That's as clear a troll as I've ever seen. Don't bite!
Indie > 'AAA'
- Thread starter Toma
- Start date
As much as people like to say extra lives is a hold over from the arcades it is more to do with adding artificial difficulty. Plenty of games way back when gave you more attempts to complete a level than if you played it at a harder difficulty. Now a days this is done by adding more health or tougher enemy's earlier on. In my brief exploits with AS 3.0 all I can say is enemy A.I. that scales is really hard.
Snapshot King
Member
So easycore means? I'm genuinely interested in how you think SMB is piss easy.
I already told you.
Sir Ilpalazzo
Member
Imagine you're playing Dark Souls. Now imagine you're playing a version of Dark Souls where you can quicksave after every enemy.
Snapshot King
Member
I must be blind, could you point out where?
The game does quicksave after every enemy.
post #195
Sir Ilpalazzo
Member
Okay, quicksaves you can reload from if you die.
Messofanego
Banned
Can it be set on an island?
Proteus
Can it be set on a red planet?
Mirror Moon
Just a couple off the top of my head. I'm sure others can give better recommendations.
Snapshot King
Member
Seriously? That's it? The fact that it doesn't have a limited life counter? All other factors in the game, not even the relative difficulty of any of the individual levels matters whatsoever, as long as the game has infinite lives it's easy?
I'm bordering on incredulous, but this post -
- makes me honestly think that I missed the introduction of a new term or I missed some meeting.
You're basically describing bonfires or the checkpointing in any game, the only difference being the levels in Meat are much shorter.
So short that the respawning is essentially putting you back a step before where you died, making the game a difficulty-free grind.
Snapshot King
Member
No...instead the difficulty is placed on being able to actually complete each level. Starting out easy and becoming progressively more difficult. You didn't play much of it did you?
Nose Master
Member
You do realize that the levels in SMB are more than a single jump, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dnz_YfEAOk
You die at the last spike in the first level. Restarting on the upper left corner is "a step before you died?" You're talking out of your ass.
EDIT: FFS, no one would call that "review" groundbreaking. You're the worst, pizzaroll.
You didn't watch the groundbreaking video review I linked, did you?
"essentially"
Snapshot King
Member
Oh, I watched it. Some guy droning on and on about weird tangential parts about the game, a perfect troll review. Whats your point?
So wait. Lemme get your point. If it doesn't have number lives, it's easy, no matter how hard it actually is.
Come on. Most websites don't exactly do much to push our understanding of the medium forward by advancing the language used to describe it.
Just like any game where you kill things can be broken down to "the deletion of virtual entities," any game where you figure things out can be called "a game where you solve puzzles."
Play Thirty Flights of Loving and Gravity Bone.
You'll understand what Blendo is capable of.
Yes, because, as we all know, playing a thing you can do repeatedly somehow affects the difficulty of the thing you are playing significantly more than having a limited amount of repeats, then being forced to play even more of a thing you can do repeatedly before getting back to that bit you can do repeatedly.
Can't agree with you on this one, Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs.
No.
Infinite lives along with really short levels where death doesn't really matter if you just get to go again means it's easy.
Snapshot King
Member
So that's regardless of any actual mechanical difficulty?
Ew. It's a picture of the real Steve.
Yes. Structure is a big part of difficulty.
Snapshot King
Member
Oh, so if I were to give you a rifle, and ask you to hit a target 2 miles away, but gave you infinite bullets and attempts, such a task would be trivial to you, right? As long as the structure I give you is open ended.
that doesn't sound like a video game
Snapshot King
Member
Sure doesn't, but the conditions are the same. But sure, lemme back up a bit for you. Say you added a bonfire directly outside Ornstein and Smoughs boss room. Would doing that now make Ornstein and Smough trivially easy? Or were they trivially easy before because Dark Souls allows infinite lives with no real loss?
Are those really AAA-games though? Aren't they just games, that are really good?
To me AAA-games are the equivalent of summer blockbuster movies, something that gets heavily marketed, lots of CG-visuals but usually is intellectually retarded and very forgettable - and mainstream.
His point was if the actual challenge is exactly that, a challenge, do those circumstances and conditions around that challenge devalue the actual challenge?
Snapshot King
Member
The past page of this thread has really gone to show how weird and muddled the entire terminology for everything is totally fucked.
Is this a trick question? I haven't played much of Dark Souls (cool aesthetics, understand why people like it, think the game is junk, don't really want to play more) so I don't know if there is already a bonfire outside of that boss you just named.
Either way, Dark Souls has respawning enemies and loss of Souls to offset the infinite lives, and the bonfires are sparsely spread out from what I've played.
AAA are generally considered "big budget" games sold at $60 retail releases and released by big publishers.
"Intellectually retarded" isn't really all that useful, since games like Skyrim, Arkham City, and Modern Warfare 2 are all games with more intelligence than they get credit for, but are definitely AAA.
Sir Ilpalazzo
Member
The closest bonfire is about a minute away so that's already pretty much the case. I think a better comparison would be if you hit a checkpoint every time you took a quarter off each of their lifebars.
