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Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/24 23:15:45


Post by: Asherian Command


Hey everyone I think I have decided to make this a GAME DESIGN Club on dakkadakka. Where we get to talk about games in a reasonable matter. All sexism arguments and issues that are quite controversial in the games industry must be avoided this is mostly because I am interested in talking and learning from both players and designers.

Asherian's Game Review of Skyrim
As requested by his professors.
Opinion Piece
Platform : PC


NOTE:
Alright people I will be writing a few opinionated pieces on here. Mostly discussing games and implications and the problems encountered in it. I usually test a game by playing it for 10 hours at least. And having knowledge in the industry will let me discuss the problems in the game in a bit more depth compared to the average game reviewer.
If you find mistakes in my work. Please message me or comment on this forum without further ado.

Title of Game: Skyrim
Publisher and Game Development Studio: Bethesda Studios
Platform: PC
Genre Action-Adventure-Open Role Playing Game
Rating : M
Player Mode: Single Player
Time Interval - Real Time
Graphics Engine: Creation Engine

Introduction:
Welcome to a world filled with dragons, mythic beasts that speak a language far beyond our own, a world filled with elves, orcs, demons, humans, and many other incredible creatures. In this world there are mortals who carry the soul and blood of a dragon. There are the Dovahkiin, Dragonborn. This adventure takes you from the cold frozen wastes of Winterhold, to a slightly warmer but still cold looking Riften to the mid-summer home of Solitude.

Now this one of the first times I have ever played this game. One of the things I quickly noticed was its lack luster beginning. Now it is something that is pivotal in a game. The beginning of the game should have the hook or the initial introduction of the world. Unfortunately Skyrim does extremely poorly up to this point.

You start in a carriage chained to the floor. You can't even move you can only move the camera. This is highly ineffective, as we are told all these names, as a new comer would be quite confused by the dialogue. In the first few minutes we the words akatosh, Windhelm, Ufric Stormcloak, stormcloaks, Hammerfell, Sovogaurd, The Empire, and several other names. First in my head. I'm going. "Wait who? Whats that?" That may work on fans of the series, but newcomers would be immensely confused by this.

This is a huge mistake. You need to introduce me to the world, but slowly. You can't throw names around without confusing the player or reader. They will be immensely confused.

This game's introduction should set the scene. Not build up this giant world immediately at the get go. Baby steps in this regard is high perferred. If we added going through a camp and the initial bit where you are captured the introduction would of been far strong. As we can see in the very introduction there were bits and pieces that didn't work. In Skyrim it is famed for its beautiful environments. Unfortunately it does not get to this point till 30 minutes in.

There is also the problem of tension. In the beginning you are sent off to die. Immediately when you step off your carriage. You are asked. "What is your name again?"

And then a screen pops up and you can choose what your character looks like and what their name is.

This is ineffective as it throws out the entire tension out the window all that tension they were building up was gone in an instant. Because why would they kill the player in the first 15 minutes after introducing your character? It would of been better to have done this after this whole introduction, or to have you been killed by the dragon. And then cut to riverwood when a stranger comes to town and you go out for an adventure. This would of made the whole game more interesting. Like as if the son of the character killed is looking for their father and trying to figure out where they were. A simple problem then could evolve into something else.

I felt no drive in the beginning to go forward. I had to push myself to enjoy the game. But after that hurdle. The game got much much better.

What Worked:
Attractiveness of the game or the Environment and Graphic Engine:


One of the most notable features of Skyrim is its immense environments, its very beautiful scenes that will make you completely surprised. The game knows this and feels like it should reward you with these scenes. This makes the game feel grand, epic, and adventurous. This also adds a bit of immersion to the player and to anyone playing the game. The graphics themselves for their time were revolutionary in the way they did many things, though compared to todays technology it really isn’t a complaint. Unfortunately even on maximum settings everything has this glossy texture to it. Now you may be wondering why you be covering this bit? Because thats only the humanoid characters, all beast creatures, or creature with hair or even the dragons are extremely well done, they seem very real. You can tell more work was poured into the dragons and beasts than into the humanoid models. The environment changes from a world of snow, to slightly less snow, to the beginning of summer. Something I wish they had implemented was seasons. I mean you have rain, snow, moons, and cloud movement. You would think that weather seasons would be quite easy to obtain.

Gameplay and its Replayability:

Due to the scale of the game, It is best to talk about what the game offers in terms of mechanics and gameplay. In fact there are so many things to do in Skyrim that one of the things you can’t do is have all the skills and perks available for your own personal use. This is not a drawback, its a bonus.

This is a hardcore, if you make a mistake you have to live with it choice. As in recurring games media this seems to be overlooked a challenge to the player having to think about his actions is just as rewarding and if not more beneficial to the player than allowing them full access to all skills. The only complaints is that there is far too much to do in skyrim. (Having Invested 10 hours into playing the game and seeing its problems.)

Like most RPGs, you can customize your character to your liking each level you gain a perk and along these lines you can choose from an assortment of skills, in total there are 18 skills you can use. They are as follows:

The Mage
● Alteration
● Conjuration
● Destruction
● Illusion
● Restoration
The Warrior
● Enchanting
● Archery
● Block
● Heavy Armor
● One-Handed
● Two-Handed
● Smithing
The Thief
● Alchemy
● Light Armor
● Lockpicking
● Pickpocket
● Sneak
● Speech


I decided to go a more interesting root, taking conjuration and one hand, heavy armor, archery, and smithing. Unfortunately that is a ton of perk points to invest in. (It means I screwed up), apparently you are suppose to at the beginning of the game only invest in two skill paths. I invested in many. Though we are never told to do this in game. I only found this out due to investigating a bit further in the game.

These skills once level also you level you up. But you need a certain amount of skill level ups in order to achieve a character level there is a set requirement of how many per level. Each time you gain a Character level.

The gameplay is quite addictive correlate your right hand and left hand weapons with their respective side of the mouse.

This actually adds quite a bit depth into the game and makes it quite immersive and addicting. Now lets move onto the most interesting part.

What is the game really like? It plays out like newer RPGs where it gives you a set of quests that you have to complete. It reminded me a lot of World of Warcraft. But instead of finding the person with the hovering glyph or exclamation mark above their head, you would come into a town and you would talk to the townsfolk. Huh imagine that, a game that thought about immersion. They would give you a quest and then will reward you with a small amount of gold for your efforts.

In this game though unlike World of Warcraft, it actually feels rewarding to kill the targets, like you are making a difference, as each camp of bandits. No matter how many times I destroy a bandit group it always plays out different. With variety in enemy types there is no telling what type of bandit you will face. Though this repetition has made me quite battle harden with my level 19 Conjuration Master. As I just summon minions to kill everything.

This game gives you quite a bit of freedom I often feel like it hits me over the head with it quite often. The strongest part of skyrim is in its freedom to basically do whatever you want. It is basically a sandbox rpg game. If that doesn’t spark interest. I don’t know what will.


The irks are that these big organizations like Winterhold College, The Companions, The Dawnguard and whoever, their stories just were far too short. They were the same thing over and over. The Companion missions be fetch this from an enemy stronghold or from a crypt. It was tiresome and got extremely boring to the point I thought to myself. "Oh god if they send me to one of those places one more time I swear to god!"

Which they abruptly did. If they added more variety like an actual fetch quest, or kill this many animals, or kill this many animals and shave their skin, or deliver this note, or help me organize this bookshelf, It would of made these repetitive quests more interesting.

Though there are a few things you cannot do, well you can but it is deeply discouraged from doing them. You can’t go into a town and lock picking into someones house while a guard walks by. That is the surest way to get caught. Its not like I have tried killing an entire town while transforming into a werewolf to rob peoples silverware. In my opinion in order to be a good game you have to a balance of all things, Skyrim has excellent gameplay and replayability. So much so that it is incredible.

Music:

I think by now I am quite jaded when it comes hearing music from games, as most times its rock and roll. But Skyrim has one of the most beautiful scores, I’ve heard from recent memory. It uses a blend of beautiful overtones and voices that make them sound angelic to the ear. It is also a great way during the game to get the player pumped up. Now there are many things that happened whenever a dragon attacks, the music pumps up. And it really gives you the energy to fight that dragon.

This is something I enjoyed very much. Though sometimes it felt like there was a symphony orchestra following me around. Sometimes the music though comes in on the wrong time. It is also a great cue to tell you. “HEY LOOK SOMETHING IS HAPPENING!” This really adds to immersion in a way, it makes you want to do something quite epic. But now we move onto the problems I had in skyrim.

The Problems and what I didn’t like:

Story:

Basically what the story is like;

As far as I could tell the story is one of most confusing messes I have ever seen in my entire life. Lets start with what is the main point of the story. To kill dragons and save the world. You learn you are the dragonborn, and then there are hundreds of extra quests. The Civil War of Skyrim being one of most notable extra quests. For a civil war it is probably the shortest one in history, and what do you get for helping the jarls or empire winning? An item. Yep, just an item, a not very good item either, an item that you have by that time already gotten something better. So there is no real point to doing the quests, as there are only five of them. I was quite disappointed by this. The story was very confusing and hard to follow for this questline. For this game the storyline is hit and miss. (Mostly Miss) By that point I figured out that the writing department must of just thought “You know what, Lets stop trying.”

I found that the main organization quests were quite boring. I felt hyped to fight in the civil war of skyrim. But it just sort of ended. Shouldn't there be... I don't know.... Defense missions or scouting missions? Or i don't know battle missions where you fight in giant battles where dragons fly over and killing troops?

It just felt empty to be with these famed organizations. Also them making you their leader seemed kind of, out of place. "Hey there is this mute guy. Lets make him our leader."
"Right behind you, man!"

This becomes extremely apparent in several missions when at the end of the winterhold college missions you become the arch-mage. Funnily enough, I had yet to use a single magical spell. I had been using a sword the majority of the time, and only used conjuration magic, and some restoration magic.. It just disconnects me from the game itself. The story was all over the place. We already know who the bad guys are and they aren't that threatening after you kill the first twenty.

The enemies felt weak after a while, and didn't live up to the world's definition of powerful. They seemed weak and letdowns compared to their mythical powers. Such as the wolf queen quest. Which should of been a lot longer than it was. As I completed it in an hour. There was very little dialogue as well, which did not help the quest chain either.

To improve this they need more character interaction apart from in the beginning and the end of a quest. You need to sparkle it through out the game.

Though there are some good parts to the game. The last winterhold college quest is probably the best quest I had played in skyrim. Mostly due to the very hard labyrinth where my magic was drained and my healing abilities severely reduced. It made sense in the story. We were in a labyrinth that sucked our magic away from us. And what do we find out the main enemy couldn't hurt me because he was far enough away that I just picked him off with a bow. There are several problems in skyrims story lines. But making a big world like this is probably where they put most of their resources into.

My major issue is that it feels disconnected and so many disconnects happen in the game that I stop thinking about the world I am in. Its just another game. The story is the most important part, and Skyrim was Incredibly lacking in that degree.

Sound And Voice Acting:

She is quite chatty (Not really)


I think anyone who knows a lot about skyrim or has played thus far knows fairly well that the voice cast consisted of 20 people. Or what felt like at least 20 people. It is one of the things that rips you straight out of the experience as guards constantly bicker at you or insult you, and all seem to have the voice.

The words “I used to be adventure like you, till I took an arrow in the knee.” Is one of the most annoying things in the entire game that and the same stupid dialogue that was impressively breaking. The sound itself is not impressive, the voice acting is not impressive, in-fact it is probably the worst voice acting I have ever heard. There is no character, there is no emotion in what these people are saying. Some hit it, most don’t. I had a child come up to me and say that her parents were killed, I was not in the least bit convinced by the tone of her voice. She sounded bored, in fact all the children in skyrim just feel wrong to be around.

There are many things that I would say that broke the game for me. And the voice acting just took it a step too far, that made the game feel rushed and not as well put together. Now the best way to enjoy skyrim is through the mods set up by the community, because there is a hotfix that fixes everything I just said about the voice acting. Minus the children of the corn.
Now on the sound. The game feels empty.

There should be birds and the blowing of the wind but I didn’t. It felt game breaking, there is so much they could of simply added and it would of added volumes to the story and gameplay as a whole. Though other than this the main characters, mainly the Jarls (Vassals/Lords) are voiced properly and have the best actors in the whole game.
This is a problem because they are the ones you interact with least. I Found that I visited the stores to get rid of my stockpile of items I get from an adventure. The actresses and actors were quite mediocre at best.

I want to feel emotion for these characters, but I don't get that emotion, because there is no soul behind the words said. I don't feel sad for this character. If this character says her parents are dead, I want to feel it.

Not.. "Hey! My parents are dead. Okay. So what now?"

Shouldn't it be the girl crying at the door of her house, and you take notice of this child?
All the children in Skyrim act like adults. They don't act any different I found it hard to tell.
And that one brat who talked down to me like she owned the world. Was one of the few times I saved my game turned into a werewolf and tried to kill her, Unforunately the skyrim creators must of thought. "Hey you know those demon childs we put in the game we should make them unkillable, and essential. Because there might be people who hate their characters and might want to kill them!"


The Pathing and the AI:



Suddenly Everything is right in the world.


One of the worst bits of this game is traveling from place to place on foot. Especially those hard to reach areas, there is a certain way up. I Took this a challenge and claimed up a peak to only bug out of the wall and fly high in the sky and die. Another time I ran my horse up a cliff and glitched out and got stuck in the wall permanently. Infact I think the game knows this and after you have visited a place you can fast travel to that location. In a blink. This is a recurring problem as objective markers sometimes misplace themselves in areas they shouldn’t be, mountains you can sometimes walk through, sometimes you trip off a ledge and die. Sometimes the objective marker is so far off it is almost comical.
Its those times when you wonder if anyone had actually tested those areas. Traveling to those far off regions especially when they are on water.
Now you can swim, but the problem is that it takes longer to do so. As the map sometimes improperly locates the objective marker on your map a literal mile away from the objective. Its this type of thing that makes the game kind of terrible for those who need proper linear pathing. Though for someone like me, I find it kind of joyous to be absolutely lost in the wilderness surrounded by frightening creatures.
Another problem that is seen is that the AI charge out and attack a dragon or a vampire (provided you have installed Dawnguard onto your game) and this you will notice quite quickly sometimes the shopkeepers and critical carriers of quests are suicidally brave, for going their homes, and instead wanting to use their wimpy knives and clubs to beat up a dragon or any hostile creature that enters the village. This probably the worst bit of the game. As sometimes those critical npcs stop entire quest chains. And resulting in a mission failed. And you do hope for a quick save from before because losing an npc, especially a shopkeeper is the most frustrating thing in all of skyrim.


Rating:
Overall this game which I have tedious calculated the score from my own personal enjoyment, bugs, artistic direction, mechanics observations, gameplay liking, and story liking, I give this game a prominent 8.6. A score which it deserves. Though this is not a bad thing this game is definitely worth the buy. Though you might get annoyed from time to time from the gamebreaking bugs. Meanwhile I will be on my adventure and killing dragons.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/24 23:35:26


Post by: Ensis Ferrae


Overall, I think it's a good piece, and only a few minor wording errors, or turns of phrase that could be better worded, or more fleshed out that I would try and edit or fix.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/24 23:35:59


Post by: Swastakowey


I didnt enjoy this game at all.

I loved Oblivion a bit too much, but this game just sucked for me from the get go.

In fact, im gonna buy Oblivion tomorrow. I miss that game.

Was a good read though.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/24 23:49:11


Post by: Desubot


I believe one of the benefits is extensive modding.

you can add a TON IIRC.

Also macho man randy savage dragons



Oooooh yeahhh


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 00:03:47


Post by: LordofHats


Predator mod is best mod


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 00:05:36


Post by: nomotog


If you play on console, then the left and right buttons match your left and right hands.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 00:16:50


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
If you play on console, then the left and right buttons match your left and right hands.


Yeah that I found interesting. It felt very natural to me to play this game. Hence why I gave such a high score.

The game felt very natural to play, so much so that I continue to play it.

I might do a review of Hotline Miami and Prince of Persia Sometime.

But you guys should compile a list of mods I should try. I have gotten quite a few XD.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Swastakowey wrote:
I didnt enjoy this game at all.

I loved Oblivion a bit too much, but this game just sucked for me from the get go.

In fact, im gonna buy Oblivion tomorrow. I miss that game.

Was a good read though.


It is an interesting game. There is a lot not to like about the game.

At first I hated it. Then I replayed it as a designer and enjoyed the crap out of it.

Because I felt like I needed a new game.

I got the legendary edition just to let everyone else know. I bought it during the steam sales

And I have not regretted it!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Desubot wrote:
I believe one of the benefits is extensive modding.

you can add a TON IIRC.

Also macho man randy savage dragons



Oooooh yeahhh


Yeah the entire game just felt incomplete to me, but damn I do not regret purchasing it.

I mean I docked points only on sound and story.

Everything else I found quite enthralling. It was mostly nitpicks. I really felt like it was very well done, and was executed in such a way that those bugs really didn't break it as badly.

I mean the sound is horrible and the simplest fix is to not play with sound.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 07:14:37


Post by: Slarg232


Does throwing names at players early on confuse players or does it get them interested in what is going on and potentially lead them down a certain path right off the bat?

Hearing "Ulfric Von Lichenstein is fighting the Imperial Bastards" while about to be killed by the Imperials right off the bat very much gave me a "Screw you guys, I'm helping the Stormcloaks" feel.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 11:45:43


Post by: Asherian Command


 Slarg232 wrote:
Does throwing names at players early on confuse players or does it get them interested in what is going on and potentially lead them down a certain path right off the bat?

Hearing "Ulfric Von Lichenstein is fighting the Imperial Bastards" while about to be killed by the Imperials right off the bat very much gave me a "Screw you guys, I'm helping the Stormcloaks" feel.


Well, at the beginning of a game, you see hey who are these guys? The player who has never played or heard of it. Doesn't know who is who.

If you introduce it slowly and not throw thirty names at the player it doesn't garner interest.

It only confuses them all.

The first 15 minutes of skyrim are a complete bore.

If you introduce it slowly by having a character talk about it, what the mission is about or something like that you introduce it.

In Halo:Combat Evolved for example the first 15 minutes you don't fight. You merely run the feth away. It doesn't just drop you into the combat, it shows you who the threat is. At first you are like who is the covenant but someone explains it to you through action.

Then you are introduced to that enemy. And you meet the characters on this ship.

It sets the scene and the mod rapidly and is far more effective.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 12:03:16


Post by: illuknisaa


Honestly skyrim is a really bad game.

Pretty much every aspect of the game is flawed in some way.

Actions of the player don't matter at all (guards have new clothing, whoope de doo) Core gameplay is extremely dull and there is no story apart from "hey fed ex guy deliver this item #2538".

If the combat wasn't so dull or the story be so uninteresting the game might have a chance. Level design sucks too.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 12:16:31


Post by: Asherian Command


 illuknisaa wrote:
Honestly skyrim is a really bad game.

Pretty much every aspect of the game is flawed in some way.

Actions of the player don't matter at all (guards have new clothing, whoope de doo) Core gameplay is extremely dull and there is no story apart from "hey fed ex guy deliver this item #2538".

If the combat wasn't so dull or the story be so uninteresting the game might have a chance. Level design sucks too.


What?

Hahahaha. I thought the level design was ambitious.

Its not a really bad game. ITs actually quite good.

The core gameplay was interesting, and dynamic and changed overtime according to your skills.

IT felt quite fun to kill dragons.

And that that bit is not gameplay. I considered that part of the story. I didn't think it was a horrible or a bad game.

I have played bad games, skyrim is well polished compared to them. It just felt incomplete to me. Like the designers wanted to put more into it.

I think the level design is one of its strengths,

But their wall detection needs work. And that happens in lots of games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 14:10:25


Post by: Slarg232


 Asherian Command wrote:
 Slarg232 wrote:
Does throwing names at players early on confuse players or does it get them interested in what is going on and potentially lead them down a certain path right off the bat?

Hearing "Ulfric Von Lichenstein is fighting the Imperial Bastards" while about to be killed by the Imperials right off the bat very much gave me a "Screw you guys, I'm helping the Stormcloaks" feel.


Well, at the beginning of a game, you see hey who are these guys? The player who has never played or heard of it. Doesn't know who is who.

If you introduce it slowly and not throw thirty names at the player it doesn't garner interest.

It only confuses them all.

The first 15 minutes of skyrim are a complete bore.

If you introduce it slowly by having a character talk about it, what the mission is about or something like that you introduce it.

In Halo:Combat Evolved for example the first 15 minutes you don't fight. You merely run the feth away. It doesn't just drop you into the combat, it shows you who the threat is. At first you are like who is the covenant but someone explains it to you through action.

Then you are introduced to that enemy. And you meet the characters on this ship.

It sets the scene and the mod rapidly and is far more effective.


1) Every Elder Scrolls game sets you up as a prisoner right from the git go; it was no different in Oblivion with the Emperor, Blades, Nine Divines, Cyrodil, and all of that that was thrown at you within five minutes.

2) Halo was establishing a new IP. Skyrim was not.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 14:40:41


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Just ordered parts for a new modern pc this week (my current one is 8+ years old). I'm looking forward to playing Skyrim on pc with access to all the mods that compensate for Skyrims weaknesses.

The Civil War in particular. I want to really,feel like one soldier in an army, participating in mass battles and a dynamic war with the front lines and territory shifting back and forth. There's a cool mod that does this which I saw w couple yeArs ago.

The console version suffers from weaknesses and flaws that pc modders have been fixing for years.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 14:52:37


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Just ordered parts for a new modern pc this week (my current one is 8+ years old). I'm looking forward to playing Skyrim on pc with access to all the mods that compensate for Skyrims weaknesses.

The Civil War in particular. I want to really,feel like one soldier in an army, participating in mass battles and a dynamic war with the front lines and territory shifting back and forth. There's a cool mod that does this which I saw w couple years ago.

The console version suffers from weaknesses and flaws that pc modders have been fixing for years.


yeah there is also patrol mods where there are sometimes engagements between stormcloaks and imperials.
There is also a mod that has dragons come more often.

Also there is another mod which allows you spend dragon souls on perks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Slarg232 wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
 Slarg232 wrote:
Does throwing names at players early on confuse players or does it get them interested in what is going on and potentially lead them down a certain path right off the bat?

