Whoa, what? When did that happen, and where?Karavision said:
OT: AAA publishers, please give Yahtzee something to review! What, are you all scared that what you release will be overshadowed by Destiny?
Zero Punctuation: Transistor - Like Bastion But...
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
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OT: AAA publishers, please give Yahtzee something to review! What, are you all scared that what you release will be overshadowed by Destiny?
Fair enough.
I have to say I think I liked the ideas of Transistor more then I liked Transistor itself. More so then the conception behind Bastion even. It suffered a lot in execution though, and while I absolutely loved the in-depth customization the downtime system needed some reworking.
Overall I quite liked it though. The story's pretty good although it definitely seemed to try too hard at points with its vagueness. And the soundtrack is better then Bastions IMO.
I have to say I think I liked the ideas of Transistor more then I liked Transistor itself. More so then the conception behind Bastion even. It suffered a lot in execution though, and while I absolutely loved the in-depth customization the downtime system needed some reworking.
Overall I quite liked it though. The story's pretty good although it definitely seemed to try too hard at points with its vagueness. And the soundtrack is better then Bastions IMO.
The combat sounds clever and unique (always a plus), but the story has some really annoying cliches, such as the amnesiac player character, starting the GAME in the middle of the STORY, and vein intentionally obtuse and vague with the story elements you're supposed to piece to gather. Game story writers, "vague" + "confusing" =/= "smart".
I don't think they ever implied that Red had amnesia. And to be fair, you're not really in the middle of the story. Mr. Nobody's death is really the only major event that happens before the game starts, and you are around for the processing in it's entirety.Darth_Payn said:
And while I agree that making a story intentionally vague can be annoying, I really did like learning the background of the city through using the abilities.
I still prefer Bastion's storytelling, and I fully acknowledge that Transistor is a much more difficult game to get into, I love it.
It's more that his idea of them is very outdated. He seems to think that they are literally switching genders (boy-->girl or girl-->boy) whereas it's actually that their gender (which is their male/femaleness as far as them as a person goes) doesn't match their physical sex; the old 'woman trapped in a man's body' term is basically literal. So the sister in the joke would always have been a sister, she just used to look like a guy.Clowndoe said:
The reason people get annoyed at this is because the 'girl who used to be a man' thing is often used as a reason for hatred and even violence towards trans people (see Ace Ventura for a good example), a feeling often based on homophobia (some straight men are fucking terrified that a woman they hit on will have a penis because they think that would make them gay). I'll give Yahtzee this though, were his concept of trans people correct that would have been a decent pun.
I do understand your unusual tastes and your right to live your own life, Yatzhee, but I would like you to stop seeing my dad. Dead people cannot give clear consent, and the grave tender wants a word.
Christ know what the fuck mum sees in you.
Christ know what the fuck mum sees in you.
(from the credits sequence here) "Utopia just ain't what it used to be."
Well, maybe we should have a game where we're sitting pretty in a Utopian society, WITHOUT everything falling apart - or at least not falling apart before we have a full clue what the mythical element that flew over our heads means, Bioshock Infinite.
Well, maybe we should have a game where we're sitting pretty in a Utopian society, WITHOUT everything falling apart - or at least not falling apart before we have a full clue what the mythical element that flew over our heads means, Bioshock Infinite.
The problem is that puns rely on the meaning of words. The definition of a trans person is major controversy with respect to the discussion about trans people. Yahtzee's joke relies the general public's definition which is based on stereotypes and stigmas. It can be very disheartening for trans people to see uninformed opinions perpetuated and give support to outsiders in deciding who they are instead of letting trans people decide how to represent themselves to the world. Ignoring the social implications, Yahtzee's pun was still shoehorned in just to have a punchline.Clowndoe said:
THE GAME;
I'm surprised that nobody has brought up the linearity of Transistor. The game is constantly pushing the player forward to advance the plot. You can't do any backtracking or grinding. This makes the use of limiters to adjust the challenge and experience gain an odd design decision. it is not intuitive in a linear game. It does weird things to difficulty curve depending on when and how many limiters you use.
Amen to that, and not even in the least bit of an offensive one at that.TaboriHK said:
If the game had been Germonic or something and he talked about it being German harmonica guess how outraged I would be! You're right, I would be 12 outraged.
EDIT: to the 1995 meaning of it where people think that. The person WAS your brother until you (or she) realized fully who she was. The moment they come to terms and identify as a woman then they're your sister. Just like if a gay person has a wife, they were still gay the whole TIME but you didn't know(they didn't know or admit) so it's not like retroactively you should say they were never your spouse.
And now cue the smug, intellectually-insecure people to come in and yell at Yahtzee for using GOTO in a BASIC program.
Transistor looks interesting, but I think I'll wait for a sale on it.
Transistor looks interesting, but I think I'll wait for a sale on it.
