Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[Mischief Maker]

Yeah, something like this just happened to me today:

https://youtu.be/TCDbY_lXS5A

I took my dog to the pet store to buy him a new toy and I stopped at the target on the way back to pick up something. The particular target I went to has its parking lot directly under the store (on pillars) so no sunlight reaches the spaces. I left him in the car with the windows cracked for ten minutes. I come back down with my stuff, my dog is in the car wagging his tail, then this white-trashy chick with a smartphone and a baby in her shopping cart yells at me. She told me that it didn't matter how cool it is outside, my dog was "dying" and she had called 911. Near as I can tell, she saw the blue cow spots on his tongue and thought he was overheating or something. For the record, it was cool in the car, my dog wasn't even panting, and when we got home he was more interested in the toy than his water dish. I just gave her a look like she was crazy and drove off without saying a word.

Now I'm worried she photographed my license plate and is preparing to dox me as a dog-abuser.

And if the parking lot was such a death trap, why didn't she take her baby out of the cart and get it to safety?

[lilmanjs]

Yeah, something like this just happened to me today:

https://youtu.be/TCDbY_lXS5A

I took my dog to the pet store to buy him a new toy and I stopped at the target on the way back to pick up something. The particular target I went to has its parking lot directly under the store (on pillars) so no sunlight reaches the spaces. I left him in the car with the windows cracked for ten minutes. I come back down with my stuff, my dog is in the car wagging his tail, then this white-trashy chick with a smartphone and a baby in her shopping cart yells at me. She told me that it didn't matter how cool it is outside, my dog was "dying" and she had called 911. Near as I can tell, she saw the blue cow spots on his tongue and thought he was overheating or something. For the record, it was cool in the car, my dog wasn't even panting, and when we got home he was more interested in the toy than his water dish. I just gave her a look like she was crazy and drove off without saying a word.

Now I'm worried she photographed my license plate and is preparing to dox me as a dog-abuser.

And if the parking lot was such a death trap, why didn't she take her baby out of the cart and get it to safety?

People don't have common sense these days. You did the correct thing, but I bet she was bluffing about having called the cops on you. Idiots abound that will try to make it out like everyone with a dog who leaves it in the car on a nice day with windows cracked are horrible animal abusers.

[goombakid]

...people who pronounce acronyms as a word (LED, SNES, etc.)...

That's what makes it an acronym. LED is not an acronym but an initialism, because no-one in their right mind has ever said LED these same way as led.

Is NATO "nay-tow" or "en-eh-tee-oh" to you?

You make a point, and I bow my head in shame. LOL! (and yes, I pronounced that as lol and not el-oh-el).

Pain meds were messing me up this morning, what can I say?

[null1024]

The PS2 slim lid sensors.
Just had to tape the back one down and add some tape around the pin to make the front one stay down when the lid is closed [could have just taped the front one down too, but it's nice to be able to get the machine to re-check the disc without needing to restart it/futz around with the tape].

My sister named my niece with a really stupid spelling of the otherwise ordinary name Kaylee that I can't bring myself to type out.

Is it Kayleigh?

nope
it's needlessly "unique"
Kayleigh is a common spelling anyway.

[KAI]

The SHGetKnownFolderPath error on win XP

[BareKnuckleRoo]

People who somehow get paid to have stupid opinions about things they don't understand.

http://www.destructoid.com/review-vanquish-186214.phtml

Just about everything he says is demonstrably factually incorrect in this review of Vanquish, and I would like to see a video made deconstructing it piece by piece, similar to this response to IGN's complete nonsense review of God Hand.

Spoiler

Vanquish is a game that intends to speed up the typically methodical cover-based shooter and, fundamentally, it has done this. Armed with his ability to glide along the ground with a ludicrously fast rockstar-style knee slide and assaulted by enemies who act more like Ikaruga-style SHMUP enemies than the beefy blasters of Gears of War, Platinum has most definitely succeeded in making a cover shooter with energy. At least ... aesthetically.

