Gripe about What You're Playing 2: Bellyache-tric Boogaloo

Sakura Wars I love your mecha/harem anime bullshittery, but that is not how a theatre is run. You can't run a theatre with only a handful of performers and only one tech crew. Even if this is back in the 1920 you still need a costumer, dresser, tech director, director, construction, and backstage crew.

MarcAlan said:

Sakura Wars I love your mecha/harem anime bullshittery, but that is not how a theatre is run. You can't run a theatre with only a handful of performers and only one tech crew. Even if this is back in the 1920 you still need a costumer, dresser, tech director, director, construction, and backstage crew.

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Removed game from my wishlist

madhair60 said:

It's a shame too because the cutscenes straight crack me up

Edit: also notably this is very on brand for Battletoads

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Using your tongue requires a combination of shoulder button, face button, and analog stick movements. There are three different combinations depending on the particular context in which you want to use your tongue. Regaining health in the heat of battle is dependent on remembering which one is which to successfully eat flies.

I've played it, though not for a while. I'm not trying to snark just saying that Battletoads has always been kind of shonky and it's the personality and notoriety that carries it forward. imo.

The beat-'em-up mechanics from the first level of Battletoads could sustain a whole game, but they decided not to do that. This was always its great tragedy.

This is just an irritation, not a real gripe. But I don't like that, in Spyro 2, you have to learn abilities, before you can do some things. I liked about the first game, that you could go into a level, and know that you can finish it in one go. Now, in the very first level of Spyro 2, I know that I have to come back, because I need to learn somewhere else, how to climb ladders.

Also, if you make me learn abilities, maybe make them actually interesting, and not as boring as humanly possible. Climb ladders. Come on.

But the first impression is good, it looks like more Spyro and collecting gems is still fun. As I said, it's more an irritation, and I'm not sure how much it will impact the game. I guess I'm more annoyed at the boring nature of the skill I have to learn.

To be fair, climbing ladders does really seem like a skill that a dedicated quadruped like Spyro would have to learn how to do.

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a beautiful game with a rich, velvety soundtrack but I really would have appreciated an option to play with more modern sensibilities like difficulty adjustment as an in-game option, checkpoints, and retaining consumables upon death. Also, the physics engine, where you have invincibility frames when taking damage but the character still reacts like she's not invincible (enemy contact ping-ponging you around), is annoying as fuck, especially on certain boss battles.

I'm playing Ninja Gaiden II with Game Genie and Save States and it still piles on everything that is the worst of NES gaming so why do people sing its praises? Like, there are so many parts that would be torn apart today as horrible design. I don't get it.

I mean, I feel like you could say that about a lot of games from that era. Probably some of the games that you sing the praises of, too.

Right. I watched my brother play Ninja Gaiden 2 over the course of weeks, eventually accumulating enough memory and reflexes to blast through the game in a single life without getting hit. I'm not sure it's any more difficult than the bog-standard NES-hard games but YMMV, of course.

At least it isn't Ninja Gaiden 3.

Bongo said:

The beat-'em-up mechanics from the first level of Battletoads could sustain a whole game, but they decided not to do that. This was always its great tragedy.

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They made that game, it's called Battletoads & Double Dragon

Not exactly a gripe about what I'm playing, but a gripe about the results thereof.

So as anyone who follows me on Twitter is probably aware of, I love Ghost of Tsushima. I've logged around 310 hours on it (260 on my first playthrough, 50 on my current NG+). Because the game world is so beautiful, detailed, and perfectly crafted, about half of that time has been in Photo Mode. Sometimes I come across an interesting set design, or still life, or landscape, or a cool-looking action pose, or even a funny moment, and I spend the next half hour experimenting with lighting, color, filters, framing, composition, even the stamps I can lay on top of the shot. Sometimes I have a specific idea for a shot, and I find a set or compose it myself. So far I've collected over 6 thousand photos, many of which are lighting/filter variations on the same shot because I liked all the different versions.

