Extra Punctuation: Action Is Not Finisher Porn

[Mangue Surfer]

Out of focus. The X-Ray moves can take to 27 to 33% of the enemy's life bar. If connected with other combos can go up to 50%. They not only must have "weight" but, more important, the game need give time to the offended rethink your strategy. You see, one guy had his life bar go to 50% to 20% in an instant, the other guy don't have more juice to perform other X-ray or even super moves (at least not immediately). The battle WILL change, so the human beings playing the game need time to reassess the fight. This IS the gameplay perspective.

Thus, the Yahtzee perspective isn't the gameplay perspective, it?s more like a voyeur perspective, a movie geek perspective. He want watch a nice show. It?s ok but the guys playing aren?t machines they are human beings, they need think and rethink in the heat of battle. It?s not that easy, they need time. And the Batman example it?s not good. It?s virtually impossible lose a fight in Arkham Asylum. It?s ok because you are the ?Goddamn Batman? but, you never need to rethink your strategy so, what's the point?

PS.: Sorry for the bad english.

 

[Namewithheld]

And I'm reminded of just how awesome it was to pull off a 20-30 hit combo in Arkham Asylum.

Yeah, that did carry more weight than spamming Kano's X-Ray with infinite super meter.

Only a 30?

Pfff, I usually hit 50s when I'm doing the combat rooms. Specially the extreme ones.

 

[Realitycrash]

Extra Punctuation: Action Is Not Finisher Porn

Yahtzee doesn't get why action games stop the action.

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You're still Bitching about the same bullshit aspect we long countered !

THE FINISHER IS EXACTLY LIKE THE ULTIMATE IN OTHER GAMES GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL OR FUCKING FIND A NEW JOB YOU'RE TURNING STALE AND ARE JUST RANTING ABOUT SHIT THAT ISN'T AN ISSUE

What a shame to waste such a high postcounter on such a silly thing.

 

[Realitycrash]

It was designed for casuals or just shitty gamers.

So, tell me, how would the game have been improved if the combat was more "skilled"?

Want it harder? Turn up the difficulty-setting.

 

[RTR]

I know Yahtzee wouldn't care about this following argument, but he's talking about the game from a single player perspective, IMHO.
First of all, I think it's unfair to compare a solo action game like God of War to this game. Yes, the asthetics are very similar, but they both have a different focus in terms of a more ideal way of playing. Generally, fighting games are better when you can play with someone else other than the AI in the game. Yes, I know Mortal Kombat has a single player component, but it functions with the same mechanics used elsewhere in the game. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the game as if I was indifferent about it, I just don't see it as an issue.
The purpose of Mortal Kombat is, for the most part, more social; the satisfaction of getting together with a friend and seeing who can come out on top. While the finishing moves can be repetitive, they are satisfying because of the pressure that ensues over the feeling of overcoming your opponent.
Also, nobody's looking at Mortal Kombat, not even from the very beginning, as something that should have dramatic weight. They never tried for it, but people still played it anyway. And it was awesome.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

"On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness" had some swift and rather brutal finishers. They were really hard to execute as well, which added that sense of satisfaction every time one would manage to pull them off.

Overall a neat game with a nice sense of humor, even if you're not a fan of "Penny Arcade" (I sure am not). The only problem with it is that, like most episodic games, they didn't finish it: only two episodes were released out of logical four.

 

[Caliostro]

Why do so many game developers have this curious blind spot to the fact that anything that's part of the core gameplay is going to be seen over and over and over again?

Or even more offensive: Death animations that NEVER FUCKING END.

I think this is one of those "people that made the game forgot to play it" issues. There really is no other explanation for some of them. It seems that whomever is making these animations gets so impressed by the fruit of their labor that they completely forget people will be seeing these every other second. And they never get a chance (or have the will) to play the game themselves, so they haven't the slightest clue how often people will be seeing them.

