it ties into the theme of this thread that engineering a different style of playing what's there is always way more valuable than cranking up all the numbers.

Yeah most games are really careful about introducing new mechanics. The developer commentary in Portal is kind of all about that. Portal and Portal 2 have really great learning curves, I don't think anyone ever said they were too easy or boring, or got stuck at a part and quitted. Funny though, that every game with a portal gun in it (tiny indie games mostly) are ALWAYS too slow and tutorialized. They introduce how everything works piece-by-piece just like Portal does, but without acknowledging that everybody already GETS IT by now. Games that're designed for a wide audience, like DarkSiders or Assassin's Creed, must have a really hard time designing for people who've played games forever, AND people who are finding out this stuff for the first time. How do you ease people into the idea of what a hookshot or gravity gun is without boring the people who already know? Yeah I bet that's a real pain for someone out there to figure out.

Yeah that's a big surprise. Well Gears of War is just about my favourite thing on the 360, and Epic is a pretty amazing studio all over. Kudos to this guy for going out on top! Assuming he doesn't just get a new job somewhere else, which would be an even bigger surprise. Seems like a great guy! Actually he seems like a really corny PR guy, but the games are awesome so whatever. Epic's just about done with Gears of War, Unreal 4's on the horizon and Fortnite's about to be a thing, so Epic Games is about to be a slightly different company in everyone's eyes regardless.

I feel like I should mention that I made like 3 posts about this on Page 2 that were all delicately worded poop jokes. I just feel like this has come up enough times since that I should explain that.

Alright, well what we've learned here is that I'm bad at games, and have a pavlovian mental block that cripples me whenever I hear the Sega Megadrive sound-chip. Back to the thread.

Yeah everything, I can't get halfway through any of those games I mentioned without sitting back like "jeez, am I doin this right!?" I've only ever beat old games with like emulator save states. I've never seriously tried to play a Megaman game, cos oh lord! I've beat Super Meat Boy and other modern hard games, but y'know, my only point here is just that old games are as hard as people say they are.

Alright well you're a crazy person, cos I can't fuckin get past Stage 3 without giving up in anything before 1999.

Play Shinobi, play Golden Axe, Contra, Streets of Rage, Metal Slug, Gunstar Heroes, Altered Beast, any game I remember liking from the Mega Drive: It's impossible. I couldn't finish a game up until the PS1, and in most cases I still can't without cheating. Old games are definately hard as hell, don't worry about that. Sometimes not in FUN WAYS, but they're definately all harder.

Holy jesus christ! I clicked on this thread cos I was interested in the topic, but boy is this a lot o text! I read the first post and yeah! I'm really thinking about the same kinda things you are right now. I just played Dark Souls, I ALWAYS go back to Gears of War Horde Mode, I love Devil May Cry and I realised recently that I guess I'm a person who likes hard games! Your whole first post is more or less what I would say on this topic, harder games can really introduce a way more engaging STYLE OF PLAYING, and that's really fun and interesting. Obfuscating mechanics, like not explaining what X-Factor is in MvC 3 or not explaining how Focus Attacks or EX-moves work in Street Fighter 4 really pisses me off. Here's something I can add though: I played through Bionic Commando ReArmed and really loved it. It's a really hard game. Once I finished, I started again the next day and checked out the Hard Mode. Ran forward, and the FIRST ENEMY OF LEVEL ONE SHOT DIAGONALLY AT ME AND I DIED. I stopped dead for a sec and laughed, cos that's never happened before. They only usually shoot straight. That changes the design of every level and enemy, and totally changed how I think about difficulty levels as a designer. Oh and also it means a lot more work. Similarly, in Devil May Cry 4, enemies have new behavoirs and fresh new attacks. I saw a particular enemy summon a bunch of knives and shoot em at me for the first time recently, and I've played like a hundred hours of that game. It's like there's a variable for how CAPABLE each enemy is that rises as you get further into this Survival Mode. Anyway: That was cool. Some cool discussion in this thread, you guys are all smart. I play everything on Normal, and then Hard if I really liked it. I never crank it all the way up to Insane.

Yeah I personally can't stand actually watching Panty & Stocking, but that animation.....................my god. AND THE MUSIC OH LORD!

Everybody scoops. Maybe in a hundred years time, architects will dig up this thread and see just how much of it was a poop joke.

Yea there's 900+ games and Mutant Mudds isn't really that great.

I'm sure Patrick must feel uncomfortable holding Hot Scoops for a few months without saying anything, I hope he won't feel too hard pressed after letting go. Alright that's enough being horrendous, I actually wanna mention that Chris playing to Sean's antidotes was hilarious and really cool.

Patrick's held it for a while, but I think it'd be a big relief and things would be a lot less tense if he just let go. After so long, I don't even know if Steve wants it to fall back on him (I'd personally like to see that) but it definately seems confusing and wrong to pick up Hot Scoops just because nobody's using it. On that I think we can all agree. Things are gonna get more and more confusing the more we throw Hot Scoops around like this.

As a fan of both podcasts, I say that Patrick Klepek should drop hot scoops, and let Steve Gaynor have it.

Every fucking game back then was Dark Souls, try playing Ghouls 'n' Ghosts!

Argh I must've missed this thread. I got Dark Souls just over a week ago. I've never played anything like it. I'm up to Sen's Fortress and my opinion on the whole game is split down the middle. On the one hand: making it SUCH a high-stakes game is VERY INTERESTING! It's makes items extremely valuable, every enemy is very dangerous, and giant roaring boss monsters are more than just a cutscene, they're actually terrifying and intimidating. It brings back all the exciting tension to games and is a really ballsy design direction. For the first couple hours, this was my favourite game in the world. HOWEVER!! If you block an attack dog, then your Z-targetting will end up looking straight downwards. If it misses you, even worse, you'll end up looking behind you and straight down. Why put a 10ft boss in a 12ft room? And then why fill it with trees!? Having the camera slide around the top of my head is just an awful experience, and then putting dogs in there aswel (I guess they thought the boss's AI was too easy to deal with on it's own?) just makes the camera problems even worse. Hiding checkpoints? Removing the FireLink checkpoint? Zero direction on where to go next? I died in New Londo Ruins for like 3 hours til I looked up a guide and found out I was playing "end game content" by accident. Dark Souls is great game to learn from, cos it presents a unique direction that nobody else is really going for, but then completely fucks itself over in some new way every hour. I'm at Sen's Fortress and I missed the checkpoint where you have to jump off a cliff. EDIT-- Now I'm at Anor Londo and I'm back on-board again. That was a great high-point.

I'm playing Dark Souls right now and you're perfectly excused for not knowing how to play it. I'm like halfway through and this game is kind of a prick.

I imagine Fez would be like the absolute best game ever if it came out before you could look up any of the puzzles or ask people online about the giant clock or hidden rooms. I got about 60 out of 64 cubes by myself! but stopped because that brown fox lazy dog part was bullshit.

Here's the secret: They're showing everything about the game in red box-man prototypes and in the lumberjack-dude prototype. That way they're showing everything about the game and how it's getting made, without a single picture of the main characters. A lot of the concept art they're showing is stuff that's getting rejected by Tim also, so they're being very smart about what they're showing, even though they're showing SO MUCH! I agree with whoever said this is the best documentary about game development ever. It's SO GREAT. You are 100% missing out on something cool if you're not watchin em.