I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[Mangela Lansbury]

Searching a bit more it looks like SMT: Nocturne on PS2 is one of the best. Generally people seem to like the Persona games more than the mainline series. Since I'm never going to get a PS2, I might just try Persona 3 Portable.

Nocturne is held in the highest regard, yeah. The plot is a little vague and sparse, and it hilariously features Dante from Devil May Cry. It's frustratingly hard at times and is mostly about the gameplay, which I liked when I played it in high school but wouldn't have the time or patience for now.

The Persona games are better plotted games that are actually about something. They approach some heavy topics deftly and smartly, and the portable versions are great. 3 and 4 are kind of split into two halves -- you dungeon crawl and you live as a high school student who goes to school and makes friends -- and usually people like one or the other more. They're very long, but good, games. They're more about the characters and the plot and the gameplay gets a little stale.

[N1njaSquirrel]

For what it's worth, SMTIV has a 50% sale on, which ends today. for £9 it seems like it's worth the go. I do hear that it's pretty good.

[Griddlelol]

You'll probably get a huge kick out of Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth on the 3DS Griddlelol, It's got the cast of P3 and P4, as well as being a really fun JRPG. I played P3P and it was fun, but I hear that the PS2 P3:FES is better, purely because you can actually run around in the enviroments, not just scroll through static screens like in P3P.

 

I try to avoid games on the 3ds as much as possible. I hate the screen so much. It was fine until I got a vita - going back to that highly pixelated screen just feels gross. Some games are worth it (Monster Hunter for example) others aren't...and like Merus said, Q looks more like an EO game. I couldn't get on with EO IV, it just wasn't my cup of tea, so I doubt I'd like Q.

 

 

Nocturne is held in the highest regard, yeah. The plot is a little vague and sparse, and it hilariously features Dante from Devil May Cry. It's frustratingly hard at times and is mostly about the gameplay, which I liked when I played it in high school but wouldn't have the time or patience for now.

 

I just finished P4, really liked it, but I'm not sure I want to get into a similar game so soon. I found it really exhausting. However, with age I've found myself moving away from narrative heavy games and prefer those with the bare minimum plot, and well made gameplay so SMT seems like I'd love it. 

 

It's apparently on PSN, so...that doesn't help until they release PS Now in the UK. Then add the game. At a reasonable price.

[Merus]

A famous moment in video game history: the announcement of the PlayStation's US price.

 

[clyde]

I enjoyed this prompt to listen to the sound-design of Mirror's Edge.

 

https://criticalswitch.bandcamp.com/track/mirrors-edge-the-landscape-of-sound

[dartmonkey]

You know, it's pretty neat that you can play almost the entirety of Nintendo's portable output for the past 27ish years on only these two consoles:

Totes wizard.

[Bjorn]

So is the new trend in games to release an actual polished, tested version of your game a year or so after it came out?  So far, in the last year, Dark Souls 2 has done it, and now Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin have both announced similar overhauls. 

[BobbyBesar]

My favorite non-Persona SMT was Strange Journey on the DS, but if the 3DS's pixels bother you, it could be an issue.

 

SMT IV was pretty good, I guess. I stop playing SMT games in one of two ways: A (usually the final) boss is impossibly hard, or I forget to save for a really long time (or save over a slot that I needed to go back to), and don't want to replay several hours all over again, and then forget what I was doing. I did the latter on SMT IV, but I was pretty far into it.

[Jutranjo]

So is the new trend in games to release an actual polished, tested version of your game a year or so after it came out?  So far, in the last year, Dark Souls 2 has done it, and now Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin have both announced similar overhauls. 

 

Witcher 1 and 2 have done Enhanced Editions as well but that was years ago.

[Twig]

D:OS was at least really good already!! Now it'll be better(?)!!!

[clyde]

A Frog Fractions kinda story.

http://kotaku.com/for-two-years-the-kanye-west-rpg-has-been-hiding-a-dis-1704673459

[Bjorn]

That's amazing!

[Vasari]

Just seen Fury Road and now I want to play some AS-Convoy

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCb7WsHcES8

 

Here's an actual thought: I just realised how much I miss referring to multiplayer maps by their filename.

[Trip Hazard]

Always-online is BULLSHIT.

I'm moving house and have no internet and GTAV won't work. I paid FORTY QUID for this game and I'm not allowed to play it for literally no reason at all.

How is this legal?

[clyde]

Always-online is BULLSHIT.

I'm moving house and have no internet and GTAV won't work. I paid FORTY QUID for this game and I'm not allowed to play it for literally no reason at all.

How is this legal?

I didn't know the PC version was that way.

