shmups with a healthbar?

[komatik]

Sheesh, do you really think people go for more challenging stuff just for some non-existing medals,

So forgive all the TVtropes links in this post, but yes, yes I do. Because quite a lot of gamers are the hardcorez type of people who are all over that sort of thing and subscribe to the Earn Your Fun school of thought. I'm the total opposite of that.

I've seen someone else put forth this idea in your previous threads and I'll 2nd them - shmups (or action games in general) may not be for you.

Yeah I know that's come up more than once but I don't agree. I do like the idea of shmups and the overall concept, I just don't like the circlejerk that the genre has turned into over the decades. Preference for one-hit-kills, bullet-hell, obsession with score and complex score chaining, etc. Games that don't do that shit I enjoy quite a lot. My problem is not "I hate shmups" but rather "I hate nintendohard". While other types of games slowly moved away from nintendohard, the shmup world seems to glorify it and any games that try to break away from it (ie; healthbars, "Euroshmups", etc) tend to get heavily derided for one reason or another. If it's what you're into then great I guess, but it might as well be liquid death for me.

I know full well that in asking for a 90's game (especially a 90's shmup) without this stuff I'm basically asking for a needle in a haystack, and that what I'm looking for is clearly the opposite of what everyone else likes anyway, it's just that I want something that will run on multiple platforms and I'm not willing to throw any money down yet given my odds. Right now that means old arcade and console roms. Magical Chase has several of the elements I like and other games have a few here and there so I know it's not impossible. There have to be at least a couple more out there somewhere.

[Shepardus]

I feel like we have a difference in terminology here

Probably. Maybe I'm not understanding what people consider or refer to under the word "progress" and what it means to lose it. For me, the concept of lives is basically synonymous with the concept of losing progress and dealing with grind- you have a limited number of tries to complete a section, and each try punishes you (to some degree) by making you start over from some previous position or making you lose your stuff or whatever. I don't really get how you could have 'lives' that don't do something like this. As I wrote in my last reply, if you're looking at a game where you can 'die' but you reappear in exactly the same spot with exactly the same gear in exactly the same state (no lost progress) to me that's just a healthbar but with a graphics swap so that the tick marks on the bar are replaced with a row of ship icons. To take Magical Chase as an example yet again, if you took the healthbar and replaced the heart icons with icons of Ripple's face, it's still a healthbar and still the same game. "A rose by any other name" and all that.

I'm taking "losing progress" to mean that you get sent back to a previous part of the level, i.e. a checkpoint, and/or lose a significant amount of powerups (i.e. enough that it makes the game harder and getting the power back is nontrivial). You're right that if you respawn at the same place you died and don't lose any significant power then it's a "rose by another name" situation. The only non-aesthetic difference between that and a healthbar with discrete segments is that your player character may visibly blow up and respawn in the corner the screen, which wouldn't make a whole lot of sense presented as a healthbar. That's why I made the distinction above about a "healthbar" allowing for different damage values, which would distinguish such a system from a discrete "lives" system.

I'd wager that the terminology is the main source of disagreement here, and that if you ask people here whether they prefer having checkpoints and powering down on death or not, then most would prefer the more forgiving system, which is why a lot of the more modern games tend to be like that.

There are plenty of games with "lives" rather than "health," but don't make you lose any progress when you die.

Can you name a few and describe exactly how they operate? Maybe if I see some examples I can understand what people mean.

All of CAVE's shmups, with the exception of Progear's second loop, respawn you at the same place you died or at the edge of the screen without any rewinding. Most also either let you keep your powerups, or scatter all your lost powerups so you can collect them right when you respawn while you're invulnerable. Notably, when CAVE made Dodonpachi Saidaioujou they got rid of powerup items entirely, probably because keeping them was pointless by then. Your scoring will likely take a nosedive if you die, but the only consequence of dying otherwise is that your remaining lives is decreased by 1, and your bomb stock would be reset. Touhou games work similarly though you may need to recollect some power (like one power level or so, exact numbers depend on the game), and Touhou games tend to give a lot more bombs and lives to work with than CAVE games. Battle Garegga and Armed Police Batrider are also similar in this respect, except that dying actually adds to your bomb stock and lowers the rank (dynamic difficulty), and you've got an unlimited number of extends (every 1 or 1.5 million points) but a limited life cap, so it's actually beneficial to die from time to time.

idk, if you look at the past 20 years I find it harder to think of shmups that do punish you significantly for taking a hit (apart from trashing your score). Some allow you to take more hits than others before calling it game over, and some may have manipulable systems for gaining lives while others just give a fixed number of lives and maybe a couple fixed extends throughout the game, but usually the main consequence of dying is that that's one fewer life you can afford to lose later (maybe losing your bombs is significant if you had a ton stockpiled). Not everything's bullet hell either, there are games like Life Fortress Volcabamba and Osorubeshi! Xaklogian that are more oldschool in style except they don't have checkpoints and don't have powerups to lose (Volcabamba) or the powerup loss is minor (Xaklogian).

Some games may also have an option to let you turn checkpoints on/off, IIRC Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius has this, though you're going to lose your powerups either way. Even in the arcade versions, Gokujou Parodius and Sexy Parodius may or may not have checkpoints depending on the upgrade mode you pick (Auto/Semi-auto/Manual), though you're still left on your own to recover your powerups and not chain-death until game over. All the TwinBee games don't feature checkpoints, though they do make you lose your powerups on death. The main difference Pop'n TwinBee presents here is that taking damage is only a partial power-down (and bell juggling is also more forgiving so recovering that power isn't as hard).

[WelshMegalodon]

Super Mario had lives because the gameplay was copied from the arcades before it, even though the physical reason no longer applied. And arcades had lives because of coins. Yes there were a few arcade exceptions, but the exceptions prove the rule.

Most of the games I've been throwing at you aren't even arcade games.

There's no functional or practical reason a game needs to limit players this way anymore in today's technology- this mechanic only still exists because it's been carried over from the original arcades where gaming was born. If arcades never existed and gaming was invented last year, hardly anybody would have 'lives' with this concept of one-hit-kill and artificially limited tries because it doesn't even make sense in most games it's applied to.

