Tournament players know what Smash is better than most. They've played the HECK out of Smash using its usual setups, and have simply discovered ways to play the game competitively that your casual players wouldn't have even thought of. They are the most dedicated, die-hard Smash Bros fans you'll ever meet. I can promise you that most of the folks in the Smash tournament scene would be very offended at what you wrote because it's so unbelievably inaccurate. The game *can* be based on raw skill under certain setups; that's how strong Smash's customizeability is! And yes, competition in a level playing field can be load of fun (Starcraft/Halo anyone?), especially after you've had the game since 2001.
Well if you're wondering, it's any character, usually 4-stock, no items, and 6 or so stages (Final Destination, Yoshi's Island, Kirby Dreamland 64, Fountain of Dreams, Battlefield, Pokemon Stadium). Sometimes a 10-min timer on top of that but I've never seen it run out. Oh, and best 2 out of 3 unless it's the finals where it's sometimes best of 5.
Smash lends itself surprisingly well to tournament play. You'd be surprised. "Tiers" notwithstanding, skill (technical and mind-games) goes a VERY long way, and the usual tourney setup is very good fun. There's nothing bad about fighting games, after all, and Smash under certain settings becomes a very good one. It's a testament to the game's great customizeability. If I want to play a 4-player free-for-all match where I am having fun with people who've never even touched a GCN controller before, I can. If I want to play an intense 1v1 (or, far more fun IMO, 2v2) match against some highly skilled folks, I can do that as well ^_^
Also, the "tournament setup" is VERY representative of how the game is played by a lot more people than you'd think. Just check out smashboards.com or something and that should give you some idea. The game is even hosted by MLGPro along with Halo for some good prizes, so it's a very legit competitive game.
Well one of the awesome things about Smash is you CAN play it as a "purist fighter" if you want to! The "usual" Smash setup is good fun for a while, but playing the game competitively in the controlled tournament environment is a good way to extend the game's lifespan (SSBM has been around without a sequel for quite some time, after all) because it lets you learn new techniques, strategies, etc. that really just don't have practical applications in the "party" setup of something like 4-player FFA with items on.
It's not rabid fighting game fans trying to justify anything. You've probably never met someone who played much Smash in the tourney scene. Well, I have, and I'm not a rabid fighter fan. Just a gamer who likes all sorts of games and finds ways to enjoy them in as many ways as I care to ^^
Vista is NOT harder to use than XP. It's virtually the same, especially from the point of view of a non-power user. UAC might be a huge nuisance, but parents or whoever can just turn it off. I wouldn't give a 13-year-old admin privileges to a machine in the first place; you're just asking for trojans otherwise.
Ballmer was probably thinking "either you or your daugher or both are just stupid" but knew he couldn't say it so he was trying to be passive and just said some BS to try and get the lady off his case.
That should give me plenty of time to finish Mass Effect and Revenant Wings before beginning a Wii hunt to play Smash.
Can't care less about Sonic, though. Just hope he's not a broken character, since in Smash speed is paramount (hence space animals and Sheik being top tier).
Well, I don't mean any offense, but to say it's outright BAD is unfair; most who have played FFXII have not only *managed* with the UI, but have liked it. So, to call it bad is very subjective and I'd say reflects nothing more than your personal preference, and perhaps inability to successfully adjust to new control styles (don't think of it as a "screwed up FF control scheme" so much as a "different control scheme"). I found the UI to be extremely efficient, the Gambits a stellar way to control multiple party members in real-time, and the pacing at the right level to keep me from getting too bored or too stressed ^_^
To each his own, naturally. FFXII just isn't for you. But it was the first FF game that I actually enjoyed almost every bit of (except the too-hard-to-get items but then again they're not important).
^_^ A clever answer, truly. And a good point, but I am not saying it should be one or the other; there can be a middle ground, and in fact the artist's vision, if not overly compromised, might lead to what even the customer considers a better product.