How exactly do the enemies behave anything like those in Ikaruga?! There's no bullet absorption, the shots are insanely fast, there's lots of wide sweeping laser attacks, missiles, melee attacks... you can tell a review is going to shit in a hurry when it namedrops Ikaruga for literally no other reason than to namedrop Ikaruga.

The trouble is, everything looks exciting and chaotic, but after five minutes of gameplay, in which you get to see practically everything that the game has to offer, Vanquish manages to go from an action-packed assault on the senses to a formulaic, boring shooter that refuses to build upon its core ideas and remains content to regurgitate itself for the duration of the experience.

How is this any different from literally any other first person shooter or third person shooter's core mechanics? The basics in a good game should be easy to pick up and play, however if the core mechanics are fun and deep, then they're naturally going to have longevity in mastering their execution. And judging by this review, this moron's staring into a tide pool assuming he's seen everything there is to see in the ocean.

Despite the bombast and flair, Vanquish is actually a rather run-of-the-mill shooter that manages to devolve its genre, rather than evolve it.

No. Just no.

For instance, Sam's rocket gliding ability is governed by an energy meter. His melee attacks are governed by the same meter. Yes, you read that right, Sam actually needs energy to punch his opponents, and once he's landed a single successful punch, he can't glide away since the energy meter completely drains. Several times, I punched an enemy, failed to kill it thanks to Sam's inability to aim his punches properly, and was killed because I could neither defend myself or swiftly escape.

The punches are one of the less useful melee moves. Far more effective is the boost kick which is always available to you, does more damage packed in a single, faster hit, has massive knockback and allows for followup gunfire during landing. Who wants to bet he's never tried pressing the melee button during a slide, and constantly plodded up to enemies while surrounded to punch them?

The whole reason melee drains your meter is so it can't be abused. Melee is damn strong, to the point where it would be better than the guns are if you could use it without any cooldown. It forces the game into an attack -> defend -> attack rhythm to promote the use of cover, but you can still easily abuse melee multiple times in a row by using EMPs to stun enemies during cooldown, or keep Romanovs knocked down during cooldown using an LFE Gun (which often gets a bad rap with beginners since you first find it at a point where you're facing one of the few enemies in the game it doesn't work well against).

So what does this mean for the overall game? It means that, when you get down to it, Vanquish is just another cover shooter with shallow gimmicks that have no applicable use.

One's inability to play the game properly and learn to use the abilities the game provides =/= "no applicable use".

Sam's glide ability is only useful for escaping (or trying to), since there's no point getting up close and killed because you have no power left. Any thoughts you had of sliding toward an enemy, murdering him in a flurry of punches, and deftly sliding away like an awesome space ninja

This isn't a melee oriented game, it's a third-person shooter that has a strong melee as a secondary means of offense. Also, why the fuck don't you just boost kick him?

If you run out of power when boosting, it's your own fault. You can melee at full effectiveness even with a minimal bar as long as you're not overheating.

everything you do in this game makes you vulnerable, weak, and ultimately dead.

When you have no idea how to play a game properly, this is the natural result.

Vanquish suffers from that peculiarly Japanese development mentality that says, "Let's throw a stupid amount of crap at players and pretend that we made a challenging game."

This is exactly the response I'd expect from someone who can't handle a challenge, but is too proud to honestly face up to it and learn to improve.

It's full of one-hit kill attacks, sometimes thrown at players after twenty-minute boss battles, and Sam himself can absorb only a pitiful amount of damage before his health becomes critically low.

Sam actually can take a decent bit of punishment, especially considering the auto-slowdown function when health hits critical, making it easier to escape or quickly throw an EMP. Also, in addition to the extremely mobile boost slide, you also have a roll with invulnerability frames. The one hit kill blast Romanovs fire from their chests? If your timing's good, you can roll right through it.

Even sticking to cover is pointless due to the amount of attacks that completely ignore the cover system and instakill Sam through solid walls.

I literally have no idea what he's talking about here. There's a couple of large missile attacks or laser beams that can damage you behind really short cover, and a couple of attacks that hit through solid walls like Romanov blasts or Argus instadeath lasers that you actually have to evade, but there's nothing that is cheap or unfair. The dangerous attacks are all telegraphed with really obvious sound effects - if you're actually deaf you are facing a fair handicap here though, but it's by no means impossible to deal with.