That's true, but it really sounds like you're assuming here that the arcade design philosophy is where video gaming started, which definitely isn't true because I sure as hell didn't see either coin slots or a life counter on the computer built to play the mathematical game of Nim in 1951. Nor did I see a tendency towards such things on the text-based Star Trek adventure game, the countless wireframe dungeon-crawlers written for university mainframes, or even certain old-ass Pong clones whose “games” consisted of you moving a single dot on the screen with an overlay.

Some games had lives because it made sense to implement lives in those genres. Some games didn't, because it didn't. The same holds true today.

No, I'm not aware of any Kirby shooters. Unless this is back to "you want something different = you hate shumps, so play something else" again.

I was actually recommending the Kirby games because they're easy, vaguely arcade-style action games with a healthbar and occasionally some light puzzle-solving elements, but now that you mention it, many (most?) of them actually do have shooter segments, usually when facing off against a final boss. All the others are non-shooter action games, too.

Have you played EA's Desert Strike? It's a multidirectional isometric shooter with hit points, a fuel gauge, an ammo counter, and mission objectives. Clearly a thinking man's game.

[WelshMegalodon]

Double post for visibility:

(Still trying to figure out how to get Amiga stuff working though, it seems a lot of the titles I might be interested in live there).

https://fs-uae.net/docs/getting-started

And then I can't link you directly to disk images because that would violate the site guidelines, but there's a certain emu-centric site with a planet's worth.

[komatik]

or scatter all your lost powerups so you can collect them right when you respawn

Hmm, ok. I've certainly seen the "powerups scatter across the screen" thing many a time, but in my experience it was almost always a real pain to try to get them back for one reason or another (Raiden/II/DX being the most infamous examples), and so I've been grouping that in with the grind I hate so much. Even games that do it 'right' are still annoying since I have to waste several seconds swirling around the screen before I can get back to playing. As for respawing in the corner, I guess I just haven't played anything yet that did that, it's all been checkpoints so far. (Granted though I've been avoiding CAVE games since none of them look like my cup of tea for other reasons).

Even still though, a corner respawn and having to re-collect your stuff seems like unnecessary spinning of wheels, just go with an actual healthbar at that point? This harkens back to my complaint of games hanging on to the past when it no longer makes sense.

but usually the main consequence of dying is that that's one fewer life you can afford to lose later

This gets back to one of my main complaints about lives though- if you're tired after a long day or you just suck, eventually it's not enough to start the level over, you're forced to start the whole damn GAME over. I much prefer games that let you retry that section as many times as you want until you get bored (or games where you don't even die in the first place). No matter how good the first few levels of a game are it gets annoying to have to play them over and over. Yeah, you can kludge your way around this with savestates and rewind, but the point is not to have to.

but it really sounds like you're assuming here that the arcade design philosophy is where video gaming started, which definitely isn't true

Please, please do no start a pedantic argument about this. Yes, we can both slap our age-card down on the table and start name dropping things like Spacewar and the like, but you and I and everyone else on this board knows damn well that 99.9999999999999999% of the mechanics and conventions that are the foundation of all modern video games were laid during the golden age of the arcades. All I'm saying is that a couple of those conventions are past their shelf life, IMO.

or a life counter on the computer built to play the mathematical game of Nim in 1951

Yes, because again, the whole concept of "lives" became ubiquitous due to coin-op arcades and the influence they had on the popular consciousness. By your own examples, most games prior to arcades were not based around a life-counter mechanic. Whereas virtually all games made for over a decade after were.

Have you played EA's Desert Strike?

"Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf" on SNES? Yeah, I don't really think of that as being a shmup though.

https://fs-uae.net/docs/getting-started

Thanks. My main problem is just trying to get the damn emulators to even boot properly in the first place.

[Shepardus]

or scatter all your lost powerups so you can collect them right when you respawn

Hmm, ok. I've certainly seen the "powerups scatter across the screen" thing many a time, but in my experience it was almost always a real pain to try to get them back for one reason or another (Raiden/II/DX being the most infamous examples), and so I've been grouping that in with the grind I hate so much. Even games that do it 'right' are still annoying since I have to waste several seconds swirling around the screen before I can get back to playing. As for respawing in the corner, I guess I just haven't played anything yet that did that, it's all been checkpoints so far. (Granted though I've been avoiding CAVE games since none of them look like my cup of tea for other reasons).

Even still though, a corner respawn and having to re-collect your stuff seems like unnecessary spinning of wheels, just go with an actual healthbar at that point? This harkens back to my complaint of games hanging on to the past when it no longer makes sense.

I think it's mainly a problem in Raiden because you're so damn slow and the powerups change colors at the most inconvenient times. In many (most?) other games you just swirl around a bit. I agree it's kind of pointless in many cases; games like Saidaioujou worked around this by just getting rid of powerups entirely (I mention SDOJ as opposed to other games with no powerups because previous DDP games did have powerups, which makes the decision to get rid of them more interesting), while in games like Garegga there may be reasons why you might want to intentionally get rid of powerups (i.e. rank control). I think an explicit death + respawn in a fixed location can be helpful compared to a healthbar as a sort of "reset" to recollect yourself and figure out what's going on after taking a hit, as opposed to still being stuck in a bad situation.

but usually the main consequence of dying is that that's one fewer life you can afford to lose later

This gets back to one of my main complaints about lives though- if you're tired after a long day or you just suck, eventually it's not enough to start the level over, you're forced to start the whole damn GAME over. I much prefer games that let you retry that section as many times as you want until you get bored (or games where you don't even die in the first place). No matter how good the first few levels of a game are it gets annoying to have to play them over and over. Yeah, you can kludge your way around this with savestates and rewind, but the point is not to have to.

