Tiny insignificant details in games that really impressed you
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Sound design is too often overlooked in games. If done well it can really elevate presentation and in-game environmental perception.
How useful and interactive all of Joe's powers are in Viewtiful Joe 1 & 2. Keep in mind, these are 2.5D cel-shaded games. Yet these titles rival games from the 6th generation in terms of environmental activities. These titles got more going on than games from 7th, 8th, and now in several cases. You can use Slow, Mach speed, or Zoom to change or interactable with the background and environment. You'll use either one, two, or all three to solve puzzles. Be they keys or environmental puzzles. VJ1 has the best puzzles because the game keeps them simple, but not easy nor too obvious. VJ2 goes too far and makes them unnecessarily tedious or complicated, even when a player knows what they are supposed to do.
Another cool feature is that you can solve certain puzzles easier, or get items hidden in the background by summoning a pink bomb (when you buy some from the shop) and just using mach speed on it. Breaking boxes in the background and given you extra lives, V-Canisters, or other powers ups. This makes it easier without having to rely on enemies to do these.
Getting a full Rainbow V-Rank on all stages above Kids mode gives you Unlimted VFX gauge. It's really hard to do, and I will not attempt that.
All unlockable characters have their own strengths and weaknesses. They have their own dedicated Henshin call outs, quips when they dodge, certain moves are renamed to fit their style or theme, and some completely change how you play the game. Some making it easier, some make the game harder to play and require more thinking. When everyone becomes unlocked, Joe becomes the Jack of All Stats by default. Silvia is a Fragile Speedster/Glass Canon depending on difficulty, Alastor fights like DMC1 Dante (with his VFX Bar acting like Devil Trigger) acting as a Lightning Brusier, and Captain Blue can't see skull markers, is the Mighty Glacier, but can hover in the air during Henshin form. You can by pass alot of the traversing and platforming by doing this and going in to mach speed. The first game has so much more content than the sequel. All VJ2 has going for it are level select and the challenge mode after beating the game.
Another cool feature is that you can solve certain puzzles easier, or get items hidden in the background by summoning a pink bomb (when you buy some from the shop) and just using mach speed on it. Breaking boxes in the background and given you extra lives, V-Canisters, or other powers ups. This makes it easier without having to rely on enemies to do these.
Getting a full Rainbow V-Rank on all stages above Kids mode gives you Unlimted VFX gauge. It's really hard to do, and I will not attempt that.
All unlockable characters have their own strengths and weaknesses. They have their own dedicated Henshin call outs, quips when they dodge, certain moves are renamed to fit their style or theme, and some completely change how you play the game. Some making it easier, some make the game harder to play and require more thinking. When everyone becomes unlocked, Joe becomes the Jack of All Stats by default. Silvia is a Fragile Speedster/Glass Canon depending on difficulty, Alastor fights like DMC1 Dante (with his VFX Bar acting like Devil Trigger) acting as a Lightning Brusier, and Captain Blue can't see skull markers, is the Mighty Glacier, but can hover in the air during Henshin form. You can by pass alot of the traversing and platforming by doing this and going in to mach speed. The first game has so much more content than the sequel. All VJ2 has going for it are level select and the challenge mode after beating the game.
Reading/playing a VN called Cosplay Love and our heroine is a sheltered nerd and after our hero tells her he loves her she makes this absolutely perfect embarrassed squeal that is EXACTLY what a nerd like her would make upon finding themselves in a situation they've only been able to see in anime and video games. The voice actress absolutely nailed it!
Reading/playing 'Sabbat of the Witch' again and it's amazing how a little bit can go a long way. I imagine most of you at least have a general idea of what a VN is, usually you just have a portrait in front of you with dialogue and voice overs and the portrait changes depending on the mood of the characters.
'Sabbat of the Witch' goes further with this and it's amazing how much of a difference it makes. Instead of just a static portrait for a full paragraph of dialogue, the portraits will change during the dialogue, multiple times even, they'll also have the portraits bob up and down or shuffle side to side depending on their mood and even though it's a small thing, it goes a long way to giving greater characterization and making you want to read, listen, and watch the story. It's like upgrading from paper cutouts to full on puppets.