The endless assault of missiles and ambush attacks can be negated by a bullet time effect that kicks in when Sam glides and shoots simultaneously. This would be useful were it not for the fact that Sam's energy levels deplete rapidly, and once they go down, you'll need to wait for them to recharge.

You recharge a lot faster if you don't allow yourself to overheat. -_-

You also can get a lot more usefulness by triggering the slowdown in short burts instead of holding it down all at once. Again, player skill is crucial here.

Of course, if an enemy throws one of its death missiles at you while you're recharging, you're boned.

Pure bullshit. The giant instadeath missiles certain Romanovs and turrets fired are slow and gigantic, and they're noisy enough that you should know when one's coming. Shooting them down is by no means impossible if you happen to be overheating.

Sam's dodge maneuver is pathetic and won't get him clear of the giant energy beams and explosions that endlessly come his way.

Also pure bullshit. It's certainly nowhere near Bayonetta's dodge in terms of i-frames, but it's still very evasive and useful. You also have EMPs for both offense as well as defense - the massive area of effect makes them akin to a bomb in a shmup in that you can use them to escape when you're in danger.

And this is Vanquish. A game that contradicts itself by having cover that offers no protection

???

and special powers that make players weaker.

?????

These are so dumb I literally don't know how to respond.

It tries to be a high octane "bullet hell" shooter with a cover system, but neither of those elements go together at all, leading to a game that ultimately feels like a conflicted mess.

It's not a bullet hell shmup. It's a cover shooter that has high mobility and dodging as its primary focus. You can't evade bullets anything like you would in a bullet hell, it doesn't play at all like one. And compared to something like Gears of War, it's more focused on moving from one piece of cover to the next, and not staying in one place for too long.

Occasionally, Sam will go up against some bosses that are impressive in terms of scale and design, but nothing else. They go on for far too long, with Sam's weapons only chipping away meager amounts of HP

Maybe he doesn't realize you have to shoot at the glowy bits on bosses, I don't know. You can finish off bosses really damn fast when you're good at the game.

and they often pack their own instant-death moves which are apparently designed solely to waste a player's time.

Then... learn to stop dying to them? Seriously, the 'special' instadeath attacks often are easier to dodge than the rain of bullets they fire.

Even worse, every boss battle in the game is repeated several times. Having to fight the monotonous and grinding "Unknown" robot three times throughout the course of the game is the complete opposite of fun.

Several of the bosses are reused... but the battles are different each time. As you'd expect in a cover shooter, the environment heavily affects how you tackle the enemy. Also, I don't understand this complaint about the Unknown battles, as the three arenas you face it in are completely different from one another, and it happens to be arguably one of the most fun and interesting bosses to fight. Seriously, the first time you fight the Unknown it's amazingly fun and tense (though it's super vulnerable to speedkills if you EMP then fire a rocket at it).

There's a distinct lack of content in Vanquish. In fact, if you've played and been impressed by the game's demo, as I certainly was, then you've already seen what the game has to offer.

What the game offers is one of the best combat systems in any third person shooter ever made. I want a goddamn sequel!

There are a few extra weapons, but they're all discovered within the first 10% of the game and you'll soon learn that the assault rifle's the only useful gun anyway.

I want to fucking slap this imbecile upside the head. If you seriously think the assault rifle is the only useful gun in the game, you're a moron who has absolutely no idea how to play the game. The assault rifle isn't even the best gun in the game, it's arguably the HMG with its abusable flipkick jump for aerial hangtime shots and its much higher damage.

There are no new moves to unlock, no cool weapons found later in the game, and the only upgrades available are increased ammo counts.

Upgrades include increased damage, rate of fire, improved accuracy, improved distance (LFE), more shots fired (Lock-On Laser), armor/terrain piercing (Boost Machine Gun). The guns are all designed to be good even without upgrades (God Hard difficulty locks all weapons at base level for the entire game).