I guess this is another discussion over what format shmups should even take. I'm getting conflicting feelings over what you want here - you said previously that you're not into credit-feeding, but I don't see the difference between credit-feeding a game with checkpoints and being able to retry a section as many times as you want. Besides that I doubt you'll find anything like this in arcade games for obvious reasons, outside of caravan/time attack modes where you have infinite lives and are just trying to score as much as you can in a time limit. In home console/PC games, I guess games with save systems would count? Hydorah comes to mind; the game itself runs on a typical lives + checkpoints system, but you can save your game between stages. Touhou 15 (Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom) also has a mode (Pointdevice mode) where you play through the game and getting hit sends you back a checkpoint but you have unlimited retries and your progress is saved if you quit and resume later. It's been compared to I Wanna Be The Guy since ZUN himself mentioned that, but you could really compare it to pretty much any contemporary game. Sora makes the main game ("Story" mode) into a stage-by-stage play, while playing through all the stages at once is relegated to a separate "Arcade" mode.

And if you have a game where you don't die in the first place, that begs the question of what consequence you think getting hit should have (if no consequence, then why even have bullets in the first place?). In time attack modes you may have something like infinite lives but taking hits is bad for scoring.

[MathU]

There's no functional or practical reason a game needs to limit players this way anymore in today's technology- this mechanic only still exists because it's been carried over from the original arcades where gaming was born.

Look, just because Mario forgot how to use lives in a meaningful and functional manner does not mean that the mechanic isn't still an excellent tool for facilitating tension ("You're at the final stage and a few mistakes is game over!") and risk-reward mechanics ("Should I risk jumping over this spike pit to get that final icon for another life?").

Since you bring up "modern" games with regenerating health, let's take a look at a series that iconifies this lazy mechanic: Halo. The level design is absolute garbage in Halo and the game has almost no tension to speak of. Why is this? Couldn't they have just been better developers? Bungie's previous series, Marathon, had okay level design. The problem with regenerating health is that it functions as a crutch for game designers. Because the player is rarely punished for failing to avoid a hazard, and consequently rarely interrupted, it serves to mask uninteresting, unfair, or even frustrating level design. By allowing the player to simply gloss through bad enemy placement/bad enemy behavior/bad world design in a playthrough--treating the game as a cinematic experience to be consumed rather than a test of skill that rewards mastery--regenerating health serves as a mask for bad level design. Not coincidentally, this is an attribute often shared by so-called "Euroshmups". In fact, the exact same situation manifests itself in Tyrian once you start relying on regenerating-shield ship parts.

No matter how good the first few levels of a game are it gets annoying to have to play them over and over.

Replaying said levels over and over is not annoying, however, when the levels are well-designed with exciting pacing and lots of depth to come back to as you begin to master them. Developers can and have made levels like this, it's just a lot harder to viscerally determine whether your levels are any good when you build systems into your game that never punish the player for making mistakes.

Seriously, stop listening to clueless idiots like Edmund McMillen who've never played anything more challenging than Yoshi's Island and Mario ROMhacks with liberal save state abuse.

[CStarFlare]

Momoiro Underground (soon to be released worldwide as Dezatopia) has a life bar you can expand/refill via the shop. It's kind of like Magical Chase in that regard, though you get a lot more shops and it's incredibly generous with resources once you understand how things work. It does have checkpoints once your health bar is empty, no extends, and no continues once your lives are gone, though.

[komatik]

the game itself runs on a typical lives + checkpoints system, but you can save your game between stages

but I don't see the difference between credit-feeding a game with checkpoints and being able to retry a section as many times as you want.

There kind of isn't one on a technical basis. It's just the annoyance of being constantly interrupted and having to stop and pound the "yes I still want to play" button in the middle of the game. Same as having to constantly pause to save/restore savestates, or games with sanctioned savestates in the form of save files. Games with a healthbar, ie; games that were designed to be forgiving from the start, are just more enjoyable to play casually/lazily since they understand where I'm coming from. I don't love the idea of having to restart a level, but if it's forced on me I'd prefer it to require as few button presses as possible.

I doubt you'll find anything like this in arcade games for obvious reasons

Well yeah but I'm not expecting to find some mythical perfect game that has everything I ever wanted. I can deal with finite lives if the main game has healthbars or infinite shields or anything else that might make up for it.

I Wanna Be The Guy

Ah yes, this game. It's worth mentioning that this game (and its clones like Boshy) encapsulates everything I've ever hated about video games and manages to be the exact opposite of anything I want to play. If there's nothing else you take away from this conversation, it's to imagine IWBTG as a point on a sphere. Now imagine a point on the opposite side of a sphere on the opposite side of the galaxy but in an alternate dimension. Whatever shmup I'm looking for lives a hundred miles past that.

lazy mechanic

Regenerating shields are not in and of themselves a lazy mechanic. The Halo franchise has a lot of problems for sure but this isn't one of them.

The problem with regenerating health is that it functions as a crutch for game designers

Oh please. And fake difficulty via one-hit-kills and limited lives isn't?

a test of skill

What if I don't want a test of skill? What if I don't need to be punished to have a good time? What if I play games to kick back and relax? What if I'm perfectly happy with the size of my dick just as it is? This gatekeeping "play hard or go home" attitude of people like you is the absolute worst. I'm so terribly sorry, I guess I'm just not enough of a real gamer to deserve to have fun.

[Shepardus]

I Wanna Be The Guy

Ah yes, this game. It's worth mentioning that this game (and its clones like Boshy) encapsulates everything I've ever hated about video games and manages to be the exact opposite of anything I want to play. If there's nothing else you take away from this conversation, it's to imagine IWBTG as a point on a sphere. Now imagine a point on the opposite side of a sphere on the opposite side of the galaxy but in an alternate dimension. Whatever shmup I'm looking for lives a hundred miles past that.

I get that from the "challenge for the sake of challenge" perspective (I've never been a fan of IWBTG myself), but it sounds like what you're describing in the sense that you can try as many times as you like and just play through it if it weren't, you know, so damn hard. Replace IWBTG with something less masochistic (say, an atmospheric platformer) and it'd make the same point regarding the game's structure.

Honestly I'm not getting a clear picture of what sort of experience you want to have with a game. Like, I get the feeling that what you want to do is turn on an invincibility cheat and just blast through a game, except the game has invincibility on by default. I'm not sure how forgiving you're expecting your game to be if even restarting a level sounds unpleasant to you. I can think of games with replenishable shields and health and stuff like that but all of them have at least some sort of failure state.

