So, do you feel that Japanese gaming is back?

[Obscura]

lol i got the best ending and killed almost everything in the game that i saw moving on hard mode. y'all fans of these games always talking about theory and consequence like this but the reality is a game you can always bludgeon your way through like the biggest dingus in the universe. the game also actively rewards you for killing everything in almost every conceivable encounter and situation and i have no idea what on earth you're on about.

WARNING TO ANYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED PREY AND WANTS TO: I'M ABOUT TO GET SPOILERY, STOP READING THIS POST

Nope, you can't get the actual best ending unless you don't kill a single one of the mind-controlled humans. Furthermore, your ending from one of the four "judges" gets downgraded if you take more than three Psi powers, which is significant for a reason I'll get to shortly. You also can't straight up "bludgeon" your way through everything, Electric/Fire Phantoms and Tele/Techopaths will fuck you up with unavoidable attacks if you try that LOL.

"Game actively rewards you for killing everything" no, it literally doesn't, unless you're doing stealth kills only a few enemies will leave you with more resources than you started with after a kill, a few such as Weavers, Tele/Technopaths, Military Bots, or Greater Mimics are fucking terrible to fight if you don't have to. Military bots especially, since they respawn infinitely.

i also don't know how you can consider a game with a built-in savestating button and where "murder everything" is the most potent strategy anything more than facile player empowerment. nearly every ability in the game is either "kill thing" or "make it easier to kill thing" and almost all of the extremely binary decisions in the game are whether you do that and receive a reward or do not and get an ending admonishing you for being a sociopath and not helping enough people. dishonored at least has kind of fun abilities and realizes it's a playground, prey feels as stupid as bioshock about believing it has something to say about the ethical quandary of whether or not you shoot yourself full of Makes-Me-Good-At-Killing-Juice.

System Shock 2 -- has built-in savestating as the only way to save your game.
Prey -- has quicksaves on the PC version if you want them, but also has proper checkpointing available.

Why are you saying Prey is inferior again LOL? If you hate quicksaves, Prey is actually better.

"Murder everything" is not the most potent strategy unless you take either gun skills or psi skills, the latter of which downgrade your ending. Most of the skills on the human tree don't make fighting easier; most of the skills on the human tree are oriented towards avoiding fighting. There's a lot more to the various endings than the sidequests you do BTW; skills taken, number of Typhon killed, and time taken to get past various sections all change the ending.

this is without going into the game's utterly dire manipulation of your cultivated, neurotic kleptomania that has been slowly instilled by every one of its ilk for the last twenty years. why am i spending any amount of this time in the game grabbing shit out of a trash can? why am i rewarded for spending hours doing so?

You're literally not, inventory space is incredibly limited, you can't grab everything.

no matter your string of decisions, you end the game an unstoppable juggernaut whose decision between stealth, shooting, and ability-then-shooting is not a matter of which is more difficult, more risky, or provides a better reward but whatever your godlike whim deems more entertaining.

This only happens if you go psi, and thus lock yourself into a partially-bad ending. Non-psi characters simply can't craft that many hypos, they need the resources for gloo and bullets, so they have to pick only one tree to really focus on. BTW, if you really felt that overpowered, just like SS2, you can bump the difficulty to Nightmare whenever you want.

Either you didn't actually play Prey, or you played it with your eyes fixated on the (again, completely optional) quest markers, and complained that the game was dumbed down because you played it in a dumbed down way.

this game was a couple of hours of curious interest if it would be what every outlet was saying it was and then many more spent in grueling self-flagellation as i forced myself to the end of yet another homogenized, modern trash heap. forget me entirely for a second and listen to grook saying he does not like modern or western design and does this really still sound like something you'd recommend, much less something you're going to tell him he's making "poor life decisions" for not playing? forgetting the notion of good or bad taste and the quality of the game, why is this something you're assuming would be up any ps4 owner's alley?

1) Since this game's release, I've been recommending this game to everyone, including people who usually play nothing but JRPGs, and all of them have come away from it agreeing with my absolutely glowing praise of the game. You're the first actual human (not game journo or something) I've ever encountered that has anything negative to say about Prey, aside from "it had a few technical issues at launch".

2) Squire said he liked System Shock. Prey stomps System Shock into the fucking ground. Furthermore, Prey's design tenets are largely less western than those of the Shocks; circular world design, mobility-focused level design and combat systems, etc.

maybe! i think it's very heavily going to matter more if you liked recent stuff like human revolution and bioshock (both garbage, imho) than either of those two (which i consider really clunky but at least respect their ambition from a certain distance).

No way, Prey is more System Shock than System Shock, BioShock and DX:HR were bog-standard FPS and TPS games respectively.

if you somehow consider steps like that "immersive" and not "psychotic torture engineered by the actual devil," i think you'll get past one of my greatest impediments to enjoyment but quite possibly get stuck up on how little decisions actually matter, how binary results are, and how little personalization your playthrough has (as you are fallout 3 levels of "i can do everything" after a certain point - wouldn't want to miss any content on your one-and-only playthrough).

You literally can't see about half of Prey's content on any single playthrough. This "lol you're only gonna play once, western game design so bad!" bit is absolutely stupid when it comes to this game in particular.