'Sabbat of the Witch' goes further with this and it's amazing how much of a difference it makes. Instead of just a static portrait for a full paragraph of dialogue, the portraits will change during the dialogue, multiple times even, they'll also have the portraits bob up and down or shuffle side to side depending on their mood and even though it's a small thing, it goes a long way to giving greater characterization and making you want to read, listen, and watch the story. It's like upgrading from paper cutouts to full on puppets.
Honestly this is one of the reasons I dig FROM games, because even just the loot drops and weaknesses of enemies and characters can tell you so fucking much about them you'd never learn otherwise. For example, in DS2, there's a lady who acts like a holy woman and sells you miracles and such. Except her clothes has a line about some straying from the path of righteousness, one of her miracles says "Was kept at the monastery, but stolen and never recovered" and every so often you'll be invaded by a red phantom that looks a hell of a lot liker her(and in fact, if you kill her before the invasions happen, they don't happen at all).
All of it points to her being a horrible person pretending to be a nun.
Something I never noticed before without looking more closely. If you give her the money in Chapter 6 she and her son at least do well enough to eventually end up owning a golf course.
Double Dragon IV has this neat thing lore wise that tries to tie all of the NES games together in to one continuity. It does rely a little retconning on the first NES game, where Jimmy is the Shadow Boss. The manual more or less describes the arcade version of events, so it comes of as a little weird, if you played DD I (NES) or marathoned the NES games. The game has customizable controls, and two music options: Sampled or Retro. Go for the retro. The game takes a lot from DD II, but gives everyone new moves, animations, or modifies their old attacks. The game has new enemy types that fit with the game, and they definitely belong. In fact the IV takes place after II, and III takes place after I, but before II. So II is the final game in the timeline, before the story change.
This game takes elements from DD I and DDA with its unlockable versus mode and tower (survival) mode respectively. Getting further and higher in Tower mode allows you to play as enemies or bosses in story mode. That is how you do a cool bonus and keep the players playing.
This game takes elements from DD I and DDA with its unlockable versus mode and tower (survival) mode respectively. Getting further and higher in Tower mode allows you to play as enemies or bosses in story mode. That is how you do a cool bonus and keep the players playing.
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Does anyone remember the days of old school Nintendo and Sega games where you would be fighting a boss, and as you beat the boss up it would start to flash red and the closer to death the boss was the faster that red would flash? This happened in those Ninja Turtle Beat 'em Ups.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is a terrible fucking game, but the enemy sprites would get damaged the closer to defeat they got and I really miss details like this.
These days very few games do things like this and it's a shame because with all the modeling tech we have now, you would think that modeling damage on characters as the fight goes on and on would be easier.
As far as I can remember only two games have done this recently. Monster Hunter as a series has done this forever as you break off parts and cut tails and shit, and the newest games are no different. But the other game....and you'll never expect this from me....Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Every boss gets damaged, from machine parts breaking, to snapping horns and other pieces off the enemy. As the fight goes on, the more damage the boss will show and this is sooooooo underrated.
I feel like the invention of Hit Points or life bars, made this need to showcase damage on the actual enemy models or otherwise showing the progress like with the flashing red stuff has simply gone away. Some bigger monster fights in things like God of War games had enemy damaged but it's just not done nearly enough as I think it should with our current state of tech.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is a terrible fucking game, but the enemy sprites would get damaged the closer to defeat they got and I really miss details like this.
These days very few games do things like this and it's a shame because with all the modeling tech we have now, you would think that modeling damage on characters as the fight goes on and on would be easier.
As far as I can remember only two games have done this recently. Monster Hunter as a series has done this forever as you break off parts and cut tails and shit, and the newest games are no different. But the other game....and you'll never expect this from me....Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Every boss gets damaged, from machine parts breaking, to snapping horns and other pieces off the enemy. As the fight goes on, the more damage the boss will show and this is sooooooo underrated.
I feel like the invention of Hit Points or life bars, made this need to showcase damage on the actual enemy models or otherwise showing the progress like with the flashing red stuff has simply gone away. Some bigger monster fights in things like God of War games had enemy damaged but it's just not done nearly enough as I think it should with our current state of tech.
Fucking YES. As much as I love SoulsBorne games I’ve always thought it was a huge missed opportunity to never really show much damage progression to enemies. I mean, there are certain predetermined changes here and there and yeah you can shoot off a dragon’s tail occasionally but man, it would feel really, really satisfying to crush the chest of a skeleton with a great hammer or slice chunks out of a beast’s legs with a sword to prevent it from moving around as much, thus altering the course of a fight. It would really throw a new dynamic into fights vs mostly being a matter of attrition.