Snapshot King
Member
So, you're saying that the difficulty of the boss doesn't matter, all that matters is penalties given to the player if they fail, and the time between attempts? So then what if one has no souls to lose? What if the time is...let's say, instead of 5 minutes, it's 10 seconds? Would you then posit that Super Hexagon is piss easy because you can instantly restart? And this may sound dumb, but you say SMB is piss easy. You then easily cleared it, right?
Why would that be a better comparison? The zones in meat boy are not a single encounter, the levels are.
Dictator93
Member
You forgot Natural Selection 2. Has the production Value and game mechanics that go above a lot of "AAA" games.
Alright, back from sleep. There are so many people in this thread who said "I just play good games", yet none of them have been posting in the recent Indie Games thread. And that is exactly the issue, what do people consider "good" games? This is something subjective of course, but people are dismissing a whole type of games ´, just based on formal aspects, which essentially comes down to "because they arent used to it". For all the people complaining about the thread title, lets just say that the thread title served its purpose. And do you know why? Because it got people to talk.
If I do a down to earth attempt to get people on here to play these kind of games, you know like... making a huge thread about the variety of recently released Indie Games:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=517647
It takes almost 2 weeks to reach 200 posts not done by me.
You know how long it took this thread to reach the same non-Toma postcount? 6 hours. And that is exactly the problem here.
So all of you guys saying you only play "good" games, or the ones saying AAA or Indie doesnt matter to them, how many of the games from the thread linked above did you play? Because there are about 5-10 games in there that are almost required playing because they are very, very great games. Yet no one seems to care. And why? Well, because what I said in the OP basically.
If I do a down to earth attempt to get people on here to play these kind of games, you know like... making a huge thread about the variety of recently released Indie Games:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=517647
It takes almost 2 weeks to reach 200 posts not done by me.
You know how long it took this thread to reach the same non-Toma postcount? 6 hours. And that is exactly the problem here.
So all of you guys saying you only play "good" games, or the ones saying AAA or Indie doesnt matter to them, how many of the games from the thread linked above did you play? Because there are about 5-10 games in there that are almost required playing because they are very, very great games. Yet no one seems to care. And why? Well, because what I said in the OP basically.
In my defense, I forgot to subscribe to the thread and have been trying to focus on finishing up the games I had started before your thread.
I did download The King of the Wood and Mirror Moon, though, and I'll be popping by your thread to mention a few indie games I've been paying attention to that I didn't see anyone else mention.
Funnily enough, I feel that way when I play a lot of indie games that are recommended in Gaf threads. Saying that about indie games as a whole will make someone out to be a villain, while saying that about the current traditional videogame market is somehow a given.
Meanwhile the truth is somewhere in the middle.
The difficulty of a boss is intrinsically tied to a game's retry structure.
I played for like 45 minutes and got bored
Snapshot King
Member
To be fair Toma, most of the discussion since you were asleep seems to have revolved around me complaining about the lack of certain genres in the indie scene, the lack of general polish, the weird, nebulous distinction between Indie and AAA and pizzaroll and I arguing because he thinks SMB is piss easy.
You're also unfortunately underestimating the power of immediate appeal. A large portions of those games in the indie threads you linked do not have that..."grab" for many people. For myself, it's because most of them are in genres I actively dislike.
Oh, so you're just ignorant then. Okay. Well this makes sense now.
Do we have any known measurement to verify he beat the game? $10 that you are not able to beat the game within a month (as in, beat every level in the game). You'd get a game worth $10 on Steam from me anytime you want, but I cant think of a way to restrain you from cheating.
I'm not doing this for less than minimum wage.
Haunted
Member
You're wrong.
Super Meat Boy has some really tough levels in it. That it doesn't force you to replay levels you've already beaten actually makes it less of a grind, not more so. Perseverance and learning the game are rewarded, just like in any other skill-based platformer. No matter how often you can try the Kid levels in Meat Boy, they still remain tough levels to beat.
But let's not derail this thread too far off-topic.
Snapshot King
Member
You wouldn't be able to do it at all.
EDIT: Anyway, Toma, hopefully you can answer this.
A big part of the indie scene is the idea that you can get new, fresh experiences there that you would never see in AAA games, but a huge problem for folks like myself is that a huge amount of those "new" experiences are incredibly similar. How many puzzles and point and click adventures can possibly be made before they're just as samey as some AAA genres?
Exactly. It's a good time for games, we have indies pushing the boundaries of creative while publishers push the graphical envelope. Now all we need is both.
I dont think I am underestimating the power of immediate appeal. But a big part of that are preconceived notions about these kind of games that are simply not true anymore. Indie developers arent in the same spot they were just 3 years ago, or dare I say at the start of the current console generation 6 years ago. These developers grew so rapidly in numbers and quality, that people should basically reassess what Indie developers can do for them yearly.
I agree that there are certain genres not overly well represented,but the same goes for big budget games. Actually, and I fully agree with the poster who said that, there is a broader variety of genres to be had with Indies than with the big budget titles.
