Chatterbox: Video Games

Anyone here familiar with Alien Breed Trilogy? Is it any good from a gameplay perspective? I admit from the get-go that I'm not familiar with top-down shooters, but the description of the storyline seems interesting, and from this one gameplay video the gameplay style doesn't seem that difficult to accustom myself to... though of course, the video's maker might simply be already used to it after lots of tears, blood, and effort.

edited 27th Mar '14 3:41:30 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I feel out of touch with the current generation of video games. The main console I own is a Wii U, mainly for the Nintendo franchise games. I worried I might be missing out on games on the X Box One and PS 4, but when I look at their libraries, I see no games I am even interested in. The only game that I really want that is not available on the Wii U is The Walking Dead adventure game.

I feel like such an old fart wallowing in nostalgia sometimes because I find I mostly prefer older games.

I really don't see any problem with that. LOTS of people feel the same way.

Just look at all the inde titles and what games are in the top charts of game sales. There are numerous titles that have older-style graphics, gameplay, music, etc. They focus on the overall gameplay/experience more than making everything High Quality.

Also, I bet there are a ton of good games that you never got around to playing for the older systems. Goodness knows my library of PS 2 games is larger than all my other console games combined. If the new systems don't have anything you really want to play as soon as it came out, there is no reason to be an early-adopter of the system.

Yu hav nat sein bod speeling unntil know. (cacke four undersandig tis)the cake is a lie!

Same here, except I don't consider the games I like "old". They're no less enjoyable than games released recently.

I've kinda disagreed with the way the gaming industry has gone, broadly speaking, for the past...howeverlong or so.

The move to 3D was cool by itself, but was unfortunately accompanied by the rise of the FPS, which was (1) a genre and interface style that I pretty much never had exposure to prior to things like Counter-Strike becoming popular, and (2) a genre frequently accompanied by a lots of violence and gore.

I'm okay with violence in videogames, but the emphasis on gore, guns, sexualized women, and the general sort of stuff that are stereotypically the tastes of teenage boys, is really not my taste.

Furthermore, the move to 3D meant a neglect for 2D — or basically everything I knew of gaming. Around the turn of the millennium, I also discovered emulation, which incidentally meant that I could go right back to the games I liked without having to bother with the stuff that I didn't.

Further increases in computing power further distanced me from the modern gaming industry — the increasing emphasis on realism and its application to the proliferating military shooters all over the place. The reputation of their fans — trash-talking tea-baggers — didn't help. Nor did the high prices of consoles or the fact that my parents didn't seem to like my gaming hobby that much anyway (regardless of what sorts of games I was playing), despite repeated assurances that they just didn't want me to play games "too much".

But yeah. I used to wander through the games section of Toys R Us or Sears or K B Toys or (all of) EB Games and browse interestedly in the stuff, but nowadays it just seems that there are so many games that try to focus on realism, on being hardcore, or being basically CG movies in videogame format, and I really don't feel interested in much of anything. Maybe the occasional brightly-colored JRPG release catches my eye.

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Incidentally, I just posted on another forum that I really don't feel like I'm anticipating anything in the gaming world. Yeah, I don't really care when Titanfall releases. That's in part because I'm just not interested in the game, though I realized this applied to games that I was interested in too — I just don't really care that much when they release, as long as they release sometime. I guess I already have a bunch of games I've picked up digitally and I feel that they'll almost certainly last me for years.

Not to mention that I buy my own games now, and I can see how much they cost, which first opened the floodgates to my buying lots of games and then realizing just how many I have and also how much I spent on them. So these days I keep a list of games I want, and try not to add new ones to it, even the few indie releases that do interest me.

Plus, I know how hurried development or annoyingly demanding fans can ruin a game by rushing it out the door.