Daggerfall is a painfully simple game. There was a genuine passion and effort behind it, but it didn't result in anything particularly good. The only two things to do are to break into shops and explore huge copy-pasted dungeons. After you've done both of those once you might as well call it quits, you've seen it all.

Yes, Mantellan Crux, very copy-pasted. Have you even played this game?

Morrowind doesn't trust the player any more than Skyrim does, killing any "critical" NPC rewards you with a huge "OMG U DOOMED TEH WORLD, RELOAD UR GAEM!" screen.

Yes, some random roguelike is better than Fallout, lol. Right.

Having a soft-version of Diablo's "go get your stuff back" mechanics isn't innovation. World tendency is "innovative", I'll give you that, but it's also shit, such a bad idea that anyone should immediately realize it's a bad idea. The summoning system is just a fancy way of implementing coop; if anything was innovative, it was invasions, not summoning.

[kitten]

Nope, you can't get the actual best ending unless you don't kill a single one of the mind-controlled humans.

you can (unless you're saying one incredibly small blurb of altered dialogue makes it "not the best ending?")

You also can't straight up "bludgeon" your way through everything

i did. on hard.

Why are you saying Prey is inferior again LOL?

i didn't directly compare the two

You're literally not, inventory space is incredibly limited, you can't grab everything.

you can compost nearly everything and are encouraged to

Either you didn't actually play Prey, or you played it with your eyes fixated on the (again, completely optional) quest markers, and complained that the game was dumbed down because you played it in a dumbed down way.

ah, yes, i disliked it and therefore "didn't play it right." even playing the vast majority of the game's content as what seemed quite intended can never conquer this one, guess you win

[Durandal]

Nope, you can't get the actual best ending unless you don't kill a single one of the mind-controlled humans. Furthermore, your ending from one of the four "judges" gets downgraded if you take more than three Psi powers, which is significant for a reason I'll get to shortly. You also can't straight up "bludgeon" your way through everything, Electric/Fire Phantoms and Tele/Techopaths will fuck you up with unavoidable attacks if you try that LOL.

They are until you learn the tricks. The Stun Gun is OP OP OP, can be found in the secret briefcase near where you start out the game, with plenty of ammo for it and can stun anything short of a Voltaic Phantom or Nightmare. You can use it to perform the good ol' Bioshock one-two punch with the shock and wrench. It's limited capacity would be a drawback if you faced off more than a handful of enemies at once, except the majority of encounters tend to consist of like two Phantoms and some Mimics here and there, even up until the endgame. Then you can use EMP nades or null grenades to disable bots or Typhons at your own leisure, which is completely possible given the incredibly liberal amount of grenades the game gives you, so you can get away with just using nades whenever. Compare how many nades you get in Prey and in Deus Ex. It's ludicrous.

"Game actively rewards you for killing everything" no, it literally doesn't, unless you're doing stealth kills only a few enemies will leave you with more resources than you started with after a kill, a few such as Weavers, Tele/Technopaths, Military Bots, or Greater Mimics are fucking terrible to fight if you don't have to. Military bots especially, since they respawn infinitely.

With the xenobiology skill or whatever all Typhon enemies drop materials which can be recycled into Exotic material, which is definitely worth it given how rare Exotic material tends to be and how useful Neuromods can be. By the time military bots spawn you should be speedrunning to the end of the game because of how much of a waste of time its, which is a rather egregious way of forcing the player to the end when you're still given loads of busywork trudging through military bots until you can finally see the ending..

System Shock 2 -- has built-in savestating as the only way to save your game.
Prey -- has quicksaves on the PC version if you want them, but also has proper checkpointing available.

It's more of an auto-save between loading zones, which can hardly be called proper, and would make the game far from enjoyable is that's what you'd have to adhere to. Imagine scouring all the levels, picking up all that trash again, and micro-managing your inventory again whenever you die, again and again. Especially on Nightmare mode you go down so fast that sticking with your losses and burning resources in the long run becomes impossible when you die outright because difficulty settings only increase damage taken and enemy HP, unlike SS2's difficulty settings which wouldn't only reduce your maximum HP and mana, but make items more expensive, reduce item drop chances, and increase upgrade point costs. Factors which make more sense for a game like this. If I have a stack of twenty healthkits, the main threat shouldn't be me dying, but it should be almost running out of medkits. I hate save-scumming as much as the next person, but the game loop in Prey would make redoing areas on death an absolute PAIN, having Vita-Chambers here would actually be a godsend. Of all things Prey didn't rip-off from SS1/2, it had to be the reconstruction chambers and difficulty settings for some fucking reason.

