Games You Played Today ##RELOAD

[Tulpa]

Final boss in Ys I Chronicles version is so unbearably bad.

[CourierRice]

IT’S SO BAD

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[toups]

on that note, has anyone played link between worlds since it came out? I really thoroughly enjoyed it the first time around and I’m curious if it still holds up. when is that team gonna make another zelda game, is what I wanna know

[Felix]

I’m waiting for Citra to get a dang dynarec

[teh_blend]

on that note, has anyone played link between worlds since it came out? I really thoroughly enjoyed it the first time around and I’m curious if it still holds up. when is that team gonna make another zelda game, is what I wanna know

Finished it once, then played it on hard a few months later. It was still brilliant the second time, maybe more so.

I don’t think the game expects you to grind, it just wants the bosses to kick you in the teeth really hard.

That and if I recall correctly the first one, even by those standards, is rough.

I haven’t had to grind, though I have gone back a couple times to upgrade my equipment.

The frustration with Ys Felghana comes from being hit with some BS that the boss starts using around 1/8 health, then my second attempt being worse than the first, then slowly inching toward victory with each attempt before succeeding on the 5th-to-8th try. I still really like the game a lot, it’s more the disruption of the game’s flow that annoys me. Ys Seven (my first Ys) was far more humane.

I played through the Chronicles+ version of Ys I on steam a couple days ago, and I’m almost done with Ys II. It definitely felt like they want you to grind at times. There are points where you can’t do anything but plow an enemy into a wall for a straight minute to make a measly ten exp if you don’t have more expensive equipment, and bosses that will take zero damage if you aren’t past a number threshold.

That said, grinding took maybe ten minutes at most, the game is so fast. Also, I’m willing to entertain the idea that the sheer brevity of boss encounters (probably one of the game’s most interesting things to me) has me trained to think that if a fight takes more than a minute, I’m Doing It Wrong. Maybe my brain skewed some of those numbers in the heat of the moment?

I feel ya. Played a bit of this on my phone before becoming annoyed with having to use touch controls. I was doing so little damage to the first boss that I was convinced I was Doing It Wrong. One LV later, I killed him in eight hits.

Go figure.

Still fun, though. Will Steam it up when I’m done Felghana.

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[Bee]

A Link Between Worlds is my favorite Zelda

[Rudie]

Playing Links Awakening tonight instead of just talking about I was struck thinking this is a childs game and maybe not for me.

In some weird way it raise my opinion of lttp. Lbw meanwhile I sure didnt get whatever everyone else got out of that game.

[Doolittle]

I just about died laughing when Ocelot starts pointing finger pistols. That game, man, what a waste. It’s the standard by which Peace Walker is pedestrian and mediocre instead of bullshit.

[Felix]

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a satisfying explanation of why nearly all Japanese developers started making such overindulgent garbage after 2006, particularly when up to that point they’d been turning in stuff with some serious artistic bonafides (the ueda/takahashi/kojima/itoi era really stands alone in hindsight). the great going to shit still doesn’t seem to be widely recognized by a lot of the commentariat – there was a perception a few years later by eg Phil Fish that Japanese games had lost direction, and I think the ubisoft fan base gradually stopped paying attention to them on the trajectory that led from final fantasy 7 through grand theft auto to assassins creed – and I know Japan’s struggle with transitioning to middleware engines on more powerful hardware is at least reasonably well documented and explains part of why early PS3 stuff was so bad/irrelevant, but there’s still something missing here. I’m of the opinion that Japanese games are just barely getting good again, but it seems like a lot of eg the 3DS fan base barely noticed a difference.

In fairness I’m not sure that gears of war and the first modern warfare propping up consoles for a few years before platinum and from got a higher profile is that remarkable either – just like I’m not sure whether it was fair to call gears a response to RE4 the way Tim did then, it wasn’t until the modern indie scene got going post-braid that both sides didn’t seem to be generally ignorant of one another.

The somewhat schizophrenic combination of the Wii and the ps3 hardware definitely didn’t help, but…

[Doolittle]

What we know:

• Asset creation struggled on 360/PS3 because they didn’t have PC chops like many developers who grew in that era (Infinity Ward, Bethesda, Irrational, Gearbox, et al. all more or less switched from PC to console targets)
• Stifling creative environment combined with what we now know to be terrible working conditions based on Konami/Capcom exodus
• Nintendo designed for the “Blue Ocean” instead of growing the consumer base for their normal output, which they’ve since reverted to (see: “EAD is good again”) after Apple ate their lunch
• Itoi/Matsuno/Ueda/Takahashi et al. just up and leaving the medium, Clover reforming and taking a while to hit capacity, Mistwalker largely releasing sleepers

To this I’d add only marginally informed conjecture about:

• the structure of a Japanese company failing to incubate and promote talent
• the Japanese independent scene being a few years behind the US in scope

None of which explains No More Heroes or MGS4 as far as their failure relative to predecessors.

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[Felix]

Gears was a response to RE4 - it pretty clearly was

That gives gears a development cycle of maximum two years though which isn’t very long to come up with a template that widely copied

That’s my only real apprehension with this one though

[Rudie]

Nah I think it is a pretty bad game that Im amazed Adi gets out as muchas he does.

Source: I also dont understand the appeal of the wrestling move ebook account.

[Doolittle]

No More Heroes talks shit about itself from the very beginning.

Killer7 and FSR are mentally exhausting to play because they’re full of obtuse nonsense like blowing out candles with the “wind ring.” No More Heroes is the kinetic equivalent of these puzzles.

For example:

• Combining the weightlifting from San Andreas and torture from MGS
• Travis carrying coconuts as if they’re 50 lb kettlebells
• Beam katana Dynasty Warriors stages wherein the “fun” part is accelerometer gestures

None of this shit is fun or funny a second time. If it’s ironic that’s a bad defense for a bad time. I bounced off this so hard despite the excellent music and art.

[Felix]

Adi also had a lot to say about MGS4, because he’s a real English/philosophy type, and they always consider the actual enjoyability/well-craftedness of something way after whether or not it’s big and interesting. Which I think is a great way to approach criticism, even if it discounts small, well-made things.

Also, Nintendo and Sega both closed one of their two really good remaining studios (R&D1 and amusement vision) around 2006, that couldn’t have helped either

[Doolittle]

This is a big “a-ha” wrt criticism of The Witness. It’s rich in simple pleasures and essentially bankrupt in subtext or meaning so of course the gaming literati would find it shallow. Thanks!

[creep]

jesus christ