Hearing "Ulfric Von Lichenstein is fighting the Imperial Bastards" while about to be killed by the Imperials right off the bat very much gave me a "Screw you guys, I'm helping the Stormcloaks" feel.


Well, at the beginning of a game, you see hey who are these guys? The player who has never played or heard of it. Doesn't know who is who.

If you introduce it slowly and not throw thirty names at the player it doesn't garner interest.

It only confuses them all.

The first 15 minutes of skyrim are a complete bore.

If you introduce it slowly by having a character talk about it, what the mission is about or something like that you introduce it.

In Halo:Combat Evolved for example the first 15 minutes you don't fight. You merely run the feth away. It doesn't just drop you into the combat, it shows you who the threat is. At first you are like who is the covenant but someone explains it to you through action.

Then you are introduced to that enemy. And you meet the characters on this ship.

It sets the scene and the mod rapidly and is far more effective.


1) Every Elder Scrolls game sets you up as a prisoner right from the git go; it was no different in Oblivion with the Emperor, Blades, Nine Divines, Cyrodil, and all of that that was thrown at you within five minutes.

2) Halo was establishing a new IP. Skyrim was not.


Yes but you need to catter to a new audience when ever you start a game.



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:03:10


Post by: Slarg232


Not if it's the No. 1 RPG in the Western Hemisphere, you don't......


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:03:54


Post by: illuknisaa


 Asherian Command wrote:
 illuknisaa wrote:
Honestly skyrim is a really bad game.

Pretty much every aspect of the game is flawed in some way.

Actions of the player don't matter at all (guards have new clothing, whoope de doo) Core gameplay is extremely dull and there is no story apart from "hey fed ex guy deliver this item #2538".

If the combat wasn't so dull or the story be so uninteresting the game might have a chance. Level design sucks too.

Spoiler:

What?

Hahahaha. I thought the level design was ambitious.

Its not a really bad game. ITs actually quite good.

The core gameplay was interesting, and dynamic and changed overtime according to your skills.

IT felt quite fun to kill dragons.

And that that bit is not gameplay. I considered that part of the story. I didn't think it was a horrible or a bad game.

I have played bad games, skyrim is well polished compared to them. It just felt incomplete to me. Like the designers wanted to put more into it.

I think the level design is one of its strengths,

But their wall detection needs work. And that happens in lots of games.


By level design I mean design of dungeon from a gameplay standpoint. Pretty much every dungeon is just one straight corridor with zero support for playing a mage or a thief.
Every dungeon offers no alternate paths and consists of mid sized rooms which of very little for any kind of support for ranged gameplay.

I could live with the linear dungeons if it weren't for the ultra stupid "RNG" quest locations. Barkeeps near riverwood just love giving that quest to kill bandit lord #216 in embershard mine. Atleast in call of duty you don't have to repeat the same quest over and over again.

As you level up the game gets even more tedious due to the level scaling. Once you hit around 35-40lvl all your opponents consists of drauger murderdeathlords and dragons which are not hard to kill but it might take few years to chisel that bloated hp bar. The last mission consisted of nothing but drauger overlords and to make things worse I had decided to try a destruction mage build (you can max everything up without thinking).


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:16:43


Post by: Asherian Command


 Slarg232 wrote:
Not if it's the No. 1 RPG in the Western Hemisphere, you don't......


If your introducing a world you have to go slightly slower.

You have to reintroduce it. That is a common part of game design in order for it to be able to be sold to a larger audience.

It needs to be slower to introduce what is going on.

You can't just introduce a setting with out setting up the world.

You want to reach the largest demographic possible not the smallest one. If you want to catter to a bigger audience introduce the world and ensure it is explained.

By level design I mean design of dungeon from a gameplay standpoint. Pretty much every dungeon is just one straight corridor with zero support for playing a mage or a thief.
Every dungeon offers no alternate paths and consists of mid sized rooms which of very little for any kind of support for ranged gameplay.


Thus far I have seen certain dunegons that are rare that do offer that. And those are usually the best dungeons.

As you level up the game gets even more tedious due to the level scaling. Once you hit around 35-40lvl all your opponents consists of drauger murderdeathlords and dragons which are not hard to kill but it might take few years to chisel that bloated hp bar. The last mission consisted of nothing but drauger overlords and to make things worse I had decided to try a destruction mage build (you can max everything up without thinking).

Agreed

Its a problem but I stopped caring after a bit, and did more than just bandit missions. I just explored.

I could live with the linear dungeons if it weren't for the ultra stupid "RNG" quest locations. Barkeeps near riverwood just love giving that quest to kill bandit lord #216 in embershard mine. Atleast in call of duty you don't have to repeat the same quest over and over again.


I disagree because thus far I have yet to have the same location in a quest. Maybe it is bad luck.

Thus far the enemies have been quite diverse. Sometimes it is a witch cult sometimes not.

I can tell you are quite bitter about playing it.

The best way to play a game is to come in with no expectations.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:21:38


Post by: nomotog


 Slarg232 wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
 Slarg232 wrote:
Does throwing names at players early on confuse players or does it get them interested in what is going on and potentially lead them down a certain path right off the bat?

Hearing "Ulfric Von Lichenstein is fighting the Imperial Bastards" while about to be killed by the Imperials right off the bat very much gave me a "Screw you guys, I'm helping the Stormcloaks" feel.


Well, at the beginning of a game, you see hey who are these guys? The player who has never played or heard of it. Doesn't know who is who.

If you introduce it slowly and not throw thirty names at the player it doesn't garner interest.

It only confuses them all.

The first 15 minutes of skyrim are a complete bore.

If you introduce it slowly by having a character talk about it, what the mission is about or something like that you introduce it.

In Halo:Combat Evolved for example the first 15 minutes you don't fight. You merely run the feth away. It doesn't just drop you into the combat, it shows you who the threat is. At first you are like who is the covenant but someone explains it to you through action.

Then you are introduced to that enemy. And you meet the characters on this ship.

It sets the scene and the mod rapidly and is far more effective.


1) Every Elder Scrolls game sets you up as a prisoner right from the git go; it was no different in Oblivion with the Emperor, Blades, Nine Divines, Cyrodil, and all of that that was thrown at you within five minutes.

2) Halo was establishing a new IP. Skyrim was not.


I think oblivion had a better opening. Your always in control and you get started playing in tutorial right away.

Oh and then extra credits did a video just on the opening of skyrim. iI's neat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpddXJJLhPY


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:26:03


Post by: Asherian Command


I think oblivion had a better opening. Your always in control and you get started playing in tutorial right away.

Oh and then extra credits did a video just on the opening of skyrim. iI's neat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpddXJJLhPY


Yep basically. It is not a great beginning and it really doesn't help the game in anyway shape or form to convey to the player he reality of the situation. It is a common mistake in games.

You need the first 15 minutes to be crucial.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:36:12


Post by: Manchu


Skyrim has a very effective beginning because it is a game about exploring a setting. This will be a surprise to many players (including some devs), who are used to story-driven games generally. A lot of players seem to think "RPG" means "strong story." Skyrim is simply not that kind of game.

Immersion is crucial to grokking Skyrim on a conceptual level. The game therefore requires the player to sit still for a few moments while the setting is established around you as opposed to being presented in a cut scene. This can be frustrating precisely because, unlike when you are passively watching an intro cut scene, you are playing Skyrim right from the start. Yes, even though you can barely move.

This frustration becomes part of immersion -- you cannot move because you are a bound prisoner. As a player sitting in a living room, you are thinking -- why am I a prisoner? where am I being taken? how can I escape? Which of course is exactly what your character would be thinking about. This correspondence between out-of-game and in-game experience is a great example of immersion.

As the set piece continues, Skyrim introduces the player to the key setting conflicts with vivid roleplay experiences, such as going from helplessly awaiting execution to making a choice to turn on your would-be executioners or join them defending the town. By the time the intro is over, you probably already have some feelings about the Empire and the Stormcloaks. You are also probably pretty impressed by dragons.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:37:04


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
I think oblivion had a better opening. Your always in control and you get started playing in tutorial right away.

Oh and then extra credits did a video just on the opening of skyrim. iI's neat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpddXJJLhPY


Yep basically. It is not a great beginning and it really doesn't help the game in anyway shape or form to convey to the player he reality of the situation. It is a common mistake in games.

You need the first 15 minutes to be crucial.


Oh it is way way too common in games and I think it is getting worse. Tutorial are getting longer and longer well the game is pushed back farther and farther. It drives me up the wall when I play open world games because they aren't any fun until you get freedom.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:46:17


Post by: Asherian Command


 Manchu wrote:
Skyrim has a very effective beginning because it is a game about exploring a setting. This will be a surprise to many players (including some devs), who are used to story-driven games generally. A lot of players seem to think "RPG" means "strong story." Skyrim is simply not that kind of game.

Immersion is crucial to grokking Skyrim on a conceptual level. The game therefore requires the player to sit still for a few moments while the setting is established around you as opposed to being presented in a cut scene. This can be frustrating precisely because, unlike when you are passively watching an intro cut scene, you are playing Skyrim right from the start. Yes, even though you can barely move.

This frustration becomes part of immersion -- you cannot move because you are a bound prisoner. As a player sitting in a living room, you are thinking -- why am I a prisoner? where am I being taken? how can I escape? Which of course is exactly what your character would be thinking about. This correspondence between out-of-game and in-game experience is a great example of immersion.

As the set piece continues, Skyrim introduces the player to the key setting conflicts with vivid roleplay experiences, such as going from helplessly awaiting execution to making a choice to turn on your would-be executioners or join them defending the town. By the time the intro is over, you probably already have some feelings about the Empire and the Stormcloaks. You are also probably pretty impressed by dragons.


Yes but the introduction to these things is just rushed this is a whole new vocabulary.

Adding simple things as just you getting captured would quite a bit of depth, At the beginning you are free to roam around. Then you get captured,


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:48:31


Post by: Manchu


nomotog wrote:
Tutorial are getting longer and longer well the game is pushed back farther and farther.
Morrowind basically dumps you into its world. This was completely overwhelming. I had never played anything like it before and it really put me off because it was so confusing and intimidating. Oblivion did a much better job and Skyrim further refined that.

FO3 is probably the best example of all but it has a much more personal perspective than any Elder Scrolls game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:52:29


Post by: Slarg232


 Manchu wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Tutorial are getting longer and longer well the game is pushed back farther and farther.
Morrowind basically dumps you into its world. This was completely overwhelming. I had never played anything like it before and it really put me off because it was so confusing and intimidating. Oblivion did a much better job and Skyrim further refined that.

FO3 is probably the best example of all but it has a much more personal perspective than any Elder Scrolls game.


Yeah seriously....

"Go to this town and talk to this person".

"Ok..... which way was that town? I'll head North, that sounds good. Death Mountain? What's that?"


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 16:57:14


Post by: Manchu


 Asherian Command wrote:
Adding simple things as just you getting captured would quite a bit of depth, At the beginning you are free to roam around. Then you get captured,
What you are suggesting here is illusion of choice. If X is certain to happen to my character, then nothing I do as a player concerning X really matters. It is therefore better to skip straight to X. You cannot be both "free to roam around" and certain to be captured.

Dragon Age 2 is basically 100% illusion of choice, for example.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 17:06:01


Post by: nomotog


 Manchu wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Tutorial are getting longer and longer well the game is pushed back farther and farther.
Morrowind basically dumps you into its world. This was completely overwhelming. I had never played anything like it before and it really put me off because it was so confusing and intimidating. Oblivion did a much better job and Skyrim further refined that.

FO3 is probably the best example of all but it has a much more personal perspective than any Elder Scrolls game.


I am half tempted make a thread just on the topic of game tutorials. It is such a rich topic.

Fallout 3 was maybe the best of all of them because of all the story and setting you absorbed in the process. You also felt like you were still playing the game, making choices and everything, You weren't just restricted to looking around.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 17:11:31


Post by: Asherian Command


 Slarg232 wrote:
 Manchu wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Tutorial are getting longer and longer well the game is pushed back farther and farther.
Morrowind basically dumps you into its world. This was completely overwhelming. I had never played anything like it before and it really put me off because it was so confusing and intimidating. Oblivion did a much better job and Skyrim further refined that.

FO3 is probably the best example of all but it has a much more personal perspective than any Elder Scrolls game.


Yeah seriously....

"Go to this town and talk to this person".

"Ok..... which way was that town? I'll head North, that sounds good. Death Mountain? What's that?"


You could say that about Skyrim too. There are certain areas that just didn't make sense.

I have only murdered one woman in all of skyrim because I entered her house. (The witch in the forest.)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 17:11:38


Post by: Bromsy


nomotog wrote:
 Manchu wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Tutorial are getting longer and longer well the game is pushed back farther and farther.
Morrowind basically dumps you into its world. This was completely overwhelming. I had never played anything like it before and it really put me off because it was so confusing and intimidating. Oblivion did a much better job and Skyrim further refined that.

FO3 is probably the best example of all but it has a much more personal perspective than any Elder Scrolls game.


I am half tempted make a thread just on the topic of game tutorials. It is such a rich topic.

Fallout 3 was maybe the best of all of them because of all the story and setting you absorbed in the process. You also felt like you were still playing the game, making choices and everything, You weren't just restricted to looking around.


Blood Dragon had the best tutorial. Fallout's was pretty dece though


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 19:08:21


Post by: illuknisaa


 Asherian Command wrote:


You want to reach the largest demographic possible not the smallest one. If you want to catter to a bigger audience introduce the world and ensure it is explained.

By level design I mean design of dungeon from a gameplay standpoint. Pretty much every dungeon is just one straight corridor with zero support for playing a mage or a thief.
Every dungeon offers no alternate paths and consists of mid sized rooms which of very little for any kind of support for ranged gameplay.


Thus far I have seen certain dunegons that are rare that do offer that. And those are usually the best dungeons.

As you level up the game gets even more tedious due to the level scaling. Once you hit around 35-40lvl all your opponents consists of drauger murderdeathlords and dragons which are not hard to kill but it might take few years to chisel that bloated hp bar. The last mission consisted of nothing but drauger overlords and to make things worse I had decided to try a destruction mage build (you can max everything up without thinking).

Agreed

Its a problem but I stopped caring after a bit, and did more than just bandit missions. I just explored.

I could live with the linear dungeons if it weren't for the ultra stupid "RNG" quest locations. Barkeeps near riverwood just love giving that quest to kill bandit lord #216 in embershard mine. Atleast in call of duty you don't have to repeat the same quest over and over again.


I disagree because thus far I have yet to have the same location in a quest. Maybe it is bad luck.

Thus far the enemies have been quite diverse. Sometimes it is a witch cult sometimes not.



Name one dungeon that isn't linear. Name one dungeon that support something else than "HIT THEM IN THE FACE" -gameplay.

Not caring about ultra poor level scaling doesn't really fix the ultra poor level scaling. "Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.

Pretty much every opponents falls into two categories.
A) They hit you in the face.
B) They shoot you in the face.

Melee attackers never change their tactics, so running around table or a tree will work everytime.
Ranged attackers will never defeat a tree or a large rock so you can just sit back and wait so you can hit them in the face.
If you can't be bothered you can just get yourself godlike gear or type "killall" in the console.

nomotog wrote:


I am half tempted make a thread just on the topic of game tutorials. It is such a rich topic.

Fallout 3 was maybe the best of all of them because of all the story and setting you absorbed in the process. You also felt like you were still playing the game, making choices and everything, You weren't just restricted to looking around.


Fo3 is easily one of the best games ever made.

I'm just joking, it sucks.

Fo3 might have been a decent game if it didn't try to be a serious rpg. When bethesda doesn't try to pretend that their guns are swords their poor gameplay seems like it works but they just had to ruin it with the extremely poor main story. The "makes sense" part never really starts. You just go to these random ass places, skip dialogue from these characters you don't care about and an ending that leaves you with "¿qué?".


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 19:16:18


Post by: Manchu


 illuknisaa wrote:
"Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.
Strongly disagree. Exploring is a mode of play (setting your own gameplay priorities) as much as a goal (discovering new things).


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 19:48:45


Post by: nomotog


 Manchu wrote:
 illuknisaa wrote:
"Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.
Strongly disagree. Exploring is a mode of play (setting your own gameplay priorities) as much as a goal (discovering new things).


A lot of people think exploration is just finding hidden rooms and walking around, but it's more then just that, Exploration includes things like testing to see if water puts out fire or what happens when you put a bucket on someones head.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 19:51:26


Post by: Manchu


Yes, you make a very good point: exploration can be both in-game and out-of-game. In-game exploration is about further experiencing the setting. Out-of-game exploration is about "testing" the game itself, seeing "what happens when X" as you mentioned. This distinction totally slipped my mind because Bethesda RPGs have a lot of possibilities on both scores.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 21:10:46


Post by: Asherian Command


Name one dungeon that isn't linear. Name one dungeon that support something else than "HIT THEM IN THE FACE" -gameplay.

Not caring about ultra poor level scaling doesn't really fix the ultra poor level scaling. "Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.

Pretty much every opponents falls into two categories.
A) They hit you in the face.
B) They shoot you in the face.

Melee attackers never change their tactics, so running around table or a tree will work everytime.
Ranged attackers will never defeat a tree or a large rock so you can just sit back and wait so you can hit them in the face.
If you can't be bothered you can just get yourself godlike gear or type "killall" in the console.

If you say it like that then every game falls into that category.

Because you also have forgotten about the dual roles characters can have.

Anyway. Guys what game should I review next or do you guys want to submit some game reviews or games I should try? And then begin the conversation on?



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 21:12:17


Post by: Manchu


What kind of games are you willing to try?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 21:18:57


Post by: Bromsy


 illuknisaa wrote:


Name one dungeon that isn't linear.


Blackreach.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 21:21:00


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:


Anyway. Guys what game should I review next or do you guys want to submit some game reviews or games I should try? And then begin the conversation on?



Try fallen London.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 21:58:36


Post by: Manchu


I tried that one myself and I confess it did not hold my interest. Also, IIRC, one is ... encouraged to pay to get ahead.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 22:01:08


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


 Asherian Command wrote:
Name one dungeon that isn't linear. Name one dungeon that support something else than "HIT THEM IN THE FACE" -gameplay.

Not caring about ultra poor level scaling doesn't really fix the ultra poor level scaling. "Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.

Pretty much every opponents falls into two categories.
A) They hit you in the face.
B) They shoot you in the face.

Melee attackers never change their tactics, so running around table or a tree will work everytime.
Ranged attackers will never defeat a tree or a large rock so you can just sit back and wait so you can hit them in the face.
If you can't be bothered you can just get yourself godlike gear or type "killall" in the console.

If you say it like that then every game falls into that category.

Because you also have forgotten about the dual roles characters can have.

Anyway. Guys what game should I review next or do you guys want to submit some game reviews or games I should try? And then begin the conversation on?



Project Zomboid.

A Walking Dead style survival game in isometric format. Gather food, medicine and weapons. Establish a safehouse. Collect rainwater and farm crops. Defend your new home against hordes of undead.

And (in future updates, as the game is currently in early access) interact with and recruit other survivor NPC's to rebuild civilization...or fight them for dwindling resources.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 22:03:00


Post by: Manchu


That looks pretty good even if I am a bit ... or to be honest completely sick of the zombie genre. Does it do anything that other zombie games (DayZ, State of Decay) don't?

EDIT: Ugh but early access is a no go for me at least.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 22:27:57


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


 Manchu wrote:
That looks pretty good even if I am a bit ... or to be honest completely sick of the zombie genre. Does it do anything that other zombie games (DayZ, State of Decay) don't?

EDIT: Ugh but early access is a no go for me at least.


Absolutely yes.

In Day Z you start off with no weapons. You need to grab a weapon asap - typically a rolling pin or a frying pan. If you're lucky you'll find a hand gun and a single clip of ammo, but you REALLY don't want to use it early one because loud noises especially gun shots draw all zombies in the immediate vicinity to the location of the last shot (this is fething scary).

You need to grab a bag, and start gathering food, water and medicine. Perishable food will rot, and will make you sick.

You need to raid warehouses and stores for better weapons and tools - Fire Axes, Baseball bats, hammers, saw, spade, trowel, and a shotgun if you're lucky.

You need to find a good defensible location, like a house with walls surrounding it, make it safe by clearing out zombies and fortify it using an axe to cut down trees for wood, a saw to cut planks, a hammer and nails (which have to be scavenged) to build fences, doors and barricade the windows of your house.

Eventually the power and water supplies will be cut off. Canned goods will eventually dwindle, unless you live the life of a nomad constantly moving from place to place - which keeps bringing you into contact with more zombies as you're not staying in an area you've made safe.

So you will need to build barrels to collect rainwater and begin farming vegetable crops. You can also hunt and trap animals.

If you get sick from food poisoning, you need medicine, lots of food and lots of rest. Injure your arm on a broken window, and you will need to bandage it. If you're infected by a zombie...you're fething screwed.

Make too much noise inside your home, fire a gun or saw logs in the yard, or catch the attention of a group of zombies whilst returning home and you could end up in a siege. Meta events affect the behaviour and movement of zombies - you might hear a gunshot in the distance or a helicopter, and that riles up all the zombies in the area, and they'll migrate towards the area of the gun shot (eventually, these gun shots will indicate the location of actual NPC survivors you can encounter, but for now theyre just ambient sounds).

You have to really manage your stamina in this game. Swinging a melee weapon will tire you out quickly. You need to eat regularly to maintain your strength, otherwise your strength and speed is penalized heavily. The game is really all about survival in a way that I've not seen many zombie games do (not that ive played very many). Food. Water. Medicine. Farming, hunting and trapping. Gathering weapons. Fighting zombies, clearing houses, making an area safe to live in and move about. Fortifying a house so that its defensible.


Day Z is nothing like that - as I understand it (havent yet played it) - its all about PVP, fighting with rival bands of players competing for resources, weapons, vehicles and the best locations to build bases. The zombies are a minor nuisance at best that just get in the way of fighting other players.

Don't know about State of Decay, havent played that.

As for it being early access, the game is pretty good atm and fairly cheap I think. I regard it in the same way that i considered Minecraft, which I bought during Beta for £15 and was pleased with the state of the game as it was at the time I bought it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Manchu wrote:
EDIT: Ugh but early access is a no go for me at least.


