Death Mechanics and Dark Souls

[00slash00]

i never found multiplayer a key part of dark souls. i barely ever played online and still loved the game. even if multiplayer was a key part of the game, its also a key part of cod and halo, but he doesnt play online when he reviews those games. feels like a flimsy excuse to me. and where did he hear it gets good after a certain amount of time? it gets easier after the first 10 hours but if you hate it from the start, it doesnt suddenly feel like a completely different game at one point.

im just really confused about how yahtzee could suck so much at souls games, considering he is not bad at games in general. rayman origins i couldnt even beat the demo and he didnt seem to have too much trouble finishing the game. i mean souls games arent brutally hard. theyre hard, yes but they are much much easier than old school games. considering how good yahtzee is at video games, i dont quite understand why he has so much trouble with these games

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Because (it seems) you can't claim to have a "FULL" experience if your PS3/360 is unplugged from the web... Unlike MW3/BF3 which have fully functional campaigns that don't depend on whether you are online or not.

I agree. But my point here is that playing BF3 for example in single player is also not getting the full experience.
The multiplayer aspect of BF has always been the main part of the game. In fact the BF series (pure, not Bad Company) never even had a single player until this iteration. (BF2 had bot matches which just emulated the MP)

So Yahtzee has in effect played 30% of BF3 and portrays it as one of the shittiest games of 2011 but doesn't apply the same "courtesy" to Dark Souls.

I don't care whether or not he likes either MW3 or BF3 and I fully understand that some people just don't enjoy that type of game or playing online in general, but then in my view it makes his opinion meaningless seeing as he hasn't experienced the bear-share of the game.
In effect it would be like playing DS offline and basing your view of the game solely on that - totally ignoring the fact that DS has that multiplayer component.

It's undeniable that hasn't given his attention to either those titles properly.
He's saying you can't fully appreciate DS without playing it online but he also says that you can fully appreciate MW3/BF3 without playing them online.
Which is a double standard. (which in essence is all I'm pointing out)

stuff

I know. I have played DS a fair bit

 

[Electrogecko]

Yahtzee makes a few good points, but I don't think his argument is very well thought out.

So, if I'm understanding him correctly, games that send you back to the beginning (retro) are okay, games that instantly send you back 5 seconds (Meat Boy/VVVVVV) are preferable, but games that lie in the middle ground are somehow not acceptable? Didn't he devote one of these articles to how to give video game deaths more impact? I'm sure he didn't try to argue back then that instant respawns were the way to go.

New Super Mario Bros. doesn't send you back to the beginning of the level after a gameover. (Yahtzee gets his facts about Mario games wrong so often that I'm doubting he plays them thoroughly) It sends you back to the last time the game was saved, which is after every world/castle. Additionally, a limited amount of saves can be purchased by coins that are found through exploration, providing another incentive to do so if you cared to notice. Deaths without a gameover send you back to the beginning of the level or to the mid-way checkpoint, and despite what Yahtzee may think, it takes about 5 seconds to regain control of Mario after you die, which, I'd say, is just the right amount of time to regain your composure. (or punch a pillow a few times) It's also much less time than it takes to respawn in an online shooter or a game like Batman or Skyrim that goes through a loading screen.

Mario 3D is a different story since the game is so easy and feeds so many 1up's that most players never even see a game over screen....including me....I guess I can't speak for this game's death system since I don't know all the details, but this is a different problem altogether.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong death system. It all depends on the type of game and the theme/feel that the developers are going for. Super Meat Boy is an excruciatingly difficult game in which levels can be completed in a few moments each. The developers expected that their players may very well die a dozen times within a minute, so they were left with no choice but to make each death as quick and meaningless as possible, and since the game was already more comical than dramatic, instant and abrupt respawns fit right in. In contrast, a game like Demon's Souls (I've never played it, though interested, just assuming here) is going for a dark, tense, and apprehensive atmosphere, which wouldn't be possible if deaths carried no weight or punishment.

In conclusion, I found this article to be lacking in a clear and well thought out thesis, which is how I've thought about a lot of Yahtzee's EP's recently. (The one on Context, Challenge, Gratification was good) Yahtzee needs to find another reason to dislike Mario....preferably one that makes sense.

 

[hermes]

Because (it seems) you can't claim to have a "FULL" experience if your PS3/360 is unplugged from the web... Unlike MW3/BF3 which have fully functional campaigns that don't depend on whether you are online or not.

I agree. But my point here is that playing BF3 for example in single player is also not getting the full experience. The multiplayer aspect of BF has always been the main part of the game. In fact the BF series (pure, not Bad Company) never even had a single player until this iteration. (BF2 had bot matches which just emulated the MP)

So Yahtzee has in effect played 30% of BF3 and portrays it as one of the shittiest games of 2011 but doesn't apply the same "courtesy" to Dark Souls.