"Murder everything" is not the most potent strategy unless you take either gun skills or psi skills, the latter of which downgrade your ending. Most of the skills on the human tree don't make fighting easier; most of the skills on the human tree are oriented towards avoiding fighting. There's a lot more to the various endings than the sidequests you do BTW; skills taken, number of Typhon killed, and time taken to get past various sections all change the ending.

who cares about the ending, it's not even narratively satisfying to go for any kind of ending when it turns out its all a simulation and the ultimate choice essentially boils down to "kill your son or nuke Boston" instead of being a unique ending with several additional mutable factors depending on your choices
when most of the narrative/gameplay reactivity is only confined to the end, as opposed to something like in Alpha Protocol where your choices majorly affect how characters and situation play out from start to finish, it's not that fun to replay for the sake of the story

the human trees are more utilitarian than combat-oriented, but that's because a human player will rely more on weapons found in the field, and weapon upgrading is done through weapon modding (though you need to upgrade the modding skill before you're able to mod in the first place). unlocking psi powers has to be done by upgrading and taking creepshots of enemies because there's no real narrative explanation for being able to find psychic abilities in the field in Prey. the psi upgrades aren't necessarily all combat-oriented either given the amount of use some of the abilities have outside of combat, like turning yourself into a coffee cup. conversely there wouldn't be as much space in the human trees for weapon-specific upgrades which also need to make room for the utility upgrades, that's why the only weapon upgrades are a straight up damage boost and a hilariously overpowered slow-mo ability which increases your weapon damage for the duration of the effect

You're literally not, inventory space is incredibly limited, you can't grab everything.

this is why inventory size upgrades become integral to any player regardless of playstyle. bigger inventory -> more shit to grab and recycle -> more psi hypos/neuromods/weapon upgrades/whatever, it's the kind of space janitor playstyle the game implicitly encourages through every facet of its systems
if you don't carry around literally every weapon you will have enough space to carry tons of recyclable junk once your inventory is upgraded and reduce the treks you have to make or spend one of your recycler charges to avoid making a trip in the first place. stack size limits in Prey are overly lenient, so carrying stacks of twenty medkits without taking up extra inventory space leaves a lot more space to carry junk around in

This only happens if you go psi, and thus lock yourself into a partially-bad ending. Non-psi characters simply can't craft that many hypos, they need the resources for gloo and bullets, so they have to pick only one tree to really focus on. BTW, if you really felt that overpowered, just like SS2, you can bump the difficulty to Nightmare whenever you want.

for my first playthrough I had maxed out all three human skill trees and had enough spare points for several psi abilities too. I had so many neuromods that I was upgrading shit I didn't really need at all. I don't know whether I was minmaxing, I just played the game as I was apparently expected to, recycling shit for more neuromods and thoroughly exploring places
the game didn't even fully end at that point, even though I was god at that point I still discovered an entirely new area which I had absolutely no reason to explore further in because I was absolutely stacked with supplies and was the second coming of god. you explore to make yourself stronger, but if you are already beyond strongest then there's no fucking reason to. the endgame completely fell apart because of this, and the boredom I felt there completely cemented the endgame in my mind as "that part"

psi players have less neuromods to work with since they won't recycle psi hypos as much, but that doesn't matter when their abilities are so fucking overpowered to begin with. Psychoshock is obscenely overpowered and can disable even Nightmares with the press of a button (even though Nightmares are a joke since you can go hide in a closet for three minutes until they go away). Of course they had to balance it out with cooldowns, cooldowns being the primary tools anyone uses when they can't figure out how to make balance fun, instead taking away player agency by having them force to wait until they can use their tools again. as a psi player I found myself relying more on my abilities and wrench, so I had resources to spare to craft a fuckhueg stack of psi hypos, which like SS2 resulted in a harder early game but completely trivial endgame. I was just going through the motions at that point. I can't stand that you can only use psi abilities a bit later in the game when you find the psychoscope in front of the psi division entrance or somewhere, SS2 would give you a psi amp from the beginning and let you exercise your abilities from the beginning

all nightmare does is make you die faster, which isn't fun when the challenge is supposedly about resource management, not avoiding death
I honestly have more fun playing on normal mode because my mistakes in combat end up having long-term repercussions instead of an instant game over, especially on survival mode when you have to deal with status ailments and shit

it was fun when I was weak and scampering for supplies
then I became god

[Mischief Maker]

What the hell is innovative about Demon's Souls? It's Ultima Underworld 2 in third person, lol.

I think the more accurate description is it's "Severance: Blade of Darkness" with some unnecessary RPG jank thrown in to dilute the action gameplay.

[Squire Grooktook]

The fires of conflict...

...have been lit.

What the hell is innovative about Demon's Souls? It's Ultima Underworld 2 in third person, lol.

I think the more accurate description is it's "Severance: Blade of Darkness" with some unnecessary RPG jank thrown in to dilute the action gameplay.

Stamina as both a cobmat mechanic and a stat is a legit brilliant idea.

[Mischief Maker]

Severance had a stamina bar.

[Marc]

Some really interesting discussion here, will add my thoughts when I'm not halfway inebriated. One observation though, seems to be a lot of people here playing games they don't like to completion? My rule is roughly three /four hours. BotW was very close to being shitcanned this week. And digs ar Demon's Souls... Ouch.

[Vanguard]

Yes, Mantellan Crux, very copy-pasted. Have you even played this game?

Morrowind doesn't trust the player any more than Skyrim does, killing any "critical" NPC rewards you with a huge "OMG U DOOMED TEH WORLD, RELOAD UR GAEM!" screen.

Yes, some random roguelike is better than Fallout, lol. Right.

Having a soft-version of Diablo's "go get your stuff back" mechanics isn't innovation. World tendency is "innovative", I'll give you that, but it's also shit, such a bad idea that anyone should immediately realize it's a bad idea. The summoning system is just a fancy way of implementing coop; if anything was innovative, it was invasions, not summoning.