Best advice i can give is, watch some Lets Plays and you-tube reviews.

Spoiler:




Automatically Appended Next Post:
The game is fething terrifying when night has fallen and you can't see a fething thing, the streets are teeming with zombies, you're spotted by a group of them but you've fired your last bullet, your only weapon is a frying pan, your food is running out and you desperately need to bandage that scratch on your arm before it gets infected.

Character death is permanent, though you can reroll a new fresh character in the same world and return to your safehouse. The downside of that is you lose all your skillss, and skills are VERY important.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 23:19:32


Post by: nomotog


State of decay is really surprising in what it dose. It's a little like they thew darts a a dart board to decide how they should spend their money.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/25 23:55:31


Post by: Perkustin


If i'm being brutally honest i felt you spent a lot of words saying not a whole lot.

Skyrim is one of my most played games of all time, in both the vanilla console variety and the, modded, PC version.

I don't quite feel you fully covered the appeal of the game as i believe Skyrim is 10x more than the sum of it's parts. I would say only the visuals, Exploration mechanics (By this i mean the way Quests are marked, the way map locations are discovered and the fast travel system) and world building are objectively excellent the rest is fairly mediocre. This makes it a very interesting game to discuss; if the combat, mission design, story and loot game are pretty poor why is it so darn addictive?

You're right to talk about the weakness of the story and i could tell you maybe had some good points to make but unfortunately you never made them.

Alot of problems i have with Skyrim are technical. This might be because a huge amount of the so called 'Creation Engine' is just janky old Gamebryo. The most obvious indication of this is how similar the Creation Kit is to Oblivion's 'Construction set modding tool, also worth noting that many, if not all, Oblivion/fallout modding utilities are compatible to some degree with Skyrim.

The game has a great variety of excellent animation cycles both motion captured and hand animated yet fails to stitch them together well enough. This makes the animation look crap when arguably, it's not. Oblivion had laughably terrible animations and it's a shame that Skyrim still only looks a little better despite the obvious effort.

Another problem is that the scripting engine is abysmal, shockingly slow for a modern game. What's worse is that it gets slower the larger(i.e. older) your save file, until some scripts take many more frames to execute than they should. For an example notice how slowly an enemy is knocked over by the 'shield charge' perk, sometimes it takes as much as half a second for an enemy to be knocked over, this makes this master perk feel unsatisfying to use.

The way inverse kinematic objects (for example your character) interact with static and havok objects is also pretty broken, the character will often get stuck on static objects like rocks and such and sometimes be outright killed by stepping on havok enabled skeletal remains. I believe the way the engine interpolates your character's position also leads to the dumb mountain climbing shenanigans, you can climb slopes far beyond the hard coded slope limit because it approximates your position wrong. Another symptom of this is the bug with allowed you to clip through walls if you were holding a plate or whatever.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 06:17:34


Post by: Asherian Command


I got a stealth game called monaco, Enemy Mind, Fract OSC, Guacamelee! Gold Edition, Master Rebot, A Tale of Two Brothers, Home, Octodad: Dadiliest Catch, One Finger Death Punch, Pixel Piracy, PAC-MAN Championship, Don't Starve, To the Moon, Stick it to the Man! Sweet Lily Dreams, Unturned, and Destiny,

I am going to pick a game, I might buy a game but Remember I am a game designer and most of money is spent on buying lisences :(

Wow are some of those games out of my price range O.O




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Perkustin wrote:
If i'm being brutally honest i felt you spent a lot of words saying not a whole lot.

Skyrim is one of my most played games of all time, in both the vanilla console variety and the, modded, PC version.

I don't quite feel you fully covered the appeal of the game as i believe Skyrim is 10x more than the sum of it's parts. I would say only the visuals, Exploration mechanics (By this i mean the way Quests are marked, the way map locations are discovered and the fast travel system) and world building are objectively excellent the rest is fairly mediocre. This makes it a very interesting game to discuss; if the combat, mission design, story and loot game are pretty poor why is it so darn addictive?

You're right to talk about the weakness of the story and i could tell you maybe had some good points to make but unfortunately you never made them.

Alot of problems i have with Skyrim are technical. This might be because a huge amount of the so called 'Creation Engine' is just janky old Gamebryo. The most obvious indication of this is how similar the Creation Kit is to Oblivion's 'Construction set modding tool, also worth noting that many, if not all, Oblivion/fallout modding utilities are compatible to some degree with Skyrim.

The game has a great variety of excellent animation cycles both motion captured and hand animated yet fails to stitch them together well enough. This makes the animation look crap when arguably, it's not. Oblivion had laughably terrible animations and it's a shame that Skyrim still only looks a little better despite the obvious effort.

Another problem is that the scripting engine is abysmal, shockingly slow for a modern game. What's worse is that it gets slower the larger(i.e. older) your save file, until some scripts take many more frames to execute than they should. For an example notice how slowly an enemy is knocked over by the 'shield charge' perk, sometimes it takes as much as half a second for an enemy to be knocked over, this makes this master perk feel unsatisfying to use.

The way inverse kinematic objects (for example your character) interact with static and havok objects is also pretty broken, the character will often get stuck on static objects like rocks and such and sometimes be outright killed by stepping on havok enabled skeletal remains. I believe the way the engine interpolates your character's position also leads to the dumb mountain climbing shenanigans, you can climb slopes far beyond the hard coded slope limit because it approximates your position wrong. Another symptom of this is the bug with allowed you to clip through walls if you were holding a plate or whatever.


I didn't include those points mainly because I could only focus on three things per. It was originally for an assignment. Give or take, I would of put more in. But I was in a time crunch. I had several pages of other material, but I cut it down to at least 6 pages.

And let me tell you that is a long review.

I originally had thought about adding that. But I felt like the most important parts of the game are gameplay, sound, music, and story.

I mean some games just rely entirely on sound. (Like outlast and most horror games.)

Its just apart of what they are.

I do have to agree with every point except maybe a few bits and pieces here and there.

The main point of this article I wrote was to be concise and to be ontopic. I had to explain each part of the topic. I couldn't really delve off topic like I normally do. I Had to write academically and professionally. And unfortunately I could not delve into many things. So yes. I had to use many words to describe the same thing but in a different manner and exploring it deeper.

I found those six things the most prominent. And don't forget this is an opinionated piece as I labeled at the top as an editorial/opinionated piece.

If i really wanted to I would of delve into the community aspect a little bit more.



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 15:01:41


Post by: illuknisaa


 Asherian Command wrote:
Name one dungeon that isn't linear. Name one dungeon that support something else than "HIT THEM IN THE FACE" -gameplay.

Not caring about ultra poor level scaling doesn't really fix the ultra poor level scaling. "Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.

Pretty much every opponents falls into two categories.
A) They hit you in the face.
B) They shoot you in the face.

Melee attackers never change their tactics, so running around table or a tree will work everytime.
Ranged attackers will never defeat a tree or a large rock so you can just sit back and wait so you can hit them in the face.
If you can't be bothered you can just get yourself godlike gear or type "killall" in the console.

If you say it like that then every game falls into that category.

Because you also have forgotten about the dual roles characters can have.

Anyway. Guys what game should I review next or do you guys want to submit some game reviews or games I should try? And then begin the conversation on?



Compare skyrim to borderlands.

Both are dungeon crawler "rpgs"* with heavy focus on combat.
In borderlands you mainly shoot people with different guns that have unique characteristics. You also have a variety of enemies which many have unique weak spots and playstyles

In Skyrim weapons act pretty much the same. Mace is not much different from broadsword because attack patterns never change and power attacks stay the same. Weapons are also tiered that you don't need to think if the weapon is better or not =>iron<glass><deadric. Enemies also stick to same attack patterns. They might sometimes raise a shield or ward but defences never reduce dmg to 0 so you might as well keep hitting them till they are dead. Very rarely enemies are immune/very resistant to specific kind of dmg and when they it is usually an elemental resistance > mace to the face=jack of all trades, master of everything. All critical weak points and different attack patterns are non existant. The only enemy type that has any variety are dragons

*Both are pretty shallow as far as rpgs go.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 15:46:35


Post by: Manchu


Skyrim is not a "dungeon crawler RPG." That really undermines your other opinions about the game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 16:03:45


Post by: nomotog


Skyrim is more of a fantasy live simulator in a sense. Not really hard about it, but you can get married so there is that.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 16:56:30


Post by: Asherian Command


 illuknisaa wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Name one dungeon that isn't linear. Name one dungeon that support something else than "HIT THEM IN THE FACE" -gameplay.

Not caring about ultra poor level scaling doesn't really fix the ultra poor level scaling. "Exploring" is just a fancy way of saying simulating walking.

Pretty much every opponents falls into two categories.
A) They hit you in the face.
B) They shoot you in the face.

Melee attackers never change their tactics, so running around table or a tree will work everytime.
Ranged attackers will never defeat a tree or a large rock so you can just sit back and wait so you can hit them in the face.
If you can't be bothered you can just get yourself godlike gear or type "killall" in the console.

If you say it like that then every game falls into that category.

Because you also have forgotten about the dual roles characters can have.

Anyway. Guys what game should I review next or do you guys want to submit some game reviews or games I should try? And then begin the conversation on?



Compare skyrim to borderlands.

Both are dungeon crawler "rpgs"* with heavy focus on combat.
In borderlands you mainly shoot people with different guns that have unique characteristics. You also have a variety of enemies which many have unique weak spots and playstyles

In Skyrim weapons act pretty much the same. Mace is not much different from broadsword because attack patterns never change and power attacks stay the same. Weapons are also tiered that you don't need to think if the weapon is better or not =>iron<glass><deadric. Enemies also stick to same attack patterns. They might sometimes raise a shield or ward but defences never reduce dmg to 0 so you might as well keep hitting them till they are dead. Very rarely enemies are immune/very resistant to specific kind of dmg and when they it is usually an elemental resistance > mace to the face=jack of all trades, master of everything. All critical weak points and different attack patterns are non existant. The only enemy type that has any variety are dragons

*Both are pretty shallow as far as rpgs go.


What? Sorry but are you sure we played the same game? Because I have not found anything like that in skyrim!

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:05:16


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")


Borderlands is like stupid brilliant. The idea is gloriously simple. You take the random weapons and loot of a diablo clone and mix that with a first person shooter. The results on the other hand are a whole new way to deliver loot... I maybe over hyping it. We have had a lot of games with random weapons, but BL was the fist were the games really felt different besides just dealing different amounts of damage. Each weapon is like it's own little experience and that fundamentally changes loot. Your not just picking up bigger and bigger numbers, now you are basically looting new bits of game play.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:06:43


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")


Borderlands is like stupid brilliant. The idea is gloriously simple. You take the random weapons and loot of a diablo clone and mix that with a first person shooter. The results on the other hand are a whole new way to deliver loot... I maybe over hyping it. We have had a lot of games with random weapons, but BL was the fist were the games really felt different besides just dealing different amounts of damage. Each weapon is like it's own little experience and that fundamentally changes loot. Your not just picking up bigger and bigger numbers, now you are basically looting new bits of game play.


Its not the first RPG to do that. There have been many games like that. Skyrim for example has a leveled item system that progresses while you progress.

Diablo 3 for all its problems all the items level with you, as do your enemies.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:06:54


Post by: illuknisaa


 Manchu wrote:
Skyrim is not a "dungeon crawler RPG." That really undermines your other opinions about the game.


Yeah I know. It's really hard to justify skyrim as an rpg.

There is no C&C, dialogue gameplay is super minimal and you are almost always forced kill, maim and burn everything in your path like in a diablo like dungeon crawler.
Pretty much every skill is combat focused*, every quest has you killing something or atleast involves an armed conflict in some way. Even the main quest has you slaughtering "endangered" species.

If skyrim was a proper rpg like new vegas or alpha protocal you would have the chance to talk your way out of situations and avoiding combat would have a point.

 Asherian Command wrote:


What? Sorry but are you sure we played the same game? Because I have not found anything like that in skyrim!

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")



Of course you haven't found any.

Enemies have no weak points.
Enemies never use unique attack patterns
Weapons never offer anything else than different dps.

 Perkustin wrote:


This makes it a very interesting game to discuss; if the combat, mission design, story and loot game are pretty poor why is it so darn addictive?


Because you want it to be good. You hope that the next chest has interesting loot. You hope the next quest has braching paths. You hope the end game combat is fun. You hope you won't meet another fething draugr.

Hope dies last.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:22:10


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")


Borderlands is like stupid brilliant. The idea is gloriously simple. You take the random weapons and loot of a diablo clone and mix that with a first person shooter. The results on the other hand are a whole new way to deliver loot... I maybe over hyping it. We have had a lot of games with random weapons, but BL was the fist were the games really felt different besides just dealing different amounts of damage. Each weapon is like it's own little experience and that fundamentally changes loot. Your not just picking up bigger and bigger numbers, now you are basically looting new bits of game play.


Its not the first RPG to do that. There have been many games like that. Skyrim for example has a leveled item system that progresses while you progress.

Diablo 3 for all its problems all the items level with you, as do your enemies.


You missed the fundamental point I was making. In a game like dialbo you get weapons that deal more damage, but don't really function differently. A sword is a sword is a sword. Wether it is level 100 or level 1 you use it the same way. In BL all the weapons function differently. When you pick up a new revolver, you will use it differently then your old revolver even thought they are both still revolvers. The small tweaks in accuracy , recoil, clip size mean you have to adapt your play style with each new weapon.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:28:27


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")


Borderlands is like stupid brilliant. The idea is gloriously simple. You take the random weapons and loot of a diablo clone and mix that with a first person shooter. The results on the other hand are a whole new way to deliver loot... I maybe over hyping it. We have had a lot of games with random weapons, but BL was the fist were the games really felt different besides just dealing different amounts of damage. Each weapon is like it's own little experience and that fundamentally changes loot. Your not just picking up bigger and bigger numbers, now you are basically looting new bits of game play.


Its not the first RPG to do that. There have been many games like that. Skyrim for example has a leveled item system that progresses while you progress.

Diablo 3 for all its problems all the items level with you, as do your enemies.


You missed the fundamental point I was making. In a game like dialbo you get weapons that deal more damage, but don't really function differently. A sword is a sword is a sword. Wether it is level 100 or level 1 you use it the same way. In BL all the weapons function differently. When you pick up a new revolver, you will use it differently then your old revolver even thought they are both still revolvers. The small tweaks in accuracy , recoil, clip size mean you have to adapt your play style with each new weapon.


Interesting so they basically combined rpg with rainbow six?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:34:45


Post by: illuknisaa


 Asherian Command wrote:

Interesting so they basically combined rpg with rainbow six?


No.

Borderlands (2, you should just skip 1) is a diablo clone. Everything diablo has borderland has it too.
Borderlands is played like an bog standard fps (though it has better shooting mechanics than cod).


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:35:52


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:

Borderlands is one of those games that I personally really disliked. Though that might be because I disliked the entire game to begin with and thought it was far too hyped up. (Like the Last of Us, which all the game designers hold up as great and powerful, where I think "Eh its okay. Its not spec ops the line.")


Borderlands is like stupid brilliant. The idea is gloriously simple. You take the random weapons and loot of a diablo clone and mix that with a first person shooter. The results on the other hand are a whole new way to deliver loot... I maybe over hyping it. We have had a lot of games with random weapons, but BL was the fist were the games really felt different besides just dealing different amounts of damage. Each weapon is like it's own little experience and that fundamentally changes loot. Your not just picking up bigger and bigger numbers, now you are basically looting new bits of game play.


Its not the first RPG to do that. There have been many games like that. Skyrim for example has a leveled item system that progresses while you progress.

Diablo 3 for all its problems all the items level with you, as do your enemies.


You missed the fundamental point I was making. In a game like dialbo you get weapons that deal more damage, but don't really function differently. A sword is a sword is a sword. Wether it is level 100 or level 1 you use it the same way. In BL all the weapons function differently. When you pick up a new revolver, you will use it differently then your old revolver even thought they are both still revolvers. The small tweaks in accuracy , recoil, clip size mean you have to adapt your play style with each new weapon.


Interesting so they basically combined rpg with rainbow six?


The way I put it is that they mixed diablo with call of duty. It's actually like my problem with the game. They should have done diablo with doom.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 17:49:09


Post by: Manchu


Borderlands is very, very good; nomotog keeps posting my opinions before I can LOL. Borderlands is why I would call a perfectly serviceable game like Wolfenstein "just a shooter."

There is really no sense in comparing Skyrim with Diablo. They have zero in common.

I think there is a problem with the term "RPG" as used in the video game context. Video game marketing (including reviews) tends to use the term to describe anything and everything. It seems like having an inventory system is enough.

I think there are currently two schools of thought concerning Western RPGs.

The first approach, let's call it the BioWare school, is features-based. Although it is a well-established trend, this especially refers to ME2/DA2, when BioWare moved past their KotOR style in favor of making action/tactical games with the following "RPG elements": parties (non-customizable), levels (few choices), inventory systems (increasingly streamlined), and conversation options (binary and/or ineffective). The BioWare school is pretty much the industry default.

The second approach, you guessed it the Bethesda approach, emphasizes player-side immersion. In contrast to most games, where you obediently do what the game says ("would you kindly"), passively enjoying/hating whatever the studio and publisher have put together for you, player input into games like Skyrim is critical. Characterization (motivation, background, personality, etc.) come from outside; it's the player's job to bring that stuff. This is a very different understanding of the word 'role' in 'roleplaying game' but it is a lot closer to the traditional tabletop RPG sense.

The mainstream/default/"BioWare" style sense of 'role' is a lot closer to how we use the word 'role' when describing an actor's part in a movie. To oversimplify the process for the sake of the metaphor, an actor executes on a script rather than writing it. And most video games ask much much much less from players than scripts ask from actors.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 18:13:47


Post by: Chongara


The second approach, you guessed it the Bethesda approach, emphasizes player-side immersion. In contrast to most games, where you obediently do what the game says ("would you kindly"), passively enjoying/hating whatever the studio and publisher have put together for you, player input into games like Skyrim is critical. Characterization (motivation, background, personality, etc.) come from outside; it's the player's job to bring that stuff. This is a very different understanding of the word 'role' in 'roleplaying game' but it is a lot closer to the traditional tabletop RPG sense.


I don't find Skyrim compares to tabletop at all, at least not favorably. Skyrim and the like aren't immersive at all for me, they're stiff toy boxes populated by the player and mostly-dead cardboard standees. If Skyrim was a pen & paper rpg, the GM would be half asleep, playing angry-birds on his iPhone and kind of lazily tapping on some one sentence entry in a table in the book whenever you do something.

It doesn't make them bad really. They're fun enough when I want run around a sandbox hitting some of the scenery when it plays an attack animation at me.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 18:34:29


Post by: Manchu


I think you are mischaracterizing what I posted. Skyrim is not an adequate substitute for table top RPGs. And I don't think that is quite what Bethesda is aiming for. What I proposed is that the kind of roleplaying you do in games like Skyrim is similar to TT RPGs in that the player generates characterization instead of assuming it as in BioWare games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 19:41:04


Post by: Slarg232


Dark Souls (Either 1 or 2, both have flaws and merits) are worth looking at for any designer.

If, for no other reason, to be able to say "Difficulty doesn't sell? Then why did Dark Souls?"


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 20:08:22


Post by: SkavenLord


While the game itself in terms of freedom is not as changeable or malleable as a tabletop RPG, you do have the option to ignore the quests completely and go on a thievery spree. I play Skyrim with a sort of "Lust for power" attitude to make me want to continue playing. Considering a lot of rewards can be used in one way or another to improve your character, that's what I use to drive my actions in the game.

So a bit like:

Thievery spree = more gold = better gear/ better homes.

Quest = Quest Reward = Easier to do stuff

More Power = Better feeling of superiority

It's that feeling of superiority that personally draws me to playing it.
Just thought I'd add another point of view to the discussion (even if it's only just my opinion, doesn't hurt to throw in another perspective).


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 20:16:20


Post by: Ensis Ferrae


nomotog wrote:


You missed the fundamental point I was making. In a game like dialbo you get weapons that deal more damage, but don't really function differently. A sword is a sword is a sword. Wether it is level 100 or level 1 you use it the same way. In BL all the weapons function differently. When you pick up a new revolver, you will use it differently then your old revolver even thought they are both still revolvers. The small tweaks in accuracy , recoil, clip size mean you have to adapt your play style with each new weapon.



To further elaborate how picking up a new weapon even though it may be the "same" as your current one.... You can have a revolver. It has a "magazine" of 6 rounds. Bad guy drops a new one (oddly enough, he didn't have it when he was trying to attack you... damn Psychos), THIS revolver has a capacity of 9 rounds, and it shoots a grenade type round. So, I have more shots between reloads, BUT I have to completely aim differently because the bullets have the physics of a grenade (as in, I have to "lob" rounds at the bad guys)

Each "brand" of gun does something different as well. One brand has a "teleport grenade on reload" feature where, the fewer rounds you've shot, the bigger the boom on the far end of your "throw" is. Some guns do elemental damage, so extra fire, cold (IIRC?), electricity, acid and the like, and each behaves differently and will work better on some enemies over another.

If you haven't given any of the Borderlands games a shot, I'd strongly recommend it. As said each gun is almost a new experience. Plus each character has a distinct playstyle from each other. The story is "serious" but doesn't take itself seriously (Seriously... there's a "character" named Butt Stallion)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 20:31:50


Post by: Manchu


 Slarg232 wrote:
If, for no other reason, to be able to say "Difficulty doesn't sell? Then why did Dark Souls?"
But isn't Dark Souls less difficult than Demon Souls and Dark Souls II less difficult than Dark Souls? (Not a rhetorical question; I checked out after Demon Souls proved to be a nutcracker of a game.)
 SkavenLord wrote:
It's that feeling of superiority that personally draws me to playing it.
On a related note, one of the most common criticisms of Skyrim is that after accomplishing all of this incredibly important stuff and becoming extremely powerful socially/physically/magically, guards STILL taunt you about sweet rolls.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 21:17:35


Post by: illuknisaa


 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Each "brand" of gun does something different as well. One brand has a "teleport grenade on reload" feature where, the fewer rounds you've shot, the bigger the boom on the far end of your "throw" is. Some guns do elemental damage, so extra fire, cold (IIRC?), electricity, acid and the like, and each behaves differently and will work better on some enemies over another.