Indeed. It can be a compromise, and almost always for the sake of livelihood it MUST be a compromise, but to *expect* it to be wholly one-sided at the expense of the artist's vision is unfounded and in my opinion unreasonable, and hence my confusion about the earlier replies to my original post ^_^
You can control the entire party by never turning on Gambits. It's only an optional feature. You press a button when you feel like in order to issue commands like 'Attack' or 'Item' and that automatically opens that selection menu for the character you've currently selected. You take turns at your leisure, essentially.
I don't follow that all-or-nothing logic at all. Visual entertainment does not need to be so divided into the fully interactive and the fully passive. A movie where you get to choose between alternate progressions for the plot, or a game where the exposition is presented via non-interactive clips -- there is nothing inherently bad or, rather, unenjoyable in these per se. The important thing is quality, and even that is relative and depends greatly on the subject and audience.
As for the principle of a game designer catering to a "customer," that completely disregards games being art, and I imagine you would agree that an artist is just as understandably a servant of his own inspiration as he is of his patrons.
Well you can adjust battle speed and the game pauses as you issue commands, so there's no "twitch" to it whatsoever. Also real-time doesn't mean "twitch." Reaction speed isn't necessarily the key to success in real-time games most of the time, anyway. Fighting games might be "twitch," but Oblivion? Nah.
And yeah, helps to read up on games before purchase:P
Most of what the author says is obvious and a waste of page space ("don't ship with a bad camera" uh-huh thanks Capt. Obvious), some of it is of no concern ("press (A) to start" on the title screen is just fine, even newbies aren't that retarded and if they are they have no place using a controller with more than 1 button in the first place), but FREAKING ALL OF IT is written with the attitude of "screw you, game DESIGNER, I am your audience and you will bow to me." That's the mentality of a spoiled little brat. Sure, cutscenes being skippable is a good idea, IF coupled with the ability to go back and re-watch these cutscenes on-demand should you skip one by accident. Because, you know, not ALL of us have the "stop showing me story and character development I wants to mash some buttons NOW!1!" mentality when we're enjoying a video game.
Even though the core *ideas* are generally fine, I wouldn't want this guy designing games for me, ever. The best games come from people who love their craft and the characters and story they are presenting to you, not folks who keep driving home the point of how much they DON'T.
I'm surprised you disliked the battle system in FFXII when it basically just gave you a lot of customizability over its predecessors (and is essentially a much more engaging version of KOTOR's setup), but it does come down to personal preference. I'll take an action game combat system over a turn-based one any day, myself, and something in-between will do if I find it well-designed.
I'd check out a remake of FF VII regardless of combat system, but I don't mind improvements here and there.
I second that. I didn't play FF VII because I was an N64 guy who never got hooked on FF in the SNES days (RARE ftw) but I do want to play an updated remake, especially if the characters are designed the way they are in Advent Children. Though the combat system is something I'd like replaced by perhaps the FFXII one.
The 1st-person Ultima 4 can definitely use being remade. That also goes for the 3/4-perspective Ultima 8. I have fond memories of that game, but it also needs some improvement (like not needing the players guide so you have the proper reagents at the right time for a particular spell or you're stuck).
They also need to remake Wind Waker with a decent-looking Link, but that's not quite the same thing:-P
PS3 is way bigger than Xbox or 360, heh. Sony needs to work on cutting down the size of that thing, and really trying a better form factor because good grief it's like the Ford F-350 of consoles when it comes to looks.
T_T if they buy a PS2, they save $200. Space in Japan isn't *that* horrible that the multiple argument is at all legit. Most folks would rather spend 5000 yen on something other than the opportunity to get rid of their PS2 to make more room.
I'm surprised no-one brought up what I think is a reasonable argument -- buy the backwards-compatible PS3, sell your old PS2+controllers and maybe save money over the 40-Gig PS3 in the end!
Actually most of the PS3 buyers I know are NOT hardcore gamers at all, since the PS3 is sorely lacking something a hardcore gamer would be looking for -- games:-P On the contrary most of these guys are older (28+) IT folks who own maybe an Xbox or something but don't generally play too many games. They buy a console for something particular -- Spinter Cell 5, an F1 racer, whatever.
