Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[BareKnuckleRoo]

That there's still no DVD collection of Captain N that doesn't suffer from music censorship, and probably never will be.

I remember hearing that this was an issue with the DVD releases of the TV show Daria, which must've been especially irritating given that it was a show popularized on MTV.

[Mischief Maker]

GOG releasing six zillion point 'n click adventure games (the genre that deserved to die) while sitting on Crypt of the Necrodancer for months.

[Lord Satori]

SAY IT ISN'T SO!

[Aliquantic]

When online stores do silly stuff like "price hidden: add to cart/proceed to checkout to see price". I mean, like... what is the purpose?

That should usually. be because the manufacturer requires that there's a minimum acceptable advertisement price, so if you are selling their product for less, they do not want you to be advertising the price until an actual purchase is done. Pretty stupid still, but not really a marketing ploy.

[spmbx]

Lazy greeks

[Immryr]

^errrr no. fuck the imf, Greece are doing the right thing.

[JBC]

Do you even know how many times the Impossible Mission Force has probably saved your butt without you even knowing?

point 'n click adventure games (the genre that deserved to die)

This opinion annoys me. Point 'n Clicks rule

[Mischief Maker]

point 'n click adventure games (the genre that deserved to die)

This opinion annoys me. Point 'n Clicks rule

My rebuttal.

[Lord Satori]

Your rebuttal is terrible. Anyone who tries to describe Myst as "action packed" is severely mistaken about what that game was trying to achieve.

[Squire Grooktook]

Satori, I want to love you, but you make it very hard sometimes

[Mischief Maker]

Your rebuttal is terrible. Anyone who tries to describe Myst as "action packed" is severely mistaken about what that game was trying to achieve.

In cyberspace, no one can hear sarcasm...

[Mischief Maker]

I buy Critical Mass on the Humble Store official DRM-free games sale for 50 cents. I boot the game up and it asks for an email for an online account activation. Part of me wants a refund, part of me wonders if it's even worth my time.

[Ed Oscuro]

Maybe Satori knows what OMM reviews are, and the joke's really on us>!

Also, people talking about Zelda and not Devil May Cry or Dragon's Dogma. On Shmups! Cats and dogs living together, pandemonium!

[Xyga]

Fucking 40°C (104°F) for over a week now, fucking hate those hellish heat waves. Die summer, die.

[Ed Oscuro]

Fucking 40°C (104°F) for over a week now, fucking hate those hellish heat waves. Die summer, die.

We've had so many days of 70-degree weather or cooler, it's crazy. Very unusual too.

[Xyga]

Fucking 40°C (104°F) for over a week now, fucking hate those hellish heat waves. Die summer, die.

We've had so many days of 70-degree weather or cooler, it's crazy. Very unusual too.

*aaaargh* OK I'll be there tomorrow just need cheap plane tickets. :p

Seriously we had that last year ('rotten summer' as we say), like; 'where has summer gone ?'.
Bet this year is the - very angry - revenge.
The Dutch tourist - they're everywhere - look like cooked lobsters (with mayonaise on) lol.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

A friend showed me Rogue Legacy. He clearly was enamored with it but god, what a shitty mess of a grindfest rpg disguised as a platformer with faux 'roguelike' randomized dungeons.

Screen has huge sprites, but you have almost no health or useful abilities starting out, so you basically won't get anywhere without a few deaths to build up money needed to actually have a character that doesn't entirely suck. Health and mana also don't regenerate (not even slowly) which means once you get a vampiric weapon or something to increase mobility like a dash or doublejump that it's like night and day between your initial runs.

Sure, there's an achievement for beating the game below a certain number of deaths, but it's absolutely no fun when you're expected to basically desperately get gold in the early levels with the clear expectation that the game is unwinnable at that stage. Maybe it's TASable from the start? I dunno. Enemies shoot from offscreen (?!), enemies do tons of damage, healing items are a desperate rarity, your sword speed leaves much to be desired (for repeated swings I mean).

