Castlevania 64 is a game I have an undue amount of affection for considering I haven’t played it since the time of release
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I went through it last year and it was less than I remembered; it’s always chunky and stolid but peters out near the end. I really like the opening grimy levels (and the skeletons on motorcycles! (!!)), the hedge maze and some of the cavern and castle climbing. There’s something about fog-filled boxy carpet-draped rooms that the N64 produced that works for me – the forest temple in Ocarina of Time and half of Shadowgate 64 run on a similar decaying vibe.
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Where are the skeletons on motorcycles??
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First level, actually (second if you’re playing the re-released Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness version)
hell yeag
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To this day, still always at the front of my mind:
I’ll see you when I get there, ffdog. I’ll see you when I get there.
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this piece of political satire from a 2003 zzt game
Nyarlethole:
Ahem. A vote for the ESP is a vote for
chaos, bloodshed, and human suffering.(Wild cheers erupt from the crowd. The
debate is clearly over.)
Ending spoilers: Nyarlethole is Tim Sweeney.
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In Wing Commander Privateer, the omnipresent risk of with an absentminded click agreeing to a mission way out in the middle of nowhere, or worse deep in the hostile late-game area, and then saving your game before realizing it. It would take up a precious space in the limited questlog and reduce your earnings per expedition until you finally bit the bullet and did it.
The same sinking feeling as when you have a moment of carelessness around the curse toads in DkS1 and you wake up to a halved health bar and a message, “You can get uncursed in New Londo Ruins, have fun”
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i have gathered that the Guardians of the Galaxy game is like marginally better than expected, and specifically that it is being praised for its script and humor. So I watched a few scenes on YouTube just to see if there has been some drastic progress the world of video game dramaturgy. It turns out that, no, this is definitely not the case, and video game cinematic cut scenes are still a bunch of plastic heads staring into the middle distance reciting ad copy to one another. There are these like weird half-second shots of an empty backdrop before the character steps into the frame and begins speaking, and no one has figured out how to record voice over to plausibly convince the listener that the two characters speaking to one another have ever interacted in person.
I think about how aesthetically repulsive every single one of these games is all the time, and how they are supposed to represent the like absolute apex of the storytelling potential of video games. This costs millions and millions of dollars to make! If the industry had collectively maintained the same 90’s interest in just like bluescreening real live actors as the budgets and sales of these things increased, you would end up with video game cut scenes being produced in essentially the same way actual movies and tv shows are made now. I mean, that means it would still suck, but maybe this would create some space for movies to be actual movies again too.
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This reminds me: Did anyone here ever play Tim Follin’s Contradiction? How was it?
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the Giant Bomb playthrough of this was pretty entertaining, the game seems ridiculous.
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I played through it with a friend and it was very entertaining. It’s hammy and really stupid in a lot of good ways.
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What little I played of Contradiction rocked and at some point I am going to stream the fuckin’ thing cuz otherwise I’ll never finish it
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contradiction rules. it’s a perfect balance of sincere and goofy. the core mechanic is just enough friction that the game is great fun to play with people. i think my boss lives in the village it was shot in.
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i know the same boring trite conversation about difficulty modes/handholding etc. comes up on twitter every few months and this isn’t a new observation, but i was talking with some friends today and i think a lot about, like… it’s true that videogame audiences aren’t nearly as dumb as most modern developers think they are, but they’re also not as dumb as they themselves think they are, which might be a bigger problem when it comes to a lot of what developers describe as qol features. i have lots of friends (esp. women and people who came to the medium late) who play difficult games (that they don’t think of as difficult) but say stuff like “i’ll play this one on the super easy mode they included because people says it’s hard and i think of myself as bad at videogames and not their target audience.” the inclusion of those sorts of features can sometimes feel more like taking advantage of players’ insecurities than reflecting and responding to their actual capabilities, whereas it would be kinder to say “i know this looks intimidating, but take your time and you’ll get the hang of it.” and similarly i do sometimes have the “git gud holy shit” response when i see people complain about difficulty/having to pay attention etc., but mostly it registers as lack of self confidence conditioned by “industry standards.”
@bunny suggested that increased emphasis on immersion discourages distanced perspective to reflect on mechanics and strategy and amps up the sense of insecure anger or frustration players feel when they’re encouraged to register in-game fictions and setbacks as if they were burdens on their irl selves. it can make games actively harder in my experience, and i definitely had this issue of excessive unmediated emotional involvement which made failure more upsetting and prevented me from really getting into games myself for a long time.
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I think the increased social comparison of even single-player games, where so many players are conversing with and watching very high-skill players, warps expectations of competent performance next to a small friendgroup only share between themselves.
I’ve probably complained about this before, but I’m very frustrated with how focus tests are used by studios. People really are worse than you can imagine at figuring things out – and, because speaking and helping them would break the rules, developers do the next best thing and write a tap on the shoulder into a tutorial – but the situation is artificial, the player is in full awareness they’re being watched and they’re tailoring their play towards performance and competence and they express anxiety around it.
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Personally my perspective is that this provides a lot more freedom to make decisions regarding my own investment in any given game’s skill development. I don’t need a game to meet me halfway on difficulty any more because if for whatever reason the shifting criteria of enjoyment + interest + available time & energy mean I can’t or won’t complete it myself, that’s cool - I can just watch it on youtube instead. If all I want is to Consume Content I can do that easily at any time, so a game doesn’t have to stoop to my level and get out of its own way just so I can see the ending, or whatever. It can just be what it is.
In general I think the whole discourse around the spectrum of where “accessibility” blends into “difficulty” heavily discounts the idea that you just don’t have to beat games.
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