List of recently released titles:
AAA said:
Indie said:
And while the 'AAA' list is almost conclusive, the Indie game list is only from my very selective thread (due to not to many people participating). Its probably easy 2-3 times the amount of worthwhile games.
But lets get to the point, what are genres you actively dislike and why?
Please show your appreciation in the corresponding Indie Game OTs or the big Indie Games thread. Just making a post about something that looks interesting to you can make a big difference. The problem is that by treating both type of games "equally", Indies get the short end of the stick. Big budget games just happen, but if we want those kind of experiences on the Indie level, you need to speak out. Otherwise they die or never get to blossom. Thats a big, big issue I also touched upon in the OP with the Invisibility. People who like these games NEED to speak out for them, like I am doing with this thread or the countless others I made before.
Snapshot King
Member
Of these-
Platformer: 11
RPG: 2
Art: 5
Adventure: 13
Shmup: 1
Dungeon Crawler: 1
Puzzle: 2
Sim: 2
FPS: 1
Action: 3
Turn Based Tactics: 2
Bold are dislike, italics indifferent.
Now, that's not to say I hate all games from those genres. For example, despite being a puzzle game, I adored Antichamber until it turns to absolute shit halfway through. The same with Grimrock for Dungeon Crawlers and Walking Dead for Adventure. But if it lives in that particular genre I'll be less inclined to take a look at it, unless it has something that grabs me.
This might now become a bit tedious for you, but why are you disliking these genres? I am not trying to dismiss your opinion btw, so please dont get the impression that I do.
Platformers, because the idea of jumping and running isnt enticing to you anymore and you feel like you cannot get any new experiences from that?
If you have the time, I'd appreciate if you could write a short "why" for each genre.
So the argument over why Indie games are towering over AAA or traditional games quality wise is quantity and variety? Why is more necessarily better?
Also what genre is "art"?
not psycho
Member
Space Channel 5 and Portal are awesome indie games. Super Meat Boy and Legend of Grimrock are awesome major games. I stopped caring about the label a while ago, especially since I'm not sure how one of the best platformers ever (a very common genre) or a standard dungeon crawler rpg needs to be called "indie" but games that are far more off the beaten path don't.
Different games call for different design. If SMB was like Contra or old Castlevania, I'd agree with you. But it's a fundamentally different game.
Super Meat Boy is a big game with lots of variety, where levels are more like bosses than traditional levels (compare to Ys where you instantly restart boss battles, and nobody would call Ys easy on high difficulty levels). The design structure works perfectly because the player needs freedom to create their own individualized challenge. There are some levels I don't care about getting good at and would be fine beating once. Others I would not consider "beaten" until I can consistently beat it multiple times in a row without dying, and I still go back and play through my favorites like that. Ever notice it gives you the option to instantly replay a level even if you just beat it? That's not by accident.
Some indie games do fall victim to this structure, but that is because they don't have the size, variety, or freedom to handle it. Hotline Miami for example (other than boss battles) should probably have been restructured since it got so easy after a while.
Different games call for different design. If SMB was like Contra or old Castlevania, I'd agree with you. But it's a fundamentally different game.
Super Meat Boy is a big game with lots of variety, where levels are more like bosses than traditional levels (compare to Ys where you instantly restart boss battles, and nobody would call Ys easy on high difficulty levels). The design structure works perfectly because the player needs freedom to create their own individualized challenge. There are some levels I don't care about getting good at and would be fine beating once. Others I would not consider "beaten" until I can consistently beat it multiple times in a row without dying, and I still go back and play through my favorites like that. Ever notice it gives you the option to instantly replay a level even if you just beat it? That's not by accident.
Some indie games do fall victim to this structure, but that is because they don't have the size, variety, or freedom to handle it. Hotline Miami for example (other than boss battles) should probably have been restructured since it got so easy after a while.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
You know super meat boy is the same right? You lose the progress of your level when you die. There are no midway checkpoints in a level.
So you're essentially set back to zero on the level you're trying to beat.
At least dark souls allows you to create shortcuts here and there, but the comparison is dumb anyway.
Snapshot King
Member
Sure.
Platformer: 11 - Running and jumping is no longer enough to properly grab me on its own merits. Said platformer would need a genuinely interesting gimmick or hook, or be polished to a mirror shine, two things that I find extraordinarily rare in the genre.
Art: 5 - I'll actually ask for clarification on what you mean for this genre, but most art games are outlandishly preachy and pretentious
Adventure: 13 - I despite point and click and keyword gameplay. It's anti gameplay. It's fucking alchemy.
Dungeon Crawler: 1 - Nothing in the genre is really able to live up to my memories of Eye of the Beholder 2
Puzzle: 2 - Same reasoning as platforming, but with the caveat of I'm exhausted and never liked pushing blocks, or doing numerical puzzles, or especially any of those mentioned in the Adventure category. EDIT: I should mention, spatial puzzling hooks me. Portal, Antechamber (till it becomes garbage) etc.
Sim: 2 - There is nothing about this genre that excites me at all. Civ 4-5 are cool, I suppose, but even them bore me to tears within a few hours. The core act of playing them isn't engaging.