tegan

I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

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Not sure if this game really deserves its own thread, but Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is out today. I've been looking forward to it for more than a year now, so that's cool.

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I got Door Kickers on deep discount during the final phase of the Humble sale and I'm enjoying it a lot, but I'm also a little flummoxed by the contradiction between philosophy and implementation of design in the game. I got the game because it's got a generously large array of real-life guns and tools to equip with my team, and indeed the developers seem to delight in presenting me with levels that contrast the advantages of a high-maneuver low-damage gun with the reverse, but on the other hand, everything's locked behind stars that I have to earn beating missions and... I don't know. The tuning's just not quite right and it's really highlighting to me the weird way that tactical/strategic games with an unlock system struggle between "explore all of the options we've given you" and "you have to earn the nice things by playing with the crappy things first."

 

For instance, I started the first campaign the moment that I unlocked it and, three missions into it, I discovered a level that is basically unbeatable in any respectable way without the Breacher class (unlocks at squad level 8), silenced pistols (minimum of 10 stars, preferably 15, with the average one-off mission giving you two), and probably stinger grenades (another 5 stars). Since I'd spent most of my stars already on high-level armor and good assault rifles, I had to quit out of the campaign, grind nine more one-off missions, and then come back and basically teach myself how to use the Breacher class on the job with that one campaign mission. I love that the game is so full of options, but the fact that I'll probably never have 5 stars just sitting around that I won't be saving up to buy an even better gun means that I'll just never get to use the taser or the bolt cutters, which is a shame.

 

I just wonder, are unlocks the only viable progression scheme for non-RPG systems? I don't want everything given to me right away, but there's got to be something more thematic than grinding missions to earn points so that my SWAT team has proper gear...

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The recent Zelda game with the rental system is one way to try it. I think the problem is less that there aren't other solutions and more that the unlock one seems tried and true, so it's a safe seeming bet

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This might be a bad way of putting it but you could tier it by difficulty?

Like the game tells you this is a Red level mission so you're allowed to use more varied equipment from 'Tier V and below' ?

You could also (still unlock based) link it to team member's courses and certificate training? Kind of XCOMy you could send a guy to complete a defensive driving course and he gets access to better pursuit vehicles, or Tasers slowly become available so you send four guys on a training course. You'd have to balance around yer skill pools since training would take time away from duty. But it could be a neat in game method to justify why your team suddenly has the new door knockers or more advanced riot gear.

As a side note you could also link their behaviour to contracts & agreements. Like if one guy goes weapons free too much he'll face internal disciplinary action for breaching contract guidelines. Or the public could get wind which could lead to a big reputation blow out and auditing of the department that could further constrain tactics and loadouts for the duration of the inspection.

I guess I really just want a mash of Dwarf Fortress, Evil Genius, LA Cops, and Door Kickers set as a security organisation management sim/tactics game.

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I fired up Resident Evil 4 on my gamecube over the weekend. I have only ever made past the fist boss, and quit, every single time. Sometimes out of frustration, sometimes because I had to stop, and when I went back I couldn't remember how to play, however, I'm determined to finish it.

 

So I got to the chain saw guy and he chopped me up. I turned it off and went back to MGS, but I've not given up.

 

Firstly: This game influenced (Dark) Souls. It's plain as day. From the YOU ARE DEAD in red letters across the screen, to the ominous village that you enter to begin with. Then there's the combat, which works in the same way: you're limited heavily. You have mobility, but you can either aim, which to me parallels holding up a shield, or shoot, which obviously parallels swinging a sword.

 

Secondly: It still looks pretty good! I was expecting to be disgusted by the non-HD image, but it's totally fine! 

 

I don't know why I've bounced off RE4 so many times. I know in my teens I didn't have the patience for it, and would have hated so many games I love now thanks to how easily I got frustrated. That doesn't account for when I bought the PC version and bounced off it again.

 

Half the battle is the controls. They feel like they should work, but they're ever so slightly off. Right trigger to aim, when now left trigger is standard. A button to shoot...when right trigger has been standard for years. I'm constantly bringing out my knife thanks to that, wasting valuable seconds. Also the actual aiming is really hard. It has no aim assist like today's shooters as far as I can tell, and head shots don't kill even basic enemies. 

 

I want to beat it. I want to like it, because I know I should. It's got everything I like in many of my favourite games. It should just click with me...but it never has.

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I played through it on the Wii and loved every minute of it, actually found it became pretty easy because the controls were so damn good

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Call me crazy, but I feel like I want to experience the game as the creators originally intended.

I know it makes no sense...if I bounce off it so consistently, I should probably try Wiiasy mode. The thing is, am I then playing Resident Evil 4, the survival horror game, or am I playing Resident Evil 4, the shooting gallery game?

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And now I'm hearing the classic RE ominous intro voice say: "Resident Evil...Babies"

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I just bought Ultimate DOOM on Steam and have found myself enjoying it far more than I thought I would. My previous experience with the game was playing the first two(?) of the shareware-levels on a friend's PC at his house in 1996 or so. I remembered the game being frustratingly hard, but graphically impressive and ghoulish.

So when I got the Steam version, I went in and I was like "This shotgun is the best weapon I've ever used in a first-person-shooter!" and just feeling like the momentumy movement and the 0-90mphness was surprisingly satisfying. I assumed that in the time since trying it briefly decades ago and now playing it this week, was that I had become skilled at first-person-shooters and keyboard/mouse controls. Then I went back into the game and saw an option for "classic controls" and was like

Call me crazy, but I feel like I want to experience the game as the creators originally intended.

The game suddenly became not fun at all. No wonder I thought the game was hard at my friend's house in 1996. It's impossible to play this way and in retrospect just seems like a really misguided design-choice. When did WASD become standard and why wasn't it an obvious control-scheme when DOOM came out?

