We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

well considering it's a Zelda game you won't need to have played LttP to understand the story because it'll be the same one as they have in every other Zelda game

plus, i read in dem reviews that the game's more on the mechanical side than the story side

probably the most relevant things will be all the callbacks tucked into the periphery

Why don't you just play LttP if you're so worried

GBA and SNES emulators are free

Funny thing, I heard similar echoes of that recently. I can’t really say whether that plan is going to work, but good luck to them (hiiiiire meeeee).

I have a personal suspicion/perverse-hope (based on pure gut instinct going directly in contradiction with practically every fact I’ve seen on this) that we will one day look at this current really-big/really-small trend like we now look at FMV games or shovelware CDs. It caught on, it’s the current reality, and we can’t be doing with this.

At least people seem to have mostly wised up to Farmville-style manipulate-your-friends fare.
I guess I should be thankful.

We have one of those, and it’s pretty ugly. Just less powerful and more fragmented.

Tangent: I’d really like to see what our incredible poly-pushing screamers could do if we really pumped up the sprites, like making the sprites do more sophisticated things or playing with giant teeming masses of them, like taking Lemmings or Populous to the next level. If there is something of a focus for my academically oriented research, it’s that (although I have no particular desire to stick around—eight years as an undergrad is kind of expensive).

I went on a GoG-browsing spree the other day. It reminded me of how a lot of the awesomeness in those old DOS games was often found more in the potential than in the practice. Sure, lots of people make fun of him these days for a legendary history of not quite delivering, but back then, nearly every developer seemed to have Molyneux-esque aspirations.

Examples?

That lighting system rules btw

so, what we're looking at is the removal of the middle ground in terms of product and pricing...

however, the freaking bread and butter of the industry WAS all these middle ground titles, which justified the existence of the machine in the first place

on the low end, we're getting ripped off by people who put hardly any effort into their creations past the first generation of simple/complex puzzle games (riding on the success of others since the 90s!) but expect people to keep feeding their pack a day habit, and at the high end, we have the premium, polished turds which appear to be fancy, but have almost no substance to them since nobody actually spent time on it when they couldn't use it to impress the people in charge, or prove that they're doing terrible, insidious things to justify shoveling money into the furnace on the grounds that it is the only thing that drives sales

but they can't do shit about giving the customer what they could actually use (timely, reasonable games that deliver on a regular basis, without baggage and garbage), because the last time somebody attempted that, their entire department gets shut down and the money is handed off to the sellouts

the magic of success

Examples?

Of games? Well, not much I could share, I’m just saying it’s good marketing copy, really. They try to say factual things, spun so that it’s exciting when you take it at face value. Regardless of whether the game is genuinely unique or entertaining, there are certain ways of making statements that have this tendency to be extrapolated in the reader’s mind into something awesome. With no videos and no other tabs open to do research, browsing the GOG catalog is a bit like going through the store in the 90s without being a magazine reader: you have only a handful of screenshots, some blurbs, and comments from regular yahoos to go on. I’m not sure someone without some nostalgia for this experience would feel the same way, where you know you’ll miss out on a lot of them because it’s practically guaranteed that a good number of these games would not be in the store next year. Maybe I can try to convey a few examples:

Ultima VII is often touted as one of the closest things to Richard “Lord British” Gariott’s dream of a highly simulated world (Ultima Online would be another one). Haven’t played it myself, but it features such things as the ability to bake bread from scratch. If they had fleshed these sorts of systems out even more and stripped it of the RPG, it could have been something like a prototypical Animal Crossing or The Sims, probably. By nearly a decade, mind you.
Wing Commander - If it were me and not Chris Roberts at the tail end of the 80s, the elevator pitch would have been “You basically fight in a X-Wing” (never minding that there would later be an official Star Wars series in the same genre where you do this). There really doesn’t have to be much more said!
Submarine TITANS (not on GOG): This is a game I got as a birthday present (in 6th grade), and the guy who gave it to me said was that they were saying it was better than StarCraft. And surely he’d know because he played StarCraft. It was incompatible with my PC, though, so I never played it. Here’s what playing it or seeing a video probably would have ruined:

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SpoilerSubmarine Titans dares you to go where no real-time strategy game has gone before - Deep into the 3 dimensional heart of a fantastical underwater universe.

In the year 2047, a massive comet ravages Earth's surface and the remnants of mankind descend to the bottom of the ocean in order to survive. A century passes, and humans, resilient and enduring, slowly create new life in their cool blue underwater universe. But even in the still of the deep, one truth remains... where man goes, war soon follows. The cradle of civilization has spawned the seeds of man's destruction and now all the oceans of the world are not big enough for the embattled civilizations of the power-hungry White Sharks, the technologically savvy Black Octopi and the alien Silicons. Deploy armies, research technologies, mine for resources and set in motion a plan to gain control of this spellbinding abyss or find the fate of civilization and mankind dead in the water.