I don't care whether or not he likes either MW3 or BF3 and I fully understand that some people just don't enjoy that type of game or playing online in general, but then in my view it makes his opinion meaningless seeing as he hasn't experienced the bear-share of the game.
In effect it would be like playing DS offline and basing your view of the game solely on that - totally ignoring the fact that DS has that multiplayer component.

It's undeniable that hasn't given his attention to either those titles properly. He's saying you can't fully appreciate DS without playing it online but he also says that you can fully appreciate MW3/BF3 without playing them online. Which is a double standard. (which in essence is all I'm pointing out)

Maybe all the caps and the quotes when saying "full" was not clear enough, but I was being sarcastic.

He is not saying you can't fully appreciate DS without online. He is saying that many people would complain about his opinion because he didn't play online and they regard it as a big portion of the game. There are only two answers to that comment: either they are wrong and the campaign is completely judgeable without online; or that is just bad design, as an offline experience should not need an online component to be "complete". Make it more enjoyable or expand on it, fair enough; but not be instrumental to the point it invalidates someone's opinion. I agree more with the first part, but his comment is more a critique to people complaining about the validity of his opinions than a critique against the way DS is instrumented.

BF3/MW3, on the other hand, are totally different beasts. One could argue that the focus of those games is in the online component, or that he choose to base his review on the "worst" part (namely, the single player campaign), but that is what he always does. Even in game he likes, he pays little to no attention to the multiplayer options, but since they are entirely separated noone could argue "bwaa, bwaa, you didn't play Red Dead Redemption online, your opinion in the campaign is trash"...

 

[JaredXE]

Oh God. Back in the relationship game for you, eh?

See, I just assumed he got himself a cat.

 

[AlternatePFG]

I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls lately and had pretty much the same experience.

The first few hours are maddening, obtuse, confusing, frustrating, and then after you beat the Taurus Demon and reach the parish, something just clicks. You learn to take it slow, to enjoy it for the oppressive, cruel but mostly fair beast that it is.

By the time you kill the Bell Gargoyles you'll have felt a kind of rewarding feeling that very few games these days can offer.

Totally agree. Once you finally decide to roll with the punches and go with it, the game can get really fun and exhilarating. (It helps once you realize that souls are essentially an infinite resource, so if you lose a lot of them it's not that big of a deal) It's also because that even though I've beaten it and played a significant amount of time more on other characters, that area between the Taurus Demon and Gargoyles still feels like such a fucking gauntlet.

 

[hermes]

i never found multiplayer a key part of dark souls. i barely ever played online and still loved the game. even if multiplayer was a key part of the game, its also a key part of cod and halo, but he doesnt play online when he reviews those games. feels like a flimsy excuse to me. and where did he hear it gets good after a certain amount of time? it gets easier after the first 10 hours but if you hate it from the start, it doesnt suddenly feel like a completely different game at one point.

I don't think he said those things as excuses, more as anticipated defenses to everyone that complains about his position in Dark Souls because:
A) He didn't played it long enough, and the game gets better after XXX amount of hours/YYY levels.
B) He didn't played it online, and online is such a big component of Dark Souls that he is wrong and he is playing it wrong.

Disclaimer: I don't agree with any of those statements, but seeing how defensive comments get in all his reviews, I can see those arguments coming out, several times.

 

[1nfinite_Cros5]

Oh God. Back in the relationship game for you, eh?

I anticipate the upcoming review in which you, once again, claim women are evil.

Also, "I stopped caring" sums up my experience with Demon's Souls as well. I had no investment in it. Or to put it in your terms, the context was just not there. The challenge certainly was there, and I suppose there's gratification in knocking over the big guys, but after the thousandth little guy I knock over, the chore becomes more apparent and it becomes increasingly clear that I'm not controlling a character with thoughts, feelings, and drives, but a series of numbers trying to beat other numbers.

And yet, Binding of Isaac (which someone else brought up) stuck with me. Perhaps it's the brevity, or the style, or maybe I'm actually investing in Isaac due to the setup and his depressive state.

'Sup Cyric? What brings you from GameFAQs?

Anyways, if Yahtzee only pushed a little bit further would he have finally reached the gratifying part of Dark Souls. He says he went the wrong way, so I'm wondering if he was heading towards the Tomb of the Giants. That area is BRUTAL at the beginning of the game.

But, alas, he has had enough, and I won't pester him for it. He doesn't have enough determination to plow through the game, and I won't complain

 

[Zom-B]

To each his own, I suppose. And, I guess that these just aren't the games for Yahtzee. Then again, I'm not really sure which are the games for him. Guy doesn't seem to like anything.

This not true in the slightest

stop saying this

this is getting really fucking annoying

Hey, he wouldn't have the reputation if it wasn't somewhat true. But okay, I retract my statement.