This is OT.

I'm assuming you talk about tediore guns in BL2.

A) You throw the gun on reload, they don't teleport. They have an arc and you can see the gun in mid air.
B) Thrown gun does more if there are more bullets in the magazine. Less bullets=less dmg, more bullets=more dmg.
C) No cold dmg atleast in BL2 (presequel apparently does). Elemements are fire(good against non armoured enemeis), corrosion(good against armoured enemies), eletricity(good against shields), explosive(jack of all trades, master of none) and slag(slagged enemies take 3 times more dmg fron non-slag weapons).

Gunslinger gets a whole new meaning in BL2.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/26 21:28:24


Post by: Manchu


 illuknisaa wrote:
Gunslinger gets a whole new meaning in BL2.
LOL, well played.

I think the cell-shaded style helps BL. Never underestimate how presentation can sell/bury game play features.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/27 01:43:58


Post by: Ensis Ferrae


 illuknisaa wrote:

B) Thrown gun does more if there are more bullets in the magazine. Less bullets=less dmg, more bullets=more dmg.



That's basically what I said I said the less you've shot, the more dmg the gun does when you reload as in, the fewer times you have pulled the trigger, the bigger the boom


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/27 11:40:33


Post by: illuknisaa


 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
 illuknisaa wrote:

B) Thrown gun does more if there are more bullets in the magazine. Less bullets=less dmg, more bullets=more dmg.



That's basically what I said I said the less you've shot, the more dmg the gun does when you reload as in, the fewer times you have pulled the trigger, the bigger the boom


Yeah you are right. I apparently read shot as got. My bad


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/28 16:30:47


Post by: Asherian Command


Alrighty time to shift gears towards more interesting things such as the horror genre. I think we have talked about quite enough of the skyrim bits and pieces and what was wrong with it.

IT is a much better game with mods.

Title of Game: Home
Publisher and Game Development Studio: Steam/Unknown/ N/A
Orginal Creator: Benjamin Rivers
Platform: PC
Genre Action-Adventure-Horror
Rating : M
Player Mode: Single Player
Time Interval - Real Time


Introduction:

The night has grown wild and dark and something has happened. You wake up in a house not your own, and there is body near you. You have no idea how you got there. What is your name…. What are you even doing here? And… Why is he dead?

This is going to be a much shorter review because I felt like ever since it is such a short game (Two hours long). That I might go over it. This is one of the few games that I have trouble coming up with bad things about it. And I have come up to it objectively. But its problems are hidden in the mist and I cannot find them.

Yes its what I would deem a great game. There are some problems but really it is nitpicking but ever since that is what I am supposed to do. I will do it anyway.

Now this is a very intriguing game as it has to be played in order to see it. Ever since the halloween is coming up I thought we should do a themed game. Also you can pick this game up on steam, but I suggest waiting for the big sale.

Things I thought that worked:

Gameplay

Now this game is an intriguing game as it is very much felt like it is very much a point and click adventure horror game. I was half right. Except it isn’t. Infact you use your spacebar instead whenever you find the item. The most interesting thing is if you go up to an item it asks you. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

It is a very different feeling, at first I ignored it but over time I started to discover something change every time I picked up an item.

This minimal amount of gameplay adds quite a bit depth. That which is lacking in most horror games of today. Depth adds something to a game, and the game is not complex.

There are some puzzles to be found in the game and as the game moves forward it has less and less puzzles to find.

This game has simply no mechanics, this is one of the few games to use mechanics as metaphor or mechanics as literal interpretations of a character. Where the mechanics say a lot about what is going on. This not only adds depth into the games story, but also interest.

This game rewards you…. Wait sorry. Punishes you for exploring sometimes. If you explore the more of the mystery starts to unravel.

For better or for worse it seems this happens.

This game feels empty and gives us a sense of loneliness that the characters is undoubtedly feeling in that moment. It is one of the few times where I had to sit back and think.

This game eventually gets to you and you start to see things. Or sometimes hear things.

Story

Okay this is probably no surprise but the story in this game is so confusing and so jumbled it actually makes sense. You write your own story, every item you pick up changes what happens in the story. The character changes as you pick up items. The more he realizes or less realizes, that maybe he is the killer.

This confusing mess actually adds to the games theme and background and just gives it this feeling of complete disparity and chaos. Which is only reinforced by what is going on.

And as the game goes on, he is only confused only further. In truth I have gotten four endings. Four completely different endings. And I have to say well. “I never expected that.”

This game surprises you from start to finish. I couldn’t ask for a game that felt like it gave me agency…. But at the same time I didn’t feel like I was in control, it was the character. The character drove the story. I always asked the question to myself while I played the game. “Am I really the one in control?”

This game can be interpreted in many ways but being light on the subject matter is probably not in their etique.

I found it beyond interesting what began to happen to my character over time. He became darker. He interacted with me. And in the end I could only blame myself for trying to find out what happened.

Let me be really clear right now.

There is no GOOD ending. All the endings are depressing and Lovecraft in origin. Where the horror is unknown and the character is slowly turning insane or is just a shadow of their former selves.

This journey you go on, just gets more depressing as time goes on. It reminded me quite a bit of the Crooked Man. (one of my all time favorite horror games).

But it gives its message as clear as day at the end. What you think that message is. Is up to you.

It is an open ended idea.

And one that I will never forget.

Sound

I will tell any game developer or designer that the most important part of any horror game. Is the sound. The sound is the most key part of any horror game. This game succeeds in this manner. The sound is empty. and echos with every movement you have.

There are sometimes drops of water and sometimes walking of footsteps behind you. Making you feel like you are not alone.

This just adds to the games pressure upon you. Giving you this much needed breath of oh god what is going on..

What I didn’t like:

Theme

This game was not scary. If anything I came around this game intrigue, but not really scared. This game has no jump scares, it didn’t have any scary moments just an overall feeling of horror. One that made me go to bed with bad thoughts. Staying on me, like a bad taste in my mouth that won’t go away. I don’t know if this is a weakness or a strength. It still preplexes me.

The theme though is quite cliched where the character has amnesia or wakes up somewhere with no memory of previous moments or how they go there. This is another problem I saw as I saw a dead body next to him and said. “Yep I know where this is going.”

Either the designer knew about this or wanted to prey on us.

This is something though that many will probably dislike about the game. It is not scary and they are promised a scary experience. Even with my expectations at the lowest I still didn't find it scary.

Only depressive thoughts came from this game.

But then I remember quite a bit that maybe that is the point of the game.

To make you feel depressed.

Though I will probably disagree quite a bit with the actions put into this game. The thought processes behind it were quite on course and made you think long and hard.

Lack of Variety

At the end of the day as I came across more and more bodies, I felt like my character just stood there and just monologues too much. The dialogue needs to be spot on for this bit.

Sometimes he repeats phrases and sometimes they don’t make a lick of sense if taken out of context.

This game needed to be more scary. But it wasn’t scary. It just felt empty.

If they added one jump scare in there, or a big realization or a scream in the distance it would of made the game feel like a horror game.

I came across this game from a recommendation. And I didn’t come into it with many expectations.

Though this a great attempt at making a horror game. And it is a horror game, but it is not a a scary horror game.

There is no enemy in the game. Which kind of makes it not really as interesting there is no risk, there is no purpose for me to be driven forward apart from the mystery. Just adding something that might threaten the player and the player character might do wonders. Such as the darkness begins to grow or you see eyes behind you and footsteps running towards you telling you to hide.

Music:

I cannot for the life of me remember the music for this game, probably because it was not memorable. A game’s music is quite important as it adds a great many depthness that games need. Hotline Miami (don’t remind I will review this game next) for example would of been a horrible game if not for its music. This game suffers like many indie games that there is not enough polish and balance between all of its elements to be considered good.

It has very strong elements in it but the music is very needed for the game to be good, you can’t just add it to the game randomly. In the game lone survivior they added it as a very creepy theme that played to tell you. “Yeah you are safe here.” or “You are SCREWED”

Music is one of the most crucial parts of a game. If you skip over the game’s music you might as well tell players to turn off the sound.

This is very disheartening to see in many games.

Score/Review:

Now it has come to the point where I talk about what whether I recommend it or do I not recommend it. I recommend it. It is a fascinating experience to say the least but many times I felt like there should of been more. There should've been more of a threat. More of a problem to face.

I score this game according to its musical talents, story telling ability, characters, enjoyment, game mechanics, and variety. I give it a 7.7

Now this game lacks a variety of things but thats are just nitpicks. It is still a great game. And I recommend it to anyone that wants to be spooked out for the rest of the day.


What things should horror games focus on?

What should horror games do?

What makes a good horror game?

Has anyone played this game or should I review outlast?

Next week I will start a discussion on Hotline Miami and the importance of music in games and their relationship that makes the game greater.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 00:18:33


Post by: Asherian Command


Anyone wanna discuss this or no?

I mean I am interested in opinions on horror games in general.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 02:00:21


Post by: Ensis Ferrae


 Asherian Command wrote:
Anyone wanna discuss this or no?

I mean I am interested in opinions on horror games in general.


I honestly can't give much opinion on "horror games" as the only one I've really played was Dead Space (2, I think it was... but I dont remember) it's never really been my genre of game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 02:03:53


Post by: Asherian Command


 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Anyone wanna discuss this or no?

I mean I am interested in opinions on horror games in general.


I honestly can't give much opinion on "horror games" as the only one I've really played was Dead Space (2, I think it was... but I dont remember) it's never really been my genre of game.


I take it you didn't like it?

I mean the genre takes a good game to get into it.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 02:10:59


Post by: Ensis Ferrae


 Asherian Command wrote:

I take it you didn't like it?

I mean the genre takes a good game to get into it.


Nope.. it was about as boring to me as any of the recent CoD games (which is to say, a standard FPS game)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 02:13:33


Post by: Asherian Command


 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:

I take it you didn't like it?

I mean the genre takes a good game to get into it.


Nope.. it was about as boring to me as any of the recent CoD games (which is to say, a standard FPS game)


I am not surprised it wasn't a true horror game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 02:32:06


Post by: Cheesecat


Seemed like one to me.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 02:43:11


Post by: Asherian Command


 Cheesecat wrote:
Seemed like one to me.


Play Outlast, Home, Silent Hill 2.

It maybe a type of a horror game but it is not a really good one.

And I consider it a very mainstream one that is poorly attempted. I never jumped at all because I reminded myself. "oh yeah I have a big gun."

Horror games are about dis-empowerment

That is their shtick.

It is also about empowerment and dis-empowerment at the same time.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 03:59:54


Post by: nomotog


 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Anyone wanna discuss this or no?

I mean I am interested in opinions on horror games in general.


I honestly can't give much opinion on "horror games" as the only one I've really played was Dead Space (2, I think it was... but I dont remember) it's never really been my genre of game.


Dead space has some neat bits. It is just that none of them are about being scary.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 14:28:33


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Anyone wanna discuss this or no?

I mean I am interested in opinions on horror games in general.


I honestly can't give much opinion on "horror games" as the only one I've really played was Dead Space (2, I think it was... but I dont remember) it's never really been my genre of game.


Dead space has some neat bits. It is just that none of them are about being scary.



Hmm.

Play this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/crookedman.htm

or this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/madfather.htm

or this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/witchhouse.htm

or this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/hellohello.htm

All of them are free and are considered to be horror games. Hello hello is probably the shortest of them and could probably be beaten in an hour.

And don't forget.

WEAR HEADPHONES YOU SISSIES.

Only real men play horror games with headphones on.

I personally love horror games so I rarely get a true one. One that scares me! But sometimes it could just disturb me (spec ops the line).



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 16:24:17


Post by: Slarg232


 Manchu wrote:
 Slarg232 wrote:
If, for no other reason, to be able to say "Difficulty doesn't sell? Then why did Dark Souls?"
But isn't Dark Souls less difficult than Demon Souls and Dark Souls II less difficult than Dark Souls? (Not a rhetorical question; I checked out after Demon Souls proved to be a nutcracker of a game.)


Not.... entirely.

Demons's Souls has Grass which you eat and gain health, with no upper limit on how many you can have; if you can buy 99 Grass, you can heal 99 times in one attempt. While this means you can run out of Grass and have no healing items, it also means you can farm them.

Dark Souls uses the Estus Flask system that you can upgrade; 5 Estus (Before upgrades), then no more until you hit a checkpoint; either walk back or keep pressing forward. While you never really run out of them, you do have only a handful of uses before you run out on your attempt.

Dark Souls 2, however, uses both systems; You start with 1 Estus and 10 Stones, Estus come back at the checkpoints, but Stones can only be used once; however, you can easily get 3 Estus upon leaving the first area and it's not difficult to farm up 99 Stones, meaning you have healing items up the ass.

The core game of DkS2 isn't any less difficult than Dark or Demons's, but due to the availability and ease of finding the healing items (There is even a class that starts with 30+ healing items at level 1), DkS 2 is a lot more accessible early on.

What really pisses a lot of people off about DkS2 is that you have to play through multiple times to get certain types of gear (Butterfly set isn't available fully until NG+2, Onion Armor isn't fully available until NG+5), weapons and armor disintegrate like mad (When it disintegrates, it disintegrates! *Swing twice* well what do you know, it disintegrated), Soul Level is meaningless for online play anymore, and the levels are far more streamlined (Though that last one was fixed in the DLC).


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/09/30 17:33:40


Post by: Asherian Command


 Slarg232 wrote:
 Manchu wrote:
 Slarg232 wrote:
If, for no other reason, to be able to say "Difficulty doesn't sell? Then why did Dark Souls?"
But isn't Dark Souls less difficult than Demon Souls and Dark Souls II less difficult than Dark Souls? (Not a rhetorical question; I checked out after Demon Souls proved to be a nutcracker of a game.)


Not.... entirely.

Demons's Souls has Grass which you eat and gain health, with no upper limit on how many you can have; if you can buy 99 Grass, you can heal 99 times in one attempt. While this means you can run out of Grass and have no healing items, it also means you can farm them.

Dark Souls uses the Estus Flask system that you can upgrade; 5 Estus (Before upgrades), then no more until you hit a checkpoint; either walk back or keep pressing forward. While you never really run out of them, you do have only a handful of uses before you run out on your attempt.

Dark Souls 2, however, uses both systems; You start with 1 Estus and 10 Stones, Estus come back at the checkpoints, but Stones can only be used once; however, you can easily get 3 Estus upon leaving the first area and it's not difficult to farm up 99 Stones, meaning you have healing items up the ass.

The core game of DkS2 isn't any less difficult than Dark or Demons's, but due to the availability and ease of finding the healing items (There is even a class that starts with 30+ healing items at level 1), DkS 2 is a lot more accessible early on.

What really pisses a lot of people off about DkS2 is that you have to play through multiple times to get certain types of gear (Butterfly set isn't available fully until NG+2, Onion Armor isn't fully available until NG+5), weapons and armor disintegrate like mad (When it disintegrates, it disintegrates! *Swing twice* well what do you know, it disintegrated), Soul Level is meaningless for online play anymore, and the levels are far more streamlined (Though that last one was fixed in the DLC).


Dark souls 2 was not as good as it's beta there is a big difference between the two. Dark souls 2 was lacking certain things that it's beta had. It seemed like quite a jump


Also....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UEM98Rf7yk


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/01 17:03:31


Post by: Slarg232


Since this is a discussion on design, I don't think you should leave the discussion as "It was different"


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/01 17:04:53


Post by: Asherian Command


 Slarg232 wrote:
Since this is a discussion on design, I don't think you should leave the discussion as "It was different"


It was different, But I can't point to it because I haven't played the dark soul series.

I don't enjoy those types of games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/01 17:26:51


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Anyone wanna discuss this or no?

I mean I am interested in opinions on horror games in general.


I honestly can't give much opinion on "horror games" as the only one I've really played was Dead Space (2, I think it was... but I dont remember) it's never really been my genre of game.


Dead space has some neat bits. It is just that none of them are about being scary.



Hmm.

Play this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/crookedman.htm

or this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/madfather.htm

or this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/witchhouse.htm

or this game

http://www.vgperson.com/games/hellohello.htm

All of them are free and are considered to be horror games. Hello hello is probably the shortest of them and could probably be beaten in an hour.

And don't forget.

WEAR HEADPHONES YOU SISSIES.

Only real men play horror games with headphones on.

I personally love horror games so I rarely get a true one. One that scares me! But sometimes it could just disturb me (spec ops the line).



I'm not too into horror games. I simply don't like to be scared. You know not unless I have someone to grab onto, but the controller gets in the way. The last horror game I played was amnesia. Most memorial part of that game was the talking head. They are so nice and pleasant answering any questions my might have explaining the entire plot. It totally saps all the horror and mystery out of the game. It's like a huge miss step in a game that was up till then so scary I had to cheat to get through.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/01 18:11:47


Post by: Asherian Command


I'm not too into horror games. I simply don't like to be scared. You know not unless I have someone to grab onto, but the controller gets in the way. The last horror game I played was amnesia. Most memorial part of that game was the talking head. They are so nice and pleasant answering any questions my might have explaining the entire plot. It totally saps all the horror and mystery out of the game. It's like a huge miss step in a game that was up till then so scary I had to cheat to get through.


Memorable*

I can see that Amensia the dark descent is meant to be played in the dark and with head phones. I think that is the point, but if you can pass the point maybe you try a different tactic.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/03 02:36:28


Post by: Asherian Command


Ahh I was looking forward to people talking about horror games by the looks of it I will move on seeing it is not a popular subject. Instead we will move onto a fun subject.......

Starting with.....

Terraria vs Minecraft (Which one is superior?)

It should be an interesting exploration seeing as I have played both and invested time into it.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/05 14:31:35


Post by: Vertrucio


Why not both?

Insert meme jpg.

Literally though. Both are fine.

Terraria arguably has more in the way of traditional adventuring, exploration, and stuff to do and find. But, with 2D maps and limited world size, you can eventually "beat" a world. You're also much more limited in what you can construct.

Minecraft, without mods, is much more sandbox and its third dimension allows players to build more interesting things. Sure, there's monsters and an endgame dragon, but it's all kind of tacked on to the overall building gameplay.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/05 14:36:54


Post by: Asherian Command


 Vertrucio wrote:
Why not both?

Insert meme jpg.

Literally though. Both are fine.

Terraria arguably has more in the way of traditional adventuring, exploration, and stuff to do and find. But, with 2D maps and limited world size, you can eventually "beat" a world. You're also much more limited in what you can construct.

Minecraft, without mods, is much more sandbox and its third dimension allows players to build more interesting things. Sure, there's monsters and an endgame dragon, but it's all kind of tacked on to the overall building gameplay.


Yeah minecraft is more endless and the one I am more or less building fanatic in while, terraria has the whole old feel of being an adventure game. That and also there are mulitdudes of enemies and the game is constantly updated with new bosses. I think what it makes up with its small map is its large supply of loot drops and game modes to play. (like survival horde modes, and the extremely difficult bosses)

Though bosses are defeated quite easily if you are simply above them in terms of armor and weaponry.

The best thing though is probably that there is a lot to do. With mods terraria becomes even better. But minecraft has a ton of mod support especially when compared to Terraria.

I think my only beef with terraria is that you are usually just stuck waiting for new content, while in minecraft you can just build to your hearts content.

If they added a leveling system or more of a loot system, then it would be a completely different game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/05 14:47:31


Post by: Vertrucio


Minecraft's adventure gameplay would still be terrible if they had levels and loot. The reality is that minecraft was not built to make that interesting in the same way terraria was.

I think the next advance in the "blocky craft" style games is to start implementing more interesting combat and adventure features besides enemy types that just charge at you spitting random projectiles.

I'd like to see someone start combining the overworld and simulation aspects of say, Dwarf Fortress or its successors like Gnomoria, Rimworld, etc.

Minecraft couldn't handle that due to its engine limitations, it's written in java and there's just a lot that it can't do efficiently with that programming language. But if someone makes a successor to minecraft, with the same simulations of DF and its clones, they'd have the next million seller.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/05 15:10:32


Post by: Asherian Command


 Vertrucio wrote:
Minecraft's adventure gameplay would still be terrible if they had levels and loot. The reality is that minecraft was not built to make that interesting in the same way terraria was.

I think the next advance in the "blocky craft" style games is to start implementing more interesting combat and adventure features besides enemy types that just charge at you spitting random projectiles.

I'd like to see someone start combining the overworld and simulation aspects of say, Dwarf Fortress or its successors like Gnomoria, Rimworld, etc.

Minecraft couldn't handle that due to its engine limitations, it's written in java and there's just a lot that it can't do efficiently with that programming language. But if someone makes a successor to minecraft, with the same simulations of DF and its clones, they'd have the next million seller.

I think terraria has better combat.

It would be interesting if they made it skyrim esque. And more or less better because of that.

They need better combat and more interesting AI which I agree with.

Lets hope minecraft 2 is written in a better a language.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/10/11 02:41:40


Post by: Asherian Command


Let us begin....

Terraria vs Minecraft?

Often I think to myself which is the better idea. Adventure and grandeur? Or building for endless hours?

For someone who deeply loves progression. I love adventure and building. So I am split in the middle.

Now this is an abnormal review. I will not score it. As I think both games are.......

God damn it. These are perfect games. I can find nothing wrong with the two. Both are my favorites and I can never choose between the two. Which one do I play more? Both... I love both of them they are equal and on par with each other both use simple mechanics and beautiful things sprout from it. One is limited, one is not.

Both have become pretty awesome things as both are updated quite regularly and improved significantly. I recommend one for its adventure (Terraria), and the other for building anything you want (Minecraft)

What are your thoughts? Anyone like the survival genre?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 16:48:23


Post by: Asherian Command


The Last of Us

It may come as no surprise that I decided to play the 'greatest game of all time'. Apparently it is also a zombie game. If you haven't gotten the hint yet I am talking about what people call a 'perfect' game.

Like many who enjoy games, I came upon enthusiastically, thinking and feeling that the game itself would give me a great story and great exploration of character development, and the Zombie genre itself. Yet I find myself severely disliking the game. Joel and Ellie though they appeared to be well thought out and having very good characterizing moments.