Yes, yes, there's one unique dungeon in Daggerfall as your reward for suffering through the dozens of other copy-pasted ones to reach the ending. It features such highlights as guessing which thing you need to touch to proceed, and which will just kill you, or entering a room with a grave inside that says "the guy ahead is the benefactor" and then you go a few rooms deeper and a guy asks "who am I?" and you type "benefactor." It sure seems impressive after you played the rest of Daggerfall's main quest and got Stockholm syndrome, but it is, in fact, well below the standards of your average Zelda dungeon.

The "doomed world" popup is a perfect form of respect for the player. They let you know that there's a big consequence for killing that guy - it isn't always clear! - and that you might want to reload. But the game still lets you do it! One of the coolest things about Morrowind is that despite there being the one prophesied way of solving the main quest, there are several ways to get through it. If you get halfway in and raise your level and reputation get high enough, Vivec decides he doesn't care that the you're supposed to prove you're the Nerevarine by doing X and Y. He declares you the Nerevarine and gives you wraithguard so you can get on with killing Dagoth Ur. You can also kill Vivec and take the unique dwemer artifact from his corpse. Take that to Yagrum and he can, at significant cost to your max HP, make a second wraithguard. You can do the standard main quest and then do this to get a wraithguard for each hand. Lastly, you can beat the game by simply raising your health through various means until you're able to endure the intense damage caused by using keening and sunder without wraithguard.

Daggerfall does not allow the player this level of choice and consequence. Oblivion and Skyrim aren't even fucking trying. Morrowind is the best Elder Scrolls game and it's not a close race.


Brogue is categorically superior to Fallout, as are many other roguelikes*. The roguelike is the perfected form of the WRPG, they have succeeded at everything WRPGs have tried and failed, and succeeded better at the things WRPGs have done well. But let's compare Fallout against Brogue:

The Virgin Fallout:
• Well-intentioned but broken combat system. Melee enemies literally can't touch you if you have more agility than them, and if you didn't pump agility, you fucked up. Pretty much everything you can't kite is a damage race. One critical hit decides the winner of a fight for either side.
• A wide variety of quests, some of which even affect the game's outcome (by which I mean they add a 10 second dialogue clip). Unfortunately, a great many are broken in one way or another**.
• Allies are generally considered unhelpful and require excessive luck, effort, or savescumming to keep alive. They can't level up and become increasingly underpowered over time. They are also known for walking straight into deadly forcefields.
• Character building system is mostly about knowing in advance which skills are demanded by quests, which perks are traps and which are overpowered, etc. There are four combat skills you can build your character around: small guns, big guns, energy weapons, and melee. Small guns and big guns play the same as energy weapons, but are not as good. Small guns are at least worth training for the first half of the game, big guns aren't good for anything.
• The much-lauded pacifist option involves simply not engaging with much of the game. You are also required to set off a nuclear bomb inside an inhabited base. There's no way around this and the base cannot be evacuated. You beat the final boss by telling him his plan doesn't make any sense, which causes him to kill himself.

The Chad Brogue:
• Near-perfect game of tactics and strategy. Every consumable used affects the rest of your run. Even the simple decision of whether to rest and regain hp after combat is loaded with consequence.
• New puzzles are generated dynamically every playthrough and are always solvable. There are often multiple ways to approach them.
• Properly supported allies are tremendously powerful. The player can clear the game by playing support for friendly monsters. They can be level up and learn new abilities.
• Dozens of enchantable items, most of which can serve as the basis for a viable character build. Mixing and matching provides tremendous variety. Stealth, defense, evasion, regeneration, life-stealing, allies, various melee weapons (most of which have different abilities rather than just different numbers), various magic spells, and several gimmick builds are all viable, can all be combined, and which is optimal changes between playthroughs.
• Possibly the highest quality random level generator in existence. Its randomized dungeons surpass many games' handmade dungeons. (Fallout, for example!)
• Tremendously interactive dungeons. Bridges can be destroyed to send enemies plummeting into the abyss. Combustible gasses can create explosions with a source of fire. Walls can be tunneled through. A charm of fire immunity will allow walking across lava and levitation will allow crossing chasms (don't mess with anything that can cast dispel magic while doing either of those!). There's plenty more too.
• Pacifist runs are viable through stealth, movement abilities, or disabling enemies nonviolently by various means. The player can complete the game without inflicting any harm on any living being.
• Functional scoring system. For the best of the best, there's an alternate victory method too.

With all of that said, Fallout 1 beats most modern WRPGs and is a shit ton better than anything Bethesda can make. It was always a step down from the original Wasteland though.


One big difference between Diablo 2 corpse runs and Souls series bloodstain runs: Souls enemies fucking respawn! Much unlike D2 corpse runs, a Souls series bloodstain run isn't just backtracking through empty terrain. Another difference: you can die a hundred times in D2 and your original corpse will still be there, only get one chance in a Souls game. Pretty significant part of the mechanic! Also: you can't teleport your bloodstain back to the nexus at any time by saving and quitting. Goddamn! Why did you think bringing up Blizzard's tedious, poorly considered mechanics would somehow make Demon's Souls look bad? Were you hoping that I had never played Diablo and wouldn't see through the blatant bullshit?

"Summoning system" was meant to encompass both co-op and pvp, but you're right that that was imprecise, and that invasions are the more innovative of the two.

