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Gaming Conventions that just don't work anymore.
- Thread starter Brannon
- Start date
Semjaza Azazel
Member
I've always hated when you have to fight a character that joins your party in the future.
In the battle he has a million hit points and four billion spells. When he finally joins you, he has 1/10 of that ability.
I don't know what could be done about it short of making him a wuss in the battles (or giving him tons of healing powers), but it always annoyed me.
In the battle he has a million hit points and four billion spells. When he finally joins you, he has 1/10 of that ability.
I don't know what could be done about it short of making him a wuss in the battles (or giving him tons of healing powers), but it always annoyed me.
radios shipping overview
Member
Kuramu said:
This seems to happen with far, far too many games. Half the time it's like they just add the cutscenes to keep up with the Joneses in their target market rather than to add anything to the player's enjoyment (let alone for artistic reasons).
Resident Evil style puzzles.
"Why, I've just randomly found the Bronzed Medallion of Antiochus III! I bet if I match that with the Gilded Gate of the 1000 Suns that I saw three hours ago, I just might find my way into the next area of this weird haunted place."
That business has got to go.
"Why, I've just randomly found the Bronzed Medallion of Antiochus III! I bet if I match that with the Gilded Gate of the 1000 Suns that I saw three hours ago, I just might find my way into the next area of this weird haunted place."
That business has got to go.
mightynine
Member
aku:jiki said:
You never played DK64, apparently. Many of us were scarred for life and fear collecting of some sort now.
Hellraizah said:
I'd break it down into three main types of double jumps.
1) When executing a double jump, character simply jumps again... this I agree is akward in a game, even if it's purely fantasy. Get rid of it.
2) When executing a double jump, character does a flip or other type acrobatic move, extending the height or length of jump... this looks much more cohesive and should stay.
3) When executing a double jump, character does some magical move mid air - Castlevania's down/up mid-air move for instance... this also comes off well I think.
Ninja Scooter
Member
SolidSnakex said:
bullshit. Mario 64 wasn't a collectathon. Neither was Conker. Or Maximo. You always come into these threads and act like Naughty Dog and INsomniac did something incredibly revolutionary. Please, just stop it. IF Mario 64 was a collectathon, than so was Super Mario Bros., cause you had a "collect" a flagpole at the end of each level. Really, the only real painfully bad high profile collectathon from last gen was Donkey Kong 64, where the game consisted of nothing but running around huge worlds collecting thousands of bananas so you could move on to the next level. That game gave all platformers last gen a bad rap.
SolidSnakex
Member
Ninja Scooter said:
I didn't call them a collect a thon did I? I said they revolve around collecting more than old school platformers and they do. With Mario 64 you need a specific number of stars to unlock a level, right? That doesn't happen in Ratchet, you beat a level and then you go to the next. That's my point.
Late Stage Marxist
Member
I always thought the puzzles were a welcome departure from all the killing.ge-man said:
Ninja Scooter
Member
SolidSnakex said:
uh, no, in Ratchet and Clank, you had to beat a certain number of objectives/missions in each "world" to unlock the next one. Does it make a whole lot of difference that in Super Mario 64, meeting these objectives rewards you with a "Star"? Its the same type of shit.
Ninja Scooter said:
Aye. And in Ratchet and Clank 2, you had to collect parts for a machine you needed.
Plus you had to keep re-killing enemies to level up your weapons so that you could beat some of the harder parts.
I love the games, but you're grasping at straws that ain't there, Snake.
SolidSnakex
Member
Ninja Scooter said:
The level structure in the Ratchet games feel completely different from other platformers. More like you're going from a Point A to POint B in them rather than being dumped into a big world and having to run around to do X event. So it ends up feeling like older paltformers than the new generation that Mario 64 started.
If you like the way other platformers are done then fine by me. But personally I hate it and that's why I pretty much can't stand any 3D platformers outside of Ratchet now.
Half of the levels of R&C2 were built as "run around doing X-event" stages, if you're going to bash the former platformers that way. Hell, once you get off the linear (READ: CRASH BANDICOOT IS THE ONLY TRULY A->B MAINSTREAM 3D PLATFORMER, and only the levels that don't have branches) path, you're going towards 3D platorming, which everyone but mama SCEA makes!
Oh, but the SCEA teams do make 3D platformers! With branches! And X-Objectives!
Oh, but the SCEA teams do make 3D platformers! With branches! And X-Objectives!
SolidSnakex
Member
Matlock said:
I'm bashing the others mainly for their collecting though. It didn't really bother me on Mario 64 which is still my fav platformer ever. But almost every one after that is just a pain to play because of it. I think that's a big reason why the platform genre is so far down in popularity now. It went from being the most popular genre last gen to being basically ignored this gen.
And i'm not saying SCEA is god or anything so get off that. THe original Jak sucked beyond belief although Jak 2 was alot better because they dumped the heavy focus on collecting.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Super Mario 64 is barely what one could call a collect-a-thon. Most of the stars were there to signify that you'd completed some task or made it through a certain path. The only real collecting aspect was red/regular coins in the main levels, which makes up what, 30 stars out of a 120 total? When only 70 is necessary to open all levels? Other games where you must collect things like, say, hundreds of notes and feathers to even learn necessary moves, have much more of a collecting focus.Ryu said:
trippingmartian said:
To me, these are quite linked. Playing through Final Fantasy Legend III and Final Fantasy IX makes things all the more clear. I've always really hated how the slow text crawl of FFLIII's battles forces you to hold down A to go through things at a decent speed, making it slower than most RPGs I'd played at the time. However, it's right speedy compared to what you must do to even get in and out of FF IX battles. Random battles are much easier to put up with when an unexpected fight doesn't take 30 seconds of loading in and out.Ghost said:
SolidSnakex
Member
dark10x said:
I know that's why I liked Mario 64. It was fun and everything felt right. It's just that almost everything that followed it is a complete bore.