There's simply nothing compelling the player forward. It certainly isn't the story, which is asinine

Because the only reason people enjoy Doom/Quake/Halo/shmups is because of the story? This guy's arguments are what are asinine.

and attempts to be political while Sam Gideon does his best Solid Snake impersonation. Even the final boss is just a repeat of a boss fought at the end of the game's first act. Except now there's TWO of them, wooooah!

It's far more interesting than any of the bosses in Gears of War, and the second bogey isn't even a mere recolour; it has different attacks and behaviour than the red version (it's faster and fires more frequently with rapid attacks whereas the red one is slower, and uses stronger shots). The arena also happens to make the fight arguably the most interesting in the game.

This total lack of compulsion and variety is made worse when you realize that the game is only five or six hours long.The game took me five hours and fifty-four minutes to complete, and that's including the cutscenes and the twenty-minute boss fights that I had to retry.

The game has a scoring system (a somewhat basic one but it's appreciated) and is good for replaying both for scoring as well as speedrunning. Then there's all the challenge maps, which you appear to have completely ignored (and which are very, very fun).

If you can play without dying and skip the cutscenes, I'd estimate between three and four hours of actual gameplay -- even less when you take out the first-person sections in which all you can do is slowly walk -- a rather disingenuous way of artificially bumping up the game's length.

This is a ridiculous argument - the game is meant to be replayed on subsequent plays with cutscenes skipped, as is say Bayonetta. The reason for the walking segments you can't skip isn't because of artificial game length padding - it's because it's loading the next section, and it's a way of doing so without having a completely separate loading screen. There's a reason they kick in when you close the door to the place you were in, and start walking through a small corridor that leads to a much larger area!

The aesthetic portions of Vanquish are very impressive indeed, so if all you care about are graphics, this is your game.

How can someone's opinions about this game be so fundamentally stupid? Was it brain damage? Inbreeding?

Short, repetitive, and criminally dull

Please never write anything ever again.

this game gives one the sense that Platinum was resting on its laurels, convinced it could do no wrong. Unfortunately, it has done quite a bit wrong with a game that's full of conflicting design choices and bereft of inspiration.

If this is what is seriously representative of mainstream opinion, I want to slit my fucking wrists.

Vanquish is a tepid and tedious game that simply doesn't deserve your cash during a period chock full of far superior releases.

This entire review makes me want to throw up.

[KAI]

Have you ever read IGN's Gundam vs Z-Gundam review ? It's probably the most stupid shit I've read in my entire life.

[mamboFoxtrot]

GAMIN GERBILISM

Yeah, people just whining "it's too hard!" is one thing, but when they can't even get the facts straight... that's annoying.

Reminds me of the HG101 article for Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, where the guy's like "you can only use a few of your abilities at once", even though you can use all of you abilities all the time (provided you have them); or "you can't outrun enemies", even though you can easily outrun everything without even trying; or "saving costs so much", even though you would have to be basically speedrunning a level (or wasting money on random pairs of boxers o_O) to not get enough coins to save your game; etc etc...


One comment in there reflect a really irritatingly common opinion, though:
"I'm not unlocking new swag every five minutes, therefor there's no reason to keep playing the game"
Seriously, shit like this and "why should I play [x difficulty mode] if I don't unlock anything" is so goofy. Like, whatever happened to just playing a game for the fun of playing the game? Why do there always need to be unlocks/achievements/cutscenes/etc to "reward" the player?

Well, that and the random "lel Japanese game designers so scrub amirite?" jab. Like, why is that even a thing?

[Lord Satori]

They need to start firing people for writing reviews that are so offensively incorrect. I mean, do they actually hire people who think all you have to do is make yourself immune to purple bullets and watch out for blue lasers? This shit needs to get fact checked by an admin or something, because bad press for a good game actually harms said game.

[KAI]

Exactly. I always thought that shitty review was the main reason why Capcom/Namco/Bandai never released any other localization of the GVS series.

[iconoclast]

The reviewer who ragequit Nier because he couldn't figure out that he had to go to the X on the minimap in order to proceed is my favorite. He even made a video of himself going full retard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRqQ5QQGCAM

Vintage game journalism.