For what it's worth there are plenty of shmups I've enjoyed playing in a casual sense for the sake of experiencing the levels even when I'm tired and kind of sucking at everything I do (I would argue that's the only reasonable way to play Cambria Sword). It kind of sounds like that's what you'd like and we're just drawing other ideas out of a hat like "healthbars" to achieve that.

Just going to throw out Azur Lane as a wild suggestion despite it being mobile gacha hell

[WelshMegalodon]

Now, now, Sheph, suggesting an invincibility cheat is the height of gatekeeping! /s

He's made it pretty clear that he wants something in between, and so far all of the suggestions we've given have been too hardcore and hellbent on performance.

Dude just wants an easy shmup that lets him be a little sloppy sometimes. Games that allow for a large margin of error. Personally I get that experience just fine with the first few stages of Bare Knuckle II or The Ninja Warriors Again, but those aren't shooters.

Oh please. And fake difficulty via one-hit-kills and limited lives isn't?

One-hit kills in the context of shooters aren't fake difficulty, they're just another rule. If you fire up R-Type with all weapons and invincibility magically activated, you aren't playing a game, you're playing a tech demo.

Games by definition have rules and objectives. The objective of a shooter is to survive to the end of the game, attain the highest score possible, or both, the same way that the objective of Portal is to solve all the puzzles and the objective of Angels with Scaly Wings is to bang a dragon.

What if I don't want a test of skill? What if I don't need to be punished to have a good time? What if I play games to kick back and relax? What if I'm perfectly happy with the size of my dick just as it is? This gatekeeping "play hard or go home" attitude of people like you is the absolute worst. I'm so terribly sorry, I guess I'm just not enough of a real gamer to deserve to have fun.

It's not a matter of dick-waving, it's just... what the game is. I've tried to direct you to games that don't emphasize survival or scoring, but most of those don't seem to pique your interest. I honestly think something like Desert Strike is going to be your best bet. That or credit-feeding, honestly.

Also... I'm wondering whether you don't have some hangup about this 'real gamer' thing, because you've been much more quick to frame it that way than we have.

There's gatekeeping, and then there's just recognizing when someone doesn't seem to be interested. If you walk into a room full of classical music buffs but can't stand the sound of string instruments or major triads, they can only help you so much.

[Shepardus]

Dude just wants an easy shmup that lets him be a little sloppy sometimes. Games that allow for a large margin of error. Personally I get that experience just fine with the first few stages of Bare Knuckle II or The Ninja Warriors Again, but those aren't shooters.

I mean, there are plenty of games that allow for some mistakes without ruining everything. I myself like games to be somewhat forgiving (even though, yes, I have spent a considerable amount of time with some very unforgiving games). I've name-dropped a number of games that I enjoy when I can't be arsed with "peak performance," but if those still don't fit the bill I'm not sure how much further we can go.

[komatik]

lives / checkpoints

Honestly I'm not getting a clear picture of what sort of experience you want to have with a game

At the expense of another wall of text, I'll try to be more clear. I'm not completely against lives and checkpoints as a concept, I just get fed up with games that do it "wrong", which is nearly all of them.

Gamers as a class tend to be pretty conservative: many just want to re-play the games they already love but with a new suit and hat, and game designers as a class also tend to be conservative: they usually go with standard actions and safe designs because anything too different often sells poorly. As a result, games often end up reusing common mechanics in places where it doesn't really work or make sense anymore just because that mechanic is entrenched in the gaming psyche as "normal", and I feel that lives/health is one of the worst offenders in this respect.

In order to better explain what I think is "wrong", I'll give two counter examples of games that do it "right". I really liked Limbo and Braid. I'll write about Limbo first.

If you've never heard of it, Limbo is a puzzle-platformer where you play as a little kid trying to navigate a dystopian world full of traps that all end up killing you in gruesome ways. It's a game that has no items, powerups, inventory, score, or HUD of any kind. It's also a game that has (infinite) lives, checkpoints, and one-hit-kills.

In Limbo's case this works. Many of the puzzles can be broken if you do something wrong, but there's always a checkpoint at the puzzle's entrance. Here it wouldn't make sense to continue in an unsolvable/unsurvivable state after you accidentally cave in the ceiling or whatever, so not having a healthbar or respawn-in-place is the correct behavior because otherwise the player would be trapped. Having a one-hit-kill makes the puzzles easier because there's a clear black and white if you did something in the wrong order. It also helps because if you know you screwed up then intentionally killing yourself to reset is faster than if they'd put in a lever you had to pull or something. Limbo is reasonably difficult, but that's NOT because the game ever punishes you: rather it's a case of "Sorry that wasn't right. Try again?". The one-hit-kills and checkpoints exist to guide you through the game, never to hold you back.

And if you have a game where you don't die in the first place, that begs the question of what consequence you think getting hit should have

As for Braid it's also a puzzle-platformer, it also lacks scoring/HUD/etc, and it technically has one-hit-kills, but it takes the entirely different approach of not letting you ever die. The game is based around a time manipulation mechanic- when you touch something that "kills" you (most enemies) everything just freezes in place. You can then rewind/fastforward/pause and back up out of the situation at any speed and to whenever you want, effectively granting the player infinite checkpoints with infinite granularity. Even more so than Limbo, this mechanic is the very core foundation of the gameplay and the game simply couldn't exist without it. It's entirely possible to do things wrong in Braid, but the game lets you recover from this at your leisure. At no point does it ever make you to back up more than you want: you're never forced to start the level over, it's always your choice only if you choose it. All "checkpoints" are exactly where you want them to be. (It's a beautiful example of how someone can think outside the box and buck what most people consider un-buckable cornerstones of gameplay design).

By contrast, in many shmups kills and checkpoints are just a pain in the ass and tacked on after the fact. These things aren't worked into the gameplay in any way that's seamless or makes sense. They NEVER help you. Nearly always it's just a lightweight form of fake-difficulty that's there for no good reason, same as shit metroidvanias where you're walking down some stairs but can't kill the skeleton because the game doesn't let you attack diagonally. When you die, it's often not even obvious if you're dying because your tactics are wrong, or because you have the wrong powerups, or because you're just too slow...etc. These mechanics are there because that was the only way the designers handled difficulty and they wouldn't (or couldn't) break the mold.



...Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I'm fine with games that have checkpoints and a one-hit-wonder for a hero as long as the game uses those things to help the player instead of hurt them and is designed around the concept from the start. My problem is that I feel like most shmups are the equivalent of Super Mario, whereas what I'm really looking for is the equivalent of Limbo or Braid. I know that those probably don't exist though, so my compromise is trying to find games that at least use something like a healthbar and don't constantly beat the player over the head and force them to be a tryhard.

I don't automatically hate hard, I hate nintendohard. I don't hate difficulty, I hate fake difficulty. Most gamers (except people like MathU apparently) would probably agree, but where we differ is that I consider things like 'lives' and 'checkpoints' to be examples of the latter not the former 99% of the time. Or at least an unnecessary annoyance.

Again, for reference, I do like Magical Chase a fair amount as it doesn't really have any of that shit until maybe the very end areas.

[WelshMegalodon]

So then what the actual fuck is "real difficulty"?

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I'm fine with games that have checkpoints and a one-hit-wonder for a hero as long as the game uses those things to help the player instead of hurt them and is designed around the concept from the start.

「. . .」

[Shepardus]

I would argue that the way lives and deaths work in a game like Battle Garegga is deeply engrained in the game's design, even if it seems like any other shooter on the surface, with the way it ties together scoring and rank control. Dying helps you control the difficulty and gives you resources to help you score, which in turn gives you more lives. The systems are all tightly coupled in such a way that removing any one of them wouldn't make sense in the way that you might argue that most other games would still be cohesive games with infinite lives or no deaths.

You could try Shoot the Bullet or Double Spoiler, which I'm pretty sure I've mentioned in an earlier thread of yours. Those games are divided into short, almost puzzle-like "scenes" the way a game like Limbo is, minus the seamless overarching narrative. Double Spoiler's about to get a Steam release too, making it easier than ever to get a copy if you want.

[WelshMegalodon]

If you're going to keep accusing us of being a bunch of gatekeeper faggots, I'm just going to accuse you of not wanting to accept that the old-school design philosophy is valid.

Yes, losing feels bad. Dying to one hit feels bad. Being sent back to a checkpoint feels bad. That doesn't mean the game is required to let you win.

It just means that winning feels better when it happens.

That's what these games are about. You're given a ship. Weapons. Powerups. Maybe you can win. Maybe you can't. But you can have a lot of fun trying.

[komatik]

Azur Lane

That's a turn based strategy game though, isn't it? Another clone of Kantai Collection or something? Never been into turn based strategy, can't stay awake more than five minutes. Big-boobed anime chicks are great and all but not nearly enough to make up for it.

So then what the actual fuck is "real difficulty"?

Well, I mean Braid and Limbo I just mentioned. Magical Chase for the millionth time. Failing that, you could look at the FakeDifficulty and NintendoHard pages and pick games that don't do any of that shit.

That doesn't mean the game is required to let you win.

I never said it did. I said I don't like games that stick with archaic mechanics that don't make sense anymore, and don't like games that use cheap tricks. I never accused you of gatekeeping either, that comment was replying to MathU.

I've name-dropped a number of games that I enjoy when I can't be arsed with "peak performance," but if those still don't fit the bill I'm not sure how much further we can go.

Well again, I haven't hardly looked into any of the suggestions from this thread yet which is why I'm mostly replying to comments about the philosophy of 'lives' and such, rather than any opinions on the games themselves. I'll go down the list and try a bunch out this weekend or something. (Although as usual I'll almost certainly skip any that aren't free or are a pain to find/install).

[Shepardus]

Azur Lane

That's a turn based strategy game though, isn't it? Another clone of Kantai Collection or something? Never been into turn based strategy, can't stay awake more than five minutes. Big-boobed anime chicks are great and all but not nearly enough to make up for it.

It's a waifu collection game where, like Kancolle, the waifus are warships, but unlike Kancolle the battle gameplay takes the form of a scrolling shooter. I haven't played it myself so I can't attest to its quality or anything like that.

[komatik]

but unlike Kancolle the battle gameplay takes the form of a scrolling shooter.

Oh ok. Given that nearly all mobile games are copycats of eachother and how popular Kantai was I thought it was just a clone and never really paid much attention. I'll try and give it a glance then.

[BIL]

That cartoon of the casual enjoying his meal and the hardcore beating up his waiter is HARARIOUS and I get it really, but I would portray the latter as one of those Ted Nugent nutters going out and catching his own food. Or at least cooking his own food. To elaborate on "beatings..." it's not a one-way street. The idea is to demolish the game right back, eventually, after sufficient analysis and experimentation. This process will be "play" to some and "work" to others. I'm not an outdoorsy type, or a foodie. The notion of hunting and cooking don't move me. Sounds like a hassle I'd sooner do without. But I get why they're as much a part of a good meal as the food itself, for some. (I stopped typing for a second, wondering where this food analogy came from - then I remembered IT WAS YOU )

This is not to say that making demands of the player is some unalloyed good. It's an ethos that can be executed well or poorly just like any other. Ninja Spirit (AC/PCE) is 99% white-knuckle hellstorm, 1% utter kusoge garbage via its endgame ninja pit where all technique and creativity go out the window for a rote playback memory test. I'm sure for some, the game's preceding 99% is much the same - ninjas kill you! - and at that point, I'm afraid there's nothing for it but to differ. Since...

When you die, it's often not even obvious if you're dying because your tactics are wrong, or because you have the wrong powerups, or because you're just too slow...etc.

...the longterm value of harder shooters and other similarly militant action games is in their forcing the player to self-interrogate. Progress isn't guaranteed, it's entirely possible you'll be shut out repeatedly, it's all very out of line with the notion of simple recreation. This'll delight some and annoy others. Oh well. It's not something to apologise for or justify, although I can certainly get complaining about it.

