Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

Yes Japan's laws get that screwed up with loopholes.

Pachinko being 'legal' is also a loophole as gambling is illegal but trading tickets won via 'simulated gambling' for items that a Kiosk next door will buy for real money is not.

Well, I doubt what Inafune says now matters or should be taken seriously after his reputation was thoroughly John Romero'd through a glass table after the shambles that was Mighty No. 9. I mean I'm serious, that game's development history smacked so much of the shit Daikatana went through I'm convinced it was a consequence of people forgetting Daikatana happened. This is what happens when you ignore history, people.

Edited by MightyKombat on Mar 14th 2019 at 12:44:31 PM

• insert you were the chosen one meme here*

I actually really liked the whack futuristic city. That was a big part of my buy-in for the sequel. But I agree that the forced stealth segments were dumb.

That's not to say there isn't value in the idea of a Dracula game having stealth sequences. Like. Conceptually. A lot of Dracula's powers are based around being able to move unhindered. The ability to turn to mist, the ability to shapeshift into animals, the ability to climb walls unhindered by gravity, these are all stealth powers. Dracula, as a character, was designed to be a super-predator, not an ass-kicking shit-stomping action guy.

But that's Dracula in a vacuum. This is Castlevania Dracula who is 100% a shonen anime action villain. Stealth sequences would work for a game where you play Bram Stoker Dracula but this is Frieza Dracula and that's a very different experience.

But the concept of setting the game in the modern day was what I loved and wished they had done more (and better) with. I like when fantasy series aren't afraid to engage the modern world. When they don't just kind of awkwardly look the other way and shuffle off when the question comes up, "Okay but how would Sauron fare in a world where tactical carpet-bombing exists?"

Like. There's only so long a series can remain perpetually frozen in the medieval era before it starts to feel like it's actually afraid to go any further. Like they're trying to say, "Meet Bob. He's the unholy lord of all evil. Armies cower before him. His power is unrivaled in all the world! But, uh. The underdeveloped world. Yeah, this guy would be a harmless little pissant if he existed today, but he is TOTALLY SCARY if the technology level only accounts for swords and clubs. And stays there. Forever.

Yeah, nerf the human race really hard, take away their ingenuity advantage that allowed them to thrive in the first place, and THEN Bob is super-scary. And you should be afraid of him. Because he's extremely dangerous, but only to an under-developed society. He cannot be killed by any weapon, except the many weapons I forbid my setting to produce. BE INTIMIDATED."

It's like boasting that your villain can beat up Wolverine and then clarifying that we're specifically talking about a Wolverine from before he had his adamntium claws and also it's a hypothetical scenario where he never mutated. A human Wolverine with no metal in his bones. My villain can beat HIM up. Why aren't you impressed?

Fantasy series are a dime a dozen, but it's a rare and special few that have the balls to introduce M16s.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 14th 2019 at 8:28:12 AM

modern castlevania should have kicked ass. Shame that the game was so bad. As it santds, the soorw duology does that better.

I'm still not over the ridiculous things like doing a stealth section against a boss you battle literally after finishing the section, or the part where dracula of all people has to crawl in a hallway while the villain is cackling like an idiot instead of finishing him off to drag him to a place where his power is negated. But that's just a symptom of the development, and the game as a whole, being a disjointed mess of things aren't properly set up.

That, and the metroidvania aspect was a mistake imo. I love about every single metroidvania game under the sun but I've never really got the appeal of doing that in BTA games. i could tolerate it in DMC games where they have the decency to be in segmented missions you can go back to easily, but that game thought that DMC 1's weird mix of resident evil with what the genre would go on to be was the thing to do. But no. I really don't want to spend 10+ minutes of walking from a useless fight to another jsut to grab a collectible instead of moving forward and kick asses.

I think Metroidvania in general is difficult to do in 3-D. The third dimension just complicates things. It's not impossible, mind you. Metroid Prime pulled it off pretty well. But there's a reason why Trope Namers Metroid and Castlevania keep going back to 2-D platforming action with their games. The format just works better in 2-D.

I remember the first Ultima incorporated space shuttles, phasers and flying cars in an otherwise mediaeval setting. In fact, the main villain, Mondain, could be taken on with a phaser, not that it'd harm him since he's immortal so you gotta cut it off at teh source but hey, kudos to Ridchard Garriot for it.

Also, I don't see too much harm in a Dracula game with stealth, as long as its similar to, say, the Predator bits in the Batman Arkham games, where yes stealth isnecessary but you're a goddamn powerful bloodsucking demon that can gradually whittle down enemy numbers via scaring them shitless. I love the Predator bits in the Arkham games, I really do. Yeah they start off hard since the enemies are numerous and are running a tight ship but then you make that one good takedown and they start to panic, fall into your traps and the last one left conscious is always the easiest because he's more than likely utterly shitting his entire uniform to focus allowing Batman too practically waltz right up to him, tank a few panicked bullets and put the guy to bed. That's what Dracula stealth should be.

