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Gaming General Discusison

Muro said:
I just learned this is going to be a thing. Really looking forward to this gem.

I preferred HoMM 2 to 3 tbh, even if 2 did reuse some of the sprites from the really awful 1 (though you can't really tell if you haven't already played 1 because they fit well).
 
My Unity Scripting Game Design class final at college went pretty well! I was expecting nobody to like my game because I made it so damn hard, but it actually ended up being the most popular game there (I think). A ton of people spent a large amount of time trying it again and again, and frequently commented to me how much they enjoyed it. One choice excerpt:

Student: Have you considered putting some sort of "fast fall" mechanic in for jumping?
Me: I already have! Try jumping and firing the grappling hook downward!
Student: OOOOOOOOOH

People seemed to also like my usage of rng, slightly randomizing enemy firing patterns (most prominent on the stationary robot enemy, a trap hallway filled with bouncing spiked orbs, and the stage boss). The teacher himself called the dodging in the game "pulse pounding" and students praised it for being "unpredictable" and heavily reactive.

One of my favorite parts though was watching people react to a trap just before the boss and stage end. There's a tower you enter, where you can't get out and as soon as you enter a giant fire ball starts moving from the bottom and engulfing the tower, forcing you to wall jump and use your grappling hook to ascend the tower before the flame catches up with you (instant death). The challenges escalate as you ascend further, starting out with just platforming upward, followed by having to choose between spiked/deadly platforms and safe ones, and finally climbing a wall while enemies on the other side shoot at you. Playing it for the first time, people acted absolutely frantic trying to get to the top, but it always ended in laughter and smiles regardless of the outcome.

Also liked how someone actually discovered a sequence break for part of the stage using the wall jump and hook. That was actually really cool, I might actually keep stuff like that in since it was pretty tricky (but rewarding) to actually pull off.
 
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Necropolis > The other Heroes of Might and magic III cities/heroes!
 
+5 Necromancer said:
Necropolis > The other Heroes of Might and magic III cities/heroes!
Dem skeletons once you've got lv5 Necromancy.

Not sure about III, but in II the Warlock was also really strong if you managed to survive until you could get into the Green > Red > Black dragon series.
 
While I liked the Knight in II, I felt the only fair map had him playing vs other Knights, he felt noticeably underpowered otherwise. Likewise, if a Warlock got to the black dragon phase, everything that was not a Warlock with black dragons was dragon food.

I think III did a good job at balancing town types, which says a lot given how there were nine of those total. With cities no longer feeling like they're segregated in tiers, I could fire up a "whoever vs whoever" map anytime, depending on who I felt like playing with and vs at the moment. Hard for me to pick favourites, though. While I probably like Dungeon (warlock) and Conflux (elementals) most, after enough games and campaigns I grew fond of each town's unique aesthetics and themes. Again, good job, 3DO.
 
Man, I want to go back and play them now, but I also don't want to lose my entire holidays.

EDIT: Forget it, I caved.
 
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Vadsamoht said:
Dem skeletons once you've got lv5 Necromancy.
That's why I love necro in Heroes of might magic 3 (never played 1&2 though :/). And hate HoMM 5 expansions for nerfing necropolis.

"Oh cool Castle, 20 Archangels, not bad" *Teleport 6k skeletons and 1HKO the angels*!

And don't forgett Dread Knights, Soo OP you can challange lvl 7 units and don't need you weak ghost dragons (they have nice special though, to bad it has a small chance for activating).
 
So I've been looking for a new game to potentially speedrun because I kinda burnt myself out on the other games while not having access to FGs for most of this month. I ended up installing Cloudbuilt, which has been sitting in my steam library for a while and... I'd suggest avoiding it.