They're not including the PS2's graphics chip (hardware) in the newer PS3 model. PS1 emulation was done entirely in software, but PS2 emulation wasn't.
Anyway, a single device with backwards-compatibility is only a clear winner if you want to play PS2 games and you want to also for some reason spend $350 on a blu-ray player while you're at it; alternately if you want to play PS3 and PS2 games but you don't already own a PS2. *If you already own a PS2* (like very many Japanese who are going with a PS3 over the Wii do), then it's no longer *that* easy of a choice since you DO get a smaller hard drive and DO pay $50 more on top of that! Jp apartments might be small but believe me one of those slim PS2s isn't going to make life any worse than it would be if you just had a PS3 by the tv. And if it will, then by golly that apartment must be truly tiny and they probably should save that $50 towards a down payment on a larger apartment! ^^
This is what I don't get -- if you already have a PS2 that you are playing enough games on that you care about backwards compatibility on a PS3, then a) how do you NOT consider yourself a gamer, and b) what makes you think others in your situation wouldn't just save $50, end up with a 2x larger HD on their newer PS3 model, and just keep their PS2 handy? If I were a betting man, I'd say the latter will be more frequent.
I doubt you'll see that happening if their prices remain as they are. The consumers who really DO care that much about playing PS2 games would either stay happy with (or buy) a PS2 (which happens to be selling decently at the moment, btw) and save themselves over 200 dollars which can be used on better things, like a DS ^_^
Indeed, aren't the DS and PS2 outselling everything else in Japan for real, or is the Wii doing about as well as the PS2 at this point? In any case, I just don't see backwards compatibility being all that critical for the average PS3 buyer. (And certainly most of the buyers I personally know, who either already have PS2's or don't care that much about PS2 games because otherwise they'd probably *have* a PS2 already cause they've been out forever and are pretty cheap.)
Well, to each his own, but I try to find ways to challenge myself in any game I get the urge. Just like some people who powerlevel their FF characters to level 80+ subsequently complain that the endgame areas are "too easy," and some keep Protoss Raping the Starcraft computer because the AI is too dumb to learn how to combat it, I suppose there's some people who try to abuse the AI's weaknesses in Smash. I don't find taking an approach that's not as abusive to be less fun; in fact I find it MORE fun. A computer can't use mind games and can't learn from what you're doing (yeah you can basically trick Ganondorf into doing an up-B every time with certain moves because the comp thinks the up-B is a good counter, etc.) but going 2v1 and concentrating on practicing the more advanced techniques while you're at it seems like a reasonable use of time if you feel like playing SSBM and there are no friends around at the moment (like, rather than floating off the edge, work on something like wavelanding off the edge so your char grabs on, then repeating with a shffl into another waveland, then throwing a nair randomly during one of the recoveries -- comp might not "fall" for it or in any case won't give you the kind of feedback a human would, but the practice can't hurt!). Anyway that's what I do (did... haven't played Smash more than once a month lately).
The 20 is just a default number anyhow. Go to options and change it, up the scratch space PS uses while you're at it; if you have a monster machine with 8 gigs of RAM you're easily able to use all of it if you wish. Most folks who use PS are professionals (everyone else has pirated it anyway so Adobe doesn't care about them as much:-P) who will probably go in and change these settings once per version release, and it will take about 1 minute to do. Indeed, I'd say you're right when you suppose that replacing this with some other implementation, like the auto-adjustment of max undo steps based on disk space (btw if you set your history to some really large number I guess you give yourself that limitation as a side-effect anyway) or file size coupled with some target fraction of available disk space, is simply not worth the time. The benefit to that approach would be negligible, if there would be any at all.
Hahahaha if your "playing style" amounts to floating off the edge waiting for the computer to suicide himself, and not abusing the AI in such a way is "nerfing" to you, then you're not really the kind of player I would have been talking to in the first place T_T It's not at all how you'd fight against an actual person to begin with... Have you ever even played SSBM because if you have it's pretty shameful to say what you said.