Another Souls series innovation is giving different weapons within the same weapon type their own movesets. At least I can't think of anything that did it earlier.

What the hell is innovative about Demon's Souls? It's Ultima Underworld 2 in third person, lol.

I think the more accurate description is it's "Severance: Blade of Darkness" with some unnecessary RPG jank thrown in to dilute the action gameplay.

lmao that this is what western gamers have to resort to.


* Take for example ADoM, a game that beats Fallout in every gameplay category. Combat, character building, long-term strategy, difficulty, overworld, dungeons, enemies, items, economy, side quests, story choices and consequences, and gameplay choices and consequences. It's a total blowout.

** A few I remember off the top of my head, the quest to take Gizmo down breaks if he attacks you while talking to him, which is fairly likely to happen. The reason for this is because every developer and every playtester for Fallout was a savescummer who reloads the instant something goes wrong. That's how the game was meant to be played. If you get the water chip that provides your vault with an unlimited supply of water, and then buy water for them from a trader, the timer until they all die will actually reset from "never" until "when the water you just bought runs out." This isn't a minor oversight! The first half of the game is about that water chip! Third, the Followers of the Apocalypse get wiped out in the ending if you don't do their quest, but you can't even fucking start that quest because Fallout is a buggy piece of shit!

Some of that stuff is reparable with knowledge or savescumming and some isn't. Either way the player shouldn't have to duct tape a broken game together as they play it.

[evil_ash_xero]

i assume evil ash is just talking about sales as last gen there was just as many great japanese games, if not more.

I am talking about sales, yes.
Almost all you heard about for half of last gen was how Japanese gaming was dying, wasn't innovating...blah blah blah...
I was pretty mad about it, honestly. lol

And it seems like Capcom is getting their heads back on. We'll have to see once DMC 5 comes out. Because I don't think the Monster Hunter games were ever bad. This one just kind of evolved to a type of game, that more people like.

Also, Platinum looked like they were gonna die, and they have an out of nowhere hit with Automata. There's no way that game would have done so well, last gen.

Things were looking a bit dire. Except for Fromsoft. They were kicking it.

[BryanM]

Text is indeed so much more efficient than having floating polygons everywhere:

"Cloud McStabby walked through the portal. Once the watery shimmer dissipated, he took stock of his surroundings. The ground was made of clear crystal plates, all the way to the horizon. The sky, was full of stars. The blue energy vortex fluctuated in the distance. It felt like a cold hand had grasped upon his stomach - this was on another level, compared to the days back when he was murdering goblins for scarce amounts of EXP."

Even such a simple barebones environment would cost like $5,000 to make in a AAAAAA game. And Cloud's emoting would look like he was taking a long fart.

It's no wonder that they turned video games into movies. The simulation angle is a million times more interesting. If there was even a 10th of the money that was put into art, put into making systems where some NPCs were actual active actors with similar power on the world and similar constraints as the player character...

... I'd have had a better example everyone would universally understand that was way better than the execution in 7th Saga.

[evil_ash_xero]

Ah okay, that makes a lot of sense and point taken. Nintendo has had their down periods but they always seem to have a strong bounce back after that. The hardware is almost always underpowered but the key is that their games are just FUN.

You know, I think Nintendo sucks ass. lol... I'm gonna get killed by the fanboys..I can see my future now.

But seriously, I hear the "their games are fun" argument, all the time. OK....but most of them are piss easy. Like, easier than they were all the way up thru GC. So, what if you don't like piss easy games? Well, that kind of takes the fun out of it.
I still don't know what the hell is going on with Switch. It's mainly a Wii U port machine (I'm still waiting on my Wonderful 101 port, btw).

I liked Tropical Freeze...once again, a port (and not made by Nintendo of Japan)... Zelda...I have problems with Zelda, although I appreciate it's difficulty. I don't know if I'm ever going to get over the fact that it doesn't have real dungeons. I mean.....I dunno, man. I'm trying.
I look forward to the next Fire Emblem. But I don't see them having a crapton of great games, that are more "fun" than what you can get anywhere else.
When I think of "simply fun" now, I think of someone like Platinum. And Nintendo were smart to get the Bayonetta games on there. It's still not exactly a Nintendo title though, so I'm only going to give them credit for making a good decision. Not an actual creative one.
Or hell, even Shovel Knight. That's fun. And you can get it anywhere. I know, it's kind of old...but still. I'm just trying to make a point.

I dunno, Splatoon is a fun multi-player game. But...once again, piss easy single player....I don't care much about Smash and all the party games. They just don't do much for me. However, I have about all their damn systems. Damn them!!!!
I have to get to work on Octopath Traveler, but I have to finish DQ XI first. This may take some time.

[evil_ash_xero]

They're never going to do the stoopid sales numbers of a Madden or Call of Duty, but the key question is, are they still turning themselves inside out attempting to muscle their way into that incredibly saturated territory no matter the cost, or are they instead willing to cater to the smaller but sustainable audience that already wants the stuff they're already good at? A handful of years ago many developers seemed to be doing the former, and had their Phil Fish moment; nowadays at least some of them appear to have realized that not all of the folks who supported them back when they were more prominant simply disappeared into the ether, and that unquestioned dominance is not the only option. Heaven knows how long it'll last before some other industry shakeup sends all the executives chasing the next shiny object, but it is nice that the "Japanese gaming is dead" talk has largely sputtered out for the moment.