As soon as he mentioned the name, I knew he was going to say "Transistor sounds like a combination of the words trans and sister". Though, he did go on to put some actually funny stuff in afterwards.
Er, transgender people get murdered for being transgender all the time. It's why there's always a long list of new names for each years's Transgender Memorial Day...and even the fact that people across the world remember them on that one day pisses lots of people off.marioandsonic said:
Nope. But I do get to decide if I find it ridiculous and react as such.RoonMian said:
To quote a man: Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.
EDIT: I'm a VERY open person and I am all for gay/trans etc. rights, however when you start getting angry about things like this it DOESN'T help your cause, at all. It just makes it seem as if you want to scream persecution or get angry about any little thing, I'm certain there are quite a few trans people who wouldn't mind that pun at all.
EDIT 2: Just to stay on topic, I actually think it's a really cool idea to be able to use different abilities differently and stuff. It also reminds me of your Marvel super hero MMO (No idea what it was actually called or even if it was marvel?) how you can have gadget based scare powers or scare based gadget powers or W/E.
I know transgendered people (and LGBTQ people in general) are sadly murdered all the time.thaluikhain said:
I just though Karavision was referring to a specific news story, because I hadn't heard that.
Thus the general summing up was "to ambitious for its own good". The game-play too complex and story too vague.
SuperGiant Games kind of remind me of the band 'Arcade Fire'. They strike gold with their first release; became overnight indie darlings; and are put in the incredibly awkward position of being required to follow that up with something even better. So they try to stick to their strength whilst trying to innovate at the same time.
Obviously, that was always going to be a hit and miss affair. They are a small as well as new. I would agree that the story lacked the dynamic edge and direction of Bastion. However, and this is my own personal opinion; I definitely preferred Transistor's combat system. Now this is just personal preference. I play strategy games; and ever so occasionally the odd RPG. This is because I have the reflexes of a lobotomised slug. Therefore games that require any degree of refined coordinated high-speed manoeuvres leave me floundering and always have. Hence why I found it hard to complete 'Bastion'.
'Transistor' on the other hand allowed me to pause and to plan. More than that, I found the attack and upgrade menu to be a work of genius. One of those things that was so obvious, I couldn't think for the life of me why it hadn't been tried before. My only criticism being that it certain upgrades gave you overpowered attacks, thus making the game far too easy; especially towards the end.
I also liked the music and art design; but again, that is just a matter of opinion.
SuperGiant Games kind of remind me of the band 'Arcade Fire'. They strike gold with their first release; became overnight indie darlings; and are put in the incredibly awkward position of being required to follow that up with something even better. So they try to stick to their strength whilst trying to innovate at the same time.
Obviously, that was always going to be a hit and miss affair. They are a small as well as new. I would agree that the story lacked the dynamic edge and direction of Bastion. However, and this is my own personal opinion; I definitely preferred Transistor's combat system. Now this is just personal preference. I play strategy games; and ever so occasionally the odd RPG. This is because I have the reflexes of a lobotomised slug. Therefore games that require any degree of refined coordinated high-speed manoeuvres leave me floundering and always have. Hence why I found it hard to complete 'Bastion'.
'Transistor' on the other hand allowed me to pause and to plan. More than that, I found the attack and upgrade menu to be a work of genius. One of those things that was so obvious, I couldn't think for the life of me why it hadn't been tried before. My only criticism being that it certain upgrades gave you overpowered attacks, thus making the game far too easy; especially towards the end.
I also liked the music and art design; but again, that is just a matter of opinion.
As much as I like Transistor and respect how it was more ambitious, I do think Bastion did pretty much everything Transistor did better (except visuals and soundtrack, but in that case both were gorgeous and Transistor was slightly more-so). The world-building was stronger, the combat had a better flow, and it didn't expect you to absorb a massive info-dump for everything the game had in the first 10 minutes of play. Even as someone who played through it, played through it again to get all achievements, and looked up the wiki, I still can't help but feel I didn't understand everything in the story. In fact, I think Yahtzee in his explanation of the story and setting gave me more information than the game did, and that's a problem.
But aye, I agree with pretty much all Yahtzee's points (and fuck Switch. Sometimes the little cells helping you can help draw agro for a bit, but I didn't use it for more than that since you can't do friendly fire). I like it, but they need to pace out how it feeds us the information.
But aye, I agree with pretty much all Yahtzee's points (and fuck Switch. Sometimes the little cells helping you can help draw agro for a bit, but I didn't use it for more than that since you can't do friendly fire). I like it, but they need to pace out how it feeds us the information.
I think it might grow on me.SirBryghtside said:
The last time I did have some trouble starting with a game was Baldur's Gate 2, after some false starts and a year not looking at it, I grabbed it, and about 300 hours later almost every bit was explored and played with.
Transistor might be something like it after a while.