koifish

12 minutes ago, TDIRunner said:

Speaking of oversaturation, how about the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises?  They were huge for a while, then all of the sudden, it was like a new game was getting released each week.  It wasn't really that bad, but overnight everyone just seemed to stop caring.  

I have thought about this for a long time. I am convinced that activision intentionally pushed out as many GH games as possible, in a purposeful effort to crush the market through fatigue. They do this with everything they have that makes money, because they have no concept of long-term brand power, but in this case, I argue it was explicitly done as punishment for Harmonix when they dared defy them by making a "full band" game (and not with activision) and didn't just resign themselves to making guitar games for all eternity. We saw with the Modern Warfare people that Activision has no love for anyone challenging their authority, even if they end up making them huge money. To me, activision has one purpose; Run studios like they're assembly lines and punish anyone who defies them. Given this view, it should be no surprise what all has happened at blizzard over the years, nor any surprise why activision's popular game series all have the same crash and burn life cycle. They can't see a popular property as anything besides a cow to milk and a dead horse to beat. CoD is a special case it seems, because people like the MP enough that they will pay what amounts to a yearly renewal fee to keep playing it. Otherwise, it seems to keep happening, and I think its intentional. Generally I blame Bobby Kotick, who is probably up there with Ray Kassar for history's worst gaming execs.

Whoa whoa, what's with putting Blood on the Dance Floor as the bottom-tier response? Anyway, I really like the clash album "Sandinista!" but I don't listen much otherwise. Of these two I'd honestly rather hear "Police on my Back" or "Washington Bullets" or "Career Opportunities". All that said, Rock the Casbah is a fun listen when it comes on the radio.

15 hours ago, Splain said:

Answer my PM!

My bad, I found the message I wrote on Tuesday and it still was sitting unsent. Fixed now.

@Splain

Got an e-reader for my birthday. Kind of a fun gimmick but don't think it made much sense to want one. At least I got some good money for it later on.

Oh yeah, not games, but there was also a time when I really wanted a treo smartphone. The concept of the internet/IM/email in your pocket was amazing to me. Of course now everybody has a toy that does all that, and much more, and it's terrible. Go figure!

On 1/2/2024 at 2:15 AM, Sumez said:

Coincidentally, Gods and Sword of Sodan are also both inherently Amiga games - I wasn't even aware the latter was ported. And if there's one thing Amiga games were great at, it was looking fantastic while playing like sticky mud  

and then meanwhile, there are some speccy games that look like something you scraped off of your shoe but play circles around the pretty amiga games.

Speaking of, video olympics/pong sports and warlords (both on VCS) are more fun than many games made on much more capable and beautiful machines.

As for games that look good but don't mesh with you, honestly Metal Slug games for me. I just don't care for run-and-gun stuff.

makaimura had a big oni boss for stage 1, didn't it? That's what I think of.

I just pick what I like at the time. Don't even use the same color on the same character every time.

Not enough is Lost Planet. Instead of a proper LP3 they farmed it out to a middling third-party (part of the same disaster that gave us DmC). Then they gave up on the west and tried a japanese cartoon spinoff which was decent but no comparison. Now the series is so dead, capcom won't even bother trying to fix the PC ports, so you can't even buy them anymore (aside from key resellers). The console versions are okay, and maybe if you use the [new xbox name here] it will force higher framerate, but PC was best and where the biggest player population still resides.

Many many games for the "too many" list. Everything EA and Activision still make, plus Halo, Pokemon, and mobile games as a rule of thumb. I'll also say Sonic, series needed an enema decades ago. 

I replayed S3 to completion in 2022. In hindsight, Sonic 3 was ridiculously easy compared to 1, 2, and CD. It was also full of "blast processing"-esque flash over substance moments. It's weird how much Sonic 3 shares in common with the far less favored sequels in the 2000s and onward. If I could name one key difference, it's that Sonic 3 feels more like a 2D action game you have control over, which also happens to have many gratuitous cool moments, whereas some later games might as well be roller coasters.

