What's with all the rave for SotN anyway? I got it on the 360 and it doesn't seem all that amazing. The castle design was looser (not much item progression necessary to get through it) but it's not better than the later games IMO and the inverted castle just feels awkward with many jumps being just a tad higher than you can jump without using the high jump or bat morph. I don't get why all reviews of later Cv games (except for OoE) said the new game wasn't as good as SotN. It just doesn't seem all that amazing.
It's spike overuse, MM9 has way too many instakill hazards compared to the height of the series. You rarely run out of hitpoints because it's more common to fall into spikes, pits, lava, etc.
Considering a download is much less prone to failure than a 20 year old cart, not subject to rarity (hello Sin & Punishment!), always comes with a manual (never seen those on flea markets) and even lets you suspend the game when you feel like it (especially useful when you encounter password saves) I don't really see that as a downside. Plus it's easier to move around, I can carry the Wii much more easily than a bunch of carts. Besides, all the flea markets seem to carry these days is the same old crap that noone wants and they only sell Gameboy (and Advance) and SNES carts anyway. Most if not all the games I got from the Virtual Console weren't available at the flea markets I've been to.
Games in the old days pushed the hardware too, it just looks funny nowadays because pushing only gave marginal advantages while a new hardware gave massive increases and all the "good graphics" games look outdated now. Games were always competing on many different things and many were little more than looks and forgotten fast.
The console versions are pretty much the same, just much faster. The DS version moves slower (or just has bigger targets) and has a lower limit on the number of enemies that can be in play at the same time. It's much harder to hit stuff in the console versions and often an enemy will hit you because it slipped through between your shots. Maybe the dual analog controls on the 360 were to blame for that though (I've been meaning to pick the Wii version up but didn't get around to it yet).
How much difference is between challenge and nintendo hard?
The NES required no 2-pixels-merged-together crap to get 4 colors per sprite and it allowed more palettes in use at the same time resulting in more colors on the screen. The sound chip in the C64 might have been better (not really sure though) but the graphics were much weaker IMO.
I don't think Square is responsible for helping the PS3 sell so they should probably go multiplatform instead to get more sales.
Then again a HD remake of the game would be massively expensive to make and it's questionable if they'd make money on it (or could even afford completing it).
I think it suffers from hardcore sequel syndrome though, it's designed for the hardcore fans of the previous games and thus much harder than before. Contra 1-3 started much easier (though it doesn't help C4's case that the first level has visibility issues with some enemies). Same for Megaman 9, it's designed for people who are used to Megaman already with pretty complex patterns for the disappearing blocks and stuff.
Really, I found Contra 1 on the Konami Arcade Collection much easier to play than Contra 4.
I think people nowadays are way too quick to discount new ideas because they can be summarized to sound somewhat similar to an earlier idea. Yet many games still feel very different because seemingly small differences can change the experience massively and it's the difference in experience that counts. A game can get praised as new and different when it doesn't look much different from afar, just by playing it you notice how it works out.
The Castlevania games nowadays tend to mark boss doors so you know not to enter before you've found the save point, I always hated taking the wrong door first and missing a save point.
Depends on the game for me. Some are repetitive and not terribly interesting gameplay-wise but keep their story interesting (for these any setbacks are really bad because it means having to repeat stuff without the game's pull being there, if I get stuck on a challenge there I tend to abandon them quickly because the fun dies when the progress halts), some have really interesting gameplay and with them dying doesn't mean much, I just hit retry and keep playing because it's the journey that's the fun with these games, not the destination.
Obviously the latter kind is a better use of my money than the former, I can get a much better story from a book without having to deal with uninteresting filler between the story scenes and a book is much cheaper.
Interesting, the 360 version used four buttons and both sticks, that's it. Still a bit confusing since there are so many actions that depend on the context but nowhere near the insanity of some of the third person shooter demos I tried.
When you're unfamiliar with a game you don't jump straight into a competitive match against a trained player. You talked about it needing a tutorial, well, guess what, there's a single player campaign for just that. You skipped that. You went right for the big challenge. No wonder you got creamed. You cannot talk about too much difficulty or no introduction in multiplayer, it depends highly on your opponent. Gentle introductions and difficulty curves are a thing for singleplayer where the game can control the whole environment and care specifically for you. In multiplayer people join to have fun right away, not to go through any "easing in" because they already know the game by the time they choose to join. The game can't help you in multiplayer except for offering options to play against people of your listed skill level online which again is an option you didn't take.
Doing everything to score a win is the point of competitive gaming, it seems your sons have the competitive mindset where the fun comes from pushing your own abilities to their limit and overcoming your opponent with them (sometimes against a handicap for additional bragging rights for you and humiliation for your enemy). This is a fundamentally different mindset from the "playing around to have fun" approach and the two cannot really work together in the same game. If you have trouble with kill stealing you shouldn't play FFA, the design of an FFA game really encourages kill steals, defensive play and such. Competitive gamers don't play FFA much for that reason, when it's played at full skill it breaks and isn't much fun. Social rules are incompatible with competitive gaming because when you're pushing limits a soft limit like a social rule just doesn't fit. You want to time the rocket right but when's the earliest you can fire it so it's no longer a kill steal? For a good competition everyone must play with the same rules.