Dynamic stuff is really where things should be headed in these melee focused action/adventure games. Just watching a health bar drain as your only indicator of doing damage feels lazy and ironically outdated for the most part, as like you said a lot of older games with far less tech had put in more effort to make things feel more alive and like you’re affecting something.
Although keeping image fidelity in mind I don’t think the tech is readily efficient enough yet to do this kinda stuff on a large scale without huge budgets though too. It’s why I still go back to something like RDR2 to cause random mayhem, because the hit responses and damage models are still awesome looking even without mods.
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That depends on what you're talking about. Not that Sega nor Nintendo didn't have plenty of those moments, but that was more so Konami's thing. Especially nearly all things Ninja Turtles.
Flash of Pain - TV Tropes
In many video games, enemies that don't die from one hit will blink a different colour when damaged. Most of the time, it tends to be white, although it may come in different variants, like red. This particular effect was chosen because it is …
tvtropes.org
Turns Red - TV Tropes
Sometimes, when you bring a videogame boss down to its last few hit points, it gets mad and begins adding more powerful attacks to its arsenal or becomes much faster and harder to dodge. The boss may also get an Extra Turn, or become extremely …
tvtropes.org
Shows Damage - TV Tropes
Rather than just give an enemy - or occasionally your character - a generic Life Meter, or show the exact number of hit points, some games will show the characters taking damage on-screen. Sometimes this makes sense and looks good, other times, …
tvtropes.org
Depends on where you look. While there aren't as many AAA games that do this, there's plenty on the shorter budget or indie the circle that includes it. Either showing damage, flash of pain, turning red, two out of the three options, or all of the above.
Yeah but my point is that with all the tech that AAA games boast about, it never relates to this kind of detail in regards to damage models. Hell even in Gran Turismo 7, the damage is very very limited on the cars, when in porevious years you could really fuck these cars up. I can't think of any reason as to why games aren't doing these damage models for enemies anymore except that maybe the industry simply forgot it was ever a thing.
I'll give you some help. Start looking at games from 7th generation. As far as 8th generation goes, play Evil Within 1 & 2, Doom 4 & Eternal, Bayonetta 2, Wonderful 101, RE2 & RE3 Remake, DMC5, and WipeOut Omega Collection.
That depends on what game you're talking about. This is actually been a problem since the third or fourth game. Yeah, they show more damage by comparison, but it was nothing compared to a racing games back on the PS1 and PS2 days. I suggest you start breaking out the Burnout games again. Mainly Revenge and Paradise.
You already know the reason why for officially licensed cars. As for the rest, most of them know, but don't care, and just want to save on some extra money. Usually all that money goes to the crappy mini games or the super hyper realistic environments and graphics. That is where all the money is going towards. Oh and of course, the top executives pay checks and pockets.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post but there's one thing I'm gonna quibble with here.
FFMQ is a lackluster Final Fantasy game. It was also designed to be "Baby's First Final Fantasy" for the kiddie crowdI(like kids just getting into video games) and honestly, with that in mind, I can't say it does a bad job at that. Arguably they should have left the Final Fantasy name off of it, but it wouldn't be the first or last time something had a brand name slapped on it to try to sell more.
Not like they haven't released Final Fantasy games of extremely different genres since then, Dirge of Cerberus coming to mind. Doubt anyone ever predicted a Final Fantasy game would release that's a third person shooter.
Eh. It's fine. But that's kind of the problem with it. It's just, fine. It's neither a good game nor a hilariously bad one. It just kinda comes and goes.
9 hours of repetitive shooting I would not call fine. If it were 4-5 hours, maybe. I'd sooner play the original XBOX version of Dead to Rights.
My point was never the quality of the game itself. I just used it as an example of the damage being show on the sprites. As you kill enemies in that game their sprite becomes more and more damage which is an attention to detail that most games don't show. And if they could do it with Mythic fucking Quest, then why doesn't it happen with the latest and greatest DragonQuest games? Or any number of other games that come out, it's such a forgotten mechanic that I feel would be really awesome to make a return especially with how good shit looks these days.