Also, I hate the ending of Launch Base. Riding in eggman's dumb turd floater takes almost a full minute of in-game clock time, which I learned can and will kill you for time over. Just feels like a bad idea, though as we know Sonic 3 had a few bad ideas...

5 hours ago, Sumez said:

CV4 is *way* harder than cv1 for sure!

When does it get hard? Have tried to get into it a few times, but so far the only hard part seems to be not getting bored and booting up Bloodlines instead. Is there a spike somewhere that gets interesting?

It's incredibly disingenuous to say that 7th gen is what made small teams possible, given what teams looked like from the 70s into the new millennium. If anything, it's HD consoles that finally relegated them to the gaming equivalent of the straight-to-video movie, the life support keeping smaller or more niche games alive when "AAA" game budgets suddenly ballooned to absurd levels. Recall it was newsworthy in 2008 when MGS4 would need to sell 500k copies just to break even, an insane stat up until that point. Fairly certain games of similar bracket now, however, are so expensive that 500k units would be a failure. The success of various indie darlings, I feel, is more a testament to how the bigger additions made from those inflated budgets aren't worth the polys they're rendered in. I can at least credit the proliferation of easy to use devtools as a meaningful change, but that was just as valid on computers, even before 7th gen started, if you consider things like gamemaker and flash.

I suppose I can't speak much to the analysis of the influences of those games mentioned, because as you said, I don't play new games. I will have to take your word for it.

5 hours ago, Kguillemette said:

In addition to other points mentioned, 7th gen largely revitalized the side scroller after everything needed to be 3D in gen 5 and 6. 

true, Mario Bros Wii selling a crap ton of units certainly helped that. It being 20 years after the 80s also meant it was time to do "retro throwbacks" to NES games, so nostalgia cash-ins helped keep the spirit alive. And as you remind me now, SF4 did revive a very dormant fighting game market, though it was more just waking up from a long slumber of VF-like games since as you point out, it was 3D 3D 3D, and nothing else mattered for a while.

15 hours ago, Brickman said:

Yeah that’s up to one’s personal choice and opinion. 

We were just letting you know that there are a lot of influential 7th gen games because you said you were drawing a blank.

Indeed! I am confused though; i don't know if they are really influential. Games like GTA5 made a lot of money, but were iterative of previous games. Rockstar is largely still making bigger versions of GTA3. I guess the period is influential in that it made games more of a leisurely subject to finish story mode. What other major influences came about because of 7th gen? Maye its just my memory failing me again, but as I recall (and looking at that list) it's mainly iterative of 6th gen, aside from the aforementioned making games easier. Cementing online systems as the standard also comes to mind, as does games dying to End of Service. Curious what else sticks out for influence in that period. Motion controls were important for VR to move onward. What else comes to mind?

3 hours ago, fcgamer said:

A buddy of mine in Taiwan just posted this video. Bet you can't guess where he's from.

 

I think the site is broken. I keep looking for the "Fear" post reaction and I can't find it.

On 1/24/2024 at 8:53 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

(in before someone calls a 17-year-old game "modern")

If you think that's bad, wait until you hear about New England.

On 1/31/2024 at 3:23 PM, Brickman said:

The 360/PS3/Wii era basically made the foundation of what games are today. Whether people like that direction is a personal opinion but I love the 7th gen era.

An apt description of why I don't care about most of that list. Some of those entries in particular are on my list of games I personally detest, in fact. I am sure there are some things here and there that I like, and am forgetting, but overwhelmingly it was the period that taught me to stop liking new video games. 8th gen was the nail in the coffin, but 7th was the setup (the 6th gen desperate attempts to appeal to boys who wanted every game to be GTA didn't help).

I recalled some, while thinking, that I liked. Tokyo Jungle was good, Lost Planet 2 is in my top 10, 7th did finally bring a fortune street game to the west. Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars was on PS3 for years before it grew into Rocket League. Otherwise I don't remember much, ignoring the DS of course. Now that was a system I loved.