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It's kinda funny when I read people on the Steam Community forums complaining about the Steam store frontpage being cluttered with indie or casual or "cell phone" or Early Access games. I practically never use the storefront. I set the thing to launch showing my Library, first of all, and I hear about new games from my friends, usually in the form of interesting indie games that have gotten released (or more recently, gotten onto Greenlight). Furthermore, I am almost certain that over 95% of the games on Steam don't interest me — and heck, that includes over 90% of indie games. (If anyone wants to challenge these guesses at statistics, please feel free; I'm curious what the actual numbers are too.)

I have been a somewhat bigger fan (read: a fan at all) of the indie game scene, and especially keeping abreast of recent localized releases of Japanese indie games, in part because those seem to be the category-intersection of games that I most likely like. But still, there are a good number that I don't find that interesting (and/or dislike for other reasons).

Yeah, maybe if I were trying to become a scholar of the entire game industry, I ought to diversify into genres I don't have much experience in. But I'm not, and I'm quite happy with where I am and what my tastes are. And if you ask me for my very personal opinion, I feel kinda like an activist — helping to support the sorts of games that I like, in part because I feel that the game industry has gone down the wrong road, or at least a road I don't like.

(And maybe it is wrong — we've had stories of games taking huge, huge budgets to develop, such that tons of sales still don't make up their costs, thanks to this increase in attempts at graphical fidelity to reality.)

edited 28th Mar '14 7:23:12 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

I'm glad to see that Octodad: Dadliest Catch, a game made on a $24,000 budget, sold over 90,000 copies in the two months since its release. And this is before it gets released on a console!

And even more happy that Gone Home sold over 250,000 copies. And that game actually had quite realistic graphics - not the best, but still very good. And it was made by a core development team of 4 people.

The thing about both those indie games is that they don't "feel" indie. By that I mean, instead of being pixel art and lolrandom nonsense, they have genuinely good and consistent graphics and an actual theme. Octodad feels like a hilarious playable cartoon. Gone Home feels like you're exploring a house that a real family lived in immediately before they apparently left in a big hurry (and the reason why can be inferred if you look at enough of the clues). They have genuinely good production values. Notice I said "values", not "budget". The developers didn't need to spend $200 million like the idiots who made Tomb Raider (2013) did, which ended up losing money (gee I wonder why). And yet, even with a low budget, they still look and sound really good, and very fitting for the theme. None of this pixel art "oh hey gaiz were so retro even though we dont kno what retro actually looked like" crap. I'm 32 years old. Believe me, I know what retro is.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch and Gone Home show that indie is growing up. Slowly, but some of them are starting to realize that you need to match the quality of console releases in the graphics and sound department and have a theme that actually makes consistent sense instead of just being randomness for randomness sake. I look forward to seeing more of this.

I also got Mercenary Kings, which I think would be a lot better if it didn't do the pixel art thing. Yeah, it's drawn and animated well, but that's also precisely why it shouldn't be pixel art - Rayman Origins had beautiful hand-drawn cartoon artwork, so why can't this game? The gameplay is good, and the presentation - SNES-style graphics with modern character designs, NES-style music crossed with electric guitars and some other real instruments, modern gameplay elements like crafting and reloading, and realistic sound effects - is inconsistent. I like it, but I really think they should have gone for a consistent theme.

edited 28th Mar '14 7:48:59 AM by BonsaiForest

I would say that it's not so much a stark divide between indie game development and professional game development as it is a stage of growth for individual developers. You can start out indie and low-budget, but if you make stuff that's good enough, eventually you can grow into a professional studio or get picked up by one.

Indie gaming doesn't have to be the refuge of the hipster. It is, rather, a breeding ground for new ideas and up-and-coming developers. And hipsters, but I generally ignore them.

edited 28th Mar '14 7:57:32 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I agree. It often is though, with lots of things like pixel graphics that look nothing like the era they claim to be imitating (and I've lived through the Atari800, NES, Genesis and Super NES, so I know what they looked like), things from clashing styles, "plots" that are nothing more than "someone insulted you on Spacebook, go across the universe and kill them", and other hipster crap. It's pretty much the reason I hate indie games in general... with exceptions like the ones I just mentioned.

