I saw this but totally forgot to link it here.
BTSX the best. Tempted to play it through again now that it’s “done.”
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i was so hype for a minute there
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Don’t think I can resist
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DF Retro is my favorite part of Digital Foundry.
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We should do a Q2 multiplayer night. Aesthetically it’s a low point–both the boring sci-fi trappings, and that jello model animation interpolation–but there’s some stand out features unique to that entry, like the hand grenades, the shotgun, that conveyor belt dm map, and the Chaos mod.
We’ll have to put together a plug-in player model and skin download pack ahead of time, so everyone can properly coordinate their ensembles.
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That’s not Space Hunter, this is Space Hunter!
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b)
Sounds like you’d both want a high pace if you’re going for rolling forward into danger, and a game focused on keeping yourself from being surrounded. I suspect Doom’s tools for spatial awareness and manipulating AI on the sides aren’t great; my gut is that one-hit death doesn’t fit with roll-in.
But! Vanquish offers great lessons on merging fragility with aggression, especially around spending shield for movement and popping shield for finishers.
That Vanquish forces you to burn your entire shield bar to do a melee attack singlehandedly made me never go back to the game after I beat it once.
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It’s an off-kilter rhythm but there’s a context where it makes sense – it’s never more clear than in the horde mode, where the waves arrive at such a pace that you’re required to burn 90% of your shield sliding into shotgun range, spend the last drop on a melee to finish off the bruiser, and then spray from behind cover as the next wave spawns on the other side of the arena.
It’s one of the best loops I’ve ever seen in an action game but if the difficulty isn’t correct you’re weighted down waiting. Unfortunately most of the single-player level design doesn’t push you in multiple directions as works best.
Yeah, I kinda wish there was more variability to the heat bar and doing a melee attack. Like one quick swat would just be 1/4 of a bar or so but doing the full mash would fully drain. The others like the backhand and somersault kick would just be half. That way you still has some meter to get away while they are staggered but still cost you some ability to get away.
I never really discovered the loops to vanquish because of that and didn’t explore melee options much because I hated being in a state where I didn’t have all my movement options.
just like nu-DooM, I still consider it a best-of-5-years action game because of the times it works even though it’s not a total package because those highs are so high (nu-DooM has horrendous pacing, it can’t consolidate secret-hunting callbacks with the action breaks, and the glory kills create a nice resource loop but could have been done so much better with proper charge/release vulnerability periods)
This sounds pretty easy to do in Unity.
I certainly think Vanquish is something beautiful and special. Just, as a Not 3D Action Brawler Gamer, that weird interruption to flow was the small push necessary to prevent a lot of replays and the formation of expertise.
That’s fair. I don’t think Mikami’s games are as good at teaching playstyles as they are at enforcing them through difficulty and scoring (contrast with classic Castlevania/Souls games which do a very good job teaching the slow, cautious playstyle and aggro management). And I’m not even certain the ideal flow is possible within the campaign, which always seemed to run out of spawn waves just as I was getting into a rhythm, or forced me to wait out an autoscrolling segment.
I ‘liked it a lot’ until the horde/arcade mode actually presented the game in the loop it desired.
Worth noting in Vanquish is that for whatever reason the disc launcher melee attack doesn’t wipe out your meter at all.
When I finished Vanquish I felt like I still had no idea how the game wanted me to play it and I consider that to be a rather serious flaw. I also generally do not like Platinum games though (this is the game that reinforced that notion).