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Tournament players know what Smash is better than most. They've played the HECK out of Smash using its usual setups, and have simply discovered ways to play the game competitively that your casual players wouldn't have even thought of. They are the most dedicated, die-hard Smash Bros fans you'll ever meet. I can promise you that most of the folks in the Smash tournament scene would be very offended at what you wrote because it's so unbelievably inaccurate. The game *can* be based on raw skill under certain setups; that's how strong Smash's customizeability is! And yes, competition in a level playing field can be load of fun (Starcraft/Halo anyone?), especially after you've had the game since 2001.
Hehehehe
Well if you're wondering, it's any character, usually 4-stock, no items, and 6 or so stages (Final Destination, Yoshi's Island, Kirby Dreamland 64, Fountain of Dreams, Battlefield, Pokemon Stadium). Sometimes a 10-min timer on top of that but I've never seen it run out. Oh, and best 2 out of 3 unless it's the finals where it's sometimes best of 5.
Smash lends itself surprisingly well to tournament play. You'd be surprised. "Tiers" notwithstanding, skill (technical and mind-games) goes a VERY long way, and the usual tourney setup is very good fun. There's nothing bad about fighting games, after all, and Smash under certain settings becomes a very good one. It's a testament to the game's great customizeability. If I want to play a 4-player free-for-all match where I am having fun with people who've never even touched a GCN controller before, I can. If I want to play an intense 1v1 (or, far more fun IMO, 2v2) match against some highly skilled folks, I can do that as well ^_^
Also, the "tournament setup" is VERY representative of how the game is played by a lot more people than you'd think. Just check out smashboards.com or something and that should give you some idea. The game is even hosted by MLGPro along with Halo for some good prizes, so it's a very legit competitive game.
Well one of the awesome things about Smash is you CAN play it as a "purist fighter" if you want to! The "usual" Smash setup is good fun for a while, but playing the game competitively in the controlled tournament environment is a good way to extend the game's lifespan (SSBM has been around without a sequel for quite some time, after all) because it lets you learn new techniques, strategies, etc. that really just don't have practical applications in the "party" setup of something like 4-player FFA with items on.
It's not rabid fighting game fans trying to justify anything. You've probably never met someone who played much Smash in the tourney scene. Well, I have, and I'm not a rabid fighter fan. Just a gamer who likes all sorts of games and finds ways to enjoy them in as many ways as I care to ^^
Vista is NOT harder to use than XP. It's virtually the same, especially from the point of view of a non-power user. UAC might be a huge nuisance, but parents or whoever can just turn it off. I wouldn't give a 13-year-old admin privileges to a machine in the first place; you're just asking for trojans otherwise.
Ballmer was probably thinking "either you or your daugher or both are just stupid" but knew he couldn't say it so he was trying to be passive and just said some BS to try and get the lady off his case.
That should give me plenty of time to finish Mass Effect and Revenant Wings before beginning a Wii hunt to play Smash.
Can't care less about Sonic, though. Just hope he's not a broken character, since in Smash speed is paramount (hence space animals and Sheik being top tier).
Well, I don't mean any offense, but to say it's outright BAD is unfair; most who have played FFXII have not only *managed* with the UI, but have liked it. So, to call it bad is very subjective and I'd say reflects nothing more than your personal preference, and perhaps inability to successfully adjust to new control styles (don't think of it as a "screwed up FF control scheme" so much as a "different control scheme"). I found the UI to be extremely efficient, the Gambits a stellar way to control multiple party members in real-time, and the pacing at the right level to keep me from getting too bored or too stressed ^_^
To each his own, naturally. FFXII just isn't for you. But it was the first FF game that I actually enjoyed almost every bit of (except the too-hard-to-get items but then again they're not important).
^_^ A clever answer, truly. And a good point, but I am not saying it should be one or the other; there can be a middle ground, and in fact the artist's vision, if not overly compromised, might lead to what even the customer considers a better product.
Indeed. It can be a compromise, and almost always for the sake of livelihood it MUST be a compromise, but to *expect* it to be wholly one-sided at the expense of the artist's vision is unfounded and in my opinion unreasonable, and hence my confusion about the earlier replies to my original post ^_^
You can control the entire party by never turning on Gambits. It's only an optional feature. You press a button when you feel like in order to issue commands like 'Attack' or 'Item' and that automatically opens that selection menu for the character you've currently selected. You take turns at your leisure, essentially.