For those who don't know what this game is about it is about surviviors or 'the last of us', you are Joel and you are taking your in the midst of a zombie outbreak, you and your brother take your daughter (Sally), and try and get away. You are unforunately gotten into a car crash, and you have to run. Later on down the way after encountering the 'zombie' infection. I use the word zombie quite loosely, as it is more of a fungal spore, these creatures are called clickers, they use echo location to find their prey. One bite and you turn into them, when I mean they are sort of not zombies is that zombies in most terms means living dead, these are quite literally living creatures. They just have a host body which is no longer alive. Joel and Sally come upon a soldier. The Soldier looks at you and calls to his superior and then... Well. Shoots Joel and Joel's daughter. Joel's brother comes in and saves Joel, but sally dies in Joel's arms. With that was the end of the prologue. At first when I first saw this I sat back and had a long think. Thinking was this effective? Yes. It was quite effective, I thought it was actually one of the highlights of the entire game. It gave the game quite proper context and fueled the character. Is this a very effective beginning. Like most games the first 15 minutes are the most crucial and I have to say, a combination of game-play and cinematic really does show the game pretty well. Does the rest of the game live up to this.. No.... It doesn't. The game seems to be stuck on repeat.

The game seems to know certain things, characters drive plot, which is good. I was entertained by it and I thought to myself it was quite interesting that the characters in this game were moving the plot. There was very little plot conveniences and most of the characters were well rounded. I kept playing the game I had this irking in the back of my mind. Like I had seen this before. I then realized.

"Wait a second. I recognize this plot." I said aloud enthusiastically. I ran to my computer turned on my online DVD player and started playing Children of Men and realized it was basically the same plot, same characters, as the Last of Us. . I stepped back for a bit and started laughing my ass off. Apparently this game didn't learn from Spec Ops: The Line. Use the basic idea. but use your own characters, and do not follow its beats. You can use it differently. Basically this was the same thing as the movie I had watched. Its actually scary how similar. Except instead of a pregnant lady we have a girl. Who for the purposes of this thread I will spoil:

Spoiler:
She is the cure to the infected virus. Apparently she is firefly, or its a resistance movement, Yeah I couldn't tell, I stopped caring.


The game often went on trying to characterize its characters and trying to make me to feel for the characters. All I felt was just "This people are horrible people." At least in Spec Ops: The Line Captain walker knew he was doing wrong, you could see it in his face half the bloody time, in this there was a massive disconnect from gameplay and story. Gameplay played out like most third person shooters, where I would continue to play till a cinematic, there was some dialogue mind you, but none of it told me much about what the characters felt. In Spec Ops: The Line, they taught the story through character interactions in real time, where if you listened behind corners you could hear people talking to each other. In this it felt like I was facing mindless drone 56. Even though human kind was basically extinct. Though the most interesting thing in my opinion is the ending, which was quite lack luster compared to other endings. By that point I just wanted to quit the game and never look back. For many reasons I found it contrived and extremely predictable. But for the effort I applaud it, for its characterizing moments and deep character interactions.

The dialogue also being quite a strong suite in this game. The characters being rather interesting lost their graces and my liking immedately when they went against their title the "The Last of Us". Which had very little meaning to the story. The characters by the end were no better than the people they were killing and at the end I thought it was going to go all Spec Ops: The Line on me, but I waited and it never came. Though it has some strong points, it doesn't feel like it came full circle, like there was something missing in terms of story and gameplay. In terms of gameplay it felt very much like Uncharted, where it used the cover combat system, and the use of stealth, and the extremely stupid instant killa zombies running around. The AI is nothing interesting, though a bit random in terms of them randomly run out of cover, as if they forgot they had guns in the first place.

Graphical wise I think the game is quite beautiful, having very large aesthtically pleasing and sometimes using the environment to try and pressure you into feeling cornered. Or sometimes using the terrain to make you feel like you were in a city. There is also the smaller sections of the game that felt quite linear, but I highly cared for it because it made sense. I was a tunnel. Of course its going to be linear. There was also telling of small stories through the environment.

Do I think it is a great game? I Think it is, it is in no way perfect nor is it gameplay the greatest thing ever. Do I think it is among my greatest games of all time list. Hahaha. No. This game has many great moments, but then it felt dispersed by the gameplay. The gameplay hindered it. Though for me, I would rather watch Children of Men, this does not mean in anyway it is a bad game. I just didn't enjoy The Last of Us as many other people did.

There are many times when as a critic it is hard to think of reasons to like the game, I mean I enjoyed it, it had great cinematics, very realistic characters, an okay story, and it was pretty to look at. Though it does not mean this is a fantastic or perfect game, as many people have often done. The game feels unfinished with its final ending. Though personally it might be my dislike of the entire Zombie Genre, and another reason as to why I didn't enjoy the Walking Dead Games or the Last of Us. Though I probably know this will be controversal in some state, as anyone that sees a negative score on this game usually starts a gak storm.

What are your thoughts on the Last of Us? Is it really the Citizen Kane of Video Games?

Do you think that the gameplay should of told more of the story? How would of you executed the game? Do you think it should of had more originality in terms of organization? Do you also think there should be more player and character interaction, meaning a connection between the player and the characters on screen? Do you think this game might of been better for having more interesting gameplay and less focus on killing human beings?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 19:19:13


Post by: Grimskul


I'll agree on the point of it not being the most original of games when it comes to the plot, but it does IMO do a good job of investing yourself into the characters particularly as Joel and Ellie's relationship develops throughout the story. In this regard, I generally found the gameplay to be quite engaging with the story itself since you can't really go guns-ablazing like in Uncharted or CoD without seriously wounding yourself or depleting your precious ammo. Did you play on Survivor or at least Hard mode? That's when I find it to be really intense, especially since you really have to plan ahead when there are multiple clickers, or worse, like in the basement level of the hotel where you have to turn on the generator. It's also in these harder modes that gathering and searching for resources becomes that much more vital for upgrading weapons so you can actually survive the later waves of guys you have to face. I also liked the change to Ellie's point of view since it legitimately gives you a different perspective as you both feel more fragile and sneaky compared to when you play the more gung-ho Joel.

In regards to the ending, personally I felt it was more realistic in the sense that it wasn't a happy ending, with the world "fixed" with the martyrdom of Ellie to save mankind. I think it would have felt a little too clichéd and it reflects the selfishness of human nature that we have in the end, this is even shown by the Fireflies' attempt to justify killing Ellie for the cure even though its hinted in the audio tapes that their attempts before had failed, especially since she was never explicitly asked for consent to the operation (nor was she aware it would be fatal). Plus even if they were to get the cure I feel that it wouldn't be distributed evenly anyways since they would try and use it for their own political gains versus the military.

The part of the gameplay that I did feel ultimately slowed down the pace of the game was the repetitive "find the garbage bin to jump onto" thing or finding ladders (moar the like the Ladders of Us amirite?) I felt they could have kinda skipped those parts since it artificially extended the game. The only other thing that I found that broke my immersion with the game was how the NPCs following you would often run around like crazy but still not grab the attention of clickers/runners, they definitely need to work out them following you more stealthily next time around.

Also I think you neglected to mention the multiplayer which is an unsung part of this game since it turns out to have been more enjoyable in some cases than in the campaign since the hearing mechanic versus players brings out a whole new form of combat than it is versus more predictable AI, especially with things like smoke bombs and getting shivved from behind. It really emphasizes group play and teamwork which ties in with the whole "Last of Us" title since you really can't try and solo a group like in CoD.

Overall I think it'd be better if there were more situations where you have to face both infected and other humans at the same time and try to lead one to the other (which they had a short segment of in the Left Behind DLC but was still very underutilized which is a shame from how fun it was) and a cut-down on the artificial lengtheners in the game as previously mentioned with better AI when it comes to pathing.

I have to say much of its praise is justified, but I do find the 10/10's a bit silly given that there is no such thing as a perfect game, I would have given it a 9/10 at most. Overall though, definitely one of the better polished games in 2013.



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 20:43:40


Post by: nomotog


The last of us is the kind of game that I like more and more the longer it's been since last I played. When I first fished it, I hated, hated it. Then after awhile I thought oh boy that was a neat game I would try it again. Played it for 5 bits and hated it again. It's was navigation. The looking for ladders and "exploring" inside the levels. You don't actually have the freedom to really explore, so your kind of just knocking around till you find the right away or more often your looking specifically for the wrong way because that way leads to treasure. (It's got to be some kind of psychosis that every time I find the right direction, I want to turn around and go the other way.) I have grown very tired of exploring in this way.

I want to praise and then condemn the last of us for it's crafting system. It's neat in that game. It gives you a nice scavenger feeling without being too boggy and even has some meaningful choices in picking what to craft. But I hate the system in almost every other game that has it now. Stop it! It's not fun anymore.

One thing I have heard said about the last of us is that it is the game. As in the game most representative of games in general because it tries to execute everything. Fighting, stealth, forced fighting, forced stealth, Upgrade system, Story, wants to be a movie, wants to be a game. It tries to do everything and be everything as many games are now fond of doing. (I am thinking of calling this the ubsoft template.)

I liked the segment where you played as Ellie the best.

I find the game use of sexual orientation to be a interesting thing.

Like almost every game I play, I would have liked an open world version of it.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 22:27:43


Post by: Asherian Command


 Grimskul wrote:
I'll agree on the point of it not being the most original of games when it comes to the plot, but it does IMO do a good job of investing yourself into the characters particularly as Joel and Ellie's relationship develops throughout the story. In this regard, I generally found the gameplay to be quite engaging with the story itself since you can't really go guns-ablazing like in Uncharted or CoD without seriously wounding yourself or depleting your precious ammo. Did you play on Survivor or at least Hard mode? That's when I find it to be really intense, especially since you really have to plan ahead when there are multiple clickers, or worse, like in the basement level of the hotel where you have to turn on the generator. It's also in these harder modes that gathering and searching for resources becomes that much more vital for upgrading weapons so you can actually survive the later waves of guys you have to face. I also liked the change to Ellie's point of view since it legitimately gives you a different perspective as you both feel more fragile and sneaky compared to when you play the more gung-ho Joel.


I agree to a certain extent. But there was a disconnection between me and the main characters. Here they are going around killing people, and it doesn't really faze them.

They just keep doing it. Where in some games I know. Like this war of mine had it where you would kill people but you are a civilain, you aren't military trained you will be pyschologly depressed by it. For the rest of the bloody game. You would never recover from killing someone.

See the problem is that with most games these are civilians, why the hell are they just shooting someone with little regards. It always distrubed me and it will continue to disturb me.

I want to praise and then condemn the last of us for it's crafting system. It's neat in that game. It gives you a nice scavenger feeling without being too boggy and even has some meaningful choices in picking what to craft. But I hate the system in almost every other game that has it now. Stop it! It's not fun anymore.


I agree, but I don't think it is was the best game of 2013. Bioshock Infinite wins that category for incredible gameplay and story.

But thats my opinion of course.

Bioshock infinite was more understandable and it wasn't shoved in your face. I mean you fell in love with characters like elizabeth, and you didn't get stuck on certain parts. Apart from the crappy final fight. Which was basically a retread of tower defense games. It would of been more interesting to have a final boss that was actually difficult.

But eh, I loved the story and the characters. Probably because this was less by choice and more by the fact that your trying to figure out what is going and who those bloody twins are.

In the Last of Us I looked at for its gameplay, approachability and story. If the game literally requires me to play on the hardest difficulty. I will not play that game. Its also why I disliked Alien Isolation (Which is basically a poorman's outlast, except with better AI).

Gameplay wise as I have said I didn't enjoy it. It like most games has a fething crafting system. And I hate crafting systems. I am sorry but everygame since minecraft has to have a crafting system. But I didn't find it useful. I Am survivor how the hell am I able to figure this stuff out? Where did I learn this stuff engineering school?

There is also a lack of a central focus in the game, no central villain except man vs man, nature vs man, man vs self. But I looked at now and I still stand by my opinion. I didn't enjoy The Last of Us.

It was more on the lines of that people told me it would blow me away. Unlike Bioshock Infinite which I heard a ton about decrying it as horrible. And I played it recently because I thought eh, lets play a bad game. And that bloody blew me away. How? because I was given this idea this is a bioshock game. It is going to have polish like I don't even know. Ken Levine is one of the best writers in the game industry. So no wonder why I will like this game. The dialogue was better, it was more natural, less forced, than the last of us. And yet it gets gak. Even though.... You have more manveurability than the last of us. There is no crafting, there is an upgrade system, but it is up to you to do that.

There is also incredibly hard gameplay, And I played it on the hardest difficulty because I loved it so much. Because I wanted to feel more challenged and the game was basically telling me increase the difficulty. You will love it.

So I did.

The Last of Us I just didn't enjoy compared to Bioshock Infinite, mostly due to gameplay and story.

The Last of Us to me was just another Zombie game that was trying to be the walking dead. I don't think it was as revolutionary as my colleagues like to believe, in fact I think both games are great games, but out of the games released in 2013. Bioshock wins in terms of well, being better, more polished, and less reliant on cinematics. It blended both player interaction with player character perfectly. They didn't have to explain. They showed.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 22:43:31


Post by: nomotog


There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 22:48:21


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 22:50:17


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


Na not even that to be honest. I mean a square RPG would crush it in the ciematics department.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/19 23:00:23


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


I quite enjoyed all 3 of the Bioshock games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/20 02:57:57


Post by: Grimskul


 Asherian Command wrote:


I agree to a certain extent. But there was a disconnection between me and the main characters. Here they are going around killing people, and it doesn't really faze them.

They just keep doing it. Where in some games I know. Like this war of mine had it where you would kill people but you are a civilain, you aren't military trained you will be pyschologly depressed by it. For the rest of the bloody game. You would never recover from killing someone.

See the problem is that with most games these are civilians, why the hell are they just shooting someone with little regards. It always distrubed me and it will continue to disturb me..


Well, to be fair, Joel is shown to be a weathered man by the time you play him, he's already too far gone as you can tell with his interactions with Tommy, who has moved on in with a new life, and Joel even yells at him for being ungrateful for what Joel had to do in order to help them survive. Also these "civilians" you speak of really aren't civilians in the conventional sense at this point, as desperation/hunger/fear have already molded them into either cannibals like David's men who have effectively institutionalized cannibalism in their town to survive and the Hunters who have accepted a very "survival of the fittest" mentality which includes effectively banning children because of their liability as weaknesses.

If you look at how little it takes for people to panic and break down into hysteria and this is over a 20 year period, it's not surprising that at this point everyone is used to the norm of death and having to survive based on who gets the drop on who first. Civility is a façade we put on when we're safe and content but when our shelter, food and lives are threatened we can easily descend to depths we wouldn't think possible, just look at real life cases where people get stranded or otherwise.

Also, no, I would say that it does faze Ellie quite a bit, you notice how she makes statements like "Oh gak!" when Joel beats the tar out of someone and how traumatized she is by her encounter with David and her brutally hacking him to death, since she is noticeably much more withdrawn to Joel after the incident.

Either way, Bioshock Infinite is a great game, but I think its clear that our personal tastes diverge when it comes to what kind of things we're looking for in a game. I respect your decision nonetheless sir *tips hat*.







Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/20 10:04:56


Post by: Medium of Death


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


Metal Gear Solid 4 says hello.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/20 12:49:59


Post by: Asherian Command


 Medium of Death wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


Metal Gear Solid 4 says hello.


I don't consider Metal Gear Solid a game because of how many cutscenes there are alone -.-

Meta Gear Solid is so uninteractive that I consider it a visual novel with some gameplay.

Games should have a balance.... Not over abundance of those cinematics. Like Meta Gear Solid.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/20 23:12:17


Post by: Psienesis


 Grimskul wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:


I agree to a certain extent. But there was a disconnection between me and the main characters. Here they are going around killing people, and it doesn't really faze them.

They just keep doing it. Where in some games I know. Like this war of mine had it where you would kill people but you are a civilain, you aren't military trained you will be pyschologly depressed by it. For the rest of the bloody game. You would never recover from killing someone.

See the problem is that with most games these are civilians, why the hell are they just shooting someone with little regards. It always distrubed me and it will continue to disturb me..


Well, to be fair, Joel is shown to be a weathered man by the time you play him, he's already too far gone as you can tell with his interactions with Tommy, who has moved on in with a new life, and Joel even yells at him for being ungrateful for what Joel had to do in order to help them survive. Also these "civilians" you speak of really aren't civilians in the conventional sense at this point, as desperation/hunger/fear have already molded them into either cannibals like David's men who have effectively institutionalized cannibalism in their town to survive and the Hunters who have accepted a very "survival of the fittest" mentality which includes effectively banning children because of their liability as weaknesses.

If you look at how little it takes for people to panic and break down into hysteria and this is over a 20 year period, it's not surprising that at this point everyone is used to the norm of death and having to survive based on who gets the drop on who first. Civility is a façade we put on when we're safe and content but when our shelter, food and lives are threatened we can easily descend to depths we wouldn't think possible, just look at real life cases where people get stranded or otherwise.

Also, no, I would say that it does faze Ellie quite a bit, you notice how she makes statements like "Oh gak!" when Joel beats the tar out of someone and how traumatized she is by her encounter with David and her brutally hacking him to death, since she is noticeably much more withdrawn to Joel after the incident.

Either way, Bioshock Infinite is a great game, but I think its clear that our personal tastes diverge when it comes to what kind of things we're looking for in a game. I respect your decision nonetheless sir *tips hat*.


This ^

By the time the "meat" of TLoU rolls around, it's been 20 years since the world ended. There are no "civilians" left. Ellie grew up in a world that has never not known want, deprivation, the lack of basic rights, military control and the infected. Joel spent the last 20 years being a shell of a man, having been a raider, a bandit, a transporter, and a scavenger.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 00:12:17


Post by: Asherian Command


^while I agree, It doesn't mean that people become less human there will still be people who will start to value human life because there are less of them.

Personally the problem is that the characters are psychopaths. And People will keep spouting out well they its been twenty years blah blah, survival. Yeah. But they have been living in relatively safe areas. Yes they might of fought zombies, but that doesn't strip your humanity. In the children of men I felt more sympathy, because there was redeemable qualities and they didn't go around killing people for no other reason. They avoided them. They didn't march into densely populated areas on purpose.

Its a problem I often have with games, there was also no central theme. Other than the 'last of us'. Which I still find very funny title. As there are more humans killed in the game.

There is very little reason to kill other humans. Like in Alien Isolation, its legitimatized, people have turned crazy only because they are constantly hunted by a creature that can appear from anywhere at anytime. But do you want to attack these survivors? No there is no reason to. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone.

In bioshock everyone has gone crazy because they are spliced to all high hell.

Whats the Last's of Us excuse? There are zombies. Good fething god that is a lame excuse. 20 years and society fell apart from zombies. You know, because nukes are completely useless. Can they climb? No. Do they regenerate? No. Are they extremely atheletic and have supernatural powers? No... Did you develop any techonlogy to combat the problem? no. Its been twenty years. And the government is supposedly gone? Yep. ARe you a horrible writer with no conception of time? Yep. Not only would this horrible time accelerate progress, but you would have people, weapons experts who are living in isolation anyway, being creating weapons specifically tailored for the problem. You would have researchers studying the virus. I mean in World War Z, in ten years they were able to not only take back an entire coast back! But they had created a special operations units to deal with it. The problem is logistically the game makes no sense. There are gaping plot holes and character problems that I scratch my head at. I know its just a game. But it lacks... ALOT OF DEPTH. Compared especially to bioshock and alien Isolation. There is alot of reasons why the aliens and the splicers are hard to kill or because there is a lot of reasons behind it, isolation, being in space. For gods sakes, Resident evil had more explanation for the Los Plagus was so freaking effective in resident evil 4. They were a small village, what the hell would anyone bat an eye at them?

You had a reason to kill the splicers, the aliens, the villagers, hell the soliders in this War of Mine it is understandable as to why you kill bandits because they are guarding food and your group needs food or medicine or bandages so no one would die.

I mean look at the new far cry 4.... If you sit at the table.....

This happens.

Spoiler:



Thats farcry 4.... In15 minutes. They finished it.... That is basically the entire game.

Anyway, next week I will talk about To the Moon integration of story telling, music and gameplay. (Properly)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 00:50:08


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


 Asherian Command wrote:
...

I mean look at the new far cry 4.... If you sit at the table.....

This happens.

Spoiler:



Thats farcry 4.... In15 minutes. They finished it.... That is basically the entire game.

Anyway, next week I will talk about To the Moon integration of story telling, music and gameplay. (Properly)


That...actually looks like it would make for a pretty fething cool plot.

Spoiler:
Seriously, if you were told the truth, that your father found out about your mother's infidelity and killed your half sister, why wouldn't you side with your "step" father? Feth your actual father, that guys a murderous donkey-cave. And instead of killing you to get revenge for the murder of his daughter, your step-dad pretty much adopts you and invites you to "go shoot some goddamn guns"

I'm not planning on getting FC4 but if they bring out a DLC alternate campaign that lets you become the adopted son and protege of a fabulously wealthy flamboyant despot who rules over an exotic Tibet-like asian kingdom, I'm sold!



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 00:58:12


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
...

I mean look at the new far cry 4.... If you sit at the table.....

This happens.

Spoiler:



Thats farcry 4.... In15 minutes. They finished it.... That is basically the entire game.

Anyway, next week I will talk about To the Moon integration of story telling, music and gameplay. (Properly)


That...actually looks like it would make for a pretty fething cool plot.

Spoiler:
Seriously, if you were told the truth, that your father found out about your mother's infidelity and killed your half sister, why wouldn't you side with your "step" father? Feth your actual father, that guys a murderous donkey-cave. And instead of killing you to get revenge for the murder of his daughter, your step-dad pretty much adopts you and invites you to "go shoot some goddamn guns"

I'm not planning on getting FC4 but if they bring out a DLC alternate campaign that lets you become the adopted son and protege of a fabulously wealthy flamboyant despot who rules over an exotic Tibet-like asian kingdom, I'm sold!



The point is that is a normal everyday thing and the most sensible. In real life you bet your ass i would do the same thing as that ending.

It making fun of the entire idea of you fighting for the person that is clearly more evil. That ridicilious circumstances where normal people would of done the opposite of. I mean how many situations are there that are just plain stupid, and could of been avoided by saying sorry, or staying and listening to people?

