Game Articles and Videos Thread
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Obituary: Legacy of Kain writer Jim Curry has died
Along with Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Curry wrote Akuji: The Heartless and handled marketing for the Gex games.
@NerfedFalcon, @hanselthecaretaker2, @Old_Hunter_77, @CriticalGaming,@Dirty Hipsters, and @The Rogue Wolf, check out this video:
Souls-likes vs. Pure Action and The Parry Problem
I did make a comment in the comments section of the video:
Souls-likes vs. Pure Action and The Parry Problem
MC does mentioned some of the stuff I did when talking in the video about the action games section. I have not made it to the parry section yet.
Some good observations in there. There's the trick with youtube videos like this- I kinda wish he went into more examples but then if the video were longer I probably wouldn't listen.
Like he describes some of the issues of making parry work but makes no mention of the games where I personally started to complain about this stuff: Lies of P, Wo Long, etc. I keep wondering if I'm the crazy one for thinking that Sekiro parry works (which he says it does) while those two don't even though many others like them and I'm not sure if it's me (burned out, too tired/lazy/disinterested to git gud) or the way they are built.
Though I never played Lies of P, the parry works like how it works in Sekiro. The reason so many people had trouble with P's parry at the start, was that a lot assumed the parry would function like Bloodborne, instead of Sekiro. I will take your word on Wu-Long though.
I do feel like he should have at least mentioned Rising's parry or No More Heroes Dark Stepping. The latter functions similar, but completely differently from what Rising or even Bayonetta do. Dark Stepping was Witch Time, before Witch Time got started.
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So I think that the premise of Ninja Gaiden being a character action game similar to "Devil May Cry" is kind of false at its core. I actually think that NInja Gaiden has more in common with something like Sekiro and Nioh than it does with Devil May Cry.
The main reason I say that is because the main focus of Ninja Gaiden is survival and making it through the levels. The game is actually pretty difficult, and even the default enemies are dangerous and completely capable of killing you if you aren't careful. This is one of the reasons that the Souls games were so interesting to people when they came out (well there's a lot of reasons including the interesting story telling and level and environmental design), the difficulty of the games drew a lot of people in, and as the series have progressed the combat has become more and more flashy and action oriented.
While Ninja Gaiden's combat is cool and flashy, that's not its point, the point is that it's brutal and largely unforgiving, which is very different from other character action games. The core gameplay of something like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta is in styling on your enemies. At the base difficulty the games are easy. Your focus isn't on survival, it's about killing creatively and with flourish to keep your ranking up. The basic enemies are barely roadblocks, they're basically training dummies to practice your combos. Dante is meant to look and feel like an unkillable god effortlessly defeating everything in his path, barely phased by something minor like being empaled through the chest with a 7 foot long sword. Ninja Gaiden isn't like that.
So I would actually say that things like the Souls games, Nioh, Lies of P, etc are actually becoming more like Ninja Gaiden, still brutally hard but with each subsequent game putting a greater emphasis on speed and style.
I would say the main difference between the action games that the video's author is talking about, and "souls likes" is the mechanical complexity of actually performing moves. The reason that souls likes blew up is that they're easy to learn at a base mechanical level. There's no combos, you don't have to learn any specific input strings, or have to do quarter circles or anything like that, you hit 1 button and do an attack. This is appealing to a much wider audience because they can immediately pick up the game and play it without having memorize lists of attacks or constantly having to pull up combo lists to remember the different combos for various weapons.
This is the same reason that there's been a major resurgence in fighting games recently. Fighting games have introduced things like "easy operation" control schemes that allow people to play those games without having to memorize long combo strings and without having to develop muscle memory to do quarter circles, half circles, pretzels, or other motions.
People don't like control complexity, they like mechanical complexity. They like complexity they can think or react their way out of rather than complexity that requires memorization of specific inputs. I can pick up Dark Souls right now after not having played it for several years and probably speedrun it without much difficulty. I can't do the same thing with Bayonetta, just pick it up and play it as if no time has past, because I won't remember even half of my bread and butter combos.
Additionally, another reason that character action games have wained in popularity is that people expect larger and larger games for their dollar. Elden Ring offers 100 hours of gameplay for a first playthrough. Devil May Cry 5 offers 15, but is meant to be replayed multiple times. A lot of people don't replay games, or feel that replayability is more of a bonus rather than a core aspect of a game. It's harder to convince people to invest in a short $70 game that they might replay 10 times than it is to get them to buy a game that's going to give them 40-80 hours of content right off the bat in their first playthrough.
With regards to parrying being a problem, I don't agree. Devil May Cry has had the Royal Guard style since DMC3 and no one complained about it then. Parrying is like any other feast or famine system. It's a reward for taking risks, no different than something like a perfect dodge. I think its way worse when a game has a parry system, but the parry isn't actually particularly good or useful, like for example Witcher 3. Witcher 3 has a parry, but when you do it all it does is allow you to do a follow up attack that's slightly more powerful than standard. You can do significantly more damage to an enemy by dodging behind them and hitting them in the back instead of parrying, and it's also a much safer option, making the parry completely pointless (I don't think I used it once after the initial tutorial).
Edit: I didn't realize my response was so long. I would have charged clients $100 for this opinion.
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Another thing about parrying in Souls games is it’s not even about a max damage option as much as a tactical tool, due primarily to the amount of iframes it and the follow-up riposte gives the player. It’s still a high risk playstyle because of the timing requirements across however many different enemies, but the reward is more of a niche yet very effective in certain situations.
Ninja Gaiden has always been described as anti-style. You can be stylish if you're skilled enough and know the enemies in and out, but the game is meant to try and kill you hard. I still consider a Stylish Action/Action game, but of a different breed.
MildConviction more or less said the same thing in your first paragraph, though he worded his slightly differently. I am not much of a speedrunner, but I've played through Bayonetta 1 & 2 so many times, I can remember most combos on the spot. Especially in Bayonetta 2.
Very useful indeed. I can do the more complicated inputs, but it's nice to be given options when I don't want to bother or I have trouble inputing a ridiculous input.
The whole $ per hour thing is bullshit to me mostly. I am not asking people to pay $70+ for a short or shorter game, but you can have all the content in the world, but if your 40-80 game doesn't keep interested by the bare minimum or just has mediocre gameplay or quest after mediocre quests, then I am not sticking around and rather stick with the shorter game that has awesome replay value and extra modes. It's why I don't bother with a majority of open world games in the first place.
MC mentioned to people who have a problem with parrying or perfect dodging are vocal minorities making it sound like a bigger issue than it is. Though he doesn't mention people having with DMC3-5 having parrying, but a bunch of games that came out afterward in either genre. Once again though, vocal minority acting like bitches, because they want to hear themselves talk and think they have something important to say.
Especially with Bloodborne.