Way more fond of roguelikes that make every game theoretically beatable and make their unlocks totally different characters or selectable abilities/challenge options) from the start (DoomRL, Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Risk of Rain). Your power comes from your skill and how you manage the items the game gives you each run. Rogue Legacy feels like you're not rewarded for skill, but for how much time you've invested in dying over and over again to unlock new upgrades so you can get further before dying over and over again, because compared to a powerful character, you're basically useless at the start of the game, and nothing you can do in-game will change that until you die and invest gold. Screw that.

People complain about the grind in older NES era rpgs but then praise it when it's even worse and billed as the primary mechanic in trashy indie games? Ugh.

I think games in general where failure is rewarded are a bit disappointing to me. Rogue Legacy would've interested me a lot more if each generation progressed when you left the castle, and you could leave at any time with the gold earned to bank it and reenter with another generation (with a brand new castle), or risk pushing deeper and getting more gold and items, but losing them all upon death. That would've introduced more of a skill element involved in the process of getting stronger, rather than being able to spend all the gold acquired whenever you die making the risk of dying much less meaningful.

[Ed Oscuro]

A friend showed me Rogue Legacy. He clearly was enamored with it but god, what a shitty mess of a grindfest rpg disguised as a platformer with faux 'roguelike' randomized dungeons.

Ahh, Cargo Cult Game Design.

This is what passes as game design at too many places these days, especially in the ill-defined "indie" scene where people only vaguely know what kind of thing they like, and decide that - fuck planning, let's make a game! Most people seem to think that random collections of things they have seen in other games will fit together to make a good game design. It's not just 2D games; Orion Prelude, or Dino Beatdown, or whatever it's being called now is an obvious pisstake on the Serious Sam model, but without really understanding what makes SS and its few close clones work (waves of enemies that challenge the player in interesting ways, rather like the teams of enemies in a beltscroller). Instead Prelude just decided to throw lots of the same enemies at you over and over in a very small part of a very overly large map (bigger = better, right? Another game design choice failure).

Elements in games must coexist with all the other elements, not plopped in without context. Games designed like this don't seem to work successfully, because only the basic appearance (i.e., "make the dungeons random, ok") got lifted, not the actual refined product.

I think that rewarding "failure" could be an interesting game mechanic, but it would only be the appearance of failure, not hamboned monkey poo-slinging button slapping shenanigans, definitely not.

[emphatic]

I have a very annoying neighbor. He lurks all summer out in the yard, and strikes up conversation with ANYONE living near him. I'm not sure he's aware that he's just eating up everyone else's free time by nagging them with his "conversation", or does it for sport, but I'm fucking annoyed. I wanna be able to just enjoy a nice barbecue without receiving instructions on how to prepare chicken (I prefer meat and vegetables in this case) for ten minutes just as I'm carrying the food inside, where he can't speak to me. Fucker.

[Shepardus]

I think that rewarding "failure" could be an interesting game mechanic, but it would only be the appearance of failure, not hamboned monkey poo-slinging button slapping shenanigans, definitely not.

And it turns out that this already exists in the form of Battle Garegga and co., but I doubt most indie devs have even played Garegga. It would help them to do some research before thinking that integrating death as a key mechanic of the game is uncharted territory or that it was invented by Demon's Souls.

[Ed Oscuro]

They wouldn't even know it's there. For all practical purposes, that mechanic is invisible. I won't blush to admit that I wouldn't know about it without having read up first. I think it's handled very elegantly - "invisible" without any unnecessary exposition in what is a simple genre and game otherwise - but that's another discussion really, though the tone-deafness about "how to explain your game or avoid it" is another issue that's gotten stuck in many minds with the death of gamest mooks, the convoluted triple-A game mechanic, and "people are stupid, so need tutorials" mentality that's been seen in so many big sellers, like...say, Zelda games.

[Shepardus]

It's not just rank control that makes death important in Garegga, it's also (and arguably even more important for top-level play) the bomb fragments you get for each death, which is completely visible. Of course, you might not know how to exploit that if you haven't discovered the various medal caches and other bombable targets, but that's still something you can discover on your own without outside resources.

