Cracked: Worse than HG101

[Edmond Dantes]

Cracked is a purportedly-humorous website (that reads more like collections of dickhurt rants and mildly noteworthy observations than humor) which is known for, among other things, them being wrong all the time about everything.

So recently, they did an article on classic video games. In a nutshell, they claim that the whole reason old games had limited lives, water levels and ladders (yes, seriously, they bitch about ladders) is because nobody knew how to design games back then.

Note to self: One, become emperor of universe. Two, expunge Cracked from existence, and Three, spread articles like this so people understand and agree with the expungation.

[Stormwatch]

Take off your nostalgia goggles, guy got a point. Some old games were very badly designed.

[Edmond Dantes]

Badly designed yes, but not for the reasons this guy posits (except maybe the reverse-controls thing, but I can't think of any game that actually did that).

Most of those sound like he's just whining that old games were hard. I mean okay, point #2 and point #1 might be fair gripes depending on the game, but seriously, hating LADDERS?! I bet he hates it when in Tic-Tac-Toe he has to let the other player fill in one of the tiles.

[drauch]

It's a shit website and their primary focus isn't even on video games. Who cares.

[Stormwatch]

I recall (vaguely) a local magazine praising Super Castlevania IV for getting the damn ladders right, you could easily leap into and out of it, not start carefully from the very first step like in the early Castlevanias. That WAS an annoyance, even back in the day.

[Squire Grooktook]

I remember a lot of things killing me in Castlevania 1 and 3. Forgetting to hold up when going up a ladder wasn't one of them.

And yeah, the article is pretty ignorant. Not something to really get mad about, but definitely under-researched and reaching for straws.

[Mischief Maker]

The poor man's Mad Magazine turned "Top 10 _____" clickbait dumping ground.

[trap15]

It's a shit website and their primary focus isn't even on video games. Who cares.

[BIL]

I recall (vaguely) a local magazine praising Super Castlevania IV for getting the damn ladders right, you could easily leap into and out of it

Wrong - you can jump onto stairs but not off. That's Vampire Killer. You can drop straight through to whatever awaits below, though! CV4's stairs still have plenty of scope for annoyance if you don't know what you're doing.

It's a shit website and their primary focus isn't even on video games. Who cares.

Must concur. No match for HG "it's arcade game so forget about balance / let's talk about these RPG characters!" 101.

[Specineff]

The only valid complain is that of the rubber band AI. Everything else reeks of "Why must I do this to reach the goal? Why can't I get instant gratification? Why can't the challenge be lowered so I don't have to make any effort? Why can't baby get bottle?"

The writer deserves to have a claymore shoved down his throat. To the hilt.

[trap15]

I agree with water levels too. They're the most painful things ever. Which is why all the really good games don't have any

[Ed Oscuro]

Why can't baby get bottle?"

HOW PROFESSOR X WRITE VIDEO ARTICLE?

[Squire Grooktook]

I agree with water levels too. They're the most painful things ever. Which is why all the really good games don't have any

Mega Man has fun water levels, especially in the X series where it's fun to just dash jump underwater and have it take you a mile at blazing speed.

[Ruldra]

The only valid complain is that of the rubber band AI.

And yet this is not something unique to retro games, it still exists in full strength today. Some of the stuff you see in some arcade racers is complete bullshit.

[Skykid]

Terrible piece of shit article. I'm offended by people who can't play games finding fault in the product as a way of ameliorating their ineptness, and then getting paid cash money to eulogize about it to the public. This ill-informed fool shouldn't even be allowed near decent games for fear he'll soil them through dimwittery.

[BIL]

The writer deserves to have a claymore shoved down his throat. To the hilt.

Or a gasoline-soaked cactus shoved right up his bum.

[EmperorIng]

Cracked: by teenagers, for pre-teenagers~

[Udderdude]

This whole thread should just be merged into that "Laughable reviews" thread .. no point having a seperate one just to bitch out a shitty humor site.

[moonblood]

That page tries to download/install something onto my phone. fuckers

[nZero]

Congratulations on helping to make a clickbait article full of manufactured outrage over old videogames even more of a success by getting a bunch of people who otherwise would have never read it, known about it, or paid attention to it to click your link to it and generate additional advertising revenue for their site. "Don't feed the trolls" goes for the whole internet, not just forums.

[Udderdude]

Good thing I run AdBlock Plus, FlashBlock, Clean Links, RefControl and NoScript. No ads for you! Ever! :3

[drauch]

Why can't baby get bottle?"

HOW PROFESSOR X WRITE VIDEO ARTICLE?

Was trying to browse shmups forum at work low key. Can't stop smiling. Thanks, Ed.

[Udderdude]

Ok, I'm going to honestly go over all of these points .. but keep in mind Cracked is a comedy site and the point is to make some lame jokes, not be 100% accurate or present a fair and balanced viewpoint.