Its basically the most awesome idea that ubisoft has ever had. And I would play the gak out of a game like that.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 01:02:08


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


I'm not getting that game until theres a DLC that lets me side with the despot.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 01:11:25


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I'm not getting that game until theres a DLC that lets me side with the despot.


Agreed. I am also waiting for it to have a lot less fps drops than it does currently.

Anyone wanna share their thoughts?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 16:21:27


Post by: Asherian Command


A simple game.. To The Moon

So heres a treat. A game that came out in 2011. And something I had never heard of until a few weeks ago. Yet it has been sitting in my Steam Library for a year.

I usually don’t talk about games that hit me in the feels.. There are many times as a writer I play games mostly to see stories, to see narratives and to see if games have well crafted narratives, stories, and characters. Video Games are escapism and they will always continue to be. What gets me up in the morning is the fact, that one day, I will craft experiences for those who play games. I want to give experiences to those who need it and those who want it.

I played a game called To The Moon half expecting it to you know, suck, because the last game I was worked all up to playing was The Last of Us, and I hated the game so much I refuse to play the last of us ever again.

This game… THIS GAME! No words can express my need to talk about this game, no words in English can summarize how I felt. It was like a hidden door finally in me that was finally unlocked, a path was shown to me. Quite simply this game, drove me to tears. I played this a few days ago. My thoughts have been collected, that I can talk about the game.

It is one of the most original games to date. Yes a Video Game, a video game drove me to tears…. Very few times have I ever just played a game from 9:00pm till the morning. I have never felt so strongly about a game and be so engrossed in its characters, its story, its plot line, it was perfect. I can’t find anything wrong with it. It is about love in a way. AS love is blind, so am I. The romantic in me has always had a thing of seeing old couples and hearing about their lives and being quite jealous of the lives they lived.

I know this place is known for rants and political diatribes. With time I have known love, and I have let it fluttered away. The game connected to me at that level. The level of knowing full well of the problems with love, and being blind to what is in front of you.

The game itself’s plot is focused on a dying old man and his final wish to go to the moon. Now for the purposes of not spoiling it. A group called the Sigmund Corp, who grants wishes. These are not boom you get it, it is restructuring of memories or a desire to have the effect of it being a wish. This in no way current time. Only the memories of the person. In order to grant this old man’s wish, two doctors whose job it is to do this for the dying, must go through his memories and see his life, and try to figure out when to implant this idea of going to the moon. This journey is long and it is rewarding, emotionally and game-play wise. It is a puzzle game, nothing that any normal person couldn't handle. It is a RPG maker game, so Don’t expect graphical fidelity or incredible beauty the which you and I would be jealous of. This game has heart, it has all the things that games wish they had.

This game is also blessed with a fantastic musical score. Which compliments the story itself. Without the music, the game would be radically different. Games need music, to help with mood setting and creating tonal changes. The music in this game is used to help tell a story, it also tells stories of its own. Each song is written with purpose and is used to help mechanics, and tell you where you are, whether to feel heroic etc. And surprisingly this is extremely effective, because it uses similar music it changes the dynamics of the story. Overall the music in this game was so fantastic I had to buy it....

I despise and love this game. One I despise as a writer, due to the fact that I was beaten before I could write something that was an art. As a writer, I know when I have met a master, and I the student. It comes at times like this that I must say that whenever anything is great that I despise it. That means it will always remain in my mind, and be one that I will carry in my heart.

Now the only thing I could complain about… Is the following. Lack of game-play. It plays out more of as a.. Well. A Novel. Its less of a game and more of a book, because yes there is game-play it is sparse and limited, most are actual cut-scenes with very little options to do things. That is my only critique of the game. Other than difficulty of puzzles being easy enough that anyone can do it if they have half a brain.

Now I would like to say. Get this game. If you have ever experienced love like I have, you might find it worth it. If you have gone through a break up. I recommend it, sigh. It is with heavy heart that I must tell you that you might need tissues.

With that I leave you with a dramatic monologue of mine.

" I often think that we are just specks in the sea, and many believe I am full of it. That we are not specks in the sea, that we are the craft of God or Gods or Science. I am aware of that idea, and I do not reject it. I am made of dust , and stars. Gods or The universe may of made me, yet I am just speck, no grand plan, just a man. I was breathed with life, and that electricity that we call, will cease its function one day. Death my friends, Is only a factiod. Not a disease, not something curable , something that will lead us to a path, that we do not yet know.One which that I will one day travel down. Then I will just be another speck in the sea, for my love, I will be thrown into the sea, the waves will flutter and I will sink to the deep.Never more but just a speck. In the sea. " .

- Asherian Command

Have you played to the moon?
Would you like to?
Do you think music adds to games feeling and tone?
What is a great story that you can think of?
Do you think games have have the potential to allow for great story telling?
Do you think that games can do reasonable love stories?
Do you think that games have the potential to make you feel something?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 18:52:21


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


I should maybe walk some of that I said back a little. Well not revolutionary it dose do something that a lot of AAA games can't do. It matches the narrative with the game-play. Joel is the same person inside a cinematic as they are outside a cinematic. It's not super hard to do. I mean dog of war pulled it off, but it's proven to be tricky for most newer games to do it because well I don't know why. The stories they want to tell doesn't match up with the games they want to make and they can't be bothered to change one or the other to make it work. Tomb raider had this disconnect from the Lara in the cinematic and the Lara in the game that was so jarring it introduced all of gameing to a fun new word. luto-narrative.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 18:54:27


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


I should maybe walk some of that I said back a little. Well not revolutionary it dose do something that a lot of AAA games can't do. It matches the narrative with the game-play. Joel is the same person inside a cinematic as they are outside a cinematic. It's not super hard to do. I mean dog of war pulled it off, but it's proven to be tricky for most newer games to do it because well I don't know why. The stories they want to tell doesn't match up with the games they want to make and they can't be bothered to change one or the other to make it work. Tomb raider had this disconnect from the Lara in the cinematic and the Lara in the game that was so jarring it introduced all of gameing to a fun new word. luto-narrative.


There are many games like that though. Halo did that, I mean it is quite easy. Bioshock infinite did that.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 19:16:48


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


I should maybe walk some of that I said back a little. Well not revolutionary it dose do something that a lot of AAA games can't do. It matches the narrative with the game-play. Joel is the same person inside a cinematic as they are outside a cinematic. It's not super hard to do. I mean dog of war pulled it off, but it's proven to be tricky for most newer games to do it because well I don't know why. The stories they want to tell doesn't match up with the games they want to make and they can't be bothered to change one or the other to make it work. Tomb raider had this disconnect from the Lara in the cinematic and the Lara in the game that was so jarring it introduced all of gameing to a fun new word. luto-narrative.


There are many games like that though. Halo did that, I mean it is quite easy. Bioshock infinite did that.


Halo dose and it doesn't. MC is rather bland and well faceless. It's a fair examples of building your MainCharcter to match your gameplay. Though MC still acts differently in the cinmatics. Sure they mostly just kill things, but they do it in a cooler way and they have more to say about it.

Bioshock infinite really suffers from the who luto thing. Like how you will root around in garbage for food right in front of people who really should be reacting to someone acting crazy like you are.

It is easy to make the narrative and gameplay match up if you do it that way... Ok that is hard to understand so let me try another way. The last of us was able to mix oil and water. The water being the kill kill kill gameplay of well games, and the oil is the kind of emotional story narrative that isn't about how killy you are. It places the game in a setting where the oil and water has already mixed so it's not really jarrying for jole to cave someones head in because he looks like he dose that and it's not hard to see him being kind and nurturing because we see that too... I don't know if that explains what I mean, but it's what I got for now.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 19:31:12


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


I should maybe walk some of that I said back a little. Well not revolutionary it dose do something that a lot of AAA games can't do. It matches the narrative with the game-play. Joel is the same person inside a cinematic as they are outside a cinematic. It's not super hard to do. I mean dog of war pulled it off, but it's proven to be tricky for most newer games to do it because well I don't know why. The stories they want to tell doesn't match up with the games they want to make and they can't be bothered to change one or the other to make it work. Tomb raider had this disconnect from the Lara in the cinematic and the Lara in the game that was so jarring it introduced all of gameing to a fun new word. luto-narrative.


There are many games like that though. Halo did that, I mean it is quite easy. Bioshock infinite did that.


Halo dose and it doesn't. MC is rather bland and well faceless. It's a fair examples of building your MainCharcter to match your gameplay. Though MC still acts differently in the cinmatics. Sure they mostly just kill things, but they do it in a cooler way and they have more to say about it.

Bioshock infinite really suffers from the who luto thing. Like how you will root around in garbage for food right in front of people who really should be reacting to someone acting crazy like you are.

It is easy to make the narrative and gameplay match up if you do it that way... Ok that is hard to understand so let me try another way. The last of us was able to mix oil and water. The water being the kill kill kill gameplay of well games, and the oil is the kind of emotional story narrative that isn't about how killy you are. It places the game in a setting where the oil and water has already mixed so it's not really jarrying for jole to cave someones head in because he looks like he dose that and it's not hard to see him being kind and nurturing because we see that too... I don't know if that explains what I mean, but it's what I got for now.


Its interesting. But at the same time. Not. Bioshock infinite you can do all the things in the cinematics and in the game. There is a balance. Saying it suffers completely.

And what do you mean Luto? Well the problem with looting is that is a mechanic to get supplies, they would of done more of it but they ran out of time to make that. The storefronts were originally supposed to be purchasable and everything. Thats one thing. And i don't find it as bad as some people make it out to be.

I mean halo 1 did. Definately had what you are describing. Master Chief did everything you could do in the game. Halo 2. Nope. Halo 3. Nope. Halo 4. nope. Halo Reach. Suprisingly yes. Halo reach and halo odst went back to their 'roots' you could do everything that the marines were doing in odst. Halo reach you didn't do badass cinematic scenes. And infact I think halo reach is probably the highlight of the entire halo series for many people.

So did half life to a degree.


And no problem. I mean I don't expect people to play all the games I talk about here. But I expect discussion at least of integration of methods into games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 19:36:51


Post by: LordofHats


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


Did you play MGS4 (or any MGS game?). This is the ending cinematic;




It is over an hour and a half long. And that's just the damn ending. This is every cinematic in the game;




It's a fething miniseries!

Granted i know there's a lot of cinema in Last of Us, but that's not much of a revolution, and it's certainly not unique.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 19:42:43


Post by: Asherian Command


 LordofHats wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
There is nothing revolutionary about the last of us. Atr least nothing I can think of. Everything in it feels very worn very known very well not-revlunary.

Well. It is revolutionary in terms of how many cinematics there are in the game :/


Did you play MGS4 (or any MGS game?). This is the ending cinematic;




It is over an hour and a half long. And that's just the damn ending. This is every cinematic in the game;




It's a fething miniseries!

Granted i know there's a lot of cinema in Last of Us, but that's not much of a revolution, and it's certainly not unique.


We actually discussed this. And I was shown this in a PM.

Metal Gear Solid now is less of a game, and more of a bloody visual novel.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 19:59:26


Post by: LordofHats


I tend to think of it as Hideo Kojima's personal way of trolling people with a conspiracy he invented during an acid trip. The real bloodiness? Trying to make sense of the fething story!


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 20:22:09


Post by: Cheesecat


I think the MGS confuses convoluted nonsense and being bloated with good storytelling, obviously the devs never learned about William Shatner in school or they would be familiar with this: Brevity is the soul of wit.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 20:27:57


Post by: LordofHats


 Cheesecat wrote:
I think the MGS confuses convoluted nonsense and being bloated with good storytelling, obviously the devs never learned about William Shatner in school or they would be familiar with this: Brevity is the soul of wit.


I think there's talent in MGS story telling, but it sure as hell isn't in plot. It's in delivery. MGS manages to deliver its convoluted bloated nonsense with an intensity and passion that really manages to distract you from how little sense the story makes by the end of things XD The delivery of MGS is really well done, and the only thing that to me makes the story worth going through (that and I do like the comedy of the series... it's trashy comedy, but I'm not hard to get a laugh out of XD)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/21 20:48:55


Post by: Asherian Command


I've never been one for MGS, never liked it, due to many reasons. Might be because I don't find any attraction to the series. Even though I love stealth games.

Anyway.. .Next WEEK IS STEALTH GAMES




Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/25 05:45:23


Post by: Asherian Command


Bad dum dum dum dum dum

ALRIGHTY!

So Stealth games!

Mark of the Ninja:

This is one of those games I can enjoy no matter where I am. Ever wanted to be a ninja? Ever wanted to have stealth forced upon you, and have extremely unforgiving game-play, where the game gets harder and harder and the enemies get tougher to kill? *Crickets* Well Too bad this is the stealth genre! So you are a ninja of a clan, and your tattoos have magical powers! Sold yet? Nope? Well neither was I, actually thinking back the story wasn't interesting at all. In-fact it was interesting to point of being more about the villain fearing for his life that there might be a skilled assassin going after him.

Now the real reason why I am talking about Stealth games is for the following reason.... It blends, game-play, sound, and animation perfectly. Now in terms of game-play you have a point system, the game is based getting points, every time you finished a mission your points are totaled into honor, in addition you have to collect scrolls that give you abilities or items. You have two different types of items, traps, and distractions, traps can be used to kill enemies, and distractions are meant to distract. (My god I never would of thought) You do have a health bar, but it only takes 6 shots to kill you, but if the enemy knows you are around you lose points, which means you get less points to spend. The game completely dis-encourages you from getting seen. And rewards you for not killing any enemies. Yes you can go through entire missions without killing a single person.

You have many many abilities, but at the beginning you are limited to a bare few, Assassination kills grant you many points, but the more interesting and more elaborate your kill is, such as distracting or going around them will grant you more points, if you hide the body you are rewarded, there are benefits to hiding bodies, in that the guards will not discover the body. If they do they will all be put on high alert and are extremely hard to attack. You also have darts that can be used for distraction or destroying lights, destroying lights allows you to move through the shadows, the shadows are the most important part of the game, if you are in a spot light they will see you. But unlike other games if you hit that light, and a guard is nearby the guard will know something is up, and will point his gun at it and start searching. You also have access to firecrackers, which could be used to do distract someone with a noise, you also have smokebombs. The next skill set are the traps, which you can lay down to kill guards and sometimes use them to turn them against other guards. The next ability is called far sight, if you go farther into the video you can see me using it, it allows you to look around farther. And it gives you a way to look around and see where the guards are. It also happens to be one of the most interesting features and really adds to the whole aesthetic and beauty of the game.

There are different suits that you can get later on in the game that change up how you play. There is one set that gets rid of your weapons and only gives you distractions. But instead everything you do is silent, running generates no noise and guards cannot detect you, but that does not mean they can't see you or find you.

There are traps, that you have to traverse, the environment itself is basically a puzzle that you have to go through. Stealth games are usually a combination of puzzle and curving difficulty. Often combining all the skills you have learned over time. There are no bosses in this game. Later on in the game you have to face tougher and tougher enemies, but they don't get tired or cliched, but actually make sense. Different AI's will work differently than others, Elite Guards have to be stunned first and then killed once they are stunned, more highly trained guard will not be as easily terrified by a ninja. And yes... You can hang people from poles with chains and scare the ever living gak out of guards and getting them to shoot each other. As you can see in the video. The game itself rewards for risky behavior. You can sneak behind a guard, or over the guard.

The more skills you unlock the easier the game becomes, but there is no trade off. They are only benefits. But the suits that you wear they are trade offs as I have mentioned. The game only rises in difficulty. There is a hard mode version of it that you get for beating the game, where your vision is limited to more 'realistic' meaning you have the vision that the guards have. So you are limited even further, the game also has it so that if a guard sees and shoots you. You are dead. If you are spotted, you are more likely to be killed by random gun fire.

Now let me clear something up, these are the guys that made Shank. Yes that game, and not only is this an upgrade, but damn. This is probably one of the best stealth games I have ever played. This is right up there with Thief 2.

Storywise, it is interesting... Your tattoos come at a cost, your sanity. Now this is shrouded in mystery and is possibly put into the game to get you some connection to the player character. Who doesn't speak. But he's a ninja. So I will give him so credence, as he is techincally dishonored. He wears the tattoo because he dishonored himself and the clan. Your Dojo, was attacked by armed guards and they kill a bunch of ninjas, your master sends you off to go kill A duke who ordered the attack. And once you are done to kill yourself after your mission so that the madness does not take over.

Interesting huh? I bet you can guess where it goes just by that lead up. Asherian Spoiling peoples dreams.

Now I am going to open the floor and say this a recommendation play it is quite fun.

What do you think of gameplay in stealth games?

Any favorite stealth games?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/25 06:23:35


Post by: Cheesecat


I'm so glad that "To the Moon" doesn't have JRPG combat which is just the worst.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/25 13:16:35


Post by: Asherian Command


 Cheesecat wrote:
I'm so glad that "To the Moon" doesn't have JRPG combat which is just the worst.


Agreed. (Sorry just woke up!)

I mean it kind of does at the very beginning of the game, but it doesn't need it at all.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/25 18:21:50


Post by: nomotog


Mark of the ninja is the best stealth game ever. Period. There is no qualifier to that statement. The reason it's the best is because it fixes a fundamental flaw with every other stealth game. Trial and error. It's the case with a lot of stealth games that your going to be hammering a quick save and quick load button till you basically guess what you need to do. You just never know what your action is going to result in till after you do it. In mark of the ninja, they tell you everything you need to know about the results of an action before you do it and you can really plan out your movements. (OK not everything is made apparent to you. The terror system some times plays hit or miss because it doesn't tell you in what state a dead body will scare.)

Another aspect I really like about mark of the ninja is the different types of guards and challenges. Other games do it now, but before mark of the ninja you didn't really see a progression of guards in stealth games. I mean sure some put on thicker armor, but that doesn't mean a lot when your stealth. In mark of the ninja, you get all kinds of guards from snipers, to dogs, to big guys with shields that can't be distracted because they would rather shoot a flare then move their fat behind. It even ends with you sneaking around physic ninjas, (It's better then it sounds. All the enemies are fair even the ones that are physic.)

The game is made by the people who made shank, but they also made/are making invisible inc. It's a turn based stealth game. Not as solid as mark of the ninja, but it's still beta. It's mostly neat because it's different.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/25 19:07:10


Post by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl


Mark of the Ninja was awesome, got all achievement for the main game and I will get the rest when I buy the DLC. The point system was annoying though. It encourage you do to a lot of unnecessary stuff, like walk by unnoticed by guard then distract guard then kill him then hang him then hide his body.
A bit too much of a chore.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 05:26:00


Post by: Asherian Command


So yeah. I agree, I know there are complaints about it, I mean personally I like Thief 2 better, but that is mostly for its setting.

Plus I believe that the differences are quite abundant. I felt like that mark of the ninja was too reliant on points mattering to people. It should of been more severe in terms of stealth if found you should of had hell unloosed. Guards should carry grenades or shock grenades.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:16:36


Post by: nomotog


One part you can complain about is that it has so much stuff in it that a lot doesn't get a chance to really shine. There are several enemies and game-play mechanics that show up for one level or a tiny part of a level only to never show up again. Like the gasmask enemies that show up once and then drop off the face of the earth.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:22:42


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
One part you can complain about is that it has so much stuff in it that a lot doesn't get a chance to really shine. There are several enemies and game-play mechanics that show up for one level or a tiny part of a level only to never show up again. Like the gasmask enemies that show up once and then drop off the face of the earth.


Or the part where you have to use the chain jump movement.

Or the part where you have to fight the elite guards, or the dog bit. Or the miniboss bit.

Or the part where you have to use smoke bombs. Yeah I only used firecrackers because they were invaluable why use smokebombs if I could use a firecracker that does the same job?

Why did they have they only have one bit where we had an awesome puzzle section. (Where you face the duke finally?)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:35:06


Post by: nomotog


Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:36:05


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.


Actually I like that mode. Its basically, everything harder and more realistic. I actually enjoyed it. Minus the fact that health was useless.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:38:29


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.


Actually I like that mode. Its basically, everything harder and more realistic. I actually enjoyed it. Minus the fact that health was useless.


I dind't like it because of the LoS changes. It means you can only see a tiny fraction of the screen at a time. (Some times practically none.) It looks kind of bad on the visuals and it also reintroduces the element of guess and check.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:40:21


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.


Actually I like that mode. Its basically, everything harder and more realistic. I actually enjoyed it. Minus the fact that health was useless.


I dind't like it because of the LoS changes. It means you can only see a tiny fraction of the screen at a time. (Some times practically none.) It looks kind of bad on the visuals and it also reintroduces the element of guess and check.


Use farsight then XD

Which invalidates it.

It is using all your skills.

I learned that using farsight in that mode was invaluable. You need it or you are fethed. Your vision is that of a guard and less guess and check. More or less you working on trying out your skills finding good vantage points and using the environment as best as you can.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 06:55:00


Post by: nomotog


Oh ya farsight. I didn't get that far in advanced mode. It was about level 2 when I stopped playing it because it just wasn't as fun as the base game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 11:03:18


Post by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl


 Asherian Command wrote:
Or the part where you have to use smoke bombs. Yeah I only used firecrackers because they were invaluable why use smokebombs if I could use a firecracker that does the same job?

Laser.
nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.

No, it was harder and I liked it.
 Asherian Command wrote:
Use farsight then XD

Which invalidates it.

It is using all your skills.

What is that? Something from the DLC?
Finished the game without it.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 15:05:00


Post by: Asherian Command


 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Or the part where you have to use smoke bombs. Yeah I only used firecrackers because they were invaluable why use smokebombs if I could use a firecracker that does the same job?

Laser.
nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.

No, it was harder and I liked it.
 Asherian Command wrote:
Use farsight then XD

Which invalidates it.

It is using all your skills.

What is that? Something from the DLC?
Finished the game without it.


Press number 4 on the keyboard it allows you to look through walls and see traps.

I rarely died because it was really powerful.

I personally love the game. But there are a lot of problems, but thats because I nitpick everything and it is my field so it is my job.

The animation is beautiful but again I found some problems in the animation of the soldiers and animation of the ninja, small little problems in the models that I noticed.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 16:48:13


Post by: nomotog


 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Or the part where you have to use smoke bombs. Yeah I only used firecrackers because they were invaluable why use smokebombs if I could use a firecracker that does the same job?