[Lord Satori]

This shit is why parenting needs to be fucking regulated.

[Satan]

Regulated by whom? The mass murderers, thieves and war criminals in government?

[Lord Satori]

Did you just use the word "whom"?

[Squire Grooktook]

A friend showed me Rogue Legacy. He clearly was enamored with it but god, what a shitty mess of a grindfest rpg disguised as a platformer with faux 'roguelike' randomized dungeons...Sure, there's an achievement for beating the game below a certain number of deaths, but it's absolutely no fun when you're expected to basically desperately get gold in the early levels with the clear expectation that the game is unwinnable at that stage. Maybe it's TASable from the start? I dunno. Enemies shoot from offscreen (?!), enemies do tons of damage, healing items are a desperate rarity, your sword speed leaves much to be desired (for repeated swings I mean).

My best score is beating it in under 2 hours with only 3 deaths. It's one of my favorite games.

I'm not really getting what you're saying about the early game for me. Early game for me in RL is quite fast paced and fun, and looks like this. Basically I play it like a fast paced arcade action platformer with some planning elements (grab as much gold as possible before death, note the location of the area transitions passages since they contain health that can extend the run, etc.)

Grinding isn't really necessary if you know how the stats work. One good run is enough to power you up to murder the next few levels if you know where to put that gold in. Even on the first playthough, I never really found myself grinding (even though I probably wasted 90% of my gold by putting it into the wrong things at the wrong time). I beat it fairly quickly and never found a lack of gold kept me from doing well in a new area.

You're not really weak so much as fragile as well. I never found any of the boss fights drawn out at low level, except the area 4 boss who is probably the only reason I haven't no deathed the game. In the above video, it takes about 3 seconds of wacking to get the stage 2 boss (who many people fight at upwards level 50-100) down by 25% health with a level 0 character.

RL is perhaps one of my favorite games. The above mentioned 3 death run is one of the greatest moments I've ever had in all my gaming. The perfect adventure, combining exploration, planning, and reflexes.

As for rewarding death, I think of it mostly as just a crutch for new players. The longer you survive, the more gold you get, and therefore the more you get to power up. Low level speed/deathless runs are the real goal for me though.

[emphatic]

Did you just use the word "whom"?

It's correct English.

[Immryr]

A friend showed me Rogue Legacy. He clearly was enamored with it but god, what a shitty mess of a grindfest rpg disguised as a platformer with faux 'roguelike' randomized dungeons.

Screen has huge sprites, but you have almost no health or useful abilities starting out, so you basically won't get anywhere without a few deaths to build up money needed to actually have a character that doesn't entirely suck. Health and mana also don't regenerate (not even slowly) which means once you get a vampiric weapon or something to increase mobility like a dash or doublejump that it's like night and day between your initial runs.

Sure, there's an achievement for beating the game below a certain number of deaths, but it's absolutely no fun when you're expected to basically desperately get gold in the early levels with the clear expectation that the game is unwinnable at that stage. Maybe it's TASable from the start? I dunno. Enemies shoot from offscreen (?!), enemies do tons of damage, healing items are a desperate rarity, your sword speed leaves much to be desired (for repeated swings I mean).

Way more fond of roguelikes that make every game theoretically beatable and make their unlocks totally different characters or selectable abilities/challenge options) from the start (DoomRL, Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Risk of Rain). Your power comes from your skill and how you manage the items the game gives you each run. Rogue Legacy feels like you're not rewarded for skill, but for how much time you've invested in dying over and over again to unlock new upgrades so you can get further before dying over and over again, because compared to a powerful character, you're basically useless at the start of the game, and nothing you can do in-game will change that until you die and invest gold. Screw that.

People complain about the grind in older NES era rpgs but then praise it when it's even worse and billed as the primary mechanic in trashy indie games? Ugh.