The difficulty level is high, but mostly because of level design that was clearly made for the people who obsess over leaderboard times rather than people just playing the game normally, leading to repeating level segments over and over until you happen to pass it with only a half-understanding of what you did right. The writing is like something a highschooler aiming at emotional depth would write and you're forced to choose between either story (such as it is) progression or gameplay - never both at the same time. The controls are nice, but the fact that the developers want you to 'discover' techniques (which are required to pass areas but not taught to you at all) means that you inevitably just end up looking up guides on youtube rather than learn by playing the game itself. The levels themselves lack directionality, skill progression and are laid out in an illogical manner with regards to checkpoints and enemies as well, though the fact that you can place your own checkpoints helps with that a bit. Even so, I've ragequit the game more times in the past two days than I have in the last several years of Street Fighter.

It's a pity, because the devs seem really happy to interact with the community around the game and there are some good ideas in how the game itself works, but the whole package isn't there.

The game certainly had potential and is fun for the first bit and in very short bursts thereafter, so if anyone's at all interested definitely wait for a heavy discount, but .
 
for whenever you're wanting to game but a little to sad too do it
 
Grim Fandango Remastered is on Steam. Go get it, it's great.
 
I just got that for PS4, its pretty good. Its kinda tough getting used to wonky controls and camera angles, though. :/
 
Vadsamoht said:
So I've been looking for a new game to potentially speedrun because I kinda burnt myself out on the other games while not having access to FGs for most of this month.

Try score play in a bullet hell shmup. You get the single player competition, and unlike speed running the routes are actually intentionally designed by the developer to be fun and take advantage of the games strong suits instead of being based around haphazard design oversights discovered by players and unintended by the developer which may or may not be fun (there's kind of a new generation of games out there that are partially intended to be speed ran by developers, but that idea is still in its infancy. Otherwise most games that are fun to speed run are like mvc2: happy accidents).

Also rng can actually be a fun tool to make your improvise and react and not something that automatically destroys your run 90% of the time.
 
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I'm assuming you've tried some of the great platformers?

Super Meatboy, They Bleed Pixels, Dustforce?
 
Spencer said:
I'm assuming you've tried some of the great platformers?

Super Meatboy, They Bleed Pixels, Dustforce?

See the in-parenthesis notation above. They're something of a newfangled beast, and that style of design is interesting though still in its infancy (and mostly limited to just a few titles and genres atm). Classic game speed running through is very much a mixed bag.

That being said, Super Meatboy and Dustforce are two games I absolutely can't stand even though I acknowledge them as excellent games (just don't like some of the design choices personally). TBP I love though.
 
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Flotilla said:
So you don't play any games made before 2001, then?
no, I just like the option for games that are released in 2015.
 
Squire Grooktook said:
See the in-parenthesis notation above. They're something of a newfangled beast, and that style of design is interesting though still in its infancy (and mostly limited to just a few titles and genres atm). Classic game speed running through is very much a mixed bag.

That being said, Super Meatboy and Dustforce are two games I absolutely can't stand even though I acknowledge them as excellent games (just don't like some of the design choices personally). TBP I love though.

TBP is good. It feels a bit too unforgiving at times, honestly. Another good one is 1001 Spikes.

As far as the guy who asked about speedrunning, how about an odd choice. The Mega Man Battle Network series? The reason I suggest this is because not only are these game great, but for those looking to speedrun them, you need to learn how to maximize damage with even the ealiest chips you get, memorize patterns, which chips of which code you get for busting rank. There's a lot of complexity to it from a speedrun standpoint.
 
Squire Grooktook said:
That being said, Super Meatboy and Dustforce are two games I absolutely can't stand even though I acknowledge them as excellent games (just don't like some of the design choices personally)..
This. I really need to enjoy the game in a casual playthrough if I'm going to consider picking it up for runs. Never played TBP, though it's in my steam library.

