Idle Thumbs 207: Buble Bloodborne Bloodbeef

[Sno]

I didn't actually play the MH4u demo, but i don't imagine being thrown completely blind into mid-progression fights with canned item and gear loadouts is an especially good representation of what the game is actually about. I have no doubt that it was a confusing mess.

 

However, I don't really buy the notion that you can go into a Souls game completely blind to its genre and reasonably be expected to figure out how everything works without an undue degree of trial and error, and in that sense, it's probably not as distant an experience from Monster Hunter as you're postulating it to be. If you really wanted to, MH4u is a game you could absolutely dive into blind and get going at the ground level, but you would miss crucial nuance in much the way you would miss nuance in the Souls games. The key difference is that i don't think Monster Hunter rewards that mindset with mystery, and playing Monster Hunter without any sense of direction will just... It will seem like a boring grind.

 

In a Souls and Dota sliding scale, i think Monster Hunter probably actually sits pretty neatly in the middle. It has the mechanics of the former, with a mindset perhaps closer to the latter.

[Twig]

I dove in mostly blind to Dark Souls (the only vision I had being that "it's goddamn hard") and hit a wall on the first bridge boss, as do a lot of people, I'm told. But the wall was entirely my own making, because I just completely forgot the fact that I could do jumping attacks from above. The wall had nothing to do with the controls. The same cannot be said about MH4u, and I think that's the number one problem. I might actually get it on the ol' Wee Woo should it ever be released because I'm pretty sure having Good Controls would enable me to love the game. Instead I kind of fucking hate it.

[Sno]

I mean, but at the same time, i'm sure you made lots of mistakes with how you built your character, and that there were many underlying systems whose presence you never intuited. That is everybody's first experience with a souls game, and to say that you still finished the game in spite of it is sort of trying to make a false equivalence with Monster Hunter, because Monster Hunter is a game that has no clear win state. You play until you want to stop playing.

 

The wall had nothing to do with the controls. The same cannot be said about MH4u, and I think that's the number one problem.

 

You're talking about the camera again, right? The camera is by far the most common complaint i see made about the game. Help me understand something then, because i've played the game almost entirely without the aid of a second stick. Where specifically does it break down for you? Why is the lock-on not enough?

 

Edit: This might be a "me" thing, i'm aware, which is why i'm not particularly trying to take a strong "you're wrong" stance here. When people around me are freaking out about weird control schemes deviating from accepted standards, i'm usually the one that's totally fine with it. So, in this matter at least, i'll just quietly look on disapprovingly.

[BigJKO]

I have that song on repeat 24/7 anyway!

 

Same!

 

Wiggy-wiggy-wild wild west!

[osmosisch]

The key difference is that i don't think Monster Hunter rewards that mindset with mystery,

That's a great way of phrasing it. I couldn't detect any such carrot in my time with MH. I need a reason to really engage with systems. Hunting bigger creatures isn't enough reward in and of itself for me.

[Sno]

That's a great way of phrasing it. I couldn't detect any such carrot in my time with MH. I need a reason to really engage with systems. Hunting bigger creatures isn't enough reward in and of itself for me.

 

I suspect it's one of the key reasons why Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were the games that finally, finally hit big for From when they had been making similarly sophisticated and obtusely arcane games all along. Their theming was finally in synch with their mechanics, and it set a tone that indicated to players that there were things to be discovered beneath surface level observations. It was the carrot that pushed people to learn about these games when people had never been as willing to learn about their previous efforts and would always write them off as impenetrable and clunky.

[twmac]

I always enjoy it when something is named based on the creator's knowledge of its end-state without any self-awareness of how it might actually be perceived by the story's characters. in Earth Defense Force 2017, the mysterious aliens that show up are immediately and unquestioningly called "The Reavers," then the game spends the first 10 missions pretending that the giant bug attacks couldn't possibly be from the peaceful visiting aliens and it's a huge shock to the world when it turns out to be them.

 

I actually think they are called Ravagers, which is even more delicious.

[syntheticgerbil]

What happened to all the moon talk on this podcast?! We need more moon topics!

[SirJakoz]

I just wanted to add that, in addition to Dart Fener (yes Dart, without the "h"), in the Italian version of Star Wars, we have Ian Solo and Principessa(Princess) Leila, for no apparent reason.

[Jake]

This was the proposed venn diagram:

Dash Rendar --> Dart Fener <-- Darth Vader

Which led to the realization that "venn diagram" is also a star wars character.

[Jake]

I really hope "dash rendar" came to be similarly to guybrush threepwood. (eg: he was named "character-render" or something so he went from character dash render to Dash Rendar, the way Guybrush was the unnamed main character, AKA "guy" brush file)

[syntheticgerbil]

Bob.bin Thread.bare

[Jake]

Everyone who says his name was guy.brush is wrong. Including early 00s me. Brush was a type of art resource but not a file extension.

[syntheticgerbil]

Makes sense, that seems like a long and dumb file extension.