3 hours ago, LeatherRebel5150 said:

Here is the order this time, I will send out the box Saturday as long I get Splain's address by then. 

Please post pictures of the things you take. That's where all the fun is

@Splain

@koifish

@ZeldaFan042

@Fleck586

@The Count

@RH

@a3quit4s

Finally! Don't take up too much space @Splain , I have a lot I need to offload.

Never played or even saw AC1 be played. I remember friends calling it "Assassins Can't Swim" and then the sequel came out and they called that "Only Assassins Can Swim".

Can't say I have even seen this game and can't say I care to. Never/Never vote for me.

On 1/26/2024 at 10:50 AM, Sumez said:

Yes the x360/ps3 generation was a super short and uneventful with absolutely no influential games that would impact everything to come, due to their immense popularity XD

it sounds like a joke but I honestly am drawing a blank. Demon's Souls was influential...sort of. Were there other games? So much of 7th is forgotten to me now.

Just now, Reed Rothchild said:

These boss ships are assholes

legend you say?

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=RxgdaMZRgRo

10 hours ago, GPX said:

I’ve never actually played Castlevania on the NES. My first experience with a Castlevania game was on the SNES with Super Castlevania IV. It’s one of my favorite SNES games of all time, so I do enjoy the shorter arcadey-levels format. 

I don’t necessarily feel SOTN is less quality than the earlier Castlevanias, but I can see to a degree it might put people off if they’re more into their action gaming rather than the explorative gaming. I guess the main difference between us, is that the explorative nature of SOTN dilutes the core values you seek in your Castlevania, whereas I see it as an enhancement to the core premise of its earlier games.

That sounds accurate. Amusing observation, I lump Super 4 in with Symphony as I find it too slow-paced and relatively easy. Your assessment of exploration sounds more relevant overall however.

4 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

Symphony of the Night's particular area design and balancing often means new areas you explore and even some bosses have zero difficulty and struggle to damage you even your first time through. Like, has the Death boss battle killed you? Do you even remember what he does in the fight? I'm no for both and I don't think the former is because I'm particularly good at the game. Fellow same-series Metroidvanias Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia heavily mitigate this big issue of SotN's while still having map exploration and RPG mechanics. I don't think Symphony of the Night is even a notably longer game than the latter three. Symphony of the Night is good and I appreciate its ambition for its time period and some of its weird quirks but I don't think it's as well put together of a game as the other four I mentioned. (It is better than Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance though)

If anyone wants to make the case for why Symphony of the Night's actual gameplay and game design (as opposed to being nostalgic, influential, 10/10 voice acting, or whatever) is better than those latter games in its own series, I'm all ears.

It's like how on my fist quest I discovered you can't even use subweapons because several of them are ridiculously OP. Knives can kill most things quickly and from a safe distance, and the stopwatch basically invalidates several boss fights.

19 minutes ago, Gentlegamer said:

Wonder Boy III - The Dragon's Trap

Zelda II - The Adventure of Link

The Battle of Olympus

Those games too were built upon even older Falcom RPGs. Xanadu and Sorcerian off the top of my head. On the topic of Zelda 2, one of Nintendo's dirty secrets, I've found, is that some of their big games are heavily influenced by other, earlier games, that happened to not make it out of Japan. To suggest Nintendo didn't make substantial QoL changes or innovations of their own would be disingenuous, but it certainly opens one's eyes to look at the Japanese perspective and to know what we never saw (Thexder really sticks out as an example, regarding Metroid as an inheritor).

