Volteccer Jack wrote:Why is that a bad thing? I will truly never understand why some folks get so buttflustered about being required to play more than one character during the course of a game, or heaven forbid, having certain features only be available during certain stages. One imagines these people shutting off Metal Slug 3 in disgust because they aren't granted the privilege of picking which Slug is available in each stage.
The sense of competence and eventual mastery that arises from the learning process is why I enjoy the genre, so swapping out the curriculum halfway is counter to the wider goal.
Ergo, narrative should capitulate to gameplay, not the other way around. Forced switches in a fully-linear plot are a concession to budget and domain standards, if anything.
And extrapolating out to Metal Slug is nonsense, my man
a Slug is a temporary set-piece vehicle whose suite of functionality can be succinctly enumerated in the pre-game button tutorial. The pages-long movelists and training modes of a character action protag are not that.
Volteccer Jack wrote:
Couldn't disagree more. Far from replacing the old characters, Viola is defined by her relationship to them. All of her actions and motivations in the story revolve around Bayonetta and Luka, she's a try-hard because she wants to be as good as Bayonetta, and she's comic relief because [spoiler redacted but the answer's pretty obvious]. Also Kamiya already stated that Viola won't replace Cereza in a sequel.
I grok that there's a scrappy successor-in-the-making story in there, thus justifying her various built-in character flaws.
The problem is that it was rushed to fuck and given no time to actually establish her as a likeable underdog; it goes straight to weight-of-the-world without even beginning to outgrow the doof.
And in which case, why go to the effort of
[that spoiler that made the internet mad] and
[the inky part] if the result is just going to be a Twitter backdown implying none of it mattered?
Wet fart, I judge by what was on the cart they took 5-8 years to sell me. Waiting again on the implication that they might unbreak it is not an appealing idea.
Volteccer Jack wrote:
No idea why people act like the ending of Bayo 3 is set in stone when the game literally confirms that the first 3 games all take place in parallel universes and follow different characters. At one point in Bayo 3, Bayonetta spontaneously comes back from the dead without explanation. Stop taking the made-up nonsense plot seriously.
Indeed, why care about anything if entire timelines and stories are freely replaceable by hopping to the next universe over with little to no opportunity cost?
That's the trouble with the Infinite Marvel Multiverse genie; it's not going back in the bottle now it's been let out, and the process of letting it out wasn't nearly impressive enough to justify the cost.
The stories in 1/2 may well be signature nonsense action game plots, but they at least have an appreciable structure; 1 establishes an open time loop paradox, and 2 transmutes it into a closed time loop paradox.
Saying "nah it was just multiverses the whole time" retcons that into so much overdone slurry. So not only is it weak standing alone, it also insists on weakening other, stronger conceits on its way down.
Volteccer Jack wrote:
Bayo Origins is just a fun little puzzley action adventure not unlike Okami. Dunno why your knickers are in such a twist over this, feels like you're the one being cynical.
I'm extremely cynical; a regular Yahtzee.
And well, it 'just' being XYZ is rather the point I'm making. There's nothing intrinsic tying Bayo - a top tier character action series - to a fun little puzzley action adventure.
They could have made that with its own cute and fun little character, but Babynetta - ostensibly a closed chapter now the amnesia stuff from 1 is out of the way - is a 'synergistic element that will broaden the appeal of the property' or whatever while simultaneously acting as a vehicle to build out the crap new 3 lore.
Volteccer Jack wrote:WILD_WILD_EAST.png
WTB: Astral Chain: Kaiju Edition
Except I technically did, after it got cancelled by MS and misguidedly incorporated into an unrelated series' trilogy-ender
Volteccer Jack wrote:skill issue
For the record by the way, the most significant changes to Viola in the update were the following: She can now perform perfect blocks slightly after taking damage, the same way Bat Within works, and she can now maintain a sword charge during dodge or block offsets.
Fair cop, I'm not going to git gud with her out of spite
That said, git gud is low-hanging fruit, so I'm still at liberty to call her moveset design out for being a little too thematically resonant with the confused teen aesthetic.
Sima Tuna wrote:Oh, I'm only a couple missions in. The missions were/are pretty long, so I would get burned out after each one and have to take a break. I'm very tempted to go into stage 1 and just lab it out over and over until the combat stops feeling like total ass.
Oh yeah, I forgot that each mission is essentially feature-length. Bah, almost wrote episode-length there
Labbing is a good shout, though you'll want to push forward to access more of the essential kit if you've already cleaned out the shop.
Sima Tuna wrote:Unrelated: Been playing a bit of DMC3 again and now I totally see where some of the criticisms of that game are coming from. No devil trigger until after Vergil? Bro. That's way too long to wait for such an integral mechanic. Camera angles are fiddly and stages/enemies are rather bland. The need to upgrade styles and weapons for exorbitant prices doesn't help with the game feeling slow-paced. I could grind in level select but I hate that shit. NG Black/Sigma, by contrast, are balanced around fresh save playthroughs without grinding. Which is pretty fucking nice!
Most of my play time with dmc3 was years ago on completed saves where I had everything unlocked. Obviously the game is operating at its maximum fun levels when you play that way. But I have a problem with PAD titles in general locking their best content behind postgame. Another reason to love God Hand, because God Hand is built around fresh save playthroughs, just like NGB.
I always missed the richness of Mallet Island when running around Temen Ni-Gru. 3 has some great stuff, but it's concentrated in different places than 1's more general sense of atmosphere.
And 3 is one of the few games where I fight the urge to play a fresh save
though I find the games that favour it tend to conversely lack options for funning around in post-game campaign. I guess it matters less if I'm not going to engage with that content much long-term, but it would be nice to see games nail both.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I don't necessarily disagree with you here depending on how different the characters are, but I think in some instances it's necessary in order to satisfy the needs of the "mass market" so that they don't whine about the game being "repetitive" (which I've never understood; if the core gameplay is fun, wouldn't you want MORE of it usually?).
If the game allows you to unlock a mode where you can play as whoever you want for the whole game after getting your first playthrough out of the way, that strikes me as a good compromise. Appeals to the mass market while the meat and potatoes remains for the serious players. If the game is fun enough you'll be wanting to replay it anyways, and getting a 1st playthrough done to unlock everything is pretty common and generally not overly onerous, in my opinion.
I tend to hold my critique to higher ideals than business realities
idealistic, certainly, but it wouldn't take too much bending to rearrange the expected monolithic N-hour campaign bulletpoint into a more play-friendly paralell structure that still serves a multi-perspective story.
But, working within the conceit, the really important thing is indeed that all the content and mechanics are used to their fullest in spite of whatever compromises have to be made.