I don't follow that all-or-nothing logic at all. Visual entertainment does not need to be so divided into the fully interactive and the fully passive. A movie where you get to choose between alternate progressions for the plot, or a game where the exposition is presented via non-interactive clips -- there is nothing inherently bad or, rather, unenjoyable in these per se. The important thing is quality, and even that is relative and depends greatly on the subject and audience.
As for the principle of a game designer catering to a "customer," that completely disregards games being art, and I imagine you would agree that an artist is just as understandably a servant of his own inspiration as he is of his patrons.
Yeah, skippable battle animations ftw. That would be really nice in FFXII. Though that game also really needs a "theater mode."
Well you can adjust battle speed and the game pauses as you issue commands, so there's no "twitch" to it whatsoever. Also real-time doesn't mean "twitch." Reaction speed isn't necessarily the key to success in real-time games most of the time, anyway. Fighting games might be "twitch," but Oblivion? Nah.
:P
And yeah, helps to read up on games before purchase
Most of what the author says is obvious and a waste of page space ("don't ship with a bad camera" uh-huh thanks Capt. Obvious), some of it is of no concern ("press (A) to start" on the title screen is just fine, even newbies aren't that retarded and if they are they have no place using a controller with more than 1 button in the first place), but FREAKING ALL OF IT is written with the attitude of "screw you, game DESIGNER, I am your audience and you will bow to me." That's the mentality of a spoiled little brat. Sure, cutscenes being skippable is a good idea, IF coupled with the ability to go back and re-watch these cutscenes on-demand should you skip one by accident. Because, you know, not ALL of us have the "stop showing me story and character development I wants to mash some buttons NOW!1!" mentality when we're enjoying a video game.
Even though the core *ideas* are generally fine, I wouldn't want this guy designing games for me, ever. The best games come from people who love their craft and the characters and story they are presenting to you, not folks who keep driving home the point of how much they DON'T.
I'm surprised you disliked the battle system in FFXII when it basically just gave you a lot of customizability over its predecessors (and is essentially a much more engaging version of KOTOR's setup), but it does come down to personal preference. I'll take an action game combat system over a turn-based one any day, myself, and something in-between will do if I find it well-designed.
I'd check out a remake of FF VII regardless of combat system, but I don't mind improvements here and there.
Why?
It's a bicycle!!1
I second that. I didn't play FF VII because I was an N64 guy who never got hooked on FF in the SNES days (RARE ftw) but I do want to play an updated remake, especially if the characters are designed the way they are in Advent Children. Though the combat system is something I'd like replaced by perhaps the FFXII one.
:-P
The 1st-person Ultima 4 can definitely use being remade. That also goes for the 3/4-perspective Ultima 8. I have fond memories of that game, but it also needs some improvement (like not needing the players guide so you have the proper reagents at the right time for a particular spell or you're stuck).
They also need to remake Wind Waker with a decent-looking Link, but that's not quite the same thing
PS3 is way bigger than Xbox or 360, heh. Sony needs to work on cutting down the size of that thing, and really trying a better form factor because good grief it's like the Ford F-350 of consoles when it comes to looks.
T_T if they buy a PS2, they save $200. Space in Japan isn't *that* horrible that the multiple argument is at all legit. Most folks would rather spend 5000 yen on something other than the opportunity to get rid of their PS2 to make more room.
I'm surprised no-one brought up what I think is a reasonable argument -- buy the backwards-compatible PS3, sell your old PS2+controllers and maybe save money over the 40-Gig PS3 in the end!
That is a hassle, though...
Actually most of the PS3 buyers I know are NOT hardcore gamers at all, since the PS3 is sorely lacking something a hardcore gamer would be looking for -- games :-P On the contrary most of these guys are older (28+) IT folks who own maybe an Xbox or something but don't generally play too many games. They buy a console for something particular -- Spinter Cell 5, an F1 racer, whatever.
