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Sean

Idle Thumbs 147: The Titan Falls

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I poked around with the NES Mario games as a kid but never beat any of them; that is my secret Video Game Credibility Shame.  I did go completely nuts with World though, and ended up playing and beating a lot of the weirdo rom hacks made while I was an undergrad with way too much time on my hands.

 

I still like the imagery of being in a sleeping bag wearing a Luigi hat and having a sudden revelation about your adult life as you play Mario 3.

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I don't think I ever beat any of the NES Mario games on my own, but between my group of friends we were able to beat all these games (different people were able to handle different difficult levels). Teamwork!

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I don't think I ever beat any of the NES Mario games on my own, but between my group of friends we were able to beat all these games (different people were able to handle different difficult levels). Teamwork!

 

In 1991 my first grade teacher brought in her Nintendo, Mario 3, and a tiny TV and made it one of stations that we would rotate into for a month.  On one specific day she had all the levels unlocked (I think through a cheat?) and I was one of the few to play that last level and beat the game!!!  It was an exhilarating feeling!!  (Especially since I always got stuck on that final Ghost House level at home.  It was the most confusing and impossible level for a six year old...)

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* Human Revolution was the Unreal Engine. Why Thief didn't use the same principles from it probably come from the core design and the fact it was a separate team for awhile (from what I understand).

 

It could have been a tech reason, but I get the impression most of this game was made in under a year and a lot of the work done for it was heavily modified or thrown out, but that's just the feeling I get from playing it and knowing how poor developments go. So the compartmentalization was probably a time saver thing, because it seems weird anyone would intentional want to design a Thief game's spaces like that.

 

edit: oh, ha, Chris goes on to pretty much articulate what happens at these studios and uses a game I worked on as reference. So yeah, I shared the same impression, Chris.

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* Human Revolution was the Unreal Engine. Why Thief didn't use the same principles from it probably come from the core design and the fact it was a separate team for awhile (from what I understand).

 

Was it? A bunch of places seem to say it was the Crystal Dynamics engine and the open logo crawl for DX: HR doesn't have Unreal in it anywhere, which I'm pretty sure is basically unavoidable if you've licensed Unreal.

 

But Rocksteady was able to bend Unreal into do big, dynamically lit (albeit, sparsely populated) areas, although going from interiors to exteriors was still a loading fest.

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I'm quite sure DXHR is not unreal engine, it does not bear its mark (i.e. directory structure does not match).

 

UE3 is quite good in streaming world if it knows it is going to happen. The open worldyness of Batman: Arkham makes loading screens unavoidable. If you look at for example: Enslaved, Spec Ops, GoW. You can finished them all without seeing a single load screen. Even on consoles.

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I retract my statement, I was 100% sure it was Unreal until I fact checked with typing "Human Revolution Unreal 3"  

 

I must be thinking of that other Deus Ex game which did use a Unreal engine, but not 3. ha.

 

Unreal 3 is quite terrible at streaming most worlds unless you very carefully set it up to be such and how Arkham City existed without any modified code is complete magic to me.

 

*I'm also 90% sure Arkham City was not dynamically lit, it had dynamic shadows, but considering my 100% certainty on the HR engine was wrong, who the hell knows, I haven't looked at it in awhile.

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Yeah I'm pretty sure the Arkham games* were baked, with dynamic shadows and a lot of color grading.

* or at least Asylum.

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Some thoughts on the intimacy question:

Not that emotional reactions are new to video games, but they are becoming more common.  People have had very powerful emotional reactions at public media forever (plays, speeches, movies, opera, sports, concerts).  The emotional impact of media has this long history of being a shared response.  I suppose I can see why Let's Play videos that have that reaction might feel forced, as it would feel like a solo response that's being intentionally broadcast, but I have to think that the core is that same idea of a shared emotional reaction.  I can totally see how and why it would make you guys uncomfortable though.

I couldn't do it, I think the process of trying to have a running dialog while playing would interrupt whatever my natural reaction was.  Or at least it wouldn't end up being compelling, because I would just get quiet.  I actually had to walk away from The Walking Dead Ep. 1 for a moment before I could go on with it.  There's a scene late in that episode that struck a nerve hard, and I had to take a break.  I'm trying to imagine sharing that reaction with strangers in real time...I can't do it.  I just can't feel what that would be like.