I loved the fighting in God of War... Except for the fact that if I wanted to level up my shit and get all the powerups, I needed to apply these cockblockers with every other kill. This completely ruined the flow of combat. And yes, Arkham Asylum was absolutely perfect as an example of good game flow.

I have a completely different set of grievances against MK though, mostly that it comes across as a somewhat cynical "My First Street Fighter" covered in gore and tits.

Cheers.

 

[Ladnil]

As one of the four guys still playing Halo Reach, all I could think about while reading this was how stupid assassinations are.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

It's got to the point where you can ask "why buy the game, when you can just watch the fatalities and babalities on youtube?"

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

I reckon the most annoying example of this would be Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

About 85% of kills end in an Ezio performing a somewhat elaborate finisher, complete with fancy camera angles (which can be mercifully disabled in the options). They look cool and there's enough of them that I never really got tired of seeing the same ones.

Problem is, other enemies can run up and smack you before you're done. Since you have no way to avoid the finishers, this results in a ridiculous series of interrupted stabbings.

I'd like to disagree and point out that those moments offer an [b[excellent[/b] opportunity to scope out which enemy is the best to continue your combo on. That combo mechanic works well because the problem you mentioned will NEVER happen unless you don't pick your targets carefully.

Trust me, fight your way to atleast Silver medals in the Virtual training combat courses and you'll get a VERY good sense of how to handle a crowd of enemies in one precise uninterrupted chain.

 

[SilentHunter7]

I like finishing moves. I feel that God of War would've been nearly as enjoyable without Kratos doing things like impaling the Hydra on a ship's mast. Of course, I agree 100% that they shouldn't be overused. Save them for boss fights where the cinematic appeal will have the most impact, and make them unique so as not to make them get boring over time.

Or if you REALLY want to have finishers against normal enemies make it part of the combat. Like if you pull off a combo chain that kills an enemy, have the last blow turn from a standard sword slash into a quick riposte through the unfortunate enemy's throat (or turn a power move into a decapitation or other kind of dismemberment). Quick enough not to interrupt the flow of battle, visceral enough for the cinematic appeal, and simple enough to program multiple such moves to keep things fresh.

And instead of button matching games when a boss's health gets to a certain point, have like an ultimate meter or some such that fills with long combo chains, and hard to pull off moves. When it's full, THEN you can do the ridiculous, over-the-top finisher. Budokai 3 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpsMGZU2B6I] comes to mind, though more for the short and sweet minigame they use and overall ridiculousness of their finishers, and less for the stupid crap they make you do before you can use one.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox was the worst offender in my opinion. I couldn't finish the game because of it. It got too boring and a lot of enemies wouldn't die unless you did a finisher. That, and the bugs. Replaying a two hour level sucks butts. If you google "felch coughing," this story is the first thing to come up.

 

[hypovolemia]

I just fell a little in love with the cooking broth metaphor.

Actually, I enjoy the X-Rays in MK more than I enjoyed the QTE in God of War or even Bayonetta. The reason for that, I guess, is repeatability... For MK, you have to fill a bar to be able to pull them off. That, combined with the amount of damage they did when they connected, means you can't just spam those moves over and over and over again.

You can't spam those in Bayonetta either. Just wanted to point that out.
Also you just gotta love

Spoiler: this.

punching god into the sun (and the Big Bang Bonus you get for doing that).

With the example of the X-Ray moves in particular, I find myself wondering why they couldn't have implemented it differently. For example, let's say that instead of executing the same move every time, it puts you into an X-ray mode and leaves you in control while showing you the damage you're inflicting with each attack.

I don't like Mortal Kombat, but that sounds pretty cool.

On an unrelated note, I think Yahtzee should review (if you want to call it that) more niche games. That would probably bring a bit of fresh air into Zero Punctuation every now and then. It could shift the focus slightly from the flaws of AAA-developers to interesting gameplay or storytelling. And I really hope Yahtzee will review Catherine. That game is certainly different.

 

[Trishbot]

I happen to appreciate Mortal Kombat's X-rays. They are very high-risk, high-reward, doing many things right.