I don't really care for symphony but I'd still call it a foundational game that everyone should play at least once. It's like talking about the beatles for rock music. Anyone with any knowledge of rock and roll knows that the beatles didn't invent the genre, but then who would say you shouldn't listen to the beatles as a foundational entity in rock and roll history? My point isn't to downplay the existence of similar games but rather to acknowledge a more harmonious way of looking at things, realizing that being the very first doesn't mean all that much and that making a really slick, well-realized version of the concept that many people enjoy is itself a major feat that can make for a foundational title. Let's be honest and recognize that countless games like Symphony would not exist were it not for Symphony (and in turn, let's note that Igarashi said he was trying to make a game like Zelda, not Metroid, when he made Symphony. Better rename the genre to Zeldavania).

On 1/25/2024 at 8:35 AM, TDIRunner said:

I'm genuinely curious.  Was the game too easy the first time you played it?  Did you know where all the hidden items were on your first playthrough without a guide?  Did you know exactly where to go, or did you have to explore?  Did you beat every boss on your first try?  Sometimes a game is easy because you've played it so many times and mastered it.  By that definition, Super Metroid is "too easy" because I can play it with my eyes closed and beat it in around two hours.  But that doesn't mean the game was easy the first time I picked it up.  A game shouldn't be penalized because it becomes easier over time.  

Only ever played it once, so I'd say no, it was just easy all along. IIRC I played and beat CV1 around 2007-2008 and then played Symphony a year later, so my perception of difficulty is likely very different from others when they played symphony.

Incidentally, I downloaded and played Symphony again, yesterday, for the first time since 2009 probably, and it's still way too easy. That said, going naked is proving to be kind of fun. You don't steamroll everything and punching things to death has comedic value. I might play a bit more, but not confident it would raise my score. It's as @wongojack points out, usually I play symphony and its clones but get bored because they become trivial hallway mapping sims. Is there a mode where you don't get levels? That might be more fun. Then again, I got bored of hollow knight because I thought the game wasn't hard, just heavy on damage sponges. Symphony with no levels would probably be similar. 

On 1/25/2024 at 6:22 AM, GPX said:

It’s interesting how you think the game is dull when it has so much going on, and more stuff to do than any other 2D-Castlevania in existence at the time it had came out, and even in the following decade after it. 

I don’t want to argue further with the scores, just curious what you think is a better representation of a 2D-Castlevania? 

I like most pre-Symphony castlevania games, but if I had to pick one then it'd be Bloodlines, no contest. It's short and sweet, a really top-quality action game, which you can tell was made by real professionals. Controls are tight, player movement is smooth and flexible without being forgiving, and the obstacles are tough but can be learned, yet they also aren't just rote memorization and reproduction. Add to it that the levels are each unique and well-paced without being too long, and the amazing soundtrack, and you get an incredible game, finished with visuals and sound effects that are icing on top of a perfect cake.

I think the length is a key point of difference between us here. I'd rather have a tightly crafted action game that's only an hour long but which pushes me for that entire hour, than slog through a long, drawn-out game whose only real challenge is how much time I have to waste. "So much going on" is meaningless when none of it is memorable or engaging. Note above how I played CV1 and Symphony at around the same time. I can remember some parts of symphony visually, and I definitely remember the soundtrack, but nothing really sticks out that is truly memorable and notable. Compare that to CV1, where I still can flash a warm smile at how good it felt to finally beat death and his bullshit level 5. I feel that the Quantity/Quality metric really shows itself here. Symphony clearly put the former above the latter, and was hurt for it. Who cares if there's more stuff to do if none of it is interesting? A pile of good baby toys has "more stuff to do" than does one good book, but I wouldn't choose the toys.

Ultimately symphony is just a fundamental break from what I like about castlevania and so I have little reason to personally rate it highly. Like Peter Gabriel Genesis and Phil Collins Genesis, old and new castlevania share little besides their name and certain characters/trademarks.

22 minutes ago, G-type said:

Zoo Keeper for the Pico-8... I linked to it in my previous post.

my bad, didn't see that. I should have thought to search for your other posts. For a laugh, I'll mention that searching for it on Yandex came back with the name "Gun Park" which didn't bring expected results.

18 hours ago, G-type said:

broke 100k! Now trying for 200k

what game is this? I can't find info online from the picture.