What he claims is that Prince of Persia is a very good example of a departure from what quite often puts off new gamers to the scene.
I really don't think that's it. Popular introductory games like Bejewelled, Tetris or Wii Sports have regular game overs. What's different is that with those you immediately start having fun again when you restart after a loss rather than having to do some mindless repetition. The games keep being fun even on levels you have already beaten before. As games are becoming more epic and story driven replaying areas becomes less fun and more of a chore (never mind longer, you could redo your progress in older arcade-style games in a matter of minutes if you really mastered the areas) so they kept lowering the difficulty and now abolished losing completely. It's a crutch for a symptom of a design failure in a different area.
Braid did that earlier, when you died the screen darkened and the game stopped, you had to hold the rewind time button to undo the death and continue wherever you want to.
Depends, if you let the player redo parts in very small increments he only has to perform a very short performance peak to get ahead, if the parts are larger then he has to sustain that peak for longer. That is a form of skill, everyone can get a lucky shot once in a while, getting them consistently is the problem for most.
I don't think that'll happen, it's too dorky and prevents the user from quickly getting away from the game (even if that just means a quick look over to the door when someone entered the room) should the need arise.
PC gaming consists of more than just people willing to pay 2000$ for a PC. That kind of expense is plain stupid, the additional gain is too small to be worth the cost and the system will need replacement only slightly later than a much cheaper (e.g. 500$) gaming system. From what I've seen videogame requirements are tapering off anyway, my 600€ system from a few years ago still runs fairly new games at minimum details, my previous systems that cost as much didn't last more than 2 years before upgrading at least one component to get a playable framerate. People can game with much cheaper computers, linking the sales of extremely expensive over-the-top hardware to PC gaming in its entirety is completely stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
What's with all the rave for SotN anyway? I got it on the 360 and it doesn't seem all that amazing. The castle design was looser (not much item progression necessary to get through it) but it's not better than the later games IMO and the inverted castle just feels awkward with many jumps being just a tad higher than you can jump without using the high jump or bat morph. I don't get why all reviews of later Cv games (except for OoE) said the new game wasn't as good as SotN. It just doesn't seem all that amazing.
It's spike overuse, MM9 has way too many instakill hazards compared to the height of the series. You rarely run out of hitpoints because it's more common to fall into spikes, pits, lava, etc.
FF and Zelda aren't really comparable.
I played Super Stardust back when it ran in 320x200, did anything change?
Considering a download is much less prone to failure than a 20 year old cart, not subject to rarity (hello Sin & Punishment!), always comes with a manual (never seen those on flea markets) and even lets you suspend the game when you feel like it (especially useful when you encounter password saves) I don't really see that as a downside. Plus it's easier to move around, I can carry the Wii much more easily than a bunch of carts. Besides, all the flea markets seem to carry these days is the same old crap that noone wants and they only sell Gameboy (and Advance) and SNES carts anyway. Most if not all the games I got from the Virtual Console weren't available at the flea markets I've been to.
Games in the old days pushed the hardware too, it just looks funny nowadays because pushing only gave marginal advantages while a new hardware gave massive increases and all the "good graphics" games look outdated now. Games were always competing on many different things and many were little more than looks and forgotten fast.
The console versions are pretty much the same, just much faster. The DS version moves slower (or just has bigger targets) and has a lower limit on the number of enemies that can be in play at the same time. It's much harder to hit stuff in the console versions and often an enemy will hit you because it slipped through between your shots. Maybe the dual analog controls on the 360 were to blame for that though (I've been meaning to pick the Wii version up but didn't get around to it yet).
How much difference is between challenge and nintendo hard?
The NES required no 2-pixels-merged-together crap to get 4 colors per sprite and it allowed more palettes in use at the same time resulting in more colors on the screen. The sound chip in the C64 might have been better (not really sure though) but the graphics were much weaker IMO.
I don't think Square is responsible for helping the PS3 sell so they should probably go multiplatform instead to get more sales.
Then again a HD remake of the game would be massively expensive to make and it's questionable if they'd make money on it (or could even afford completing it).
I think it suffers from hardcore sequel syndrome though, it's designed for the hardcore fans of the previous games and thus much harder than before. Contra 1-3 started much easier (though it doesn't help C4's case that the first level has visibility issues with some enemies). Same for Megaman 9, it's designed for people who are used to Megaman already with pretty complex patterns for the disappearing blocks and stuff.
Really, I found Contra 1 on the Konami Arcade Collection much easier to play than Contra 4.