FEATURES:

- Three distinct civilizations to play, each with its own objectives, histories, units, technologies and strategies to master.
- Innovative all-new unit classes and structures along with the ability to hide units and buildings in caves, under cliffs or above opponents creates new twists in offensive and defensive strategies.
- A fully realized 3D underwater universe including 5 depth/elevation levels of iridescent swirling waters, winding mountain ranges, dimly lit caverns, cliffs, and dark tunnels.
- An evolutionary dual control interface allows you to control individual units or entire groups as well as simultaneously planning production and launching attacks on the enemy.
- Three zoom levels allow you to zoom into or out of the game anytime you need.
- A powerful scenario editor and an intelligent random mission generator combine to provide an almost unlimited amount of gameplay.
- Includes a complete scripting language allowing the creation or modification of custom player assistants and enemy artificial intelligence.
- Massive maps give optimal strategic overview of battlescapes, supporting screen resolutions from 800 x 600 to 1200 x 1024.
- Multiplayer action over Internet or LAN allows up to 24 players—including 8 opponents and 8 spectators.

"Submarine Titans is shaping up to become one of the most enticing RTS games of the millennium." CNET

"Submarine Titans stands ready to become the surprise hit of the real-time strategy genre." Game Industry News

Holy crap! 3D gameplay! 24 players! Player assistants! (this game actually does have an AI that can play the game for you if you so wish) Unlimited gameplay! That must be the best game ever, right? GoTY 2000, at least. GoTY 2013 if it came out today. You read what they said on CNET. “One of the most enticing RTS games of the millennium.” (current Metascore: 69)

Here’s a video that’s primarily about choices in RPGs and the like, but it details a little bit about what developers were going for, especially in and around the 90s but sometimes still try today, that made them wicked awesome (primarily that they tried really hard to simulate, rather than be “pick the next part of the movie”).


And tangent-ing again, it is key to modern narrative for some kind of logic to string events together. It can come from without or within the audience, but in games (in contrast with film) you want most of that to come from within. Giving the player a good sense of “being there” doesn’t come from feeling like you’re there, manipulating emotions and events, stripping UIs down to near invisibility, making the graphics better, or whatever (this sense is called “immersion”; I’m sure a lot of you have seen a lot of game marketing claim the game has this, which is pretty good evidence it doesn’t). It’s when this sort of driving logic really just works, where the player has accepted the game logic as a facet or reflection of reality even when it’s not on a Star Trek holodeck kind of level. You kind of expect this out of a good RPG or action-adventure, but perhaps it would be appropriate (if not APA-approved?) to extend this to when Tetris has you totally hooked.

This sort of intrinsic logic comes less from cutscenes than it does from levels and mechanics in games. In some ways, this is what is meant by “worldview” (sekaikan) in Japanese designs.

Okay, I am done procrastinating on schoolwork now. Time to boot up Steam

edit:
Hey, someone is working on yet another solution to the “silver bullet combat” problem in Skyrim’s combat. Using (drumroll) better AI.

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Spoiler

so, what we're looking at is the removal of the middle ground in terms of product and pricing...

however, the freaking bread and butter of the industry WAS all these middle ground titles, which justified the existence of the machine in the first place

on the low end, we're getting ripped off by people who put hardly any effort into their creations past the first generation of simple/complex puzzle games (riding on the success of others since the 90s!) but expect people to keep feeding their pack a day habit, and at the high end, we have the premium, polished turds which appear to be fancy, but have almost no substance to them since nobody actually spent time on it when they couldn't use it to impress the people in charge, or prove that they're doing terrible, insidious things to justify shoveling money into the furnace on the grounds that it is the only thing that drives sales

but they can't do shit about giving the customer what they could actually use (timely, reasonable games that deliver on a regular basis, without baggage and garbage), because the last time somebody attempted that, their entire department gets shut down and the money is handed off to the sellouts

the magic of success

#reasonsI'mnervousaboutDarkSouls2

Well, this looks like a shift in tone.

White Helvetica Bold Condensed centered on a black screen: for when you want to be confused with Adult Swim.

I actually watched the live announcement thing. There was a lot of Teddie freaking the fuck out. But not before some Japanese lady saying apparently absolutely nothing relevant. And then the first thing that got announced was a 3DS P3/P4 crossover game, with a chibi art style to the entire thing, including the animated cutscenes. Which is weird. But I'm interested and do hope it gets a localization.

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The people in the stream chat I was in were really, really mad about that. And then I got temporarily banned for telling them to stop bitching about something that they don't actually know if it's gonna suck.
Then there was stuff on the next Persona 4 Arena, which looks pretty cool.

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Spoiler
Adachi may or may not be a playable character, but he does at least have a battle sprite.

Aaaaand then this happened.


Yyyeah. And then people being all disappointed in chat and then Teddie freaking out a bit and then the Persona 5 teaser and all were satisfied.


EDIT: ahahaha

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SpoilerThe story begins a half year after the Inaba City serial murder case was solved and Rise Kujikawa returns to the world of entertainment. As rumors begin spreading that "at midnight, if you see a strange video playing on a certain site, you are transported to the 'other side' and never wake up again," members of Rise's kohai Kanami Mashita's idol group "Kanamin Kitchen" are disappearing.