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Okay since I played Mario Bros. 3 hundreds of times as a kind and revisitied as a young adult (in 2007), I'm going to be the fucking jerk that shits all over Mario 3 in this thread. It's incredbily mediocre in terms of design, and I would say nearly the worst first party title in the 2D platformer Marios (Yoshi's Story exists and Mario 2 (Lost Levels) is a lot of anger and no fun). Please don't hate me, Jake.

 

Also, I still have yet to play a New Soup game, so maybe those count as first party 2D platformers? I can't speak of the quality

 

So the reasons Jake said Mario 3 is brilliant are the same reasons I feel like it's a mess. It's just a platformer full of open levels with no clear goal, barring than the airship levels. They have so many twists and turns that end up utterly useless. There's not much point in discovering any secret outside of having enough lives in order to not start a world over. You can search for the special suits, but there's no fucking point because you'll equip it on the next level and probably get hit within the first 30 seconds. Not even worth it. Mario 3 is just a game that meanders without any kind of solid difficulty ramp or clear goal other than to get to the end of the level ASAP. Mario 2 (USA) had secrets that were worth your while, obtaining health increases, secret keys, and shortcuts. A lot of good ideas from Mario Bros. 2 were carried over to Mario World.

 

Mario Bros. 3 feels like one of those subpar platformers where stuff is just pasted all over a level design where you get points for collecthing random objects. It's very much closer in kin to Bubsy, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Toejam and Earl 2 than any other Mario of the 8 and 16 bit era. Also the dungeon style labyrinth levels were maybe a bit more clever, but all of that is done with more ingenuity in the haunted house levels Mario World, which kind of breaks the idea that later Marios were only left to right.

 

I should probably touch on my thoughts as a kid, since I played the game as an adult as Mario Advance 4. I loved this game as a wee one, it was one you always pick up and play but one you could never fully see. There was no fucking save system. Why did Nintendo do this? Apparently some kids could beat this game by leaving their Nintendo on for days, but I never had this luxury. My Dad was always hiding around the corner waiting for me to abandon my NES and check if the red light was on, because don't you ever fucking waste electricity like that. I played a lot of PC games concurrently at the time and was confused why no one could really be bothered to put a save system on most NES games. It's not like Nintendo couldn't do it, you could save in Zelda, Metroid and Kid Icarus had passwords, and Wrecking Crew just allowed you select whatever god damn level because that game was bullshit. There's really no excuse for not implementing a save system on a much larger and later Mario title. Instead, you pretty much needed those obscure warp whistles everyone knew about because the only way to actually experience the game other than leaving it on forever was to just warp to different worlds as a sampler of sorts. I think most people who actually beat the game just got pissed and warped to World 8 because the trajectory of the game without a save system was just an awful mess.

 

I think the Mario games did not start getting clever until Mario Land and on, leading even in to the genius of Wario Land. Mario Bros. 2 was good even as a reskinned game, but it is also very difficult to appreciate unless you are playing the Advance version with a save system.

 

The only way I'd recommend Mario Bros. 3 is in it's Game Boy Advance state. Even then you should only play the game for historical purposes. The beauty of Mario Advance 4 is the World-e stuff where you scan the e-Reader cards for the add on levels. If anyone has the time and patience to do this, you can get about 40 levels of genius platforming that combines the best of Mario Bros., Mario Bros. 2, Mario Bros. 3, Mario World, and Yoshi's Island all in one package. The only problem is Nintendo released these add-on levels on a ridiculously crappy peripheral and almost no one who even owns Mario Advance 4 has even played them. If you own an e-reader, there's a way to print out all of the American and Japanese dot codes on card stock at home, but this is a lot of work and only for the nerdiest people. Plus when I did it for some, there was way too much trial and error. I think you can download a Visual Boy Advance save with all of them on it though.

 

Hey I wrote way too much.

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All the excitement over Titanfall kind of leaves me feeling like an alien. A lot of the time, even when I'm not that interested in a "big" release for the reasons most people are interested, I still at least have some level of anticipation of someday playing it just to see what I do get out of it - like, with Call of Duty, I actually enjoy the campaigns quite a bit. They're brief and all about the spectacle (at least, after the first Modern Warfare, which felt like it had some thoughtfulness to it), and there is no way in HELL I'm paying $60 for that experience, so it often takes quite a while before I get to play them, but that's enough to have me looking forward to that eventual price drop or sale. And with sims, realistically I know I'll bounce right off the learning curve and in a lot of cases the mundanity and aimlessness, but I enjoy the -idea- of having that carefully modelled experience enough that I've got things like X3 and IL2 Sturmovik sitting in my Steam library (at rock bottom sale/bundle pricing, at least) and occasionally I at least give it a shot. I never would have expected to be as enamored with ARMA II or Euro Truck Simulator 2 as I was, so it's a policy that does occasionally pay off.