Yup. Portal got its start from the developers of Narbaculus Drop. Drop made no sense, with a "Princess No-Knees" character who could magically make portals appear just by looking at the wall. Portal took that concept and improved the presentation, also making it make more sense in the process.

Funny that you should mention Ultionus.

It's actually a thorough remake of the game Phantis.

Not to mention that the lead guy who worked on it is a sprite artist himself, and it shows.

And I definitely agree that stuff like Bit.Trip Runner, while it may be pixelated, is definitely beneath the graphical detail of even 8-bit systems. However, there are a ton of great indie games, and this includes 2D, 2.5D, and 3D games, with sprite art, vector art, and polygon art.

edited 28th Mar '14 8:48:51 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

A new IP from Team17, Flockers, coming to Steam Early Access in the coming months. It's basically Lemmings. Which I am perfectly okay with.

I wish indies would at least give their games a fricking theme. When I play a game, I like the feel that it provides, that of being in another world, with its own consistent setting, characters, and everything. Indie games are often so full of lolrandomness that while they may not be exclusively the domain of hipsters, they often feel like they're giving the finger to anyone who wants a game that can immerse them in another world. I see good gameplay ideas squandered behind shit graphics (which is understandable considering their budgets) and silly jokes that shatter any mood the game would otherwise have.

Anyway, I have Mercenary Kings, and while I really think the game would be better with actual hand-drawn artwork that's animated as well as it is instead of pixelated spritework, it's a good game. A nice 2D exploratory shooter with RPG elements that aren't all that complicated at all, and has both online and local co-op. Anyone else here have it and want to play it? It's only 15 bucks. My Steam account name is "bonsaitree" and screenname is "Special Needs Forces".

While I made a thread on this just now, I think it could go here, too.

If this blog post is any indication, Adam Sessler (Formerly of X-play, and now of Rev3) is quitting his reviewing job

http://sessactual.tumblr.com/post/81519573404/in-tangier-the-parade-bar-is-closed

Any Thoughts from here?

edited 2nd Apr '14 7:01:41 PM by Demongodofchaos2

Watch Symphogear

I wish him luck in whatever he decides to do in the industry from here.

Long live Cinematech. FC:0259-0435-4987

I dunno, I'd rather have a plot like the one in Ultionus than what I see from most indie games. I just... can't stand the rampant pretension and the constant need to have some kind of deep message that a lot of indie games seem to have, honestly. It tends to happen more often in the low-res, faux-retro sort of indie games than anything, I've noticed.

I guess that makes me dumb or unartistic, but I've just never really enjoyed it when pretty much any game tries to be really deep... for me, it just, more often that not, comes off as confusing. I mean, there's nothing wrong with enjoying that, of course. I guess I just prefer to take things at face value. :P

I will say, though, I'm honestly really looking forward to Flockers, now that I've heard about it. It doesn't look very original, but I'm just really happy that Team 17 is doing something that isn't Worms, for once.

edited 2nd Apr '14 9:52:55 PM by Bobinator

"Great Scott! Send in the Doomsday Squad!"

Yeah, something like this.

Usually, for me, whether I get the right feels depends strongly on the music.

Like, I think that if you took out the music, the text script of Tower of Heaven would be no more meaningful to me than the text script of Braid. But Braid's music didn't draw me in as much, and its gameplay was too challenging not to be distracting, while Tower of Heaven had catchy music that just kept right on going, so I ended up finding more meaning in Tower of Heaven than Braid.

I'm not talking about being "deep" in comparison. I'm just saying, I'd rather have "I'm here to save the world" than "lol look how random we are gaiz". Someone traveling across the universe for petty revenge makes me feel like the thing is a big joke. Someone traveling across the universe to avenge a death or save a world at least feels like I'm doing something.

How is someone traveling across the universe for revenge in any way random?

It's one thing to make a spectacle. It's another to make a difference.

I wouldn't say the focus is on plot. Not all games are about having a story. There's nothing wrong with that.