[null1024]

Have you ever read IGN's Gundam vs Z-Gundam review ? It's probably the most stupid shit I've read in my entire life.

I'm confused and distrubed after reading that.

[BIL]

Whiny, huffy mainstream commentary is at least a good hint that a game's doing something right, in my experience. Precious resistance is flagged up much like the falling of a hapless canary from its perch in the coal mines of yore, absent the poor caged creature's mute dignity. Which is fine tbh, huffy scrubs are the best kind.

Secondhand incompetence can also illuminate details more jaded eyes have become insensitive to! The other day I learned from a popular website that Altered Beast's boss attacks are hard to dodge because your sprite is so big. Most of these bumbling cunts could fuck up a bowl of cereal, let alone spot an i-frame, let alone appreciate a game. They are legion too of course. Might as well make the most of 'em. \(・ω・)/

[Lord Satori]

When you're stuck in a game and discover that there aren't any god damned walkthroughs or guides.

I've been playing Rack N Ruin for awhile and it's been pretty awesome until I hit a point in a puzzle area that makes me think it's broken, or there's something I'm missing. There aren't any proper written or video guides to speak of.

[Skykid]

Have you ever read IGN's Gundam vs Z-Gundam review ? It's probably the most stupid shit I've read in my entire life.

I'm confused and distrubed after reading that.

Genuinely appalling.

[Xyga]

Have you ever read IGN's Gundam vs Z-Gundam review ? It's probably the most stupid shit I've read in my entire life.

I'm confused and distrubed after reading that.

Genuinely appalling.

Holy fuck !

[Ed Oscuro]

I would like to see a video made deconstructing it piece by piece,

Ain't nobody got time for that. Throw 'em in the gerbil blender and be done with it

re: the IGN article - not knowing anything about the game, it looks almost reasonable enough on its face. Devious! A shame if a fellow Ed is misleading the people again (not that I'd know anything about that).

[Squire Grooktook]

re: the IGN article - not knowing anything about the game, it looks almost reasonable enough on its face. Devious!

That's the problem with reviews that pass off opinion/taste as fact. It's easy enough to spout off a bunch of drivel on why something is a "bad game", which can be fairly convincing to someone who's in the dark on the subject.But it takes a certain level of empathy and understanding to realize that people play games looking for different things, and what you might find frustrating or weird might be exciting and interesting to someone else.

My review preference is: tell me the objective elements of the game (what the rules/mechanics/length/etc. are), then tell me the subjective reasons why you did or did not like it. Don't tell me if it's a good or bad game. There's no such thing. If it's well written, I (the reader) should be able to distinguish whether I'll probably like it or not based on the objective elements and based on whether the reviewers reasons for liking/not liking a game match my own.

[Skykid]

Don't tell me if it's a good or bad game. There's no such thing.

wat?

Don't take objectivity to the absurd: there's plenty that outright sucks. The issue is a simple case of a reviewer lacking historical experience in gaming, and therefore being unaware of how to approach games that require actual skill levels.

Most of these guys think playing Super Mario Bros accounts for understanding the entirety of gaming's formative years, and modern games related to previous eras. It doesn't.

If you asked him to review brown sandbox war FPS X on the other hand, he could probably do a fairly solid job breaking it down.

[mamboFoxtrot]

That's the problem with reviews that pass off opinion/taste as fact.
...
tell me the objective elements of the game (what the rules/mechanics/length/etc. are), then tell me the subjective reasons why you did or did not like it.
...
I (the reader) should be able to distinguish whether I'll probably like it or not based on the objective elements and based on whether the reviewers reasons for liking/not liking a game match my own.

What if their "objective" statements about the mechanics and such are objectively bullshit? That's a lot of what Roo was complaining about, as was I. There's a lot of whining and waffling in the Gundam review, but the guy actually does make numerous statements about the mechanics of the game ("no camera control", "lock-on abuse wins everything", "can't lead targets with guns", "massive amounts of slowdown") and why they pissed him off. I haven't played the game, but given the reactions here I'm guessing a lot of those complaints might be BS.

[Squire Grooktook]

Don't tell me if it's a good or bad game. There's no such thing.

wat?