In the game, the "Hero," Rise, Kanami, Yosuke, Chie, Kanji, and other Persona 4 characters engage in a "dance battle" with the Shadows in the mysterious world of 'Mayonaka Stage.'"

the dancing game has a plot

the dancing game is going to be very important to understanding how persona four is going to tie in with persona five, two, and one and three-hundred and fifty eight days over two

the only thing about Q is that im wondering how the hecky the protagonist form three is there, or if it is going to be.... a non canon spin off.......

Q apparently involves time travel from what I've heard?

and also terrible decisions (let's include literally every non-canon side character EXCEPT minako lol who's that)

Persona 4 is the first game to have spin-off titles and such, Persona's 1-3 only have re-releases and updates. Persona 2 was two games, 3 has two versions that each are argued as a definitive version.

Four on the other hand has the original, a re-release on the vita that is the definitive version of the original iirc, a sequel in the form of a fighting game by the same people who make BlazBlue and Guilty Gear, a sequel/re-release to that and now two other spin-offs (Q and the dancing game).

I think that Persona 4 is the first one to get Really Popular which is why it has the anime and all of these spin offs and why it is the only anime game that something awful acknowledges :U.

Persona has been Really Popular in Japan from the start; it’s a spinoff of the Really Popular SMT series to begin with. It’s always been kind of hip in its sensibilities, but P4 has taken it to a whole other level.

I could only guess why they’ve made so many spinoffs. Index Corporation’s financial difficulties could have had something to do with it....

I feel like the whole barrel roll thing has diluted the genuine recognition of Star Fox 64 as a game with seriously great voice acting. I don't know what else you'd call a game where every other line is a joy to quote out of context.

Despite my general dislike of the Nintendo 64 as a console, Star Fox 64 is one of maybe four or five games for it that I will vigorously defend as legitimately excellent. If they don't make a real sequel that does it justice, I will cry.

I currently have a space-themed franchise/series bible tech-demo-to-get-us-jobs-game in the works; if years down the road people cared about it and I told someone that Star Fox 64 was a big inspiration on that exact series, I’m sure the most common reaction would be “what?” due to general unrelatedness.

Beyond just an admiration for those low-poly designs and hamtastic lines (involving some seriously good localization work), I just love how it fits comfortably between a few gameplay genres. So for the most part, it kinda sits in its own. Granted, it also happened to arrive there from the SNES incarnations, but I never got to see those as a kid.

you can get deadly premonition on steam now and also the PS3

According to wikipedia Child of Eden is also on the PS3 (altho that doesnt mean that it is good because... Ports...)

and so is killer is dead but im unsure if you knew that or not

there are a number of exclusives that it looks like then turned multiplatform and i think i remember microsoft having some dev rule about needing xbox release as early or earlier than all other consoles or you couldnt release it probably contributing to that??? i dunno

I’ll admit I thought Gears of War was kind of fun in its own way... when it came out. (I was on a dorm floor with several Microsofties, I got to be pretty good at mooching.) The thing is, for a few years it was like everyone wanted to make a Gears 1 copycat, right down to cover-shooting and having no colors. Agh. I was downright convinced we were imminently headed for a market crash at the time.

At least mocking CoD is a sort of secret-masonic-handshake thing widely accepted across broad swaths of the Internet for us to be all supercilious about our taste in games.

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Spoilerreese_ridley /mu/ 746 points 9 months ago
> be working at Gamestop
> MW2 comes out
> bunch of twelve-year-olds want Cawadooty
> tell their moms about the level where you shoot civilians
> moms get pissed
> refuse to buy the game
> little brats start running around the store crying
> grab one of them by the collar
> bend down
> "no russian around in the gamestop, please"

I don't actually know what attributes Call Of Duty does/does not possess that basically every other FPS in the past 13 years has lacked/not lacked. Is there something I'm just not getting, here?

I’ll leave a detailed description to someone who knows what they’re talking about (maybe someone who actually likes FPS), but most of it kind of boils down to it’s super-LCD and the crowd is too.

IIRC, Call of Duty is the series that introduced that style of RPG-like progression in multiplayer.

Really, the only reason I don't like that series is that there's no innovation. The last time anything significant was added to the multiplayer was Black Ops, and that one didn't stick.

well, at least dead rising 3 managed to continue the proud tradition of derpfest despite attempts to make it "grittier" by some unnamed buttface

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Spoileralso maintaining the proud tradition of causing pain to megaman fans in the guise of conciliatory measures

Wonder Pink has totally put me off of Wonderful 101.

Huh? *googles wonder pink*

Why

That game looked so cool god dammit.

Not related anymore, but your conversation nailed what makes low poly so appealing.

Oh, yeah? Well, I just beat an adventure game where you spend like 80% of the game carting around the unconscious body of the main heroine because the scuzzball protagonist has a possessive creeper crush on her and it’s played off for laughs. *macho puffed chest*

Eh? This wasn’t a contest? Sorry.

(honestly not sure how this game got a PEGI 12 though)