They're not including the PS2's graphics chip (hardware) in the newer PS3 model. PS1 emulation was done entirely in software, but PS2 emulation wasn't.
Anyway, a single device with backwards-compatibility is only a clear winner if you want to play PS2 games and you want to also for some reason spend $350 on a blu-ray player while you're at it; alternately if you want to play PS3 and PS2 games but you don't already own a PS2. *If you already own a PS2* (like very many Japanese who are going with a PS3 over the Wii do), then it's no longer *that* easy of a choice since you DO get a smaller hard drive and DO pay $50 more on top of that! Jp apartments might be small but believe me one of those slim PS2s isn't going to make life any worse than it would be if you just had a PS3 by the tv. And if it will, then by golly that apartment must be truly tiny and they probably should save that $50 towards a down payment on a larger apartment! ^^
This is what I don't get -- if you already have a PS2 that you are playing enough games on that you care about backwards compatibility on a PS3, then a) how do you NOT consider yourself a gamer, and b) what makes you think others in your situation wouldn't just save $50, end up with a 2x larger HD on their newer PS3 model, and just keep their PS2 handy? If I were a betting man, I'd say the latter will be more frequent.
I doubt you'll see that happening if their prices remain as they are. The consumers who really DO care that much about playing PS2 games would either stay happy with (or buy) a PS2 (which happens to be selling decently at the moment, btw) and save themselves over 200 dollars which can be used on better things, like a DS ^_^
Indeed, aren't the DS and PS2 outselling everything else in Japan for real, or is the Wii doing about as well as the PS2 at this point? In any case, I just don't see backwards compatibility being all that critical for the average PS3 buyer. (And certainly most of the buyers I personally know, who either already have PS2's or don't care that much about PS2 games because otherwise they'd probably *have* a PS2 already cause they've been out forever and are pretty cheap.)
Well, to each his own, but I try to find ways to challenge myself in any game I get the urge. Just like some people who powerlevel their FF characters to level 80+ subsequently complain that the endgame areas are "too easy," and some keep Protoss Raping the Starcraft computer because the AI is too dumb to learn how to combat it, I suppose there's some people who try to abuse the AI's weaknesses in Smash. I don't find taking an approach that's not as abusive to be less fun; in fact I find it MORE fun. A computer can't use mind games and can't learn from what you're doing (yeah you can basically trick Ganondorf into doing an up-B every time with certain moves because the comp thinks the up-B is a good counter, etc.) but going 2v1 and concentrating on practicing the more advanced techniques while you're at it seems like a reasonable use of time if you feel like playing SSBM and there are no friends around at the moment (like, rather than floating off the edge, work on something like wavelanding off the edge so your char grabs on, then repeating with a shffl into another waveland, then throwing a nair randomly during one of the recoveries -- comp might not "fall" for it or in any case won't give you the kind of feedback a human would, but the practice can't hurt!). Anyway that's what I do (did... haven't played Smash more than once a month lately).
You certainly wouldn't! You might even be LESS right!
The 20 is just a default number anyhow. Go to options and change it, up the scratch space PS uses while you're at it; if you have a monster machine with 8 gigs of RAM you're easily able to use all of it if you wish. Most folks who use PS are professionals (everyone else has pirated it anyway so Adobe doesn't care about them as much :-P) who will probably go in and change these settings once per version release, and it will take about 1 minute to do. Indeed, I'd say you're right when you suppose that replacing this with some other implementation, like the auto-adjustment of max undo steps based on disk space (btw if you set your history to some really large number I guess you give yourself that limitation as a side-effect anyway) or file size coupled with some target fraction of available disk space, is simply not worth the time. The benefit to that approach would be negligible, if there would be any at all.
Hahahaha if your "playing style" amounts to floating off the edge waiting for the computer to suicide himself, and not abusing the AI in such a way is "nerfing" to you, then you're not really the kind of player I would have been talking to in the first place T_T It's not at all how you'd fight against an actual person to begin with. .. Have you ever even played SSBM because if you have it's pretty shameful to say what you said.