Many new ideas just die because they aren't good ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen, good ideas and good implementations thereof are the rare stuff.
Also nowadays when you make a new kind of game the "discerning" people on the internet will dismiss it as "casual"...
I think people nowadays are way too quick to discount new ideas because they can be summarized to sound somewhat similar to an earlier idea. Yet many games still feel very different because seemingly small differences can change the experience massively and it's the difference in experience that counts. A game can get praised as new and different when it doesn't look much different from afar, just by playing it you notice how it works out.
The Castlevania games nowadays tend to mark boss doors so you know not to enter before you've found the save point, I always hated taking the wrong door first and missing a save point.
Depends on the game for me. Some are repetitive and not terribly interesting gameplay-wise but keep their story interesting (for these any setbacks are really bad because it means having to repeat stuff without the game's pull being there, if I get stuck on a challenge there I tend to abandon them quickly because the fun dies when the progress halts), some have really interesting gameplay and with them dying doesn't mean much, I just hit retry and keep playing because it's the journey that's the fun with these games, not the destination.
Obviously the latter kind is a better use of my money than the former, I can get a much better story from a book without having to deal with uninteresting filler between the story scenes and a book is much cheaper.
Interesting, the 360 version used four buttons and both sticks, that's it. Still a bit confusing since there are so many actions that depend on the context but nowhere near the insanity of some of the third person shooter demos I tried.
When you're unfamiliar with a game you don't jump straight into a competitive match against a trained player. You talked about it needing a tutorial, well, guess what, there's a single player campaign for just that. You skipped that. You went right for the big challenge. No wonder you got creamed. You cannot talk about too much difficulty or no introduction in multiplayer, it depends highly on your opponent. Gentle introductions and difficulty curves are a thing for singleplayer where the game can control the whole environment and care specifically for you. In multiplayer people join to have fun right away, not to go through any "easing in" because they already know the game by the time they choose to join. The game can't help you in multiplayer except for offering options to play against people of your listed skill level online which again is an option you didn't take.
Doing everything to score a win is the point of competitive gaming, it seems your sons have the competitive mindset where the fun comes from pushing your own abilities to their limit and overcoming your opponent with them (sometimes against a handicap for additional bragging rights for you and humiliation for your enemy). This is a fundamentally different mindset from the "playing around to have fun" approach and the two cannot really work together in the same game. If you have trouble with kill stealing you shouldn't play FFA, the design of an FFA game really encourages kill steals, defensive play and such. Competitive gamers don't play FFA much for that reason, when it's played at full skill it breaks and isn't much fun. Social rules are incompatible with competitive gaming because when you're pushing limits a soft limit like a social rule just doesn't fit. You want to time the rocket right but when's the earliest you can fire it so it's no longer a kill steal? For a good competition everyone must play with the same rules.
What he claims is that Prince of Persia is a very good example of a departure from what quite often puts off new gamers to the scene.
I really don't think that's it. Popular introductory games like Bejewelled, Tetris or Wii Sports have regular game overs. What's different is that with those you immediately start having fun again when you restart after a loss rather than having to do some mindless repetition. The games keep being fun even on levels you have already beaten before. As games are becoming more epic and story driven replaying areas becomes less fun and more of a chore (never mind longer, you could redo your progress in older arcade-style games in a matter of minutes if you really mastered the areas) so they kept lowering the difficulty and now abolished losing completely. It's a crutch for a symptom of a design failure in a different area.
Braid did that earlier, when you died the screen darkened and the game stopped, you had to hold the rewind time button to undo the death and continue wherever you want to.
Depends, if you let the player redo parts in very small increments he only has to perform a very short performance peak to get ahead, if the parts are larger then he has to sustain that peak for longer. That is a form of skill, everyone can get a lucky shot once in a while, getting them consistently is the problem for most.
I don't think that'll happen, it's too dorky and prevents the user from quickly getting away from the game (even if that just means a quick look over to the door when someone entered the room) should the need arise.
Their loss, a trademark that becomes a generic term is pretty much lost.
PC gaming consists of more than just people willing to pay 2000$ for a PC. That kind of expense is plain stupid, the additional gain is too small to be worth the cost and the system will need replacement only slightly later than a much cheaper (e.g. 500$) gaming system. From what I've seen videogame requirements are tapering off anyway, my 600€ system from a few years ago still runs fairly new games at minimum details, my previous systems that cost as much didn't last more than 2 years before upgrading at least one component to get a playable framerate. People can game with much cheaper computers, linking the sales of extremely expensive over-the-top hardware to PC gaming in its entirety is completely stupid.
I thought it was released as freeware or public domain anyway...
With gigantic, rigid pillars used as elevators. That just doesn't work.
Long live? Pah. At the current rate Core is headed for total annihilation within two or three days!
Novel ways of feeding astronauts can be developed for the ISS too, you don't need to land on a random rock for that.