I've posted, maybe, a few hundred on a specific Twitter thread with the appropriate hashtag. Since I do hour-long dumps (which amounts to 40~60 photos per dump) once every two or three weeks, I used to say "please mute the tag if these annoy you" because I didn't want to overrun anyone's timeline. But lately, I wonder if it was even necessary. No matter how proud I am of a shot, how much effort I put into one, the most views I've ever gotten is around 5, and the most likes, 2. Meanwhile, I see people who post a basic, raw shot of the main character standing in a landscape, and they get thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets, even from the game devs themselves.

I mostly take the shots because I enjoy taking them, I grew up surrounded by professional photographers and I have tons of books, but at this point, should I even bother sharing them if no one is looking? I tried changing it up last night with a similar Spider-Man 40-photo dump and I got literally 2 likes for it :/

@Zef You basically described me and Animal Crossing: New Horizons there.
One of many tweets I've done.


But anyway, if you enjoy taking them I'd say to keep sharing them if you like doing that. Personally I don't let the lack of Internet fame bother me too much, I enjoy sharing the results of my shoots and at least I'm not attracting the attention of any horrible shitheads.

Honestly, I'm not looking for internet fame (though an SP artist going, "Hey, thanks for noticing this very specific detail we hid in this forest" would be nice). A simple "nice lighting" or "I like your comp" every once in a while would be enough. At least it'd tell me whether I learned the lessons my dad and all the photographers I grew up with tried to teach me, or if my shots are garbage.

4-So said:

Right. I watched my brother play Ninja Gaiden 2 over the course of weeks, eventually accumulating enough memory and reflexes to blast through the game in a single life without getting hit. I'm not sure it's any more difficult than the bog-standard NES-hard games but YMMV, of course.

At least it isn't Ninja Gaiden 3.

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And It's quite a bit easier than pt1 as well. it's the only one of the nes games i've beaten!

Zef said:

Honestly, I'm not looking for internet fame (though an SP artist going, "Hey, thanks for noticing this very specific detail we hid in this forest" would be nice). A simple "nice lighting" or "I like your comp" every once in a while would be enough. At least it'd tell me whether I learned the lessons my dad and all the photographers I grew up with tried to teach me, or if my shots are garbage.

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Presentation and curation is an extremely important part of this though. If a photographer has a show they're not going to put everything they've ever taken on the walls of the gallery. They pick their best ones, add statements to them, and think about how they all relate to each other, etc.

I definitely did not think you wanted input on those posts, it seemed more archival to me and for your own enjoyment. If you want responses I think you need curation and a bit more writeup, a 40-photo dump doesn't make me think you're approaching this the way you obviously are.

Also if you're calling it a dump, that's probably self-depreciating humor but it doesn't make it seem like you are invested enough for want anyone to really critique them, and suggests to me that you may not react well to criticism so I'd be reluctant to say much? I'd select some (I haven't seen this community but sounds like posting fewer than 5 would be best) and make them strong rather than just putting everything up there. Or make it clear what you're doing "here's 10 photos with different lighting effects, what do you think is strongest?" to create engagement.

Edit: Actually I think analogy-wise MetManMas is more the gallery show equivalent and you're looking for something more like a portfolio review, but the overall point of curation still stands I think.

Regulus said:

I mean, I feel like you could say that about a lot of games from that era. Probably some of the games that you sing the praises of, too.

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Probably. But this level of knockback when you tend to have so many enemies on screen at once and teeny tiny platforms does not fall into the "tough but fair" category for me.

I...basically do exactly as you describe already? If I take 200 shots across a few gaming sessions in the same week, I only post 20 of them, and only post once every 20 days or so (frex, last week I was still posting stuff from October). As much as I like experimenting with variations, and keeping them around, I'm very selective of what I post so I only put up what I feel is worthy of critique, and while most of the tweets are just descriptive titles I've done lots of commentary on the set design, or the SFX, or the artistry of the developers, or the photo mode options, or the unintended tricks I've discovered. While I inherited "photo dump" from the GoT community itself, if that carries a negative connotation I can use something else like "today's album" instead.