You get what I'm talking about.
I think some folks here weren't paying much attention to the gaming media, at the time.
And yeah, they're not gonna be selling Madden numbers...but who cares? As long as they can keep doing well enough to make games frequently, and with good budgets...that's the important thing.
I shed some tears during Platinum's Activision phase.

[Immryr]

You get what I'm talking about.
I think some folks here weren't paying much attention to the gaming media, at the time.

i mean, sure, i wasn't paying attention to the gaming media. but even if i was, them saying that japanese gaming was dead would not make me think it was then and wouldn't make me think what we're seeing now is some sort of resurgance.

when i think about japanese gaming last gen i think:

demon's souls/dark souls/dark souls2
armored core iv/fa/v/vd
tenchu z
catherine
bayonetta
vanquish
ninja gaiden 2/3re
deadly premonition
deception iv
earth defense force 2025
sin and punishment star successor
muramasa
xenoblade chronicles
yakuza 3/4/5
folklore
cave shmups getting western releases!

that seems pretty healthy to me, and i'm missing out a load of stuff here.

[evil_ash_xero]

You get what I'm talking about.
I think some folks here weren't paying much attention to the gaming media, at the time.

i mean, sure, i wasn't paying attention to the gaming media. but even if i was, them saying that japanese gaming was dead would not make me think it was then and wouldn't make me think what we're seeing now is some sort of resurgance.

when i think about japanese gaming last gen i think:

demon's souls/dark souls/dark souls2
armored core iv/fa/v/vd
tenchu z
catherine
bayonetta
vanquish
ninja gaiden 2/3re
deadly premonition
deception iv
earth defense force 2025
sin and punishment star successor
muramasa
xenoblade chronicles
folklore
cave shmups getting western releases!

that seems pretty healthy to me, and i'm missing out a load of stuff here.

Lots of good stuff you mentioned (you forgot Dragon's Crown!). But some didn't do well, or straight up bombed. You seen the sales of Star Successor? Tragic. You don't hear much from Treasure any more.
I'm more talking about how the industry is falling back into the good graces of the West. And now you have sales that reflect the quality of the games. This, to me, is a major thing.
Otherwise, we'd stop getting these games, at some point.

But man, I do miss CAVE. Their games were getting hit and miss at the end...but they were the last stand.

[Mischief Maker]

What the hell is innovative about Demon's Souls? It's Ultima Underworld 2 in third person, lol.

I think the more accurate description is it's "Severance: Blade of Darkness" with some unnecessary RPG jank thrown in to dilute the action gameplay.

lmao that this is what western gamers have to resort to.

Have you played Severance?

[quash]

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, there are definitely still great games coming out of Japan. On the other, certain Western developers are absolutely killing it right now and Japan does seem to be relying on their more risk averse franchises to pay the bills.

Fighting games in particular are a sore spot for me anymore. The few legitimately great fighting games out there aren't receiving the recognition they deserve, and it's pretty discouraging to see the perpetual cycle of name recognition beating out quality that the US community lives and dies by has yet to show any signs of changing. Not to say that I have no grievances with the Japanese community, either; UNIST is easily the best fighting game of the past five years, yet in Japan you'll almost never see anyone play it. At least both the US and JP communities for the game have some serious fervor, but that only goes so far in the face of people getting hype over a game they supposedly hate in SFV/Xrd. The SFIV apologist movement is downright hysterical if you've paid any attention to the genre over the past decade, and you can expect something similar to happen to SFV if it ever sees a direct sequel.

Past that, I did enjoy Nioh and am intrigued by Breath of The Wild due to how much of a departure it seems to be from typical 3D Zelda. Truth be told though, Rainbow Six Siege has occupied the bulk of my ever decreasing gaming hours for roughly a year now. Despite some missteps, Ubisoft has done a great job of keeping that game fresh in a way that I would dare to say is unprecedented. I can't think of any online game that improved by the magnitude that Siege has over the course of its three years on the market. You could argue that they set the bar low on purpose, but even assuming that is true, they've definitely far exceeded what would have been reasonably expected of them at the time, which I think is worthy of recognition.

If I had to say whether I think games are getting better or not, I would say that the average quality of games these days is higher than it was last gen, but at the same time it seems like there's less exceptional titles being made. I admittedly haven't played enough current gen games to say that with a comfortable degree of certainty, but it seems to be the trend. Which I guess is fine for now, since the consoles are pretty weak anyways, but with the next big leap in hardware I would hope that developers will be frothing at the mouth to give their passion projects the treatment they deserve.

[qmish]

chad brogue

Didn't expect alphamale garbage on this forum
Ah, roguelike elitists...

[Immryr]

Lots of good stuff you mentioned (you forgot Dragon's Crown!). But some didn't do well, or straight up bombed. You seen the sales of Star Successor? Tragic. You don't hear much from Treasure any more.
I'm more talking about how the industry is falling back into the good graces of the West. And now you have sales that reflect the quality of the games. This, to me, is a major thing.
Otherwise, we'd stop getting these games, at some point.

