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Hey, Talking Time, Whatcha Playin?
- Thread starter Octopus Prime
- Start date
Oh yes! The MM2 soundtrack is just so good. I made a custom rip of it for myself over 10 years ago, and it's still in my iTunes today.
Nice job beating the game! Don't let anyone tell you it's not hard. It is a Hard Game! Certainly one to be proud of finishing.
For the most part I'm pretty bad at video games, but this right here is the one thing that's so burned into my muscle memory that I'm surprised when I don't clear it first try.
Playing the last iteration of Strider seems like a nice little Metroidvania! Love that holoscarf!
Same. That and the disappearing block puzzles in Heatman's stage.
Did you start grinding as soon as possible or did you play through it without grinding?
Now that it’s finally starting to feel autumnal around here, I’ve started playing Night in the Woods for the first time. It’s really good!
I ground for a short time at the start to see how it worked as the little I knew about the game came from a retrospective I’d read. After that I kept getting lost. The overworld and levels were not very distinctive to me, and the constant enemy spawning is relentless. Unintentional grinding, or how it was meant to be played? I don’t know. It felt like the sort of game which would have come with a map in the box, so eventually I went online for one. Looking back, I have a hard time remembering anything more specific than vague “there was that brown mountain level with the sunset” or “that grey place with the pillars and that difficulty spike boss” type descriptions. The only music which I can remember is several notes of quite harsh synth from IIRC area 1.
The character control, attacks and so on felt intuitive to me in a way which other NES games so far have not. Link doesn’t have the slight diagonal hitbox I’d expect on his sword, Samus’ feet are a bit slippery, Mario is so different to most of what I’ve played I find him hard to predict, Mega Man can’t have many bullets on-screen at once. Rygar I could pick up without needing to fight my own muscle memories. I were able to send a NES back to my younger self I’d probably include a Rygar cart. Young Froggy would have found the RPG elements cool. Today I’m glad to have had chance to play it despite the appreciation being mainly academic.
I can't get over how good Morrowind is.
My main worry going in was that I would get lost all the time because I'd seen a lot of memes about how confusing it was to do open-world RPG quests without markers and arrows, but I've been finding that not to be the case. It's been fun to figure out directions using landmarks and relying on diegetic texts (notes from characters, maps you can buy in stores, descriptions in in-game books, etc.). The auto-journal system is also honestly quite good for keeping track of quests and topics, many current games do much worse than this. (Apparently this was overhauled in an expansion pack, so presumably it was a real problem right after release in 2002, but nearly 2 decades later I'm not particularly bothered that the journal was bad from May to November of 2002.)
The breadth of available magic and the lack of concern about removing potential exploits relative to Skyrim also makes this one of the best wizard simulators I've ever played. These games aren't really balanced to begin with, so I think the balance tweaks to the magic system between Morrowind and Skyrim were basically all a negative to the experience of playing the game. (I guess some things like the loss of Levitate were victims of moving to bigger 3D worlds? Hopefully it will come back, someday...)
My main worry going in was that I would get lost all the time because I'd seen a lot of memes about how confusing it was to do open-world RPG quests without markers and arrows, but I've been finding that not to be the case. It's been fun to figure out directions using landmarks and relying on diegetic texts (notes from characters, maps you can buy in stores, descriptions in in-game books, etc.). The auto-journal system is also honestly quite good for keeping track of quests and topics, many current games do much worse than this. (Apparently this was overhauled in an expansion pack, so presumably it was a real problem right after release in 2002, but nearly 2 decades later I'm not particularly bothered that the journal was bad from May to November of 2002.)
The breadth of available magic and the lack of concern about removing potential exploits relative to Skyrim also makes this one of the best wizard simulators I've ever played. These games aren't really balanced to begin with, so I think the balance tweaks to the magic system between Morrowind and Skyrim were basically all a negative to the experience of playing the game. (I guess some things like the loss of Levitate were victims of moving to bigger 3D worlds? Hopefully it will come back, someday...)
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I think a big part of it is just that whatever choice you make, you need to design your game around that choice. I can see any combination of those things as working or not working.
Morrowind does have both a world map and a mini-map. The world map is unlabeled until someone teaches you a location or you've reached it, and it only includes major locations to begin with. The mini-map includes all locations, but it's black fog of war style thing with a short range around your current location, so in general you're not going to see a location on the mini-map until you've basically there. This strikes a good balance, preventing a frustrating situation where you basically followed the verbal directions correctly but just barely missed it. The mini-map here mostly feels like the open world RPG navigation equivalent of platformers providing a brief Wile E Coyote effect, a concession to the way you think it should feel. It's there to augment following diegetic directions, not to replace it.
Watching speedrunners do Morrowind really is fun. So many ways to break things.
4-So
Spicy
No balance really needs to be struck. Developers simply need to allow people to turn off icons, mini-maps, quest markers, and so on at the player's discretion. That way, people like myself who are really focused on forward momentum, not having to "figure things out" (generally speaking), and don't have much time to dick around, can keep all of those systems on, while people who want to get their feet muddy, dig into the game, and really digest it can keep those systems turned off.
I'm not sure how easy or hard it is to cater to both crowds re: game design but I'm also not a game developer and isn't my problem to figure out. I just think options are lovely.
I'm not sure how easy or hard it is to cater to both crowds re: game design but I'm also not a game developer and isn't my problem to figure out. I just think options are lovely.
My wife got me a couple of 3DS games for my birthday! I've spent a few late-night hours on Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, to the point where I reached the rather weaksauce final boss and the credits rolled. Not sure how much I'll keep coming back to it--while FF music is lovely, the fact that so much of it is self-remix makes even a respectably-sized song list feel repetitive.
EDIT: Looking up a song list, it appears that my hope of tapping and swiping to the tune of "Dancing Calcobrena" from FFIV has been dashed. Aw.