Yahtzee doesn't seem to like very many games. I can't think of any except Rayman Origins, but I'm sure he must like something.

That being said, the guy has made a career out of basically trashing games and reviewing games negatively. He's not the guy you go to for glowing praise and 5 star recommendations.

 

[walrusaurus]

That right there is pretty much the thing i hated most about dark souls. I understand that they want us to clear each gauntlet of trash between bosses as a discrete unit, I'm fine with them resetting everything when you die. What i wasn't fine with was being forced to redo the entire 20-30 minute trash gauntlet after every single attempt on the viciously difficult boss fights. There needs to be a save point before every boss. Its unbelievably irritating, and when your irritated you aren't as focused, and in a game like dark souls loosing your focus is suicide. It leads to a feedback loop, in which your pissed off at having to do the trash again, so you rush through it, and die getting more pissed off. Its a huge problem. Nearly a gamebreaking one for me. Its the reason i still haven't finished it, i can only make myself try a boss 1 or 2 times before i just get so irritated at the repetition that it just wasn't fun. That and the camera are the only two issues i have with the game.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

The game actually managed to break me as well. When i first bought it i only played for like 2 hours before not bothering anymore. I picked it up again last friday, started a brand new character and just today i'd rang both Bells of Awakening and i've had probably just as much fun as frustration.

What turned me off Dark Souls in the beginning though was all the people telling me how "You have to play the game its own way" and "if you die it's all your own fault. you're just being punished for being stupid". Such half-assed arguments i can live without, thank you very much.

 

[bjj hero]

The original Aliens Vs Predator (the 2000 game, not the abortion released last year) was criticized because you had to start the level over if you died. And the human and alien characters died if an enemy so much as noticed them. An update added a very interesting mechanic to satisfy these complaints.

They gave you a limited number of "saves" based on the play difficulty. So now choosing to save or not was turned into a strategic gameplay element instead of an obligatory extra button push every time you passed a save point, or every 30 seconds in the case of games with quicksave like doom3.

If you screwed up and saved in the wrong place there was a chance you couldn't beat the level and had to start over. If you were too conservative then you had to go pretty far back to your last safe location.

It was a great way to modernize the gameplay while still retaining the tension inherent in the "make one mistake and lose" situation and a very long level.

That sounds awful. So if Im called into work, the baby wakes up, guest drop by unexpectedly, then the game gives me the shaft for having a life?

A game should let me save whenever I need too.

 

[Something Amyss]

But Dark Souls doesn't do any of the sort. I eventually asked my self "why am I bothering? is there going to be any reward in this? Better locations, more amazing music, improved combat? No, there isn't... sod this, back to my other games."

And therein lies the difference between challenging and punishing.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

That sounds awful. So if Im called into work, the baby wakes up, guest drop by unexpectedly, then the game gives me the shaft for having a life?

A game should let me save whenever I need too.

You could still pause and walk away whenever you wanted (unlike diablows 3). You just couldn't save an unlimited amount.

 

[bjj hero]

You could still pause and walk away whenever you wanted (unlike diablows 3). You just couldn't save an unlimited amount.

Having one over diablo 3 doesnt make it right. Id rather not leave my game paused for hours on end either. Its fine if you have no responsibilities but my gaming time is more and more fractured by family life as I get older. It may have fitted me when I was a teen/student.

There really is no excuse not to let me save when I need to.

 

[Mr Companion]

Two games that did infinite life wrong:
I want to be the guy
Prince of Persia (2008)

I actually thought that Prince of Persia did infinite lives well - when you screwed something up, you turned back the clock to before you messed up. And while I haven't played I want to be the guy, I have seen it played and it seemed to work fairly well.

Just my two cents.

No he means the confusingly titled Prince of Persia game that came out in 2008 where the graphics were cell shaded and the game was hard as sin to learn but patronized the shit out of you every step of the way by having a motherly figure waving away all your problems whenever you messed up which made death about fifty times more annoying and humiliating.

You know, the one where what passed for combat was shuffling around counter attacking everything over and over. The one where you came back to life after a boss kills you but they regenerate most of their health as well which serves triple shift ruining tension by making all your actions devoid of consequence, ruining satisfaction by making you feel like you suck at the game and finally ruining the very purpose of anti-death mechanics by reverting you to a point near the start of the battle thus wasting your time anyway in the same way that a checkpoint or save would have done.

The REAL Prince of Persia games were awesome I agree, the only anti-death mechanic that served a storyline purpose a gameplay purpose and was genuinely satisfying to boot.

 

[Bostur]

The worst part about delay between attempts, is pesky loading screen tips that state the obvious.
"Tip: If you struggle with this boss, try avoiding the swirly, green chaos vortexes of death"

Yes I already figured that out. And on the off-chance that there happens to be a boss that is not completely obvious, I'd rather miss the spoiler.