Just with Dracula killing since he kills, unlike Batman

Considering how troubled development for Lords of Shadow 2 was, I'm amazed MercuryStream managed to make a great game in Metroid: Samus Returns.

Edited by MJTrooper on Mar 14th 2019 at 10:20:37 AM

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild does precisely that. There's a bit of a backstory, but in short the Hyruleans develop autonomous spider robots and helicopter drones that shoot lasers, as well as animalistic mechs. Ganon responds by posessing the machines and using them to take over the world. Link can fight them with a chainsaw, and if you get the DLC, he can do it while riding a motorbike, which is REALLY FUN!

Other than that, I know gunpowder weapons are common in Warhammer Fantasy, and The Wheel of Time ends soon after cannons and steam engines have been invented. The latter actually explores how such things would be used in a setting with magic; since the heroes have rediscovered how to conjure portals, an effective tactic is to open a portal to the villain's rear, fire a cannonball through it, and quickly close the portal.

Ultima I was bonkers. Apparently Garriott based it on a D&D campaign he GMed; I'm in agreement with Spoony that his D&D games must be things of beauty.

It's because they had Nintendo looking over their shoulders, and Nintendo are sticklers for quality control.

We saw this with Silicon Knights. When they were a second-part developer, they made Eternal Darkness, and it was really good. Then they broke away from Nintendo and made Too Human, which by all accounts was awful (I haven't played it).

That doesn't actually surprise me in the slightest. The Mirror of fate interquel was essentially a 2D metroidvania that didn't dared to be with it's chapter structure shotting it in the foot, but the combat was proably the tightest of the 3 games with a very good level design and rythm. I remember after playing it thinking it was a waste they couldn't try their hand at a real 2D metroid.

I'm glad to see nintendo apparently thought the same way.

Yup, and we see that with retro themselves too. When nintendo's not over their shoulder, they go back right in development hell.

Edited by Yumil on Mar 14th 2019 at 9:47:14 AM

Silicon Knights made Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain on their own before working on Eternal Darkness for Nintendo, though. And that game became a cult classic.

Squarenix has announced that they are going to patch Pierra Taki's voice out of the Japanese version of KH 3 following the Cocaine thing (He voiced Olaf)

There was a lot that went wrong with Too Human, so much that I can't remember it all. Matt McMuscles made a video detailing most of it, for anyone who's curious.

To be honest, my problem was that I never felt like that sci-fi stuff fit with Castlevania and that was never the appeal of the series for me to begin with. What I wanted out of it was to explore a cool, labyrinthian and beautifully realized gothic castle. I'm all about that aesthetic. So while I admit that the idea isn't inherently bad it wasn't exactly a plus for me either given how much more enjoyable I found the castle segments to be. If the plot was made a lot more straightforward and satisfying and the vast majority of the game took place in said castle, that would remove all my major problems with the game. Oh and also getting rid of the stealth segments because they sucked.

The first Dark Souls had a pretty respectable attempt at this kind of level design. The game areas were all interconnected in a way that felt very sensical and believable, and it felt great to unlock the game's shortcuts between areas and see the game fold in on itself. The following games unfortunately dropped the ball on this though.

Batman Arkham Asylum is also very Metroidvania esque, too, mostly due to the small size of the Asylum itself compared to the later Big City sections in later games.

Origins Blackgate too I'd say, but the Origins games are basically redheaded stepchildren to the other Arkham games.

But yeah Asylum counts as one, and a damn fine one too

It seems like a medtroidvania only works when the backtracking feels like a reward and not a massive pain in the ass.

Edited by M84 on Mar 18th 2019 at 4:56:45 PM

That is a good way to see it.　If you are not excited with the opportunity to backtrack and reach all the places you couldn't before, something gone wrong.

Hollow Knight is a pretty good example.

I have a soft spot for Salt and Sanctuary. It's very much inspired by the Souls games, and it's all the better for it.

Alright, now that we've finally stopped talking about politics and censorship and other controversial topics, let's have a nice, simple Jimquisition to get that heavy topic out of our minds.

Oh, fuck.

Jim's statement that developers want to exploit real life issues like racism without having to actually talk about those issues for real was on point.

Basically, they want to corner the market of people who face real life bigotry without alienating the loudmouth bigot market.

And while David Cage wasn't the only developer called out...fuck David Cage.

Say what you will about Wolfenstein's developers, but at least they had the guts to point out that it's really fucked up that making Nazis the enemies in a Wolfenstein game is now controversial.

Edited by M84 on Mar 18th 2019 at 9:58:22 PM

I love that they doubled down on shooting Nazis in the FACE.

You see, Nazis are people and brutally killing people is bad!

Quietly boots up Resident Evil 5

Does the video bring up Far Cry 5? Where Ubi very obviously made the antagonists far-right religious extremists, but never called them far-right religious extremists, so that the Alt-Reich could pretend they were leftists?

"Far Cry 5 was too cowardly to even say that a violent militant doomsday prepper cult was bad". And that's it on that particular game. Mostly focuses on The Division 2

Edited by Hylarn on Mar 18th 2019 at 7:53:40 AM