EDIT: Looking up a song list, it appears that my hope of tapping and swiping to the tune of "Dancing Calcobrena" from FFIV has been dashed. Aw.
At least one has been made already, a few years ago I think, although I can't recall offhand which Youtuber did it.
Unfortunately, the argument in favor of those things, at least in the context of modern Bethesda-likes, is "budget". It's a lot easier to have your quest giver say "I'll mark it on your map" for all your semi-randomly generated quests than to record lines of them describing every possible location. Even more so when the quest giver may not have a fixed location, so you can't have them provide directions at all, even without voiced dialogue.
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw came out recently on consoles and it is very much my kind of nonsense.
You’re a Space Lady retired bounty hunter who has an Astro garbage truck and a hankerin’ for revenge after your husband is murdered (she treats it less like a tragedy and more like a frustrating chore); and you complete bounty hunts and deliveries in order to get enough cash to upgrade your ship into something you can use to actually avenge aforesaid murder.
Kind of feels like a Burt Reynolds movie, if he were a woman and lived in outer space
You’re a Space Lady retired bounty hunter who has an Astro garbage truck and a hankerin’ for revenge after your husband is murdered (she treats it less like a tragedy and more like a frustrating chore); and you complete bounty hunts and deliveries in order to get enough cash to upgrade your ship into something you can use to actually avenge aforesaid murder.
Kind of feels like a Burt Reynolds movie, if he were a woman and lived in outer space
I can't speak to the actual tech cost of implementing quests in random locations since I'm not a programmer, but I can promise you that it's actually pretty trivial to record dialogue for having the quest start in alternate locations. I do this all the time at work, it only takes about a minute. If the location comes at the end of a lengthy explanation, you can just reuse the explain-y bit and add on a new location to it for wherever you need.
This is a real consideration, and one that comes up a lot. There's also another possibility: the design team may not have come up with a final location yet for the quest giver or the quest when the dialogue was recorded, so the script has to be a bit vague to allow for placement later.
Paperboy-em-ups
It’s like Animal Crossing, but with lasers and explosions
I really did not anticipate how much of an impact a decent arcade stick would make for some games; my skill at Salamander practically doubled!
Now, if you double nothing, it’s still nothing, but reaching and almost beating, the second boss on one credit is still an accomplishment for me, even with the game set to the lowest possible difficulty, so I’ll take the proportionate win, gladly!
Now, if you double nothing, it’s still nothing, but reaching and almost beating, the second boss on one credit is still an accomplishment for me, even with the game set to the lowest possible difficulty, so I’ll take the proportionate win, gladly!
Playing Mega Man 2 again. I can now finish all of the robot master stages with reliance on the transport items and the metal blade instead of rewind and save states ... except for Quick Man's stage. That one I might have to commit time to repeatedly replaying until I have it down to semi-reliable muscle memory; I don't want to be intimidated by it any more. It's so satisfying to see how much I've improved in the other stages. After that I've got the Wiley Stages to improve at, and then I will officially be Not Completely Dreadful at one whole Mega Man. One down, ungodly numbers of them left to go.
Also working on finishing a replay of A Link Between Worlds. Got 4 Lorule dungeons left so I'll aim to finish it over the weekend. Still a very good game, was my favourite 2D Zelda but now I think the Link's Awakening Remake might pip it at the post thanks to smoother control and the sheer exuberance of the presentation. Would happily play LBW for a third time if it got a Switch version but probably won't if it remains 3DS exclusive. In my wildest dreams Nintendo has a backwards compatibility program similar to the xbox's. Then I wake up and still can't play sufficient quantities of Metroid on my Switch. Sigh.
Is there going to be a Halloween Castlevania thread? I'm wondering about doing some Castlevania this month. Not chosen my games yet. Played most of the Explorevanias at their respective releases plus replays of the GBA trio on Wii U, only played a little bit of Classicvania.
Also working on finishing a replay of A Link Between Worlds. Got 4 Lorule dungeons left so I'll aim to finish it over the weekend. Still a very good game, was my favourite 2D Zelda but now I think the Link's Awakening Remake might pip it at the post thanks to smoother control and the sheer exuberance of the presentation. Would happily play LBW for a third time if it got a Switch version but probably won't if it remains 3DS exclusive. In my wildest dreams Nintendo has a backwards compatibility program similar to the xbox's. Then I wake up and still can't play sufficient quantities of Metroid on my Switch. Sigh.
Is there going to be a Halloween Castlevania thread? I'm wondering about doing some Castlevania this month. Not chosen my games yet. Played most of the Explorevanias at their respective releases plus replays of the GBA trio on Wii U, only played a little bit of Classicvania.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
There's a Game Maker's Toolkit which talks about exactly this! And specifically about how Morrowind does it. I agree, it's much better not to have the glowing breadcrumbs - I relied on it in Fable II and at the end of the game I realised I didn't know where anything was. It destroyed the world's cohesiveness entirely.
I'm currently playing the uncensored Woolsey version of Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Animal Crossing, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance and Super Mario 64. I've got to stop playing everything simutaneously.
We had one as a companion to MEGAMAS, last year, so I don’t see why not.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Picking up Rocket League again now that it's cross-platform and on Switch. I am terrible at this game but I love it so much. Also I enjoy that the Mario car makes his jump noise.
I’m replaying Super Mario 3D Land. It’s not my favorite Mario game, but it feels really well put together. The gameplay is somewhere between NSMB and Galaxy, the structure feels a lot like Super Mario Bros., and it’s full of callbacks to SMB3. It’s in this weird middle ground where it doesn’t have a lot of unique personality, but there’s nothing I can point to that isn’t great. It’s just, kind of, an extremely competent Mario game.