North888 said:
As far as the guy who asked about speedrunning, how about an odd choice. The Mega Man Battle Network series? The reason I suggest this is because not only are these game great, but for those looking to speedrun them, you need to learn how to maximize damage with even the ealiest chips you get, memorize patterns, which chips of which code you get for busting rank. There's a lot of complexity to it from a speedrun standpoint.
I enjoyed those games ages ago (I played 2 through 5 on a GBA emulator during high school classes), though I think the RNG might be a bit too much. I'll have a look, though - if I can find one of the games with a few decent skips I'd definitely be interested.

EDIT: 100% WR for MMBN3 is 37 hours... I think I'll be passing on that. Any% for MMBN6 is a little over 2 hours, might give that a shot sometime eventually.
 
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There isn't actually that much RNG. There is an unspoken "point" system to battles. The amount of points you have determines your rank, which determines the reward. Points are based on speed, multi-deletes, and damage taken. The only real RNG is overworld items. Speedrunners get really good at getting high damage output from a lot of the guaranteed base and junk chips you naturally earn over the period of time between each stage and the boss. It's pretty cool, actually.
 
But doesn't RNG still dictate when you get random encounters, the type/configuration of encounters (and thus the ability for multi-deletes) and the chips you start the battle with? Not saying it's necessarily bad, just that I'm not sure if it'll make me rage or not - my main game for the past year or so has been Mirror's Edge, which has no RNG apart from enemy shooting accuracy which is only relevant in one small section if you try to save and extra ~3 seconds.

EDIT: @North888 you seem to know a bit about the games, is there one that people usually start with?
 
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@Muro @+5 Necromancer So it looks like a lot of people are disappointed with the Steam version of HOMM3 because it's missing content and the online is terrible (now where have I heard that before lol) - have either of you tried it?
 
Not yet, no. I knew the HD version will be the vanilla game without expansion packs, but assumed those will come later as DLC. After reading that it's pretty unlikely, my hype has dropped rather significantly.

As is, Steam version is basically a HD mod for an incomplete game. Pretty, but not really worth the price for me in its current state. I'll get it one of these days off a steam sale to play through the vanilla campaign in glorious HD, but that's pretty much everything I see it offers. For scenarios, I'll stick to the full non-HD version I had for years.
 
More or less my thoughts. Missing scenarios isn't such an issue (though missing one of the classes is disappointing), but lacking playable online and random map support means I can't really justify paying full price or even half-price. If it's heavily discounted in the summer or sale or something I might consider it, otherwise I've got tons of other games to be getting on with.
 
Vadsamoht said:
But doesn't RNG still dictate when you get random encounters, the type/configuration of encounters (and thus the ability for multi-deletes) and the chips you start the battle with? Not saying it's necessarily bad, just that I'm not sure if it'll make me rage or not - my main game for the past year or so has been Mirror's Edge, which has no RNG apart from enemy shooting accuracy which is only relevant in one small section if you try to save and extra ~3 seconds.

EDIT: @North888 you seem to know a bit about the games, is there one that people usually start with?
It depends. Battle Network 5 and 4 are ones you're gonna want to stick clear of, as 5 has these turn based mode that can be very annoying. 4 has you going through the story mode 3 times with 3 fairly random sets of scenarios, so it relies heavily on RNG. The 1st is a complete maze and not really good for speedrunning. The best ones fr this are 2,3, and 6. 6 is by far the easier in the series, but has some segments that switch things up, but 2 and 3 are a totally balanced package. Most ppl do speed runs of 2 and 3. It's pretty easy to find walkthroughs and chip guides if necessary. It's a different type of speedrun, for sure, so I'd only suggest it if you're fine with random battles. Also, you don't need to have played previous games to get the story. Some characters do show up from past games, but they fill you in on what they did, if you care about the story, that is.
 
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Muro said:
Not yet, no. I knew the HD version will be the vanilla game without expansion packs, but assumed those will come later as DLC. After reading that it's pretty unlikely, my hype has dropped rather significantly.