Laser.
nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.

No, it was harder and I liked it.
 Asherian Command wrote:
Use farsight then XD

Which invalidates it.

It is using all your skills.

What is that? Something from the DLC?
Finished the game without it.


Far sight was kind fo a useless ability. You have to use it once, but other then that I never used it.

Advance was harder, but harder in kind of a cheap way. The LoS stuff makes the game more busy, but not really harder. You have to make sure you look in very direction every few seconds or your going to be caught by something you didn't see and some times it just totally bugs out and you have zero visibility.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/27 16:55:39


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Or the part where you have to use smoke bombs. Yeah I only used firecrackers because they were invaluable why use smokebombs if I could use a firecracker that does the same job?

Laser.
nomotog wrote:
Oh and lets not forget advance mode that is basically mark of the ninja if they took away the best part.

No, it was harder and I liked it.
 Asherian Command wrote:
Use farsight then XD

Which invalidates it.

It is using all your skills.

What is that? Something from the DLC?
Finished the game without it.


Far sight was kind fo a useless ability. You have to use it once, but other then that I never used it.

Advance was harder, but harder in kind of a cheap way. The LoS stuff makes the game more busy, but not really harder. You have to make sure you look in very direction every few seconds or your going to be caught by something you didn't see and some times it just totally bugs out and you have zero visibility.


Speaking of DLC, get it! You know the guy that gives you the tattoos yeah apparently he was a ninja when he was younger.

He was so badass that he could kick anyones ass.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/28 01:20:02


Post by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl


nomotog wrote:
Far sight was kind fo a useless ability. You have to use it once, but other then that I never used it.

Oh, yeah, I remember. It is the thing that allows you to see which lever will open the door and which lever will just kill you, is that it?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/28 02:34:04


Post by: nomotog


 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Far sight was kind fo a useless ability. You have to use it once, but other then that I never used it.

Oh, yeah, I remember. It is the thing that allows you to see which lever will open the door and which lever will just kill you, is that it?


That is it. In a different game, it would be one of the more powerful and useful abilities, but you all ready have good LoS so it's not as needed.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/28 18:22:53


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
nomotog wrote:
Far sight was kind fo a useless ability. You have to use it once, but other then that I never used it.

Oh, yeah, I remember. It is the thing that allows you to see which lever will open the door and which lever will just kill you, is that it?


That is it. In a different game, it would be one of the more powerful and useful abilities, but you all ready have good LoS so it's not as needed.


Until you know you actually need it in the harder difficult.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 00:55:34


Post by: Asherian Command


Hey guys!

So I was wondering what do you want to talk about next.

Do you want to talk about Hearthstone, Guns of Icarus, Left 4 Dead 2, Diablo 3, The Last Dream, Outlast, One Finger Death Punch or Fear and its DLC. Or do you want me to talk about Master Reboot or Castle Crashers?

I am thinking about focusing on multiplayer and or systems for players or Player Customization or AI. I have no idea which to focus on to talk to you guys. I had it all planned out till November but we have gotten to the point where I really can't think about anything else until I finish up school


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 00:59:10


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Have you played The Stanley Parable?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 01:06:52


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Have you played The Stanley Parable?


Yep!

I actually wrote a speech on it and its discussion and conclusions about choice in games and how they are all illusions made for the player, and how every in a game is still techincally linear and structural narrative tropes.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 01:14:20


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


I've played it just a couple of times, and I'm already starting to recognize and categorize the different branching paths to the point that I can predict which end I'll get.

its ironic, that a game which satirizes the linearity of video games is itself linear.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 01:16:34


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I've played it just a couple of times, and I'm already starting to recognize and categorize the different branching paths to the point that I can predict which end I'll get.

its ironic, that a game which satirizes the linearity of video games is itself linear.


Thats kind of the point.

The Stanley Parable is purposefully written to be like that. The Writer is incredible. Everything in that game is built to be like it is. They almost thought of everything. Except for me editing its code. :p

I had to test. No luck, though the code makes me blush.




Tada!


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 01:23:12


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Heh. haven't seen that one yet. I did manage to get the "You broke the game!" Ending though. Something about Narrative Contradiction.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 01:30:15


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Heh. haven't seen that one yet. I did manage to get the "You broke the game!" Ending though. Something about Narrative Contradiction.


Yes there is also the ART ending, where you press a button for four hours to try and stop the baby from going into a fire, and a puppy get dipped into acid.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 01:41:41


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Heh. I think I disobeyed and left during that. Only spent a min saving the baby then lost interest and let it burn. That prompted the narrator to throw a hissy fit.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 03:19:48


Post by: nomotog


I hated Stanley Parable. I mean I get it was a smart little art game, but I just felt rotten after playing it. It was the confusion ending that made me quit and curl up in my bed and cry.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 03:36:57


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
I hated Stanley Parable. I mean I get it was a smart little art game, but I just felt rotten after playing it. It was the confusion ending that made me quit and curl up in my bed and cry.


Get the choice ending. You will retract that opinion XD


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 04:04:28


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
I hated Stanley Parable. I mean I get it was a smart little art game, but I just felt rotten after playing it. It was the confusion ending that made me quit and curl up in my bed and cry.


Get the choice ending. You will retract that opinion XD


No I will not. I don't care how smart of clever the game is. It felt like I was being eaten by Shub-Niggurath. Just a unpleasant and unsettling experience.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 04:06:06


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
I hated Stanley Parable. I mean I get it was a smart little art game, but I just felt rotten after playing it. It was the confusion ending that made me quit and curl up in my bed and cry.


Get the choice ending. You will retract that opinion XD


No I will not. I don't care how smart of clever the game is. It felt like I was being eaten by Shub-Niggurath. Just a unpleasant and unsettling experience.


You are the only person I have ever heard say that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
I hated Stanley Parable. I mean I get it was a smart little art game, but I just felt rotten after playing it. It was the confusion ending that made me quit and curl up in my bed and cry.


Get the choice ending. You will retract that opinion XD


No I will not. I don't care how smart of clever the game is. It felt like I was being eaten by Shub-Niggurath. Just a unpleasant and unsettling experience.


You are the only person I have ever heard say that.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 05:46:39


Post by: Lotet


I played the Stanley parable and it was the most annoying thing I ever played. It had it's cool moments but overall the experience was only of annoyance. The problem is that it does not touch the heart of people. It's a very emotionless game. I am very logical myself, but also very emotional, so it was easy for me to find the game annoying. What happened is that the Stanley Parable frustrated me. I felt like I was being taken into someone elses hallways, doors and plans, to deliver me an experience that didn't touch me. And worst of all I had absolutely not free will in the game, no way to change anything, no impact, no power, I accomplished nothing. People play games because of what they can do inside them and the Stanley Parable is very good at letting them know they can't do anything. Other things I didn't like were the narrator dialogue too much, and that 'Stanley' is repeated all the time by the narrator.



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 16:26:24


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
I hated Stanley Parable. I mean I get it was a smart little art game, but I just felt rotten after playing it. It was the confusion ending that made me quit and curl up in my bed and cry.


Get the choice ending. You will retract that opinion XD


No I will not. I don't care how smart of clever the game is. It felt like I was being eaten by Shub-Niggurath. Just a unpleasant and unsettling experience.


You are the only person I have ever heard say that.


Oh Kay? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/11/30 16:51:40


Post by: Asherian Command


 Lotet wrote:
I played the Stanley parable and it was the most annoying thing I ever played. It had it's cool moments but overall the experience was only of annoyance. The problem is that it does not touch the heart of people. It's a very emotionless game. I am very logical myself, but also very emotional, so it was easy for me to find the game annoying. What happened is that the Stanley Parable frustrated me. I felt like I was being taken into someone elses hallways, doors and plans, to deliver me an experience that didn't touch me. And worst of all I had absolutely not free will in the game, no way to change anything, no impact, no power, I accomplished nothing. People play games because of what they can do inside them and the Stanley Parable is very good at letting them know they can't do anything. Other things I didn't like were the narrator dialogue too much, and that 'Stanley' is repeated all the time by the narrator.



yeah.. I thought you were once I recognized the wording.

I've actually heard that before.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/12/06 21:39:47


Post by: Asherian Command


Next week I will be looking over the game The Last Dream. But it might take me a while to write it up due to my time constraints I currently have.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2014/12/15 20:53:21


Post by: Asherian Command


The Last Dream

Sometimes I wonder have games gotten too easy? Has gameplay become too narrow pathed and too focused on making it user friendly. Often I debate these types of ideas from dawn till dusk. That was until I played the Last Dream, and I realized maybe its a good thing everything has become user friendly. As I began to play The Last Dream I was reminded how much better gaming has gotten, but for something that echos to the past. It might be worth your time to play. Final Fantasy 1 stats and abilities were sure bloody hard to keep up with now. The last dream is a homage to the old Final Fantasy Games.

If that doesn’t sell you will not enjoy this game. So the best thing to do is to ensure you don’t play it. This game is hard. And long. I took me 70 hours to beat the whole campagin. As the mobs get harder and harder throughout the game. The gameplay can be summed up like this. Remember final fantasy 1. Exactly like that. There are different zones or areas or even continents to explore. There are many things to delve into and there is even an ENDLESS monster arena.

What about the story? What story? The story keeps itself together but then The third boss you face, you really think to yourself. Why the hell am I killing this well developed character? To that point you already know this character, the main character has no face, along with the other three adventurers. Who You name and they never talk. Okay the Story needs work. The main cast is silent and you are basically sent off to do peoples dirty work. Its actually quite sad and one that makes the game suffer as a whole. As it is the missing piece throughout the whole game.

Now unlike many other games this game actually gives you meaningful choices. Every choice you make no matter how menial will be showed to be meaningful. No matter how stupid the task the game will remember that stupid choice to give that kid a bread. This game rewards for exploration. There are different paths you can take and the classes YOU CHOOSE. Will affect the game, and sometimes who lives or dies. Take for example the Engineer the most useful class. I choose to go a knight, hunter, black mage and white mage. I didn’t found out till later in the game the engineer helps mediate time spent on the overworld. So the best way to travel is by moa. So you either choose to have a hunter or an engineer.

The Classes though many do not offer the variety that we see in other fantasy games. If you choose one class it is a character locked. Meaning you can’t change it to a new job class. Which eliminates actually choices for the class. There is one only one type of build for each class.

Now lets talk about this games strengths. This game has a great soundtrack. One of the best I’ve heard in quite sometime. It really captures the epic journey you are on. Then there is the gameplay itself, it is fun and a change from the boring Final Fantasy Games, and adds to it with different play styles. Do I wish there was more to play with the main classes. Like a Job system from final fantasy 5? Hell Yes. But the variety of monsters and areas you explore more than make up for that misstep. There are ‘master’ classes but they only unlock three new abilities for certain characters. There is no cap to how many attributes you can have or what level you can attain. There is a highly competitive scene to try and beat the game in less than an hour. (Somehow its possible)

The game also supports some of the hardest puzzles and the integration of these puzzles in fantastic ways. These are the best puzzles I have ever encountered in gaming, and a lot of them are actually user generated puzzles. Which makes them quite difficult and insane to figure out.

Don’t worry the devs have a walkthrough if you want to complete all the puzzles. There are tons of secrets and tons of different things to do.

In total there are 8 classes/characters to choose from. You can go whatever you want you could go all knights (Fighter) or a black mage (Wizard) a white mage or a hunter, or a martial artist. The game has quite a few incredibly fun bits and pieces to it. But don’t expect anything spectacular in terms of graphics or story.

This game was fun and had one of the most addicting mini-games I have ever played. Wanna know what its called? Button mashing Gambling. Yep. If you have an addiction like I do to pressing a button over and over again to get money, Then this game you should well and truly avoid or else you are going to look upon your shame of time played in your steam library for the rest of your life.

For ever you will repeat to yourself “I Seriously spent 70 HOURS ON THIS?!?!” But realize it was well spent playing a great game. The designers knew what they set out to create. And I look forward to their expansions and them developing a much better story.

Though I recommend this. There are issues to the game, buggy systems, but they are usually fixed if you contact the staff that made this game. They will immediately fix it. But beware they are coming out with a last dream 2, and it will just like the first one, but hopefully it is to fix all my complaints about the game. Mostly the story and limiting class features.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 04:12:27


Post by: Asherian Command


Asherian Recommends:

Life is Strange.

Okay everyone.

so I will be back for a bit and one of the things I have been debating for a while is posting about this game. as I don't know if this would attract anyone to the game.This game is called life is strange.

All I can say is wow. This is probably one of my interesting games I have played this year. Behind a Story About my Uncle. Which is another game entirely. Life is strange centers around a girl having the ability to turn back time....

This is probably the best hook to a game I've had in years. And will probably be one of my top games of all time, because it is smart. It is intelligent, it has great gameplay. And your choices really do matter. I mean they really do, they are immedate and do change certain things and how people talk to you. Its very interesting and different. It also has a fantastic soundtrack, interesting backdrops, very indepth gameplay and mechanics, but it is point and click. So you might not like that. This game is meant to be played at higher resolutions. The lip syncing is a bit of an issue, and some of the characters sound really lame.

And there is alot of jokes about sex from teenage girls. If you are wierded out by that there is probably a good reason why. You are playing a teenage girl. Who can turn back time. Of course teenagers would use their powers in interesting *HINT* ways *HINT*.

I will recommend anyone to this game. Mostly because of the characters and the story. And the back drop of the game. It is interesting and though provoking, but I suggesting buying it entirely including all the episodes. It is episodic and is very comparable to Telltales game of thrones, minus the blood and the gore and backstabbing.. Wait... No they are very similar, just less.. .Nevermind this game is rated M For a pretty good reason. And if you don't have the stomach for realistic reveal of suicide, rape, murder, and bullying. This game is probably not for you.

If you want a run down of one of the major things I like about this game welll.....


It might have something to do with a blue haired female character, being a favorite character of mine. I suggest playing the first episode and if your not interested after the first thats fine!

Next up I will be talking about two games I played Hotline Miami 2 and a Story About my Uncle, both of which I have finally beaten....

See ya then.

TLDR:

Game Pleasures Fulfilled in Life is Strange:

Fantasy
Competition
Sensation
Expression
Narrative

Recommendations by:

Asherian Command

Reasoning:

Interesting Story, Mechanics, Characters, and Narrative

Not reasons to buy:
Episodic, Not all episodes have been released, terrible lip syncing, specular mapping, BUMP maps usage, NORMAL maps kind of too similar to each other. (Rocks are randomly shiny)

Character models are a bit blurry, though this might be the camera doing that.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 05:30:09


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


I love that game. Downloaded all the songs to my Kindle and I'm listening on a permanent loop lol.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 11:36:13


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I love that game. Downloaded all the songs to my Kindle and I'm listening on a permanent loop lol.


Wait where did you get the music from? I've been searching for a while XD. Anyway I am glad I am not the only one who enjoyed it.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 16:55:52


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


There's a fan made Life Is Strange soundtrack playlist on YouTube. I looked up the songs from that playlist on the Amazon Kindle store and downloaded the tracks that I like I individually to my Kindle and made a playlist.

AFAIK no official soundtrack has been released yet.

The dialogue is rather cliched and corny, but that's part of the charm.

And those feels when
Spoiler:
you talk Kate down from suicide. Or not.


Not embarrassed to admit I teared up a little.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 17:00:57


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
There's a fan made Life Is Strange soundtrack playlist on YouTube. I looked up the songs from that playlist on the Amazon Kindle store and downloaded the tracks that I like I individually to my Kindle and made a playlist.

AFAIK no official soundtrack has been released yet.


They should its brilliant. I still can't believe I like the game so much. It does a great job of building characters and exploring high school life with a realistic lens.

But to be honest I am just waiting for darkest dungeon to go on sale. *Smiles evilly*


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 17:07:03


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Well the games not complete, and most of the tracks in the official soundtrack might not have featured in the game yet.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 17:18:37


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Well the games not complete, and most of the tracks in the official soundtrack might not have featured in the game yet.


Thats quite a bit of music already. I really like the direction thus far.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 17:35:06


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


 Asherian Command wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Well the games not complete, and most of the tracks in the official soundtrack might not have featured in the game yet.


Thats quite a bit of music already. I really like the direction thus far.


Glass Walls, and Piano Fire are my favourite tracks.

I think part of the reason why I like the game so much is that this is the most I've ever been able to personally relate to a video game character. I'm 23, I graduated from University 2 years ago (British equivalent to American College? ~18yr - 21yr) so my "high school" years are still fairly recent fresh memories.

I fall somewhere between Max and Warren.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 17:48:48


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Well the games not complete, and most of the tracks in the official soundtrack might not have featured in the game yet.


Thats quite a bit of music already. I really like the direction thus far.


Glass Walls, and Piano Fire are my favourite tracks.

I think part of the reason why I like the game so much is that this is the most I've ever been able to personally relate to a video game character. I'm 23, I graduated from University 2 years ago (British equivalent to American College? ~18yr - 21yr) so my "high school" years are still fairly recent fresh memories.

I fall somewhere between Max and Warren.


I am on the line XD of I don't know, but the girl I like so far is chloe because she reminds me of one of my good friends. I am nowhere near max as I am quite a bit more adept at talking and speaking my mind.

I am inbetween Chloe and Kate. I act both ways and sometimes.

I feel like the game is shot like a movie but its a game within a very interesting setting and one that is very different from what we are used to in games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 18:03:47


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Actually I had a friend like Chloe too when I was a kid, then I moved school at the age of 10 and we drifted apart. My grades skyrocketed . And, last I heard, he was a cannabis user.

Basically a reflection of Max and Chloe, but at age 5-10. And boys.



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 18:08:19


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Actually I had a friend like Chloe too when I was a kid, then I moved school at the age of 10 and we drifted apart. My grades skyrocketed . And, last I heard, he was a cannabis user.

Basically a reflection of Max and Chloe, but at age 5-10. And boys.



Mine is a girl Same hair color too ^.^ and an artist.


But eh its a game where I have to pay attention to details and such. And thankfully I saved one of the characters from doing something really horrible. But I think it has some of the most relatable characters in games.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 18:38:46


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


 Asherian Command wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
There's a fan made Life Is Strange soundtrack playlist on YouTube. I looked up the songs from that playlist on the Amazon Kindle store and downloaded the tracks that I like I individually to my Kindle and made a playlist.

AFAIK no official soundtrack has been released yet.


They should its brilliant.


Speak of the devil. Just saw this link posted in an update by the official LIS facebook group.

https://play.spotify.com/user/officiallifeisstrange/playlist/1f5ZzLDTXHTDR8CYIEddpW

ah, nevermind. Doesn't seem to work for me.

Heres the unofficial youtube playlist.




That thumbnail image is my desktop background btw.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/03/31 19:44:07


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
There's a fan made Life Is Strange soundtrack playlist on YouTube. I looked up the songs from that playlist on the Amazon Kindle store and downloaded the tracks that I like I individually to my Kindle and made a playlist.

AFAIK no official soundtrack has been released yet.


They should its brilliant.


Speak of the devil. Just saw this link posted in an update by the official LIS facebook group.

https://play.spotify.com/user/officiallifeisstrange/playlist/1f5ZzLDTXHTDR8CYIEddpW

ah, nevermind. Doesn't seem to work for me.

Heres the unofficial youtube playlist.




That thumbnail image is my desktop background btw.

its one of mine


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/05 20:19:46


Post by: Asherian Command


Look at new post


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/25 14:24:10


Post by: Asherian Command


Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/25 15:11:55


Post by: Co'tor Shas


The writing in that game is hilarious (ly bad). It's really hard to tell whether it's a spoof on dating games or not.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/25 15:25:41


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Huniepop. I have heard a lot about that game. Mostly that it's awfully absurd or just awful. One detail I have heard is that it's a game based around "pickup artists". You know the negative complements and things. I thought about playing it myself, but I fear what people would think if they saw it on my steam library.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/25 15:53:35


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Huniepop. I have heard a lot about that game. Mostly that it's awfully absurd or just awful. One detail I have heard is that it's a game based around "pickup artists". You know the negative complements and things. I thought about playing it myself, but I fear what people would think if they saw it on my steam library.


ITs charming but one of the hardest puzzle games I've played in a long time.


Not really awful at all its probably one of the better games out there. Its a complete parody of dating games and the whole 'hentai' genre in general. There is no sex, There is implied sex and some of the best writing I've seen in a while. Though my standards for games are extremely low.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/25 18:59:01


Post by: nomotog


 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Huniepop. I have heard a lot about that game. Mostly that it's awfully absurd or just awful. One detail I have heard is that it's a game based around "pickup artists". You know the negative complements and things. I thought about playing it myself, but I fear what people would think if they saw it on my steam library.


ITs charming but one of the hardest puzzle games I've played in a long time.


Not really awful at all its probably one of the better games out there. Its a complete parody of dating games and the whole 'hentai' genre in general. There is no sex, There is implied sex and some of the best writing I've seen in a while. Though my standards for games are extremely low.


Some of the best writing? It's going to be interesting to read about your experience then. I wonder how it's meant to be a parody and what it's trying to say through it's mockery.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/04/27 00:43:48


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Huniepop. I have heard a lot about that game. Mostly that it's awfully absurd or just awful. One detail I have heard is that it's a game based around "pickup artists". You know the negative complements and things. I thought about playing it myself, but I fear what people would think if they saw it on my steam library.


ITs charming but one of the hardest puzzle games I've played in a long time.


Not really awful at all its probably one of the better games out there. Its a complete parody of dating games and the whole 'hentai' genre in general. There is no sex, There is implied sex and some of the best writing I've seen in a while. Though my standards for games are extremely low.


Some of the best writing? It's going to be interesting to read about your experience then. I wonder how it's meant to be a parody and what it's trying to say through it's mockery.


Well so far it plays like a bejeweled thing game except with anime, and.... Boobs. Apart from that not as bad as I thought it was going to be.....


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/07 19:05:10


Post by: Asherian Command


Huniepop


What originally started out as a joke among me and my peers, I first began playing the game to see if it was built up to be nothing more than a dating simulator.