 

But if there's one kind of Video game experience I absolutely know for a fact does not work for me, it's the online competitive multiplayer game. I've tried. PvP in MMOs, a few FPS games over the years (the closest to sticking was near-launch TF2 on a newbie server that wasn't there when I tried to come back), League of Legends, Starcraft, a few fighting games...just no. I don't mind an even match with some back and forth as long as there's something there to get me going (TF2's visual design and class system, say), but I just don't enjoy walkovers or being slaughtered either one at all (and I've never found a game that reliably provided the former rather than the latter two), I really really don't enjoy downtime, I have a very low frustration threshold, I don't want to deal with people being assholes, and most importantly...I dabble. I do not have any desire to build mastery, and absent that desire I think you pretty much need to either have a reliable group of friends who play the same games and are close enough to your skill level to make matches not frustratingly lopsided, or you need to be able to find the fun in losing in really one-sided ways and I don't have that group and I can't find that fun.

 

So absent a surprise singleplayer mode I'm just not seeing any role for Titanfall in my life. Which is a shame. The titans and the traversal both sound pretty neat.

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synth is it going to bother you if I pick apart your post? I'm going for it.

 

It's just a platformer full of open levels with no clear goal, barring than the airship levels.

I hate that this is going to make me sound like a smart-ass, but it really is how it is; every level has a clear goal. The end. The openess is just about letting you get through the stage as you see fit. You also brought up secrets not giving you much other than one-ups, but I dunno if that's a fair assessment. I guess it depends on what you play the game for. Finding clouds in the sky with coins laid out on top doesn't just let you work up toward that 1-up you get when you collect 100 coins. Coins give you score too. And maybe I'm old-fashioned but I love high scores in games. That's less of a "you're wrong" and more of a disagreement in taste though.

 

You can search for the special suits, but there's no fucking point because you'll equip it on the next level and probably get hit within the first 30 seconds. Not even worth it.

Again, not to sound like a wise-ass, but that's the challenge of the game. Getting something so valuable, and having to maintain it via skill. The game is built with that in mind, that you may have or may not have any given suit. Having the frog suit trivializes water levels, but there's still some risk involved. Having a free ride through the level wouldn't make it much fun.

 

Mario 2 (USA) had secrets that were worth your while, obtaining health increases, secret keys, and shortcuts. A lot of good ideas from Mario Bros. 2 were carried over to Mario World.

okay this is one where I'll say you're wrong on. Mario 2 had shortcuts, yes, but so did Mario 3. They weren't expressed in the same fashion though. In Mario Bros. 2 the shortcuts were internal in the levels, sure. In Mario Bros. 3, the shortcuts were on the world map itself. Which was also something you can execute in a few instances in Mario World.

 

Mario Bros. 3 feels like one of those subpar platformers where stuff is just pasted all over a level design where you get points for collecthing random objects.

This is such a weird statement to me. You literally just collect coins and suits / mushrooms. By the way, going back to what you said about more 1-ups, the coins you collect in Mario 2 are literally for the slot machine that literally rewards you with 1-ups.

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Yeah, it's fine, Mario 3 just makes me mad. In general, I know you get to the end, that's the only way to construct a platformer, but I need something a bit more substantial that to just wander around a map with things pasted around with hardly any rhyme or reason. That's why I feel only the airship levels and parts of World 8 are actually engaging, because you have to move with the scrolling screen and quickly use your skills.

okay this is one where I'll say you're wrong on. Mario 2 had shortcuts, yes, but so did Mario 3. They weren't expressed in the same fashion though. In Mario Bros. 2 the shortcuts were internal in the levels, sure. In Mario Bros. 3, the shortcuts were on the world map itself. Which was also something you can execute in a few instances in Mario World.

Maybe it was misunderstood. The shortcuts are not within the levels, so there's not much to explore for. The most you can get are items to break blocks and such on the map. The items aren't normally earned in the levels themselves but instead by either completing a minigame or fighting some Hammer Bros. that roam around. Mario World encourages you to take multiple paths within the levels to open up new paths. It's a much cleaner design if you actively looking for more game to complete.

his is such a weird statement to me. You literally just collect coins and suits / mushrooms. By the way, going back to what you said about more 1-ups, the coins you collect in Mario 2 are literally for the slot machine that literally rewards you with 1-ups.