I mean, I know that the secret to getting responses is to have thousands of followers, but I'd like to have ANY kind of engagement. Visual art that no one else sees has no reason to exist. Both in real life and in virtual photography, I don't take photos to be praised or to get featured, or even for my own memories; I take them because there was something I found interesting, and I want to share it with someone--all the tricks and techniques are just to make it more appealing to them, or to bring attention into something mundane. But if no one looks at all, it's like I never shared it, defeating the whole purpose.

I think that VV is right and that you'll probably need to curate a bit more. It might help to try to find a more narrow audience. I've only recently started sharing my art online (here's my twitter) and I've noticed that different content can get pretty different reactions. Anecdotally, my most recent piece on twitter (a picture Minerva from Fire Emblem) has been seen 61k times, has been interacted with 5k times, but only has around 700 likes. For the ZeroRanger pic, it's 14k, 1.7k, and 200, respectively. For the Animal Crossing screenshot, it's 650, 27, and, uh, 1.

I only had around 10-15 followers when I first posted each of them. I think you might be able to draw some conclusions about the content, though. The AC pic is in a category that receives a ton of traffic. With only a dozen followers, this was probably lost in the sea of AC content. The ZeroRanger pic did much better -- I got a retweet from the developer the day after I posted it. This probably only happened because ZeroRanger is incredibly niche, so it had far less "competition" and has a relatively small audience that is excited to see any content for it. The Minerva piece did even better, and I think it's because Fire Emblem is a nice balance of popular, but not so popular that the hashtags are completely flooded with content.

To really illustrate what I mean about narrowing the audience, though: I shared the Minerva picture with some Fire Emblem subreddits and received way more of a response than I did on twitter. 150-ish comments and something like 5k combined net upvotes or whatever. It's one of the top 10 for the last month on the Heroes subreddit now and it did pretty well in the main FE subreddit as well. It was very encouraging. I'm sure there are probably communities dedicated to sharing photomode screenshots for various games that you might want to give a shot.

Zef said:

Visual art that no one else sees has no reason to exist.

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I kind of disagree with this. I make art mostly for myself -- I've drawn probably hundreds of things that I've never shown to anybody.

I'd KILL for 27 likes. "Only 700" is a stupefying amount I can't even imagine.

But the thing that discourages me the most is that, well, if this happens with a hashtag that sees lots of traffic for a popular game, there's no chance in hell my hand-drawn digital fanart will even get noticed by my followers, let alone the fandom, so why bother.

(Also, I think we're looking at this from different angles. With the fanart I create, yeah, I want it to be seen by people in the fandom because that's who I create it for. With the GoT photos I take, I just want it to be seen by people in general, or at least my followers, not by the GoT community specifically. That's why I insist on "sharing" while you and VV insist on "curate.")

Anyway to bring this back to griping about games, I... don't think I'll be returning to FFVII Remake? I got to the Train Graveyard and while I enjoy traversing the environments and the character interactions and all of the new additions that expand upon the experience, actually playing it feels like a chore, and I feel like I've played enough of it to get my money's worth. Fiddling with all the new systems is honestly exhausting--I knew I'd have to keep track of my character and materia levels, but now I have to keep track of weapon levels for multiple weapons, I have to fulfill vague or luck-based goals for the Battle Intel sidequests, Limit Breaks are now all item-based, I'm broke all the time, etc etc. I want to get to the end of the story, and I want to explore and go through dialogue and see all the new environments and scenes, but i want to pay someone to do the combat for me.

Doesn't the game just play itself if you put it on classic difficulty?

Zef said:

I...basically do exactly as you describe already? If I take 200 shots across a few gaming sessions in the same week, I only post 20 of them, and only post once every 20 days or so (frex, last week I was still posting stuff from October).