I think games in general where failure is rewarded are a bit disappointing to me. Rogue Legacy would've interested me a lot more if each generation progressed when you left the castle, and you could leave at any time with the gold earned to bank it and reenter with another generation (with a brand new castle), or risk pushing deeper and getting more gold and items, but losing them all upon death. That would've introduced more of a skill element involved in the process of getting stronger, rather than being able to spend all the gold acquired whenever you die making the risk of dying much less meaningful.

I would never have expected to see this kind of diatribe on the shmups forum. it seems pretty clear to me that the goal of the game is ultimately some level of game mastery leading to low death count runs, which is not too dissimilar to arcade games - although obviously score isn't really a factor in RL.

The RPGesque elements to me are just there to help ease people into the game and to avoid it seeming like a brick wall for lesser skilled players. Fwiw the people who made RL call it a rogue lite rather than a rogue like and I think it's a mistake to think of the game the same way you think of Isaac or spelunky.

[mamboFoxtrot]

When I misspell a URL and get taken to some malware-ambush scam site. Especially when said site has ultra-persistent pop-ups, so I can't just close out or even use task manager to end all the processes quick enough. You'd think I'd have learned by now to top trying to directly type URLs and just use search engine results and bookmarks...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

My rebuttal.

This shitpost. (It's obviously poking fun at one of the more ridiculous puzzle examples in the genre.)

Love 'em or hate 'em, adventure games do still exist in a sense in the form of visual novels. They rely heavily on the same elements, though without the pixel hunting often found, and focusing not on action but on the text and the story being told. Whether it's a point and click Microprose or Sierra adventure game or a text-based Infocom game, enjoyment is derived from the work that goes into the descriptions of events (whether it's comedy, horror, or mind-twisting puzzles). Visual novels let you have similar experiences, including have the characters give ridiculous responses. More casual experiences include Flash-based point and click games which, while generally minimal on text, occasionally try to have something reminiscent of the older atmosphere of that bygone era.

The "mystery" style ones like Gabriel Knight I feel were weaker, mainly because they took themselves too seriously while having, as you mentioned, very bizarre puzzles. Games like Myst got away with surreal puzzles and experiences because it was a magical world at least. Something like Loom, that innovated with its music system was much more imaginative.

I would never have expected to see this kind of diatribe on the shmups forum. it seems pretty clear to me that the goal of the game is ultimately some level of game mastery leading to low death count runs

Except the mechanics when you start out are paint-drying level boring. I've watched low death speedruns - you have no dash, no doublejump, no MP whatsoever, a giant sprite with which to soak attacks - at least in Metroidvania style games with low level/HP challenge runs you're given some cool moves and mobility to work with (see: Circle of the Moon's extra Magician/Fighter/Shooter/Thief modes that greatly drop def and HP for giving you boosts to other areas to compensate and motivate you to approach the game differently). Spelunky gives you numerable items to use from ropes for climbing or hitting enemies above, bombs for opening walls or direct offense, jumping on enemies, throwing rocks, the whip, etc.

All of the character classes also have the same core mechanics aside from perhaps the Dragon - you have a big sword, and you have a spell that you can cast a few times, depending on how much you level your MP pool. None of them feel like they have significantly diverse movesets (see: Risk of Rain) over one another with completely separate attacks or movement styles; they're all based heavily on the same template (until you get the class upgrades which give extra abilities, the most notable differences will be in their base stats and spell choice). Sure, some get to block or yell, but it's much more meaningful in terms of power progression when you get the increased mobility of dashing and doublejumping. The game's enemies, particularly the bosses, are designed around having these basic abilities... which means it feels really stupid and not fun dealing with them when you don't have either one.

The sad part is that the most interesting element of the game are the harsh downsides some of the traits can be like colourblindness or vertigo - they're "interesting", but that interest quickly fades when you realize how annoying it can be to deal with in a serious game.

For comparison, many shmups reward you for playing with as few deaths as possible in a run, but those don't penalize you on your first couple of lives by being insanely weak compared to after you've died a few times.