are y’all out here saying bad games are bad
get that shit outta here
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Yea, I see what you’re saying. Where does that mantra come from? The old Califronia Poet’s Society? I remember Samuel R. Delany mentioning it in his book About Writing. Good stuff for sure.
sorry man, i realize that post came off as pretty aggressive
my frustration is with the cynicism that always surrounds movements of independent work once any kind of content pattern emerges, like as soon as things start to resemble each other folks act as if the work is bankrupt by virtue of being just a tiny bit samey
obviously this work is being done and consumed in volume because it’s relevant to people in some way, because there’s an audience that actually likes it and draws from it. it’s one thing to dislike an artistic zeitgeist on the basis of the actual content but it’s another to dismiss genres of work entirely bc hipsters
of course super metroid is like the perfect videogame, it doesn’t mean that everything that draws inspiration from it falls short as a whole work because it falls short of being super metroid
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Yea that’s cool, dude. We all have our moments. I’ve been there myself. Don’t sweat it 
I get you, but my point was not about games being made that resemble each other, but actually relying on such things mechanically and aesthetically and ending it there. Why are these mechanics here? What does the aesthetics mean in the greater scheme of things presented in the game? While the inspirations are apparent (and very much appreciated) the finer details are just barren; it lacks a “voice” in the mire.
But I also forget, as @stylo pointed out, that some of these devs are making their first or second game and that experience is required to hone the craft and skills of making a potentially excellent game.
After all, Super Metroid would not have existed without the experiments of Metroid I & II.
I’ll just leave it at that and be done with it.
It’s a pretty common thought pattern.
See: every boring thinkpiece on [[[Millennials]]] that targets a vaguely defined group’s mere existence.
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Belmont’s Revenge’s Hard Mode is interesting. There’s not much about it that’s different, except that and makes more enemies’ hits–specifically, monsters in the precise middle of the annoyance scale–take away whip upgrades. Also, since it’s password-activated, it forces you to finish the game in one go.
Other observations: Is the Soleiyu fight the first instance of a battle against an enemy who could be a player character (see: Maxim, Julius, Albus)? If so, it’s a not-entirely successful first attempt–I’m not sure this concept works with Classicvania mobility. On a similar note, the game’s Dracula fight is terrible, starting off being far too hard–really, game, if you’re going to keep Dracula only vulnerable to headshots, making the stage have platforms is just sadistic–until it swings around to become entirely rote-based. Finally, I am charmed by the mechanic of only making bosses appear after the player collects an otherwise useless (gameplay-wise) item.
So is it worth playing, then, if I’ve played the sequel? Oh, good! I should get it, then.
That’d be CV3
EDIT: just to be clear, in case it seemed like I was referring to Grant/Alucard/Sypha
I thought the Fall was great. Don’t worry about the gunplay, it’s more another puzzle element than a real action/twitch mechanic. Made me think about Flashback of all the things.
first: i apologize for shitting on tomb raider (psx) way back
second: can we talk about prince of persia/another world/flashback/heart of darkness and how they connect to tomb raider, and further if there are other 3D games that more appropriately capture the stilted jank of Another World (there’s a flashback sequel in 3d i haven’t tried yet, i assume that’s the spot to start)
i guess dragon’s lair is sort of in the same vein. hm. i could make a thread for this.
This sounds interesting, I can see clear control/character animation influences but the game around them feels real different
i’m really interested in “things like [x]” threads, usually with the word “like” as rigorously defined as possible. in this case it would basically be about tracing a line from dragon’s lair/prince of persia through eric chahi’s work and then seeing what recent stuff sort of fits as well
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I mean, I can see the relation with Dragon’s Lair (high graphical fidelity at the expense of limited control), but I think QTE games are essentially different from the cinematic platformers.
I honestly don’t know any other 3D games that are such blatant 3-dimensional transformations of cinematic platformers as Tomb Raider. Weirdly I don’t think there were hardly any Tomb Raider-likes, despite its huge popularity. But I could easily be wrong or just forgetting shit.
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I have this personal theory that if I could remove one game from existence it would be Super Mario 64, just because it “solved” so many moving in 3d issues so early on that most games just fell in line behind it. Tomb Raider I believe was in development around the same time so it had to figure things out on its own, and you have other early 3d platformers such as Jumping Flash, but they more or less became endangered much earlier than one would historically assume because of Mario 64 kicking things a few years ahead of schedule. It was a good game but… I’d have liked to have seen a few more years of experimentation before things became so codified.
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Deathtrap Dungeon (PSX/Win, 1998) seems to use the TR1 engine (maybe?) at least, but is definitely not a cinematic platformer. (e: actually it’s probably not the same engine, but it’s definitely something trying to cash in on TR1)
Dragon’s Lair is definitely pretty different from e.g. Another World, but I don’t know if there’s anything before DL that is even remotely what i’m looking for. DL, narrowly defined, probably represents the genesis of the idea the games I’m looking for expounded.
i’m not sure i like the term cinematic platformer because, like
what’s keeping gex games out of that category
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There was that dragon game in the late 90s that aped Tomb Raider, unfortunately I thought it was by Eidos, named Drakan or Drakhen and I’m all wrong
I don’t think I ever finished Fade to Black, and while it’s movement is still really _Flashback_y there’s not any/much jumping I remember.
Remebering it now it reminds me a bit of Hybrid Heaven, and that actually has fixed-length jumping and ledge-grabbing and stuff.
Hybrid Heaven has just a whole big pile of stuff though.
I’m not sure if Tomb Raider is particularly cinematic though. At least not in the sense that PoP and its successors are considered to be. It’s storytelling elements (FMV mostly) are typically isolated from the actual play area, if that makes sense, whereas Another World continually subverted my expectations of what might happen in a 2d side-scroller by taking away my control of the avatar for the purposes of narration. A lot of the mechanical similarity between the two is really just rooted in uninterruptable movement animations which was pretty much abandoned (“solved” as @username put it) in 3d gaming until Souls turned up.
A lot more could probably be said for the lack of a constant ost and the rather sparse hud applied in Tomb Raider, but this is more likely due to the six-person design team and their tight dev-schedule than any purposeful omage to these specific 2d games.
Yeah! I think part of the problem is that many developers looked at Tomb Raider and decided to imitate it’s combat approach and general move set without any regard for how these meshed with it’s intelligent level design. The PS1 is rife with comparable 3D action games in this respect (Urban Chaos etc.)
Core also pressured the original developers post-release for an obscene number of expansion packs and sequels which saturated the market. The emphases placed by the later games on combat, expanding the move-roster and integrating stealth-elements etc. is also indicative of the increased size of the dev team which I think was cumulative for each new release, culminating in two separate teams working on alternate entries which further diluted what made TR1 so special. No wonder the devs of TR4 tried to kill Lara.
Messiah on PC is pretty successful though because it understood verticality.
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Yea, Another World was so seamless with its art direction that there is no separation of video and gameplay states. It also allowed for creating many interactive modes (scenes/events) with the same inputs through out the entire game. It has more variations of death than almost any other video game too.
All before the advent of Quick Time Events.
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