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20 at a time is still way too much. Instead of posting 20 in single day then waiting 20 days, post a single image every day for 20 days.

Zef said:

I'd KILL for 27 likes. "Only 700" is a stupefying amount I can't even imagine.

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Oh, I apologize, I didn't mean it that way. 700 is a ton for me -- my art on IG rarely pulls more than a dozen likes. I meant it was "only" 700 relative to the amount of people that have "seen" it (61,000). My AC pic only got 1 like. And that like was from my brother, lol.

Zef said:

But the thing that discourages me the most is that, well, if this happens with a hashtag that sees lots of traffic for a popular game, there's no chance in hell my hand-drawn digital fanart will even get noticed by my followers, let alone the fandom, so why bother.

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That's not necessarily true. Like I said above, you're likely to see different levels of engagement from different audiences. Hashtags with lots of traffic have a lot of individual posts, all competing for screen time. Getting noticed on twitter is like 99% luck, but you can do things to nudge your odds.

My experience is really limited though, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

I don't want to monopolize the thread too much, but

Violentvixen said:

20 at a time is still way too much. Instead of posting 20 in single day then waiting 20 days, post a single image every day for 20 days.

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The way Twitter works, this guarantees no one would see the tweets at all, especially not my own followers (whom I prioritize over hashtag followers). A batch upload spread across an hour increases the chances for the whole batch itself to be visible to people following either me or the hashtag, and if the individual posts within the batch are distinctive enough, they may encourage someone to check the rest of the thread (another reason for me to be very selective, and to put so much effort into every one of my photos). A single upload, unless you're a Big Name contributor with thousands and thousands of followers, gets lost in people's timelines among the hundreds of other tweets, and is drowned out by the other posts in the tag itself.

I mean, this morning I posted 1 piece of fanart of my own. I used the fandom hashtag and everything. I posted it at a time when the fanartists I know are usually active on Twitter. It got 15 impressions and zero engagement until I deleted it out of embarrassment eight hours later. So :/

I've been playing Ghost of Tsushima for a while, and I've been enjoying it a fair bit. I've started the second act and seeing another big land mass full of quests and locations to free has almost completely demoralized me into just quitting right now, however. It may be my own fault for spending twenty or so hours in the first area doing most of the activities. This is a very polished and well made game that looks astonishing in some places, and killing Mongols, some of history's greatest assholes, is always fun. But there's just so many icons to go to and even some new ones in the first area have shown up.

I had to break myself a few years ago of the habit of checking every little icon that popped up on the map. Nowadays in open world games, I just tend to go to wherever the next main objective is; I'll stop and smell the roses on the way to said objective but I'm not going out of my way to check out that icon a hojillion miles away. Depending on my engagement with the game, I might go back later and take a look but I don't feel compelled to clean up any particular area before moving on.

It took a while before I was able to shut down that inner completionist but it's made these kinds of games more enjoyable as a result. YMMV, as with all things.

I actually need to go back and finish Ghost of Tsushima. It's been about 4 months since I last booted it up and I'm afraid I may have forgotten how to play, which is a problem I tend to have a lot. "Oh, I was playing <random game> and I want to go back. Do I even remember how to play? Do I actually want to start over? FFS, I was 40 hours in."

I wish I could ban bosses where you just dodge patterns for a minute straight before getting one chance to attack and then dodging again for a minute straight. It’s very frustrating to have no influence over the pace of the fight.

That always annoys me so I would be behind you on using a wish for that.

I went back to Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Finally got out of the prologue area. The game gets significantly better and opens up considerably once you make it to England. But it’s such a long, tiresome slog to get there first. There’s way too much padding in these last two AC games, I miss when you could beat them in a dozen or so hours, instead of having to dedicate 200+ to completing them. I could have beaten and platinum’d ACII: Brotherhood in the time it took to get to England.