It's not that collecting any of those things bothers me, it's that is pretty much all there is to Mario Bros. 3. The Mario Land games continued the slot machine/gambling end of level things through the Wario series. No issue with that.

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For Kohler's wife, the next time you see her: perhaps she would enjoy some of the DROD games. They are difficult, but excellently designed puzzle games. Full disclosure, I have credits on Journey to Rooted Hold and The City Beneath, which are the two I'd recommend alongside King Dugan's Dungeon, but people no less than Chuck Sommerville (Chip's Challenge) and Terry Cavanaugh have expressed it's one of their favourite puzzle games.

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With respect to f2p games as super hard puzzlers, Plants vs Zombies 2 was totally that.  I never used a powerup in the game (pinch to destroy zombies, etc) and every level was beatable... just barely.   I enjoyed the experience much more than the first game actually because it was the difficult PvZ game I always wanted.  Some of those challenges required perfect builds.  No exaggeration, it might have been my favorite tower defense game ever.

 

Unfortunately they have revamped the game entirely -- the PvZ2 that I played no longer exists and nobody can play it.  The game had a huge patch and is completely different now, they removed the map, challenges, and the fine edge of balance of gone.  You can still get through it without paying but I don't enjoy using consumable powerups even when they are free.  

 

I agree with this.  Before the update I did the same thing, beating the game without paying anything (I used the occasional free powerup but never got more with the ingame coins).  The design was definitely set on encouraging you to pay for extra plants and upgrades, but with a little planning and work it was entirely possible to never miss them.  After the update, the game swings to the far end of the bullshit meter by throwing unfair amounts of special zombies at you so that you're forced to use the non-renewable resources.  It eliminates the need to farm for keys to unlock levels, but the tradeoff is the core game got much worse.

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With regard to Mario, I had a similar experience to Jake with Super Mario World.  In college my friend's mom sent her old SNES to her along with SMW.  An event that started as a potluck dinner turned into a SMW party.  My friend proclaimed that she was an expert at the game, having beaten it multiple times.  The rest of our friends had only a passing familiarity with it.  We then proceeded to start a new 2-player game, where I then IGN.com'd her by immediately revealing secrets she never knew existed, such as the Star Road.  I didn't have the intention of being a showoff, but I accidentally ended up as one.

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Out of curiosity, what was the job description that they were referencing from Penny Arcade? Really curious what made it 'gross'.

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The original IT guy also posted a defense of the post on their forums, which didn't necessarily hlep.  The worst part of it was that if you're someone who occasionally wants to take a weekend off and not be on call, tough shit, you can't. 

 

The on call expectations for a lot of IT folks are completely and patently ridiculous.  Doctors, cops and fire fighters have better on call plans than IT people. 

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Yeah I remember being in Yosemite on vacation and having to frantically call the guys doing the cat6 install at Telltale's new office because they weren't on track to finish by the time the whole company was moving in. And going over to the new office in the evenings to run cable up to the ceiling in conference rooms for projector mounts before the drywall went in (also, installing projector mounts). And IT wasn't ever technically my job the entire time I was there. Thankfully they finally hired someone to help out with IT part-time not long before I left.

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For Kohler's wife, the next time you see her: perhaps she would enjoy some of the DROD games. They are difficult, but excellently designed puzzle games. Full disclosure, I have credits on Journey to Rooted Hold and The City Beneath, which are the two I'd recommend alongside King Dugan's Dungeon, but people no less than Chuck Sommerville (Chip's Challenge) and Terry Cavanaugh have expressed it's one of their favourite puzzle games.

 

The DRODs are amazing and I really am sad that they seem to languish in obscurity, but given that she's playing free to play games I strongly suspect that by "puzzle game" she means something more like Bejeweled or Tetris, which are commonly called puzzle games in some circles. I feel this is an extreme misnomer and lumps very different game styles together but there you have it.

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Hmm, I guess if she's a competitive fake plastic rock player the appeal might be more in making quick decisions under pressure than mental stimulation.

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So I tried this Calculords game. It's got 3 lanes, pushing mechanics with automated AI units and you have to strategize how and when to get a calculord bonus. 

Is this actually Calculords Management?

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The DRODs are amazing and I really am sad that they seem to languish in obscurity, but given that she's playing free to play games I strongly suspect that by "puzzle game" she means something more like Bejeweled or Tetris, which are commonly called puzzle games in some circles. I feel this is an extreme misnomer and lumps very different game styles together but there you have it.

 

Is SpaceChem a puzzle game?

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