As is, Steam version is basically a HD mod for an incomplete game. Pretty, but not really worth the price for me in its current state. I'll get it one of these days off a steam sale to play through the vanilla campaign in glorious HD, but that's pretty much everything I see it offers. For scenarios, I'll stick to the full non-HD version I had for years.
If I remember correctly. Why they didn't add the other expansions is becous off the BS reason "We don't have to source codes on Restoration"! I mean, sure I like they make it HD. But another thing a remake can do is acctually balancing the game some more (don't destroy Necropolis tho)!
 
IIRC Ubisoft said they only got the source code for Restoration of Erathia (base game) from New World Computing when they asked. No idea if that's just NWC being dumb or if they've legit lost it somehow.

Really, the thing that turned me off the most was the fact that the netplay is apparently abysmal - it's supposed to be a real pain just getting all of the players into a lobby, and one person disconnecting part way through the map causes issues (not sure what they are, the game might just end).
 
Not vidya gaems, but still gaming news: A recent Kickstarter for a card game called Exploding Kittens has really taken off, netting almost 5 million dollars (with an initial goal of 10,000 dollars, mind) and the most backers of any Kickstarter ever (over 125 thousand backers, to be specific). And this for a campaign with 19 days left to go! If you want to go back it or check out what the fuss is about, here's a link to the Kickstarter page.
 
Not surprising actually. Exploding kittens have a longer history on the internet than regular kittens:
But hey, instead of funding cats on paper, check out Starr Mazer instead! The promo graphics look really slick, and the gameplay sounds cool too. They're aiming for something like a mash-up of Sigma Star, Monkey Island, and Wing Commander. I'm definitely interested to see where it goes.
 
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I have a BIG soft spot for shmup genre hybrids like Guardian Legend and Xexyz (and to be honest, genre hybrids in general), so this does look very interesting. Just hope its more like the aforementioned Guardian Legend (AWESOME) and not like Sigma Star Saga (where IMO the shmup sections were boring to the point that it would have been better off as a simple rpg).
 
so, I recently got Yakuza 3 again because is was cheap and i didn't get into it that much before I quit.
but I love how one of the first things you do in the game is console a little girl on a beach about what a real family is.
this game knows how to tug at your heartstrings and have hype as fuck fight. Kiryu is the manliest video game character ever.
;-; I still cry at that scene with Saki. you know the one.
can't wait to finish this, get Yakuza 4, beat that, and then get to Yakuza 5 when it comes out.
 
Squire Grooktook said:
Just hope its more like the aforementioned Guardian Legend (AWESOME) and not like Sigma Star Saga (where IMO the shmup sections were boring to the point that it would have been better off as a simple rpg).
I agree with you there. One challenge Sigma Star had was that it didn't want to make the gap too wide between the RPG elements and shooter ones, so the shooter segments ended up feeling like they were on auto-pilot. I still wish they had tried to make a sequel to improve on their ideas though.

Anyway, I think Starr Mazer already looks more fun, so hopefully the dev team can strike a nice balance between the gameplay styles. It'd be kinda cool if the game could help dedicated point-and-click players become more interested in shmups, and vice versa, but without compromising the nuances of either genre.
 
KaboomKid said:
I agree with you there. One challenge Sigma Star had was that it didn't want to make the gap too wide between the RPG elements and shooter ones, so the shooter segments ended up feeling like they were on auto-pilot. I still wish they had tried to make a sequel to improve on their ideas though.

Anyway, I think Starr Mazer already looks more fun, so hopefully the dev team can strike a nice balance between the gameplay styles. It'd be kinda cool if the game could help dedicated point-and-click players become more interested in shmups, and vice versa, but without compromising the nuances of either genre.

Yeah, it does look interesting. And the aesthetic certainly looks fun. I also like how they apparently have dialogue during boss fights.

52990d5a484e3564b38ff17249d537b6_large.gif


I've been interested what'd be like to have Shin Megami Tensei style mid-battle dialogue tree's in a more action oriented game.
 
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