Don't take objectivity to the absurd: there's plenty that outright sucks. The issue is a simple case of a reviewer lacking historical experience in gaming, and therefore being unaware of how to approach games that require actual skill levels.

Games have objective elements, but how "good" these elements make a game is, is subjective.

Does putting the Goomba on platform A make for a better game or Platform B? Subjective. Maybe Platform A gives the game a better "flow", but platform B makes it "tighter". There are likely objective ramifications for both choices. Separate lines of reasoning can exist for why the designer and anyone who shares the tastes of the designer would prefer A over B, or vice versa. But it's a matter of taste, and what gives such a game it's "character".

Don't mistake me, there is a lot to talk about in terms of the objective elements of games. Marvel Vs Capcom 2 is objectively unbalanced. Character balance might be relative (since there's no universally agreed upon metric, and all fighters are imbalanced to some extent), but MVC2 has some of the most skewed match up ratio's in the history of competitive, mainstream fighting games, and this is provable fact. But the broken elements that put 1/5th the cast an eon above the rest, open up some incredibly unique and deep tactics and strategies (these also objectively part of the game). Is the game better or worse for it's imbalance? Again, subjective. Some may hate it for what it sacrifice while others may love it for what it gains, and there's nothing wrong with that (personally it's my favorite fighter). Similar arguments could be made about Battle Garegga.

For the sake of convenience, we can say Mortal Kombat Advance or E.T on the Atari are bad games. I'm sure somewhere out there, there's an insane masochist who finds MKA's rampant unplayable glitches fun, or E.T's hole climbing tense. And more power to him. But the minority is slim enough that it's not worth talking about.

If you asked him to review brown sandbox war FPS X on the other hand, he could probably do a fairly solid job breaking it down.

For the majority of them, I'm not sure I would trust their insight or analytical abilities, even there.

[Skykid]

Games have objective elements, but how "good" these elements make a game is, is subjective.

Does putting the Goomba on platform A make for a better game or Platform B? Subjective. Maybe Platform A gives the game a better "flow", but platform B makes it "tighter".

Ah. Do you think you'd make a good critic?

I always read your posts with some interest, in part because you seem to go kind of OCD about the details, examining the most minute of elements. To be honest, that's a tough angle - and even tougher for a potential readership.

Believe me, there's a balance. We all can agree IGN and the majority do it wrong. But at the same time you need to excise a certain amount of objectivity and subjectivity and extract the core elements that signify a work's value. If I wanted I could criticise various elements of Dracula X, especially if we're going granular; but that's not the best approach unless you have a market interested in reading 10,000 word essay material.

Ultimately, defining good, average, and bad is a less complicated art, it's simply about education. Games DO have a certain amount of give: I've played games that are considered average, I know are average, but I still eked some strange enjoyment out of them. But if I had to explain the whole in 1500 words, I'd still find a way to include those elements that are enjoyable, why some may have some fun with it, AND why it still doesn't make the grade as a successful piece of software.

I get the impression you think the scale of good and bad is more arbitrary and fuzzy. I disagree. Everything can be qualified.

[Squire Grooktook]

Ah. Do you think you'd make a good critic?

I always read your posts with some interest, in part because you seem to go kind of OCD about the details, examining the most minute of elements. To be honest, that's a tough angle - and even tougher for a potential readership.

Ah, I'm not sure. The OCD and detail/nuance fascination thing is something I've had for games since childhood, and because of it I'm actually more interested in pursuing a career in game programming/design (or just regular 'ol programming if that doesn't work, with amateur game development as a hobby on the side). Writing about games is mostly something I do for fun.

That being said, I'm not entirely confident in my writing skills, but I have been trying to improve. I also do agree about length, as I usually try to limit my Steam recommendations to 4-5 short-ish paragraphs (still a lot lol). I did consider at a time uploading more thorough reviews/analysis for people who were interested, but I was never happy with any of the attempts I made.


Of course, I am very flattered by the compliment. Especially coming from you, since I admire your writing. It's definitely better than the last compliment I received on the subject.

"All I ever take from your posts is that you wanna bone an arcade machine"
-Some jokester on another forum.