But man, I do miss CAVE. Their games were getting hit and miss at the end...but they were the last stand.

yep, i forgot a bunch of things. then when i try to counter balance it by thinking of western games i loved last gen.... xcom enemy within is probably the only one i loved. i enjoyed mirror's edge and dead space too...... that's about it. (yes i know this is a matter of taste. if you like open world rpgs, sandbox games, fps games or action movie narrative games like tomb raider/uncharted western games last gen were probably great for you.)


i'm not too worried about the sales or how the games are received by the gaming media to be honest. companies like from soft, koei, tecmo, atlus etc have been putting out games with modest budgets and niche appeal for years and for me, that's enough. it's nice if the people making these great games can get some more money from them (although really it's probably just the publishers making more), and obviously it's terrible for good studios to disappear, but bigger sales and bigger budgets are not always conducive to making better games. so it's pretty double edged really.

[qmish]

Immryr's position is good, it's just OP was talking about mainstream popularity in West and sales regarding japanese games

Like Yoko Taro jumped from "ok this game is for niche of the niche" to "2nd most popular fanart theme" (now someone please give him money to make a shmup pleeeeaaase)

[Immryr]

from the OP(emphasis mine)

I think the quality, popularity, and sales of JP games are going up a lot.

so yeah, the sales and reception in the west is looking better this gen, although as i said this is a double edged sword, but i don't think the quality is any higher.


not sure why you would want a yoko taro shmup. the shmup sections in nier automata are absolutely terrible.

[qmish]

i havent played nierA yet, i speak from the point of view about bringing mathafukin shmups to face of newsites again..

Yoko said many times how he wants to make a stg but publishers say "no". I'm sure if he do finally attempt one, it'll be all over internets... unlike how it goes nowodays (when even raiden 5 or dbcs straight up ignored by most sites, not even talking about indie/doujin)

...or you think it'll be Sine Mora situation again?

[Immryr]

damn, thinking about it from software's success has lead to a HUGE decline in their output. in the first 3 years of the last gen they put out enchanted arms, two armored core games, chromehounds, demon's souls, ninja blade and a bunch of smaller titles. in the first 3 years of this gen they've put out bloodborne and dark souls 3.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Ah okay, that makes a lot of sense and point taken. Nintendo has had their down periods but they always seem to have a strong bounce back after that. The hardware is almost always underpowered but the key is that their games are just FUN.

You know, I think Nintendo sucks ass. lol... I'm gonna get killed by the fanboys..I can see my future now.

But seriously, I hear the "their games are fun" argument, all the time. OK....but most of them are piss easy. Like, easier than they were all the way up thru GC. So, what if you don't like piss easy games? Well, that kind of takes the fun out of it.
I still don't know what the hell is going on with Switch. It's mainly a Wii U port machine (I'm still waiting on my Wonderful 101 port, btw).

I liked Tropical Freeze...once again, a port (and not made by Nintendo of Japan)... Zelda...I have problems with Zelda, although I appreciate it's difficulty. I don't know if I'm ever going to get over the fact that it doesn't have real dungeons. I mean.....I dunno, man. I'm trying.
I look forward to the next Fire Emblem. But I don't see them having a crapton of great games, that are more "fun" than what you can get anywhere else.
When I think of "simply fun" now, I think of someone like Platinum. And Nintendo were smart to get the Bayonetta games on there. It's still not exactly a Nintendo title though, so I'm only going to give them credit for making a good decision. Not an actual creative one.
Or hell, even Shovel Knight. That's fun. And you can get it anywhere. I know, it's kind of old...but still. I'm just trying to make a point.

I dunno, Splatoon is a fun multi-player game. But...once again, piss easy single player....I don't care much about Smash and all the party games. They just don't do much for me. However, I have about all their damn systems. Damn them!!!!
I have to get to work on Octopath Traveler, but I have to finish DQ XI first. This may take some time.

Lol. I'm not going to tell you what to like or crucify you for not liking Nintendo games. Hell I have a Wii U and I only played Mario 3D World and NSMB U on it. Probably not worth it for most people but those were actually two of my favorite games from w/e gen we put the Wii U in. Mario Odyssey is definitely super easy of course. When I'm looking for a truly difficult game and I want it to be something modern I think the only options are indies at this point.

Octopath is a really solid throwback JRPG. If you are a big old school JRPG fan I bet you will like it. I'm actually waiting to play DQXI until it's out on Switch. Dat portable factor.

I hope the Fire Emblem game is awesome. I love Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is the only reason I touched my N3DS.

And hell some of the games I have on the Switch can be played on any number of things like Sine Mora. Love it on Switch though. Switch also saved me from having to play Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 on 3DS. At this point Mario Odyssey is the only Nintendo game I have for Switch. But I'll scoop Metroid Prime 4, Smash, Fire Emblem etc...

I can get not wanting to buy a Switch at this point, but I really like the system.

You get what I'm talking about.
I think some folks here weren't paying much attention to the gaming media, at the time.

i mean, sure, i wasn't paying attention to the gaming media. but even if i was, them saying that japanese gaming was dead would not make me think it was then and wouldn't make me think what we're seeing now is some sort of resurgance.

when i think about japanese gaming last gen i think:

demon's souls/dark souls/dark souls2
armored core iv/fa/v/vd
tenchu z
catherine
bayonetta
vanquish
ninja gaiden 2/3re
deadly premonition
deception iv
earth defense force 2025
sin and punishment star successor
muramasa
xenoblade chronicles
folklore
cave shmups getting western releases!

that seems pretty healthy to me, and i'm missing out a load of stuff here.