7. Limited Lives - Depends on how they're used. If you only had 1 life to get through a 2 hour game, that sucks. If you have 3-6 lives to get through a 20-25 minute game, suck it up and try harder. Also if running out of lives just lets you continue from the start of the stage, that's not as bad as throwing the player back to the title screen.

6. Water Levels - Let's be honest, 90% of the time, these sucked. I can count the number of non-cringeworthy water levels in classic games on one hand.

5. Ladders - Again, depends on how they're used .. looks like they picked the most annoying example EX. Megaman 2 for purposes of comedy and/or humor.

4. Reverse Controls - Sucked, and I can think of at least one game that did do this. Snake Rattle and Roll on the NES had a reverse controls power-down that you basically had to avoid.

3. Instant Death - They have a point that some things that look like they shouldn't kill you instantly do, while some things that only look like they should harm you, kill you instantly for no paticular reason.

2. Being Stuck - Yeah this sucks, back then you only had yourself to rely on, or if you were lucky, a guidebook ..

1. Rubber Band AI - This was annoying as hell to deal with, but sometimes could be dealt with by careful use of game resources.

[Stormwatch]

things that look like they shouldn't kill you instantly do

Those damn desert levels in Giana's Return... rrrrhhaaaargghhhh!!!

[jonny5]

keep in mind Cracked is a comedy site and the point is to make some lame jokes, not be 100% accurate or present a fair and balanced viewpoint.

[Specineff]

Why can't baby get bottle?"

HOW PROFESSOR X WRITE VIDEO ARTICLE?

Um... I don't get it. Can you please explain?

[Ed Oscuro]

[TransatlanticFoe]

No excuse for rubber-band AI or indeed superhuman AI. Really takes the fun out of racing games when you are blitzed for straight line speed by a CPU opponent. Likewise when you suddenly crash and everyone else on track turns into a dumbarse again until you take the lead. Shittiest of the shit.

Otherwise what a load of shite. Instant death? That's actually more annoying in modern gaming because it often comes without any warning either via a shitty QTE, scripted event or overpowered boss attack. And I think the only game where I've had the controls inverted on me has been Dead Space's final boss so yeah, really retro

[Specineff]

I still don't get it, Ed, but it's fine. No need to derail the thread.

[Ed Oscuro]

You know, I had a lot of trouble with the ladders in Shadow Tower Abyss at first. Of course, once you do figure out that "duh, the O button is for general interaction" it's pretty clear what to do in other situations (I don't care to relate how long I tried to walk into the ladder; the Half-Life runs strong in my veins). But then I still ran into a situation where one ladder was positioned (and possibly warped a bit) so that it was very easy to get near the top, then fall off and take damage (just a little, but still annoying). Thanks to the joys of analog controls combined with a restricted 3D perspective, you have the possibility of shimmying back and forth without realizing that you're actually in trouble and that you need to pull back.

In a purely 2D game, you'd see your avatar moving to the side, and instinctively pull back into the middle.

I think one of the main points separating "retro" games from current ones is that a lot of the information you need is more easily understood from a 2D perspective, so game developers had a better argument that players were expected to have total awareness of their environment and actions. In 3D games, there's potentially a lot of fudge factors built in to save people from these things. One thing I noticed was that Resident Evil 4's enemies seem more reluctant to viciously attack you from behind, for example. This isn't to say that older games were always perfect in meshing the world information with its visual presentation (those damn Gradius III environmental collision boxes).

Rubberband AI in racers...well, that's definitely a feature of some early 3D racers as well as new ones, so it's a feature that never went away. I noticed this was really severe in Roadsters Trophy on the N64, which has some other pretty fundamental problems as an enjoyable racer. I can definitely see the draw of rubberband AI though: You want other racers to continue to be a challenge, so just timing laps seems to be out. But if you want other racers to continue to challenge the player despite a sharp difference in the player's speed, there's a problem in trying to decide which way to cheat: Do you penalize other racers so that they don't reach their speed potential, or do you penalize the player by boosting another player beyond what they possibly could achieve?

One thing I think factors into bad rubberband AI implementations is that other players hold back to your region for a while, but then suddenly they gain that burst of speed and pass you, getting much closer to their potential perfect lap time. That's the most flattering explanation I can imagine for it. Personally, I would rather that other players' speeds just represent the efforts you'd likely see other racers making at your chosen difficulty level, without holding them back or speeding them up later. If I am doing poorly in a race I want visual confirmation of that, damnit, instead of getting to the last 30 seconds and finding out "oh shit, I'm screwed actually," like Roadsters Trophy is fond of doing.

I still don't get it, Ed, but it's fine. No need to derail the thread.

Do me a favor and please, please, please don't post responses like this...I'm just humoring you, dude; don't make it look like I'm doing something awful. If you don't want to derail the thread then don't ask "I don't get it" responses. Nobody was having a laugh at your expense, if that's what you're worried about, although I'm tempted to now.