Besides, Ultionus is a pretty good game, anyway, so even if the plot's that bad, that doesn't mean it's not worth playing.

"Great Scott! Send in the Doomsday Squad!"

Ultionus's "Someone insulted you on Spacebook" makes it harder to take the proceedings seriously, as in, when I play a game, I at least want some degree of believability in the world.

Like in Gone Home, there's no cutscenes or anything like that, but the house is totally believable.

Octodad is silly, but not in a random way, but in a way that makes sense. The premise, that you're secretly an ocotpus disguised as a human, is used as the basis for most of the game's humor. Random comments from civilians don't detract and fit within the light-hearted, family-friendly humorous nature.

Anyway, how is Ultionus's plot random? Well, it's silly, it's stupid. "You insulted me on Spacebook, so I'll travel the universe and kill you" clashes with the actual traveling across the universe. Really, either have no plot at all, or a generic "save the world" type. I'd much rather something like this have zero plot whatsoever, than to insult the proceedings with silly, stupid crap.

edited 3rd Apr '14 6:04:17 AM by BonsaiForest

I think you might be taking this a little too seriously, honestly. Then again, so am I, maybe, but still. Not every game has to have a serious plot, and if you think so, you're basically cutting out so many good games out there. Like Earthworm Jim and Strong Bad's Cool Game, off the top of my head.

"Great Scott! Send in the Doomsday Squad!"

No, they don't all have to. It's just that indies almost always tend to trend towards the silly and the dumb. It annoys me.

If indies want to make Octodad and Gone Home level sales, they could start by stopping the retro crap and by trying to make the games have some kind of feel to them.

Peter Molyneux (yeah, the guy who overpromises on everything) said "Enjoy it while you can, because the indie explosion will be gone". I imagine he's saying that at some point, the middle budget will replace the zero budget, and instead of "indies" as we know them, we'll be seeing games that are low-budget by industry standards (like $24,000 for Octodad: Dadliest Catch or ~$50,000-$60,000 or around there for Gone Home) but which actually have a budget. Such companies will want to get a bigger audience, so instead of "lol someone insulted you on Spacebook" or "stop Dr. Fetus", they'll make their games have themes that actually make sense and are consistent.

While indie games don't have to be the domain of the hipster, they largely are. Small companies will leapfrog past that and reach actual audiences.

edited 3rd Apr '14 6:26:09 AM by BonsaiForest

I'm surprised that you feel Octodad — of all things! — has more motive coherence/sensibility than Ultionus. I never got why Octodad was even a thing, other than as something so patently ridiculous its novelty value trumped everything else. I mean, it's like one of those "let's arbitrarily make the setting include this premise" things, at least that's how I feel. On the other hand, revenge and petty disputes are extremely common motives for doing things.

Also, not sure what you mean by "zero budget", unless you're referring to hobbyist devs, and for them they're very often not even trying to make a game that will appeal to the masses anyway. That's why you get things like Japanese indie games (including free ones) by hobbyist-type devs catering to niche interests with weird or hard-to-pick-up games — they do it because they want to.

edited 3rd Apr '14 6:32:39 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

Octodad has what feels like the plot of a cartoon. It has plenty of coherency. An octopus dressed in human clothes is pretending to be a human, and fooling his human wife and kids, while a crazed chef tries to expose him. That's cartoon plot right there.

Ultionus just sounds like its "plot" is silly. Yes, revenge is a common motivation for doing things, but traveling from planet to planet because someone insulted you on the internet? Just remove the damn plot and keep everything else. It feels like someone thought "lol wouldn't it be funny if THIS was your reason for doing everything?" and shoved it in there.

Replace the revenge motivation with wanting to catch 'em all, and replace traveling from planet to planet to traveling from location to location within a region of the Pokémon world, and you have the plot the Pokémon TV show.

Wanting to catch them all makes more sense.

Revenge makes sense, but revenge because someone insulted you on the internet is obviously meant to be silly.

Fight! Fight!

(kiss, kiss)

"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."