"I'd rather just cuddle." was my response.

Ultimately, defining good, average, and bad is a less complicated art, it's simply about education. Games DO have a certain amount of give: I've played games that are considered average, I know are average, but I still eked some strange enjoyment out of them. But if I had to explain the whole in 1500 words, I'd still find a way to include those elements that are enjoyable, why some may have some fun with it, AND why it still doesn't make the grade as a successful piece of software.

I get the impression you think the scale of good and bad is more arbitrary and fuzzy. I disagree. Everything can be qualified.

Well, let me put it this way. When making the choice between, let's say, Psikyo, Raizing, and Cave, I'd say the decision is less like choosing the highest of 3 numerical grades out of 10, and more like picking your favorite color. All of them offer completely different experiences and gameplay styles, all of which appeal to different tastes among stg players.

I agree to a degree with a lot of what you said, but ultimately I think that the most important bits of a game (and their ultimate worth) are more about resonance and taste then craft.

[Skykid]

I agree to a degree with a lot of what you said, but ultimately I think that the most important bits of a game (and their ultimate worth) are more about resonance and taste then craft.

Hmm, taste certainly has something to do with how someone connects to a game. I would never play an RTS over an FTG for example, because the former doesn't light my fire. But craft? Well that's everything IMO. Resonance and the reward one feels in gaming is all about craft - which is why I still find gaming's golden age so beautiful and absorbing, because the craft was more apparent. When it's a ship being steered by a handful of people you can feel the effort (if it exists) in every aspect of the product, and for me that's what resonates most.

Only writing tip I have is the same I always have: brevity. Try to communicate everything you want in the shortest possible way. Delete repetition, rephrase a paragraph into a sentence, and excise anything that isn't absolutely relevant. Your end product will be infinitely more engaging. And you want to start practicing that now: I think it's the thing that's toughest to get ahold on because everything you write is so dear to you. One of my earliest jobs was for a newspaper who wanted 2 reviews a week, each at 250 words! I was a lot more amateur then, and it was a task beyond belief, especially since I wanted to convey everything good and bad about the games, be brutally honest, and communicate the feel of the product. It was a crash course, but there were some valuable lessons there, primarily because there was no space at all to talk about mechanics (which is a pit that's easy to fall into - six paragraphs later and you actually remember to start talking about why the thing is fun.)

It would be interesting to open a thread for 250 word reviews and see how people do. It's harder than you might think!

[Squire Grooktook]

Hmm, taste certainly has something to do with how someone connects to a game. I would never play an RTS over an FTG for example, because the former doesn't light my fire. But craft? Well that's everything IMO. Resonance and the reward one feels in gaming is all about craft - which is why I still find gaming's golden age so beautiful and absorbing, because the craft was more apparent. When it's a ship being steered by a handful of people you can feel the effort (if it exists) in every aspect of the product, and for me that's what resonates most.

This is where we'll have to disagree a bit. For me, there is a clear cut distinction between an art and a craft.

A craft is 100% objective: either it does it's job or it doesn't. There is no opinion or personal taste or interpretation involved with building a hammer: either it can pound in a nail, or it can't.

An art on the other hand is more equivalent to asking "which is the best color? red or blue?". There is no universal answer to that question, it comes down to the individual. In my experience, a lot of the choices in game design (especially in our favorite games) come down to this kind of resonance. Raizing and Psikyo are as different as those two primary colors, and there's no honest way to say which is "better" without using words like "to me" or "I prefer...".

To take the STG comparisons a little further: Another example would be Cave's handling of bomb's vs Raizing's. Cave (generally) wants you to avoid bombing at all, and play perfectly to score. Raizing (generally) wants you to use your bombs as a fun, flashy weapon of mass destruction to be mastered along with all other mechanics in order to score. Both philosophies have their advantages, and both are fundamentally opposed to eachother. There's no way to get the best of both worlds without compromising and losing a bit of the appeal, either. For that reason, I'd say this design choice is subjective and a matter of resonance, and cannot be objectively graded on which is better.