Lots of good stuff you mentioned (you forgot Dragon's Crown!). But some didn't do well, or straight up bombed. You seen the sales of Star Successor? Tragic. You don't hear much from Treasure any more.
I'm more talking about how the industry is falling back into the good graces of the West. And now you have sales that reflect the quality of the games. This, to me, is a major thing.
Otherwise, we'd stop getting these games, at some point.

But man, I do miss CAVE. Their games were getting hit and miss at the end...but they were the last stand.

Star Successor was one of my favorite Wii games. You are right though of course the sales on some of those listed titles were tragic. On the bright side I remember Deathsmiles getting down to like $2.99 at Gamestop.

i havent played nierA yet, i speak from the point of view about bringing mathafukin shmups to face of newsites again..

Yoko said many times how he wants to make a stg but publishers say "no". I'm sure if he do finally attempt one, it'll be all over internets... unlike how it goes nowodays (when even raiden 5 or dbcs straight up ignored by most sites, not even talking about indie/doujin)

...or you think it'll be Sine Mora situation again?

I'd play tf out of a Yoko Taro shooty.

[Immryr]

i havent played nierA yet, i speak from the point of view about bringing mathafukin shmups to face of newsites again..

Yoko said many times how he wants to make a stg but publishers say "no". I'm sure if he do finally attempt one, it'll be all over internets... unlike how it goes nowodays (when even raiden 5 or dbcs straight up ignored by most sites, not even talking about indie/doujin)

...or you think it'll be Sine Mora situation again?

I'd play tf out of a Yoko Taro shooty.

Yeah, but you like sine mora :O

[Steamflogger Boss]

i havent played nierA yet, i speak from the point of view about bringing mathafukin shmups to face of newsites again..

Yoko said many times how he wants to make a stg but publishers say "no". I'm sure if he do finally attempt one, it'll be all over internets... unlike how it goes nowodays (when even raiden 5 or dbcs straight up ignored by most sites, not even talking about indie/doujin)

...or you think it'll be Sine Mora situation again?

I'd play tf out of a Yoko Taro shooty.

Yeah, but you like sine mora :O

Yeah it's not terrible. FIGHT ME SHMUP ELITISTS. Actually don't because I don't want to read that.

Can't say I'm surprised that a Grasshopper game is divisive though.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah it's not terrible. FIGHT ME SHMUP ELITISTS.

dukes up muthafucka

Yeah, honestly it is a mediocre, playable game and it's only terrible in the sense that a fanpatch could fix nearly every issue, because frankly almost all of Sine Mora's problems are ones that most indie/doujin shmups don't screw up nowadays:

• It's 2018, proper autofire mechanics are not a hard thing to figure out on a game where it's a plane with actual machine guns.
• The time thing is mostly a shit mechanic, but could be completely fixed by changing it so you don't die when the timer hits 0 - instead, you die if the timer is at 0 and you take damage (and whenever the timer hits 0 you have a 5 second or 10 second delay before killing enemies will start refilling it, so you can't constantly survive hits with only a few seconds on the clock). This would make the timer meaningful without the possibility of deaths on bosses where "oops you didn't kill enough enemies beforehand, guess you die now".
• Make powerups not float the hell away from you on death. Or vastly reduce the power loss penalties. Powerup progression is fun in shmups. It is not fun to constantly go from max power to basically no power at all. Hell, Gradius doesn't even do this, you can recollect your options which represent a vast portion of your damage output.
• Visible hitbox overlay would fix the camera angle weirdness and the lighting/visibility/colour issues when dodging.
• Add a proper slow movement button for people playing with digital controls so you can actually tap dodge shit. Default speed is very fast for tight patterns, and analog stick + shmup is a terrible combination nobody wants, tap dodging on an analog stick suuucks.
• Don't make both bombs AND special ability reduce your score rank. Pick one.

They clearly had a budget, so how did they make so many "I have never played a shmup before" design mistakes?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Mediocre sounds about right. It's a $10 game. Playable but not something to go back to again and again ie a masterpiece like Mushihimesama Futari, Ketsui, DDP etc...

Your quality of life improvements list for Sine Mora is definitely solid. I've only played the EX version fwiw.

Edit: Fuck, Cave should port shit to Switch. I'd buy them all again and never turn on my 360.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/606730/d ... 967991609/

Apparently Sine Mora EX has a half speed slow button now and powerups do one screen edge bounce - this alone might make it flawed, yet decently playable. Hm.

Guess I can't keep shitting on how awful Sine Mora is now that there's Sine Mora EX, a.k.a. Sine Mora Patched Version. :V They don't mention addressing the autofire issues where you can cheese the game with a rapid fire controller, but the lack of a slow button for some of those bullet hell dense patterns made it pretty crappy to play honestly. High speed move + tight, dense dodging is not a "fun for everyone" design and just fixing that is huge and should go a long way to improving the game.

[BulletMagnet]

Hell, Gradius doesn't even do this, you can recollect your options which represent a vast portion of your damage output.

Took them a couple decades and a different developer to figure out, but yeah.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Oh no, that's right, the early ones were checkpoint shmups. Salamander/Life Force were the first to actually have recollectable options right?