[SecretAsianMan]

I've run across several modded versions of the Android game Pixel Dungeon on the Play Store and I'm really happy this is a thing.  I'm currently playing one called Skillful Pixel Dungeon which adds active and passive skills to each character as well as a skill point system.  It also adds some new items.  There's also a great one called Shattered Pixel Dungeon which adds an entirely new class of items called artifacts, as well as some tweaks and fixes.  But what I'm really loving about all this is that they're not clones or blatant ripoffs, they're full on mods of the original because Pixel Dungeon is free and open source.  Each of them adds new stuff while still retaining the same core as PD.  It's so amazingly refreshing and wonderful to see this happening on a mobile platform.  I'm fed up with the constant trash that's filling up the store as everyone introduces their reskinned variant of the latest popular game.  I really hope this idea of modding mobile games spreads but I don't think it will because it's not a profitable business model.

[Reyturner]

Is there secrect depth to Pixel Dungeon that I'm just not seeing? I give it another go every time it comes up around here and I just don't get the acclaim it gets. The first couple of floors is always just "push through monsters and hope for good rolls" bit then I get bad rolls and die.

[SecretAsianMan]

Is there secrect depth to Pixel Dungeon that I'm just not seeing? I give it another go every time it comes up around here and I just don't get the acclaim it gets. The first couple of floors is always just "push through monsters and hope for good rolls" bit then I get bad rolls and die.

 

That depends a lot on how you feel about roguelikes.  PD is a pretty traditional roguelike.  If you're not into those, PD isn't going to change your mind.  Maybe give one of the other variants a try.  The Skillful one I mentioned before has several difficulty levels and the skills can make you quite a bit more powerful.

[Ninety-Three]

It recently occurred to me to wonder about a fundamental aspect of game design. Why are there hacking minigames (and lockpicking minigames, and diplomacy minigames, and so on)? Why do so many developers decide "Man, you know what would be great here? If we forced the player to stop playing the game for a moment to play Breakout/Pipe Dream/Word Search/etc. And then did so again every fifteen minutes for the rest of the game." Do they really think (presumably for reasons of pacing) that the minigame is more fun than just letting the player move on and do more core gameplay? Is it just that the game industry has a habit of copying without thinking?

[SecretAsianMan]

It might be copying without thinking about it by now, but I imagine it started as a way to keep the player engaged.  Mini-games like that are a way of letting the player feel like they did a thing that supposedly requires skill to do in real life without making them actually do it.  The alternative I guess would be "Press A to hack" which brings up the question of why even have it at all.  Personally, I feel like Fallout 3/NV did the lock picking/hacking minigame the best, even letting you bypass them entirely when you have enough skill points (although I would often do it anyway just because I liked it).

 

But I'm not a dev so what do I know.

[Trip Hazard]

I hate all those hacking/lockpicking games. Even the very best examples, which would be fun enough in isolation, end up being much too frequent and ruin the pacing of the game. Worst offender (to my mind) in recent years is Human Revolution.

Luckily I generally play on PC, and modders are quick to find ways of bypassing those minigames

[SuperBiasedMan]

In general, modern big budget games have an issue with cramming in too much stuff because they feel it's required rather than choosing what benefits their game. Mini games are just one aspect of that.

[clyde]

How do you determine what is a minigame? In a rpg, couldn't combat be considered a minigame? Even if it's the change in perspective and mechanics, combat in JRPGs would be a minigame. Or shopping, or dialogue choices might be considered one.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Frankly the combat in Dragon Age and puzzles in point and click games always just annoy me as fluff I don't play those games for.

 

I feel like the use of 'mini games' here is like the Thumbs use of 'lore' in a recent cast. It's not that a deep and detailed world is bad, it's that when it's handled poorly it feels like this thing called 'lore' instead of writing or backstory. Likewise a poorly integrated mechanic that ends up being un fun and feels incongruous will be called a mini game.

[Ninety-Three]

How do you determine what is a minigame? In a rpg, couldn't combat be considered a minigame? Even if it's the change in perspective and mechanics, combat in JRPGs would be a minigame. Or shopping, or dialogue choices might be considered one.

 

Combat is (in most games) core gameplay, it's what you'll spend most of your time doing. I don't feel the need to formally define "minigame" because surely everyone knows it when they see it. Hacking minigames are far more videogаmey than navigating dialogue or merchant menus. This lack of definition leaves some grey areas, but the grey areas don't matter to my initial question.

 

 

a poorly integrated mechanic that ends up being un fun and feels incongruous will be called a mini game.

 

I wouldn't say that, I had fun with Bioshock's Pipe Dream, and it's the minigamest minigame that ever minigamed.