These mechanics are there because that was the only way the designers handled difficulty and they wouldn't (or couldn't) break the mold.

This reminds me of the one guy who was stymied by the grand enigma of Gun.Smoke: enemies shooting him in his ass. I'm sure if he'd had infinite do-overs he might've cottoned onto the basics of evasion and counterattack, instead of going thermonuclear and declaring the game a great big pain in his asshole, but maybe not. He was so hopping mad he apparently forgot how many buttons the game uses.

As was suggested I looked at a page, and was similarly nonplussed!

The original Metroid (on the NES, of course). Those who play the game from scratch know that between Copy-and-Paste Environments inside of a maze, not starting at full energy (you have to fill it) regardless of passwords, only being able to shoot forward and up, needing the ice beam to fight Metroids in the last level despite not being told of this and having a choice of other weapons, and real hard bosses (especially the last one, which requires you to shoot while being harassed by turrets and "onion rings of death"), getting through the game at all is almost insane.

Yo Metroid is awesome, I "PLAYED FROM SCRATCH" on my GBA FC Mini cart* a couple years back and had a blast. It was like being on a suicide mission into an alien death labyrinth, or some shit.

*EVEN HARDER THAN THE NES CART :O

[Shepardus]

but unlike Kancolle the battle gameplay takes the form of a scrolling shooter.

Oh ok. Given that nearly all mobile games are copycats of eachother and how popular Kantai was I thought it was just a clone and never really paid much attention. I'll try and give it a glance then.

I didn't realize myself that it was a shooter for the longest time. That reminds me, CAVE also made their own mobile shooter, Gothic wa Mahou Otome. I don't know much about it (or Azur Lane, for that matter...), but I think it's in a similar vein? Technically region-locked to Japan, but there's a guide that describes a way around that.

[CyberAngel]

Really, it sounds more and more like Raptor: Call of the Shadows will be something right up your alley.

[MathU]

What if I don't want a test of skill?

Then why are you playing games at all? That's a serious question. I don't pose it to belittle you or jerk people off who've conquered the greatest challenges. At the heart of this is a conflict in discourse. A game is a set of rules and limitations to guide the development of a player's skill for the purpose of entertainment. There's lots of other hobbies, forms of play, and modes of entertainment that don't involve tests of skill, and they aren't games. What attracts you to video games if you do not wish to be challenged?

[Shepardus]

I can't speak for komatik, but...

What if I don't want a test of skill?

Then why are you playing games at all? That's a serious question. I don't pose it to belittle you or jerk people off who've conquered the greatest challenges. At the heart of this is a conflict in discourse. A game is a set of rules and limitations to guide the development of a player's skill for the purpose of entertainment. There's lots of other hobbies, forms of play, and modes of entertainment that don't involve tests of skill, and they aren't games. What attracts you to video games if you do not wish to be challenged?

Set of rules and limitations, yes, but I disagree that it's necessarily "to guide the development of a player's skill." Sometimes the interaction of different rules and systems is interesting in and of itself; this is something that's mostly talked about in the context of simulation games and roguelikes, though not entirely devoid from shmups (you could tinker with some scoring systems like this, or experiment with weird weapon gimmicks). Discovering what can happen in an isolated environment has an appeal that doesn't come up a whole lot outside of games (video or otherwise), even if it's not necessarily a challenge.

There are other appeals (experiencing an interactive narrative, or making steady and visible progress toward goals like in a host of grind-centered games, etc.) but I personally find that one the most compelling.

[WelshMegalodon]

Relevant quote from the last time we had this discussion:

Castlevania's a very structured game, but the limitations are what make it great. Consider chess. The movement of all pieces except the Queen is severely gimped, especially pawns, who can't even hit what's right in front of their faces. Looking at it from those troupes articles' perspective, I guess chess is just fake hard. Poor game design is holding it back. So lets improve all the players units by giving them the same movement as the Queen! We don't have to constantly keep our forces' limitations in mind anymore! Isn't the game much better now?

No. You've destroyed every element of strategy. The winner is now simply who moves first. By removing the limitations, a thought-provoking game has been reduced to the complexity of a coin toss. That's what happened to the post-Symphony Castlevanias, though not to the same degree.

Anyway, I do acknowledge that some games are unfairly designed. Could anyone beat this on skill alone? You have to be objective, though, instead of just saying any game beyond your current level of ability is unfair. That's what those troupes articles are doing; thay say "Nintendo hard" when most Nintendo games are in fact incredibly easy, and the screenshot illustrating "fake difficulty" is from a boss fight so simple that only the most inbred of players risk death.

Yo Metroid is awesome, I "PLAYED FROM SCRATCH" on my GBA FC Mini cart* a couple years back and had a blast. It was like being on a suicide mission into an alien death labyrinth, or some shit.

*EVEN HARDER THAN THE NES CART :O

I've gotten the best ending! Though even I'll admit that the game shines more in subsequent playthroughs when you remember to pick up the Screw Attack sooner rather than later.

The lack of slowdown in Tourian and the handful of modified enemy patterns do make the game slightly harder, but I think not having to input a password actually makes the Famicom Mini release the more accessible game.

needing the ice beam to fight Metroids in the last level despite not being told of this and having a choice of other weapons

This is a load of bunk. The manual clearly states that Metroids can't be damaged with your standard beam.

It can't be destroyed directly with the normal beam. Freeze it with the ice beam, and then fire 5 missile blasts at it.

