I love the gameplay and style of Mad World but could never finish it because I just can't see anything with how darkness interacts with the style.
Your video game hot take(s) thread
- Thread starter Dany_the_penguin
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Really? I was able to handle it fine. I thought the lighting, and the black and white contrast, did most of the environments fine. I had little trouble seeing. Now I did admit that my eyes had to adjust when grabbing certain items and missing. With enough play time, it got to the point where I rarely did empty grabs anymore. I will say if you're using an HDMI converter for your Wii, or playing with a Wii U, it'll up-res the images making it easier to look and find things. Everybody's eyes are different though. Sorry that happened.
It's a me thing. Like I said, I love the style but something about it just made it hard for me to continue. Maybe if I tried playing it today with a new setup I'd get better results though. Could indeed have been my set up at the time.
I agree with Yahtzee on this one 100%. For a while I thought the genres of games that were least interesting to me were strategy or FPS but I realize it's this stuff- this click to pick a dialogue thing and that's the whole game. It's like a boring TV show but also I have to do pointless stuff.
Nero never needed redeeming. GB has some points, but I still feel Nero's attitude worked fine for gameplay and story in DMC4. The problem with DMC4 was that it felt like a side/gaiden/spin-off game than a full sequel. Capcom's production trouble did not help either. DMC5 fixes most of 4's problems, or enhances its strengths further.
You realize that a good chunk of your favorite game(?) does the same thing though no?
I’m about 80 hours or so in myself and have tried to take my time with all the dialog, listening intently. But in the past games I’ve just lost patience and wound up skipping through it and read things quickly so I could get back to running around doing Witcher stuff.
It's not a good chunk, it's an extra bit of flair. Assuming you're referring to Witcher 3, a quest might give you a branching path choice but you're spending most of the quest exploring, fighting, etc.You realize that a good chunk of your favorite game(?) does the same thing though no?
I’m about 80 hours or so in myself and have tried to take my time with all the dialog, listening intently. But in the past games I’ve just lost patience and wound up skipping through it and read things quickly so I could get back to running around doing Witcher stuff.
I think genre names like roguelike and Metroidvania are fine and good.
I saw this come up in the AV Club write-up on Cult of the Lamb today and it's something that comes up in Escapist streams, about how some people apparently get annoyed at these genre names. But they work! They're fine!
Yes I know probably like no gamer alive actually played Rogue but who cares, we know what roguelike means. Do you really care that the first couple of Castlevanias weren't AHKCHOOLLY the style that we think of when we say Metroidvania or whatever?
When someone says Metroidvania I know they're talking about a game where I waste time running around the same levels and getting to obstacles where I get stuck and look up on the internet if I can get past it or I need to go back to get some item. The term does its job.
Pedants are mad that video game genres don't have neat little terms like in movies- comedy, drama, etc. But games are not movies, they are interactive, and while it's perfectly fine to call a movie a comedy because it means watching it is supposed to make you laugh, it's equally fine to describe a game as Soulslike because it means you gotta get killed and go back to checkpoints and loose currencies and fight big bosses.
I saw this come up in the AV Club write-up on Cult of the Lamb today and it's something that comes up in Escapist streams, about how some people apparently get annoyed at these genre names. But they work! They're fine!
Yes I know probably like no gamer alive actually played Rogue but who cares, we know what roguelike means. Do you really care that the first couple of Castlevanias weren't AHKCHOOLLY the style that we think of when we say Metroidvania or whatever?
When someone says Metroidvania I know they're talking about a game where I waste time running around the same levels and getting to obstacles where I get stuck and look up on the internet if I can get past it or I need to go back to get some item. The term does its job.
Pedants are mad that video game genres don't have neat little terms like in movies- comedy, drama, etc. But games are not movies, they are interactive, and while it's perfectly fine to call a movie a comedy because it means watching it is supposed to make you laugh, it's equally fine to describe a game as Soulslike because it means you gotta get killed and go back to checkpoints and loose currencies and fight big bosses.
You have great points, my only problem is when people use labels that make no sense, or that are so generic that they really don't mean anything or say nothing about the actual product. Whenever somebody categorizes single player brawler/hack and slash games as "Character Action or Spectacle Fighter". Character Action makes no sense, and while Spectacle Fighter is a bit more descriptive, it's too silly and jumping on a train Yahtzee started. Even he got sick of the term (you have no one but yourself to blame Yahtzee). It's to the point that the term will show up on Steam pages for certain action games, and it started happening around 2015. Not to mention, back in the early 2000s when more DMC games in style game started coming out, they were mislabeled as action adventure. When at the end of day, these are glorified brawler games. GameStop and IGN would mislabel these games for the sake of making them sound fancier than what they are. And in some worse cases today, try to put all these things micro subcategories for the sake of further division, or to put certain other games on impossibly high pedestals.
Do note that the first two videos have some points, but was done as damage control, because GB had the bright idea to insult people who like the new God of War game. So take some of what he says with the grain of salt. Foxcade does more of a better job and is less negative Nancy about it. While it doesn't happen as much, character action still gets thrown around a good amount with certain users on YT. At the end of the day, just call them stylish action games, which is what most of them are, when they're trying to emulate DMC. Thankfully, at least I was action is getting more proper use nowadays.