Also: Knee-Deep in the Dead is significantly more interesting to me than The Shores of Hell is there a story behind that? The first levels feel like they have secret doors everywhere, the corridors are easy to orient yourself in, but weave together in exciting ways. The levels in The Shores of Hell seem like they weren't given as much thought.

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Ugh, I've been playing some CS 1.6 the last few days to unwind because I finally have some free time. Unfortunately there are only like two decent servers left near me, and I just got perm banned from one of them for "wallhacking". When I was 15 I thought that was flattering but now it's just annoying as hell. It would be pretty stupid of me to risk getting VAC banned on a decade old Steam account anyway.

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Also: Knee-Deep in the Dead is significantly more interesting to me than The Shores of Hell is there a story behind that?

 

Doom was released with the first episode free, so the designers were incentivized to put the best levels at the beginning to hook people for the full version.

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And now I'm hearing the classic RE ominous intro voice say: "Resident Evil...Babies"

I always preferred the sequel.

 

Resident Evil...Terrible Twos...

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I just bought Ultimate DOOM on Steam and have found myself enjoying it far more than I thought I would. My previous experience with the game was playing the first two(?) of the shareware-levels on a friend's PC at his house in 1996 or so. I remembered the game being frustratingly hard, but graphically impressive and ghoulish.

So when I got the Steam version, I went in and I was like "This shotgun is the best weapon I've ever used in a first-person-shooter!" and just feeling like the momentumy movement and the 0-90mphness was surprisingly satisfying. I assumed that in the time since trying it briefly decades ago and now playing it this week, was that I had become skilled at first-person-shooters and keyboard/mouse controls. Then I went back into the game and saw an option for "classic controls" and was like

The game suddenly became not fun at all. No wonder I thought the game was hard at my friend's house in 1996. It's impossible to play this way and in retrospect just seems like a really misguided design-choice. When did WASD become standard and why wasn't it an obvious control-scheme when DOOM came out?

 

 

Interesting experience. Curious: what is the "classic" control scheme for Doom? 

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I think it was arrow keys to move forward / back and to turn left / right. Strafing was hidden on something obscure like period / comma. There was also a modifier you could hold to turn the left / right keys into the strafe keys.

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iirc it was arrow keys to move, since there was no seperate look at that point the move direction would also have orientated the view and strafe would have been separate keys, possibly comma and full stop (period), fire was probably ctrl.

WASD wasn't standard until some time later, I didn't play many shooters on PC in the 90's though so couldn't say when exactly. Also I don't it's really such an obvious choice when you think about it. You had arrow keys there already, it would have made sense to try and use those, WASD is staggered so makes less sense too. I assume at some point people got sick of uncomfortable positioning of their hands and the lack of additional keys around the arrows and looked for something else.

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I know I read some stuff in pc gaming magazines around the time of UT/Quake 3 about WASD vs Arrow Keys. Lots of people were used to arrow keys from all the 2D sidescrollers I think.

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Ok so that's just weird, obtuse, ancient button placement. It's not the equivalent of turning an analogue stick aim into light gun aiming.

 

I think the thing that bothers me most about the Wii version of Resident Evil 4, is that you can see where you're aiming before your gun comes up. It makes shooting things so much faster, it's even more important than the 1000% increase in accuracy of Wiimote over GCN controller. 

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Some competitive shooter mans players still use arrow keys. Those people are clearly dangerous individuals who should not mix with society.

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Since discovering that the campaigns in Door Kickers each give you forty to sixty stars in a single sitting, once completed, that game has replaced Payday 2 as my go-to game for appreciation of military hardware. Honestly, I'm not even that hot on the team-based tactical planning, I really just enjoy giving my guys new gear and then watching them put it to use. I'm beginning to think that I could be completely satisfied by a military-themed dress-up game. You know, I get a squad of four guys to equip with armor, pistols, and rifles, maybe decide what scopes and gadgets to put on each gun, and then the game rates me on my choices, with one of those polygonal aptitude graphs that you often see in Japanese games, and play some gunshot sounds to celebrate. High ratings for a complementary team loadout, appropriate to a specific tactical scenario, could unlock more gear that I could use in higher-stakes scenarios, maybe larger teams that allow more diversity of specialization. No need for actual gameplay, I just want lots of screens like this one, where I can compare sets of bars or numbers and decide which I like more for each individual person:

 

DK01.png

 

Believe it or not, this isn't just me struggling with a hyperfetishized fixation on the military. I had the exact same feelings about the Rock Band series of games: I would five-star entire concerts on expert just so that I could buy clothes to kit out a perfectly matched goth or punk band. Obviously the "dress up a team with a theme" RPG sub-genre is a niche begging to be filled. The ones that exist are all about execution, but I want one that relishes the minutiae of planning as much as me and is not particularly interested in making me prove my concept.

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If the arrow keys were on the left side of the keyboard, we'd all still be using them, no?

I'm not sure, I think one of the main advantages of wasd is that they're in the middle vertically and there are a lot of other keys you can easily reach with one hand. Try placing your hand on the arrow keys ans seeing what else you can reach. I can get right ctrl right shift and enter ok, and some of my number pad but that's about it. Whereas from wasd I can easily use the space bar, shift, and ctrl, and without too much trouble can also get tab, caps lock, q, e, r,  z, x, c, v, and 1-4. Not all keyboards have the arrows isolated like mine does, and I suspect fewer would if they were commonly used for that, but they're still on the bottom of the keyboard.

 

Then again, if all you needed was movement and a jump button you could probably get away with arrows+mouse and bind jump to right click, which I feel like may actually have been a thing at some point?

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