Spoiler

Now I am going to apply a method of critique to Braid's puzzle aspect that will outrage casuals, "indies" and other fagots even more than my criticisms usually outrage them: I am going to rate Braid's puzzle aspect PURELY ON THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TAKES TO OVERCOME IT. Now, do yourself a favor and stop for a moment to think about the rationale of this approach before outright dismissing it. Ask yourselves: what is a puzzle? Is a straight corridor with a door at the other end a puzzle, if all it takes to solve it is to walk down the corridor and go through the door? Am I solving puzzles every day on my way to the supermarket, whenever I turn another corner? Aren't puzzles, after all, supposed to be things THAT ARE PUZZLING? Things that stop you in your tracks AND FORCE YOU TO THINK in order to overcome them? And if so, what could be more natural than to conclude that, THE LONGER a puzzle forces you to think, THE BETTER IT SERVES ITS FUNCTION AS A PUZZLE? I am not trying to set up here some universal, absolute standard of the type "a two-hour puzzle is a good puzzle", since different people have different intelligence levels, and will therefore arrive at the solution at different time frames (or not arrive at it at all—) — I mean as a RELATIVE standard, in the sense of: the puzzle that takes ME longer to solve is FOR ME a better puzzle — because it PUZZLED ME LONGER. And let no one be childish enough here to cite some stupid adventure game puzzles which, though it might take you days to figure out, are just based on some utterly illogical item combination that can only be discovered by a tiresome trial-and-error process — that's a whole other type of puzzle altogether than the kind games like Braid, Loop Salad and Chu Chu Rocket offer, where the ingredients for the solution are very few and can be found on a single screen, or at any rate across a very small area. And in any case, I am not denying that, FOR A GIVEN LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY, there do not exist better- and worse-designed puzzles; all I am saying is that if a "puzzle" barely even requires you to think IT'S BARELY EVEN A PUZZLE; and certainly not a "devilish" one, as Braid's puzzles have been dubbed by every memetic review of the game I've come across; for how in hell could a puzzle ever be deemed "devilish" IF EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET CAN SOLVE IT WITHIN TEN MINUTES TOPS? Or did all the retards in the world's basements somehow drop dead and were instantly replaced by bona fide geniuses? Bottom line is that THERE'S BARELY ANYTHING PUZZLING ABOUT BRAID'S PUZZLES, and the 4 to 5-hour time-frame in which EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET claims that they finished Braid is basically the amount of time it takes to walk from one end of the game to the other while pausing now and then to admire the backgrounds and occasionally mess about with the rewind feature. At any rate, that is what every halfway experienced gamer who's played this game has realized — which is to say, as far as I know, only zinger:

"In all of the game's worlds, it's the unconventional and confusing concept of time manipulation that is difficult, not the puzzles. The engine, that was the real puzzle to me, while the actual puzzles, which I often cleared by chance (well, those few that weren't obvious), served as clues when exploring it. ... I mean, you learn the basics of each world's concept just before you've completed it, but after that I expect devilish puzzles that push this concept to the limit."

[BIL]

The lack of slowdown in Tourian and the handful of modified enemy patterns do make the game slightly harder, but I think not having to input a password actually makes the Famicom Mini release the more accessible game.

Yeah no FDS load times / disk flipping either! :O It's rad.

I'm offended our gaming obersturmfuhrers didn't also mention the lava pits that those wascally turrets and "ONION RINGS OF DEATH" will regularly dunk you into... if you suck!

Spoiler

Now I am going to apply a method of critique to Braid's puzzle aspect that will outrage casuals, "indies" and other fagots even more than my criticisms usually outrage them: I am going to rate Braid's puzzle aspect PURELY ON THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TAKES TO OVERCOME IT. Now, do yourself a favor and stop for a moment to think about the rationale of this approach before outright dismissing it. Ask yourselves: what is a puzzle? Is a straight corridor with a door at the other end a puzzle, if all it takes to solve it is to walk down the corridor and go through the door? Am I solving puzzles every day on my way to the supermarket, whenever I turn another corner? Aren't puzzles, after all, supposed to be things THAT ARE PUZZLING? Things that stop you in your tracks AND FORCE YOU TO THINK in order to overcome them? And if so, what could be more natural than to conclude that, THE LONGER a puzzle forces you to think, THE BETTER IT SERVES ITS FUNCTION AS A PUZZLE? I am not trying to set up here some universal, absolute standard of the type "a two-hour puzzle is a good puzzle", since different people have different intelligence levels, and will therefore arrive at the solution at different time frames (or not arrive at it at all—) — I mean as a RELATIVE standard, in the sense of: the puzzle that takes ME longer to solve is FOR ME a better puzzle — because it PUZZLED ME LONGER. And let no one be childish enough here to cite some stupid adventure game puzzles which, though it might take you days to figure out, are just based on some utterly illogical item combination that can only be discovered by a tiresome trial-and-error process — that's a whole other type of puzzle altogether than the kind games like Braid, Loop Salad and Chu Chu Rocket offer, where the ingredients for the solution are very few and can be found on a single screen, or at any rate across a very small area. And in any case, I am not denying that, FOR A GIVEN LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY, there do not exist better- and worse-designed puzzles; all I am saying is that if a "puzzle" barely even requires you to think IT'S BARELY EVEN A PUZZLE; and certainly not a "devilish" one, as Braid's puzzles have been dubbed by every memetic review of the game I've come across; for how in hell could a puzzle ever be deemed "devilish" IF EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET CAN SOLVE IT WITHIN TEN MINUTES TOPS? Or did all the retards in the world's basements somehow drop dead and were instantly replaced by bona fide geniuses? Bottom line is that THERE'S BARELY ANYTHING PUZZLING ABOUT BRAID'S PUZZLES, and the 4 to 5-hour time-frame in which EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET claims that they finished Braid is basically the amount of time it takes to walk from one end of the game to the other while pausing now and then to admire the backgrounds and occasionally mess about with the rewind feature. At any rate, that is what every halfway experienced gamer who's played this game has realized — which is to say, as far as I know, only zinger:

"In all of the game's worlds, it's the unconventional and confusing concept of time manipulation that is difficult, not the puzzles. The engine, that was the real puzzle to me, while the actual puzzles, which I often cleared by chance (well, those few that weren't obvious), served as clues when exploring it. ... I mean, you learn the basics of each world's concept just before you've completed it, but after that I expect devilish puzzles that push this concept to the limit."

blackman.txt, a sword without a hilt...

[komatik]

The idea is to demolish the game right back, eventually,

Then why are you playing games at all?

You're missing my point.

Nearly all games are fundamentally based around fighting: in some cases literally (eg; Street Fighter), in some cases procedurally (you have to fight the enemies to beat the level), and in some cases meta-lly (you have to fight the design of the game itself due to broken controls or whatever).