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Who makes the case they are innovative though? Games coverage might've been eager to throw out the word 'innovative' when Heavy Rain was a thing, but even then it was mainly the Playstation related magazines that did this. Not even fans of these games are claiming they're innovative, so I don't really know what Yahtzee's getting at here.
These games aren't particularly popular, they aren't held in high regard by anyone really, and they're in a niche of their own, not influencing the rest of the industry in any real way, so why exactly complain about them not being innovative? These games actually seemed to have found their groove with titles like Life is Strange and Until Dawn. Neither of which tried to compete with the nemesis system from Shadow of War.
I won't say it totally feels like 'old man yells at clouds', but it doesn't totally not feel like it either. Just much ado about nothing really.
He has also made a video called "Stop bragging about game length", something I haven't seen done for years, although that could just be a matter of who I chose to watch. In particular since I know some games have bragged about it in the past. Likewise I know that David Cage is quite self aggrandizing. And even if the places you follow no longer hold an opinion there probably are someone that still hold it, since habits die hard. Specifically, marketing departments will do anything and everything to catch your attention, so these opinions are probably touted somewhere.
My read is that Yahtzee needed some catchy title without really giving a toss about if it was a mainstream opinion (whatever "mainstream" means in this fractured culture).
Sometimes the usual games coverage media, but this isn't about me agreeing or disagreeing with Yahtzee. Just thought it was odd and I decided to post it.
I do agree with you though. There is a niche audience for this game, cuz my older brother is one of them. He likes Until Dawn, The Quarry, and some of the other titles from those same developers. He can't get enough of them.
Honestly, whenever Yahtzee does this show, he's been getting "old man yells at cloud" vibes for me since last year. This is only accentuated further with him going on about how "RE4 does not need a remake!". Yet tries to shift all the blame on Capcom. You all keep buying this game over and over again on different platforms; what did you expect? RE4 makes money. Lots of money. Therefore, RE4 Remake is going to happen. He seems to be the only one going against the remake though. Most others don't have a problem or are interested. I'm interested because it's going to be a different take, and not the goofy tone. Nothing against the goofy tone, but there are people who try to give RE4 way more credit than it deserves, and claiming that it's intentionally goofy. Some parts are, but most other parts are clearly them trying and failing, and it becomes unintentionally goofy.
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You're either with me or against me seems to be the theme. Or, "if you don't listen to me, you're stupid, misguided, or evil!".
Me personally, I just go with what I like. If I don't like it, then I don't like it.
I'm starting to think that the best use of different routes or endings and the focus of making them should be on getting to see alternative takes on how things play out
Interesting though to look at the exception and think about why it is though; Horror games.
The point about DMC also reminds me of how genre names can get sticky with long running franchises, which is such a core part of gaming. Series like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Assassins Creed
If I'm getting my recent history right, I think Yahtzee made that video after someone from the makers of Dying Light 2 tweeted about how there's 500 hours of content in the game and the entire gaming culture dumped on it and cried about game length.
I do feel that if there are notable consequences to your actions it's good enough. Even if you reach the same place in the end, have the some of the choices being mutually exclusive or just outright meaningful. Sure, in Mass Effect, the end of the game is the same but depending on who stayed behind on Virmire but you will never see Kaiden or Ashley again for the rest of the game/series depending on your decision. Or a more expansive example, Witcher 2 has a critical decision at the end of Chapter 1 and which choice you make changes the rest of the game in big ways. Even though it uses the same locations in general for the whole game you'll spend a majority of your time with a very different set of characters in chapter 2 depending on what choice you made before the game converges in chapter 3(and even then some things are different).
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The term roguelike has been applied so broadly as to become almost completely meaningless. Most games that bear that name have almost nothing in common with the original Rogue or traditional roguelikes. Basically, if your game has permadeath, that's enough to shove it under the roguelike umbrella.
I guess it's just.... I've been thinking about how in VNs you can have wildly varied outcomes in the more ambitious ones because you can have your cake and eat it too. Like in a romance VN you could have one ending lead to a Romeo&Juliet like ending where the lovers die together and still have a more traditional happy ending with everything working out fine. Video-games have always treated routes or endings more as a way to "Let you be who you want" or do what you want to do but that's led to choices either being limited in what they actually effect or lacking interesting nuance.
I guess what I was trying to get at is, I wonder if changing the guiding philosophy behind why you have choice in games would lead to better outcomes in the gameplay department before you even get into how your choices effect things.
Like.... Fire Emblem: Three Houses! With that game, the house you choose isn't so much about good or bad choices as it is seeing how things play out differently and which characters you learn about. In that case you have one choice of three options that has a great effect on how things play out but the crux of it isn't right or wrong or "your choices mattering" but instead getting to see different and interesting ways for the story to play out. Whereas you have things like The Wolf Among Us where choices are all but meaningless in terms of how things play out because no one can actually deliver on the butterfly effect they advertise, so they have to use smoke and mirrors and just deliver on an illusion.
Uuuughhhhh, I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear or if I even really understand what I'm trying to get at. I feel like I'm close to some kind of epiphany but it's too foggy for me to grab the idea in my head.
Yeah but terms like Roguelike and Meteoidvania are related to how a game plays. The genre labels are more appropriately applied against the game’s story or style/tone (delete where appropriate). Like something can be both a Roguelike and be a comedy game. Metroidvania games can be action or horror etc.