Yeah, each star was attached to a platforming-centric objective. You performed tasks to get stars, as opposed to just roaming around collecting stars. The latter is what a collectathon actually is (DK64, for example); Mario 64, by requiring you to complete objectives to progress in the game, is not.dark10x said:
Jupiter Jones
Member
I love RPGs, but I wish some one would come up with a better plot than "orphaned hero", whose a naturally gifted fighter, saves the world and in the process finds out one of his/her parents has some connection to the final boss.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
*blinds self* Please mark spoilers!Jupiter Jones said:
SolidSnakex
Member
Jupiter Jones said:
September 21st.
Diomedeskun
Member
Battle Arenas in RPGs. They were fun once, but they are far too common. Also, every RPG has added summoning as a mechanic even if the actual act of summoning is not well thought out (Chrono Cross, where it was nearly impossible to summon without the field spells and rather unnecessary too).
Too many RPGs tend to throw in every cool detail from every RPG to come before it. Strangely, I dearly love Tales of Symphonia, despite it having every RPG convention I have come to depsise. Nevertheless, I want more RPGs like Valkyrie Profile and Panzer Dragoon Saga that tell great stories their own way and have highly original mechanics.
While I'm at it, I also wish that the SaGa (Frontier, Unlimited, any others that may come here) didn't suck. Akitoshi Kawazu is a genius at bucking trends in RPGs, but most of his games are not fun or become too repetitive.
Too many RPGs tend to throw in every cool detail from every RPG to come before it. Strangely, I dearly love Tales of Symphonia, despite it having every RPG convention I have come to depsise. Nevertheless, I want more RPGs like Valkyrie Profile and Panzer Dragoon Saga that tell great stories their own way and have highly original mechanics.
While I'm at it, I also wish that the SaGa (Frontier, Unlimited, any others that may come here) didn't suck. Akitoshi Kawazu is a genius at bucking trends in RPGs, but most of his games are not fun or become too repetitive.
Late Stage Marxist
Member
LOLJoshuaJSlone said:
Something else that bugs me about (Japanese) RPGs: How "black and white" everyone perceives things to be. I.e., ALL of Race X is evil, and there isn't a single wholesome member of it; or believing that firing giant cannon Y WILL succeed without any negative consequences, or whatever
My point in singling out Mario 64 was that all platform games before then didn't require you to collect anything at all. You simply went from one level to the next without any requirements. You didn't need a specific number of levels beaten to move on or anything like that. You didn't need to unlock star road to beat Super Mario World. You didn't have to beat 3/4 of Mario 3 if you didn't want to -- just warp your ass to the end. However, in Mario 64, if you didn't acquire a certain number of stars, you didn't advance. That's not my point though...
My point is that with the sales of Mario 64 being in the millions, it's only natural for Japanese and Western developers to mimic these conventions. Some of them took them to the extremes while others presented a similar gameplay feel where accomplishing missions netted you items that you needed before you could advance -- just like Mario 64. That doesn't necessarily make Mario 64 itself a huge collect-a-thon, but it certainly is to blame for setting a platforming standard that was milked and imitated for years to come and it's now something that plenty of us have come to dislike in our games.
In Mario 64, if you didn't finish a certain number of levels...you didn't advance. The stars are not an item to collect, they simply mark the end point of a level. That's it.
In Super Mario World, each "area" was represented via an overworld map screen. In Mario 64, they took that idea to a new level. Each main play area in Mario 64 (entered via a painting) was essentially the same as an overworld theme in SMW. Each "star" represents a "dot" on the SMW maps, basically. The progression requirements were a bit less linear than SMW, but they still followed the same kind of idea. Finish a world type and you can move on.
In something like Jak and Daxter, you actually ARE searching for objects scattered about the world. This a very different design from Mario 64 and the two shouldn't be compared. You aren't just doing tasks in Mario, you are finishing levels...
radios shipping overview
Member
belgurdo said:
This is fairly common in lesser western RPGs as well. Orcs, anybody?
Rocket Punch
Member
bobbyconover said:
what do you have against Rare??
How do we classify the fetch quest? Is it a subcategory of the collectathon?
Anyway, there's nothing like being everyone's errand boy, fetching onions for soup, fixing weathervanes, passing messages, delivering mail, what-have-you. You'll help me if I gather 13 books for your library? How about I just stab you for the information?
Anyway, there's nothing like being everyone's errand boy, fetching onions for soup, fixing weathervanes, passing messages, delivering mail, what-have-you. You'll help me if I gather 13 books for your library? How about I just stab you for the information?
Ninja Scooter
Member
dark10x said:
exactly. Like i said before, the stars in Mario 64 are pretty much the same as the flagpoles at the end of each level in Super Mario Bros. They just signified the end of an objective, be it running from one end of a level to another (SMB) or actually completing some kind platforming based task (Mario64). To call Mario 64 a collect-a-thon because of th stars is just stupid.
Littleberu
Banned
jiji said:
"Hi, my name is Warcraft III and I do not agree with you, thank you."