They do "break the flow" of the game... and that's a GOOD thing in my book. Why? Because in a fighting game, especially one like Mortal Kombat, I view it like a good game of chess. You attack, they defend/dodge/counter. They attack, you defend/dodge/counter. It's a back and forth parry of moves, timing, maneuvering, and outsmarting.

And like Chess, I sometimes need time to plan my next move after my opponent makes an amazing comeback or deals me a heavy blow. Or I bide my time, plot my moves, build my strength, and then execute my coup de grace. I want to breathe a little bit and enjoy the reward for pulling it off.

Beyond that, X-rays ARE OPTIONAL. And that adds a lot of strategy to the mix. Only poor players exclusively use X-rays (especially when you know how to defend or counter them). Smarter and more skilled players use their meter to get out of tricky combos or to augment their normal moves with enhanced specials to supplement damaging combos. The meter has multiple uses, and focusing only on the X-rays is not tapping into the depth the system offers.

So I really don't have a problem with QTE or finisher porn any more than I do with beautiful CG cutscenes in Final Fantasy, scanning enemies in Metroid Prime, botching puzzles in Portal, or even Riddler Trophies in Arkham Asylum, all of which break "the flow" of a steadily beating game experience.

 

[Slinker07]

I started to think of the assasinations in halo: reach after reading this. This instant kill move you can do if you manage to sneak behind enemys. They are just about 2-3 seconds long. And they are mostly really hard to do on multiplayer and in singelplayer.

And I love em! They feel like a small reward during gameplay, and short and so they don't feel repetive. You also put yourself at great risk when doing them. Since other enemys can intrupt it and save their teammate. . Which can often lead to hilarious situations.

 

[Alphalpha]

Yes Yahtzee, that was an excellent metaphor.

Unskippable cutscenes of any kind are my biggest irritation with games, simply because they're stupid and unnecessary, and nobody has ever liked them.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I'll agree that cinematic finishers are a nuisance, but I will say that conditional finishers are exciting. When it shifts to Poseidon's perspective and you hit a few buttons to watch Kratos obliterate the living hell out of the camera was one of the best death scenes I've ever seen. Admittedly, you get to participate in that more than the insta-kill with a grab attack sequences for beleaguered enemies, and it would be better if you could move seamlessly from that decapitation to continued assault, say for instance by throwing the body at enemies t stun them and following with a blade swing that left them two feet shorter, their legs suddenly ending at their knees. But pressing the button to rip them in half, then another to throw, followed by a third to separate tops from bottoms. That would work because we could still be involved in the actual kill.

 

[SanguineSymphony]

It was designed for casuals or just shitty gamers.

So, tell me, how would the game have been improved if the combat was more "skilled"?

Want it harder? Turn up the difficulty-setting.

I don't like canned combat.... I want my presses to have direct consequences. It makes the combat fresher and gives me more to shoot for than how big a combo I can string together... After getting 20 plus hit combos in most battles it gets stale fast.

I liked the Platforming and the Stealth in AA but prefer Bayonetta and DMC3's combat by a mile.

 

[Mangue Surfer]

Capcom got it right. Ultra moves in SSFIV are 3 or 4 seconds long. That's enough time to make a spectacle without breaking the action flow.

The X-ray last about 4 seconds. The longest 6. The second Ryu ultra take 6 seconds (I'm not a crazy guy with an chronometer, I see this things on the youtube, if you wanna know). In fact, the close up "fist met chin" in this ultra it's an obvious inspiration to the MK X-Ray moves. Borderline, X-Ray are ultra movies with dark humor.

With the example of the X-Ray moves in particular, I find myself wondering why they couldn't have implemented it differently. For example, let's say that instead of executing the same move every time, it puts you into an X-ray mode and leaves you in control while showing you the damage you're inflicting with each attack.

They already do. In the Street Fighter Alpha series. There's a mode in which instead of have ultras your character moves more powerfull and you can make better combos. It's functional but is damn hard. The ultras are simple more convenient.

Sorry for the bad english.