That's not to say there isn't craft and science in art. An artist needs to learn anatomy and perspective if he hopes to represent the human form, for example. But "who's the prettiest girl?" is as subjective as the above best color question.

Only writing tip I have is the same I always have: brevity. Try to communicate everything you want in the shortest possible way. Delete repetition, rephrase a paragraph into a sentence, and excise anything that isn't absolutely relevant. Your end product will be infinitely more engaging. And you want to start practicing that now: I think it's the thing that's toughest to get ahold on because everything you write is so dear to you. One of my earliest jobs was for a newspaper who wanted 2 reviews a week, each at 250 words! I was a lot more amateur then, and it was a task beyond belief, especially since I wanted to convey everything good and bad about the games, be brutally honest, and communicate the feel of the product. It was a crash course, but there were some valuable lessons there, primarily because there was no space at all to talk about mechanics (which is a pit that's easy to fall into - six paragraphs later and you actually remember to start talking about why the thing is fun.)

It would be interesting to open a thread for 250 word reviews and see how people do. It's harder than you might think!

Oh yes, I know it's very difficult. I have tried similarly short write ups, and know how frustrating it can be or how dissatisfying it can leave the writer. I'm fairly happy with 450 word reviews, and anything longer as a bonus that I don't expect people to read unless their incredibly interested in the subject.

Personally, I'm not too interested in reading 250 word reviews myself (though neither do I like those pointlessly rambling HG101 style write ups, *shudder*). I personally don't mind reading a page or two on a subject I have great interest in, if it's well written. Roughly 500 words is what I consider the minimum necessary to be truly analytical and successfully convey the nuances that make a game great.

It would be interesting to open a thread for 250 word reviews and see how people do. It's harder than you might think!

You could try it, might be fun lol.

[Skykid]

This is where we'll have to disagree a bit. For me, there is a clear cut distinction between an art and a craft.

You didn't say art, you said 'resonance'. It has a very different meaning.

A craft is 100% objective: either it does it's job or it doesn't. There is no opinion or personal taste or interpretation involved with building a hammer: either it can pound in a nail, or it can't.

I don't agree with the way you're defining the word. A 'craftsmen' can be considered an artist, depending on his trade, and can have varying degrees of success at his product compared to others. Ikeda and Miyamoto are both types of craftsmen, so are movie directors. Some fucking stink, others are revelatory. Craft doesn't mean a functioning product, as you seem to put it. It's not a tool, it's a trade.

An art on the other hand is more equivalent to asking "which is the best color? red or blue?". There is no universal answer to that question, it comes down to the individual. In my experience, a lot of the choices in game design (especially in our favorite games) come down to this kind of resonance. Raizing and Psikyo are as different as those two primary colors, and there's no honest way to say which is "better" without using words like "to me" or "I prefer...".

I get this, but you're just talking about taste again. We can still agree Raizing and Psikyo made good games. It's not taste that's deciding if they're good or bad, it's the quality of workmanship.

I'd say this design choice is subjective and a matter of resonance, and cannot be objectively graded on which is better.

Neither is better. Bombing as a requirement, or not bombing as a requirement, you're judging the whole, not its parts.

That's not to say there isn't craft and science in art. An artist needs to learn anatomy and perspective if he hopes to represent the human form, for example. But "who's the prettiest girl?" is as subjective as the above best color question.

You're getting into genes and sexual programming now. That's nature and psychology. The type of chick you'd most like to lay is more about influence than taste. We shouldn't talk about art either, it won't go anywhere good.

You could try it, might be fun lol.

I generally try not to open threads too much anymore.

[Xyga]

printers, printers, printers, fucking PRINTERS !

[Blinge]

^ The absolute worst. Haven't had to use one in a while thank fuck.

Okay new one: walking through town then remembering something embarrassing you did 8 years ago and experiencing wild facial cringe contortion on the spot.

[JBC]

'James Bond Gets Politically Correct Makeover In New Novel'

Sigh...

[Skykid]

'James Bond Gets Politically Correct Makeover In New Novel'

Sigh...

I had to google it.

http://metro.co.uk/2015/09/09/james-bon ... r-5383419/

Why did I have to google it.