Now, tons of people enjoy fighting in one sense or another, and that's totally fine by me. But personally I'm damn tired of fighting all the time. I have to fight with idiots and asshole companies and stupid shit day in and day out. When I want to play a game, I want to relax and get away from all that as much as I can.

I understand full well that there will never be a shmup that completely avoids any sense of fighting (at a base level, fighting off waves of enemies are just what shmups are), but I'm still going to try and minimize my exposure to it by avoiding egregious bullshit. And for me, the most egregious are games that actively punish the player with arbitrary limitations and pointless rules. Especially when these limitations and rules are holdovers from older systems and still having them isn't necessary anymore. There are other ways to add conflict into a game that don't rely on this stuff, which leads me to...

Now I am going to apply a method of critique to Braid's puzzle aspect

I don't really understand what point this person was trying to make, or what point you're trying to make by quoting it. I never held up Braid as some paragon of ultimate difficulty- what people think of the puzzles themselves isn't related to anything I was talking about. I was using it as an example of how a game that doesn't fight the player in any way, which never punishes you, and which doesn't even let you die, still manages to be very fun to play. And it does this without reducing itself to the level of legos or jumprope. People are so used to age old concepts like "lives" and "health" and "score" that they think games are required to have these things to even be a game in the first place. Braid is proof that that's not true and that there are other ways to introduce challenge and enjoyment if people would just take a step back and think about it.


I'm not desperately in love with things like healthbars or recharging shields. I don't think they're the best thing ever or that they should be shoehorned into every game. I'm just saying that games which have them tend to be made by designers who are more accepting of the concept of a game which works with the player and not against him; a game that offers some challenge and enjoyment but with less unnecessary fighting. And that those types of games are the ones I'd rather play. Maybe there aren't a lot of shmups that take this approach, and maybe the ones that do aren't popular, but I'm still going to make some attempt to find them.

[komatik]

Then why are you playing games at all?

To answer your question more literally: I play games to have fun. I'm very much one of those "life is a journey, not a destination" types of people; when I play a game it's to experience the art and the flow and mechanics and all that, not to win. I don't necessarily care if I get to the end. I don't give a flying fuck about things like score or achievements.

I can't speak for komatik, but...

Everything you wrote is pretty much on the money. There's all sorts of different ways to present combinations of sounds and visuals to a person in a way that's enjoyable to them, and quite a few of them are games even though they may not be presenting any sort of test or skillcheck. Speaking of a journey, the PS3 title Journey is an archetypal "experience" game that's pretty far from any of the classical nintendohard tropes and lots of people liked playing that.

I disagree that it's necessarily "to guide the development of a player's skill."

Part of this argument might also be what people classify as "skill". Limbo and Braid are both puzzle games, but I don't consider puzzle games to be skill based really.

[WelshMegalodon]

People are so used to age old concepts like "lives" and "health" and "score" that they think games are required to have these things to even be a game in the first place.

Except in strategy games. And graphic adventures. And most RPGs. And simulation games. And sports games. And Zeldalikes. And Metroidvanias. And the gazillion other genres that aren't descended from arcades but which co-existed alongside them and still remain (mostly) relevant to this day.

I just find it extremely bizarre that you're so hell-bent on discovering a shooter that rejects "archaic" concepts like lives when it's one of the genres where it actually MAKES SENSE TO HAVE THEM. This means that yes, SHOOTERS ARE DESIGNED WITH LIVES AND HEALTH AND SCORE IN MIND BECAUSE WITHOUT THEM THEY WOULD BE BORING.

This thirst for PUROGURESSU DESU might make sense if you were looking for NEWER GAMES like some of the ones we've been namedropping, or for COMPUTER GAMES, which are historically less about the shooting and dodging, but you've honed in on the era in which YOU YOURSELF INSIST ON CLAIMING that no one allegedly knew any better (except the people that had been writing thoughtful/immersive/plot-based/exploration-based/what have you games for years, mostly on computers but occasionally on consoles).

This is like walking into a meat store and complaining that there's blood on the counter. Like... yes, there's blood, because it's a fucking meat store. Or like going into a porn shop and complaining that there are pictures of naked women. Most people like seeing naked women when they're trying to get off, that's why there are pictures of naked women in a porn shop. It's not an ANTIQUATED CONCEPT if people associate naked women with sex and arousal, it's just something you personally don't agree with.

If you apply to be a NASCAR driver but tell them you just want to sit in the car and enjoy the smell of the leather seats, and don't care about breaking records or coming in first, they're just going to laugh in your face.

And WHY THE HELL do you not consider Desert Strike a shooter?

Also, play OutRun. Like seriously. Play OutRun. It's a driving game, but it's not too hard and the penalty for crashing is relatively small, at least in the beginning. There's a time limit, yes, but the game doesn't feel like it's pressuring you at all. I think it checks all the boxes.

Also play Hyper Dyne Side Arms because it also ticks most of your boxes, although it's also a little dull and there's no puzzle element or whatever.

Play Gunstar Heroes because it has a health bar and is pretty lenient about you not being 100% efficient.

Is it OUTDATED if a graphic adventure asks you to make a choice once in a while? Not really, because it's literally the core gameplay loop. (Though there are 'kinetic novels' like Planetarian, which is in effect a digital picture book, for people who play VNs but hate choice.)

[Shepardus]

This thirst for PUROGURESSU DESU might make sense if you were looking for NEWER GAMES like some of the ones we've been namedropping, or for COMPUTER GAMES, which are historically less about the shooting and dodging, but you've honed in on the era in which YOU YOURSELF INSIST ON CLAIMING that no one allegedly knew any better (except the people that had been writing thoughtful/immersive/plot-based/exploration-based/what have you games, mostly on computers but occasionally on consoles).

Among other things, yes, this. You're really not doing yourself any favors trying to focus on games from the 8/16-bit era. Easier to emulate, yes, but you're missing out on pretty much the entire doujin scene's output, which is where much of the experimentation happens. If you're looking for a game just right for you, you should be prepared to invest a bit more than it takes to download a rom pack and shuffle it through an emulator.