I was surprised to find that I was right, the game was a basic dating simulator, with really difficult puzzle mechanics. This game was.... How would I put it... More than I expected. It had funny dialogue and probably quite a compelling premise. Its about a guy who wants to get laid and find a girl.... And *GASP* Has morals? Originally I would wondered if there was going to be some type of backlash from this game mainly from a certain minority group. To my surprise this was the most highly rated game on steam. (That is not a joke, it is one of the most highly rated games on steam right now)

The characters you encounter are fun and interesting and their personalities are all different from each other. The basic gameplay is that in order to date a girl you have to answer a series of questions first and then face a puzzle, for four dates in a row. Once you have gone on four dates in a row you are 'rewarded'. Though you cannot date the same person four times in one day there is a cooldown that you have to wait for two days. And sometimes the girls are out of town or they are sick or they are sleeping.

This is very weird and probably the reasons I actually enjoyed the game. The characters felt real. Though there was times when I felt like "Wait what... I slept with this girls mother and her, and the two of them never found out they slept with me... Okay..." Other than that, this game is not meant for kids or anyone who hates anime girls and well... Lots of raunchiness.

Though I will say this. The game-play got increasingly difficult but it was curved. I was learning how to match so well because I had a goal in mind, I want to finish this date with this girl. And if I lost they (the Characters) started chastising me for ruining the date. I have never felt so bad in a game before. Until I played huniepop. Where I was told by a bunch of AI I suck at dating. So that after a bit annoyed me and made me want to complete the game. I have played around 7 hours of Huniepop.... And I don't regret it. It is a weird feeling knowing that you are playing a game and you absolutely are playing it for no other reason than to talk to anime girls and date them. I despise dating simulators but this game is so well designed I couldn't help but like it. Infact it might be one of my top puzzle games of this year.

This is Rated M for a good reason. They do show many things that are not age appropriate and sometimes I had to walk out of the room and wonder why the helk was I playing this game? Then I realize why. I am single and I lack a girlfriend, so what the hell.

This game has no real issues, no exploits, no exact issues that would cause the game to be classified as sexist. Its just a very well made puzzle game. There is so much that is good about it that I would recommend it to anyone that likes anime, and puzzles. The most surprising thing about this game, is that there is a large demographic of women that play it. I have countless discussions with girls that I know who have played this game.

Though your self respect for yourself is probably going to hit an all time low when you play this game. Be wary of that.

Next week.......



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/08 17:37:33


Post by: Eumerin


nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Huniepop. I have heard a lot about that game. Mostly that it's awfully absurd or just awful. One detail I have heard is that it's a game based around "pickup artists". You know the negative complements and things. I thought about playing it myself, but I fear what people would think if they saw it on my steam library.


I got curious when I heard about it, which was at release, and went poking around the official site. You can purchase and download a non-Steam version from there.

/innocent whistle

I have to say that I find the mechanic of "succeeding" at a date by playing what is effectively Candy Crush to be somewhat amusing.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/08 18:42:42


Post by: nomotog


I.. expected more from that review. Not really sure what I expected, but I mean as the highest rated steam game thought you would find something inserting to latch onto and talk about.

Alien Isolation is neat though.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/08 19:16:12


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
I.. expected more from that review. Not really sure what I expected, but I mean as the highest rated steam game thought you would find something inserting to latch onto and talk about.

Alien Isolation is neat though.


Something to latch on to? what do you mean?

I would love to hear a criticism of my work

It had some problems no doubt. But they were quite small. I mean I only found out it was the highest rated game on steam until after I started playing it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eumerin wrote:
nomotog wrote:
 Asherian Command wrote:
Lets get this started up again........

Next bit.... Asherian plays huniepop.....

*grumble*

Don't ask, but I've been recommended to play it by my friends and alot of people.

I'll write up a review in the next few days.


Huniepop. I have heard a lot about that game. Mostly that it's awfully absurd or just awful. One detail I have heard is that it's a game based around "pickup artists". You know the negative complements and things. I thought about playing it myself, but I fear what people would think if they saw it on my steam library.


I got curious when I heard about it, which was at release, and went poking around the official site. You can purchase and download a non-Steam version from there.

/innocent whistle

I have to say that I find the mechanic of "succeeding" at a date by playing what is effectively Candy Crush to be somewhat amusing.


Effectively yeah. It is almost identical to candy crush. It encourages you but then if you fail it makes fun of you. And the puzzles get progressively worse. Except this game isn't evil unlike candy crush.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/08 19:39:38


Post by: nomotog


I don't know. I haven't played the game myself. There might not actually be anything to talk about. (There is actually very little talk about it. It only has one official review.)

You could of spent some time talking about the difference between a visual novel and a dating sims and how hunie pope fits in that scale. You could have talked more about the mechanics they actually seem kind of deep. What are the characters like? Is the sex good? You said it had the best writing, but forgot to explain why. Is their really a stalker app in it?

I don't know something.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/08 20:36:09


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
I don't know. I haven't played the game myself. There might not actually be anything to talk about. (There is actually very little talk about it. It only has one official review.)

You could of spent some time talking about the difference between a visual novel and a dating sims and how hunie pope fits in that scale. You could have talked more about the mechanics they actually seem kind of deep. What are the characters like? Is the sex good? You said it had the best writing, but forgot to explain why. Is their really a stalker app in it?

I don't know something.


I think there is quite a bit to talk about the game had a lot of depth to it and became more complicated in time. What once started out as easy mechanics became more difficult overtime. It is probably easier to get laid in real life than in Huniepop.

I could rewrite it. But yes I would of gone more in depth about it but I hadn't really thought of those bits of information.

But yes there were some bits that did happen that were kind of creepy. The fairy does give you a stalker phone that basically tracks every girl and what they are doing and where they are. It also remembers what they tell you so you can reference before talking to a girl because they will quiz you on the information and you can't bring it up on the stalker app. But I really didn't think it was as creepy as people made it out to be. Its not like it is broadcasting their exact state of being and where they live.

It was very gamified and I didn't really think it was as bad as some reviewers or people made it out to be. It was clearly a jab at how in most dating sims the character knows exactly where the girl is, or they don't change location at all.

A visual novel has certain times where you can choose to do certain things and has an entire story set around it. There is some type of goal that the protoganist is trying to complete. The Dating sim is usually just a harem of a particular gender that the player would find attractive and they get to choose which one they get to date.

A Visual Novel is story based, a Dating sim is mechanic or niche based.

This game has no story, it has a story a player can create through their interactions with the characters.

On the other questions
In terms of sex, you barely see anything. A nipple here and there and thats about it. Its quite tame. Unless you go the uncensored path, for giggles I turned it on and not much of a difference, except a few noticeable things. Though god willing I would no play this game in public.

Characters? I can't exactly speak for all of them but they were various and they were quite enjoyable, I mean I felt like they were quite real and interesting.

The most favorite character I met and probably interacted most with was probably the Asian teacher, whose name escapes me. She had a very laid back, controlling personality. Able to control people rather easily but she doesn't like to. She is quick to anger and quite intelligent. Though the other characters represent alot of minorities in life. There is a white blonde women, but there is also an indian, a persian , an asian, an northern african, and southern african. So far they were all quite interesting except for one, who is suppose to be the.... well..... The B--ch as I like to refer her as. And many other characters do too.

The characters were all their own different types of flavors and cliched stereotypes that are not insulting but more based in reality than most Triple A games see women.

In terms of writing it had better writing than what I was expecting. It had funny dialogue and poked fun at itself. It was witty and interesting and dragged the readers attention to where it mattered, the characters. There were times when I felt like the characters were talking straight to me. It had an interesting character dialogue that were unique to each character and didn't feel like copy paste like most RPGs and most games are like. They fit a certain criteria and it made sense in that world.

The writing reinforced the characters and the setting, it felt like the world was just living. But sometimes it did feel void of life, such is the limits of most dating sims.



Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/15 23:58:35


Post by: Asherian Command


So I had a change of mind Instead of Alien Isolation which is a relatively new game, I am planning on saving it for halloween time.

Instead I will be doing borderlands 2 and FPS RPGS. Expect to see it up tomorrow, as I begin my editing process.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/16 03:16:40


Post by: nomotog


Oh ya borderlands. I would hazard to say that I like the series too much, but it was the biggest revolution for loot based games since.. well since they were really confide by diablo. (BL ruined me for diablo even.) BL2 is maybe a little worse then BL1 in some respects. A little big of the unbalanced elements of BL1 actually served to make it a better game so when they were cleaned up it lost something.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/16 21:09:44


Post by: Asherian Command


Borderlands 2


Introduction

Often times it is said by some designers that open world RPGs are the bane of the industry often found to be extremely difficult and a very hard task to complete and deliver tremendously well. But to combine an FPS with an RPG is quite unheard of outside of fall out or borderlands. Today we are going back to a game that came out quite a while ago and Something I had never played the sequel to the infamous borderlands.

Borderlands 2 takes place on pandora, a world wealthy in resources, bullets, dead bandits, bandits, and monsters. It is controlled by a man called Handsome Jack who rules it with his evil coporation hyperion and holds it with an iron grip.

Handsome jack is an insane leader of hyperion a space born company from.... Somewhere. This games narrative focuses on big names that are memorable it is often a trick used by developers to get people to remember places rather quickly.

And everytime they introduce someone it is similar to this.



There are six characters you can choose and play as are
Axton: The Commando (Has a ranged Sentry Turret that can be upgraded with abilities that the commando can have access to.
Maya: The Siren (Has an ability that can lock people
Zero: The hunter, has a cloak ability that gives him power the longer he uses it
Salvador: The Gunzerker (can dual wield guns!)
Gaige: the mechromancer Has a giant robot that fights for here
Krieg : The Pyscho has a rage mode where he uses his axe thing to kill people.

These are the playable characters and they really don't talk that much to other characters and don't really converse as much as say as the main cast of NPCs. Who really don't do much other than sit around and let you do the work. Outside of the echo thingy they use to communicate you with.

Lilith (One of the Female Protoganists) and her costar Handsome Jack (The Antagonist) in terms of characters they kind of steal the whole show in terms of NPCs. As they were probably the most fleshed out characters in the entire cast by the end of the story.

They had a more interesting driving backstory than say the more marketable Moxxi. Which is basically a trademark of Borderlands 2... For some reason

The Pros




Borderlands 2 is the sequel to one of the games I found quite overrated (Borderlands 1) Finding its gameplay not as enjoyable as it's sequel. Where borderlands failed me in its first iteration the second iteration delievered on a compelling set of characters and a large variety of RPG elements. IT also developed its world far better and far faster than the previous world. The game became more interesting the more I played and had a curve and a difficulty curve as well. There wasn't many times where I had to grind an area to level. (not until late game)

The Game has a variety of enemies from the Hyperion army of robots, to bandits, to monsters, to pirates (DLC), to orcs (DLC), and bikers (DLC). The Variety of enemies is incredible in terms of how much you can do rather quickly in terms of gameplay and how fast gameplay is. It happens rather quickly with different types of weapons going off, the screen shaking when bombs go off and grenades shooting off effects.

Borderlands 2 has a compelling villian and a central story. Though it lacks in certain areas it delievers through its various gameplay and gunplay. The enemy varieties are quite vast compared to its predecessor, and its environments are upgraded to be a bit more spatious and more interesting. The sound developmentin general is probably one of the better ones I have heard in recent years. Borderlands 2 is a triumph of game design, where there are may things to do and provides many hours of entertainment. From Borderlands 2 I have played 50 hours of it. And I will continue to play it. Though it might not stand the test of time for much longer. AS the third game is fastly approaching in 2018 or 2019. The game itself seems to be what older games were like fun filled and not a gritty dark area of gaming. This era was very passionate and had interesting characters. I mean 2012 and 2013 was a great few years of gaming that still stands today as some of the best years of gaming.

Unlike Skyrim where the gameplay became quite old with no variety of weapons or the complete lack of a story. Borderlands 2 has a wonderful story. It has a simple one and it pays off. It is told in such a way that it makes it feel epic and interesting. Which was something many games fail to do correctly. This game tries very hard to sell itself in gameplay and from the trailers that is the major seller. This games success is mostly warranted by its preexisting IP and also because people saw the gameplay. They were lost in the visual look of the game which is rather unique compared to what was coming out at the time. (The Brown Era). This game appeals to sensationalists and those who wish to experience a world. Which is something not many games can do. In terms of graphics it looks like a comic book, with strong black lines and very colorful settings and characters. Though with a tinge of brown. (such was the era of graphics it was set in). The Graphics compliment the gameplay and the visuals are complimented by the gameplay. Where most games lack a true aesthic, borderlands 2 has its own unique aesthetic. And something that not many games have. This game delievers a setting in its own way and is an interesting and fun. The game's dialogue is clever and unique. Where there is alot of black comedy and funny intellectual comedy. The game becomes more interesting the more you dive into its optional quests which add depth to the world. The game becomes more and more interesting as time progresses. The quests lead to more interesting items and locations.

The bosses are all unique and interesting have their own styles to them, and feel like they belong in this world. And something that many games struggle to do. IT is said that boss battles are the pinnacle of games. To have a true epic fight we need to have a great villian and we have a great villain. Handsome Jack. The NPCs are fleshed out and have their own personalities and in this crazy world they do crazy things. And many of them are as blood thirsty as the bandits they face and as cunning as the corporation they face. Vehicles add what is needed in most games, exploration. Exploration is key to open world games, and is often a game pleasure people skip over. (I will talk about game pleasures soon.) Players want to explore, they want to find all the nooks and crannies that the developers have made, and all the secrets they have placed. Easter Eggs are quite common in games now. In every game there is an easter egg. And there will always be easter eggs, and some of them I stumbled upon and I found them clever. That is not something I would say to many other games and their secrets. (looks at Call of duty and shakes head in shame)

Borderlands 2 unlike many FPS's surprisingly has a health bar! If many do not know why this different it is mostly because health bars are the most gamy thing you can have in a game. And thats good. I will not try to go into details as to why this is a good thing, but most games have stepped away from health bars, and instead have resorted to the blood in your face technique instead of showing it on the character like Spec Ops The Line or even Dragon Age.

This game becomes more interesting the more I play it. But as I will cover later that is lost in many places.

The Cons




I do not know when it became popular to have certain boss sections to be near impossible solo, this is something as a trend in games that often I see as stupid and unneeded. As many people who do not have access to the internet and friends would find difficult. I am mainly looking at the finale boss fights. Which even at level 50 are still incredibly difficult. The game has many problems with it. Such is the bane of open world games. There are bound to be bugs. And niches that will not be filled. After finishing the main campaign I asked myself... What now? What do I do? There was nothing to do other than face terramorphus and buy the dlc. Though I will go into the DLC later on. The DLC itself is actually worth purchasing, but this is the negative talk here. So no more compliments....

In that after the main game was completed there was virtually nothing to do. There are no quests, there was no hunt this bandit group for funsises. There wasn't much to do other than hit the reset button and redo the campagin. Which initself was kind of dull. Its like someone telling you have to restart skyrim all the way at hearthglen, would anyone do that with the same character? No. Hell no. In terms of replaybility this game lacks in terms of that. Nothing changes, and nothing was different. there was no player choice there wasno reason to go back. That was something I enjoyed very much about other games such as life is strange, they are small choices but they have a big impact later on. This game does not have that player choice and as such the game suffers. You can't choose who gets to die and who gets to live. But such is life. Skyrim at least had a limited amount of choice but it still made your choices valuable, those small choices made up for many of the larger decisions.

I understand why they didn't do it, but as games progress forward the number 1 thing we as designers worry about is player choice, does a player have a meaningful choice in the matter? Does the player get choose their path? How does this affect gameplay? What should we as designers do to enforce this idea that the players are powerful or that they are weak. What are we going to do to ensure the player has meaningful choices? These are questions we ask ourselves as designers (Of course that is just a different outlook).

From what I have found a lack of characterization on the players we play. Other than audio logs that we find throughout the game. These characters should be more fleshed out unfortunately the game doesn't give a chance to have these characters actually be anything but a blank slate. Characters that are defined should be defined through gameplay and story. These characters are interesting it feels like they were going to but they just forgot midway in production about having to flesh these characters. There is also a lack of true customization outside of player color and what helmet you could wear. These characters are fully voice acted and have a unique look to them, they look like they were suppose to talk and make decisions other than go to point a to point b, which is what most of the quests come down to. The game does not get more complicated other than that. Also the fact that the skill tree is so limiting in that some skills are laughably more useful than other skills. Some skills don't even deserve mention. And that can be seen on many characters. The characters themselves feel like they should be a big part of the story and yet they are not. They are just as faceless as the enemies we face.

There is also the question of bringing life to a world and this just primary a gripe as a story teller and a world builder in order to give life to a world you need to have characters moving in the open world. Currently we see the Crimson raiders maybe once or twice throughout the game. And never actually firing their weapons? It might be that they lacked the time to put in this effort. But it would make it more interesting to see that happen to see the other characters interact in that way. The NPC's in particular don't do anything but stand around. In order to give life to a world just making them fight back gets rid of the immersion breaking features that this game has.

This game cracks apart once compared to an established IP like skyrim, or even Diablo. There are many great things about Borderlands 2. There are many problems akin to the first game. Where diablo 3 has fixed this error by adding in random locals and random corpses of people throughout the landscape. The World of Borderlands feels surprisingly empty.

I want to get involved in this world and characters, and I feel like I was just given a scoop and I want more of the characters and their interaction with the player. The gunplay does get boring after a while. As you face the same enemies over... And over... And over. It really starts to annoy you. Where borderlands goes wrong is that it lacks the variety of say diablo. Where each enemy is radically different from each other. With different abilities and a slew of other abilities that they can access. Unfortunately borderlands 2 fails in this regard in terms of enemy difficulty as you can stand at least a mile away and snipe the AI. Which is the way I beat most of the bosses.


As someone pointed out I needed to talk about.the guns... What can I say that has already been said? Other than they are unique? And change gameplay? That may seem big deal to some, but I really can't offer what is already been said. The guns are different they behave differently. And sometimes I was actually quite annoyed at how different some guns are, some guns do a ton of damage but the cooldowns are considerably high and shot darts. Darts... Not bullets. Darts.... I don't know if that was suppose to make the players powerful but overall I consider it to be quite weak compared to the other guns in the game. There are some guns that feel powerful and do powerful things and yet it doesn't . It may feel different to many but to me it just annoyed me. I know the differences between guns, but it became quite reptitive to actually to find that one gun from jakobs. Or that one gun from dahwls . Sometimes I didn't want that one gun that shot explosives, yes it might be better but it doesn't feel better. sometimes I wish it was like space marine were I could change it into kraken bolts or incendiary rounds. It just doesn't feel right to have these powerful guns that do all this on every single person. sometimes I would randomly die from explosive rounds, when I was hiding behinda corner all of a sudden thirty rounds of explosive bullets hit me and I don't know where the shots came from.

The penalty of death was asinine and dumb. Money? Money is incredibly stupid in this game. With three different types of currencies in the entire game this only makes it more useless to have cash other than to buy ammo. In my opinion they could of just combined the three into two. And the game would of been much better. The currency in the game was dropped so often that it is my same complaint with skyrim it was useless to collect gold other than to say I collected some gold. For what purpose? No idea. There is no money sink. There is nothing to spend this money on. There is no reason to buy from a vendor, and there is no reason to even collect cash.


To wrap things up, I enjoyed the game immensely and it still is a great game to this day. But it has many things that just break immersion. If you want to get immersed into a world deep with lore and history. Play the Witcher 3 (now coming to a store near you!). But if you want a game with excellent gunplay with some rpg elements, play borderlands 2. Borderlands is a series that will continue to improve and to be better, though I hope the next borderlands 3 delievers more on narrative and on the complaints I have with the series. As It may have great gameplay, not all great games just have great gameplay. FPS RPGs are a rare breed and something that I have little experience. I recommend this game completely to people who want a trip to the past.

Anyway I hope everyone enjoys this little piece before I dive into playing The Witcher 3 when it comes out.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/16 21:35:55


Post by: nomotog


How do you do a review on borderlands and not talk about the guns!!! It's like reviewing food and forgetting to eat it. I think I might have to call you out on this because you do it a lot in your reviews. Your very board and don't tend to tailor what you look at to the game.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/16 21:57:53


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
How do you do a review on borderlands and not talk about the guns!!! It's like reviewing food and forgetting to eat it. I think I might have to call you out on this because you do it a lot in your reviews. Your very board and don't tend to tailor what you look at to the game.


Well its similar to how I feel about guns in general. There are tools and weapons. They add a lot no doubt. But I could add that in.

I go in with a broad approach and I never specifically go after a single thing as that is often something that most reviewers try to do. I come at a broader point of view because in retrospect it is better to and I will not be to specific or else I go into it with a different frame of mind.

I want to remain as broad as possible to cater to a wider audience.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/16 22:32:46


Post by: nomotog


Ya you are too board and rather shallow. Your major failing is that you don't budget your focus well. A broad style doesn't work for every game. I would say it doesn't work for most games and that could be why most people don't do it. It's not just that your focusing your efforts on the wrong elements. Your also not spending enough time on the elements you are looking at. Your right that Lilith and jack are some of the more fleshed out characters, but you don't say why. I mean you barly describe them or their place in the world. (Fun fact. I played Lilith in the first game.)

A broad style doesn't appeal t a wide audience it appeals to no audience. You really need to give people something to chew on. People look for different things in a game and knowing your audience is important. You want to know what they want to know about and then give them that. Not everything. (My school teachers use to say everyone is not an audience )

Skipping over the guns though. That is an horrible misrepresentation of the game. BL is a loot game. It's a game where you collect loot. (see diablo and diablo clones) The big difference is how BL handles their loot. In a game like diablo, New loot means bigger numbers, but finding a cool new sword doesn't really change how you play the game. (The game changing stuff is left in skills.) BL is a almost inversion of this. Each gun you find changes how you play. You move in close when using an masher, but try to keep your distance when using a bulldog. (Your skills are more the number buffers, but some of them are game changers in themselves.)


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/16 23:27:12


Post by: Asherian Command


nomotog wrote:
Ya you are too board and rather shallow. Your major failing is that you don't budget your focus well. A broad style doesn't work for every game. I would say it doesn't work for most games and that could be why most people don't do it. It's not just that your focusing your efforts on the wrong elements. Your also not spending enough time on the elements you are looking at. Your right that Lilith and jack are some of the more fleshed out characters, but you don't say why. I mean you barly describe them or their place in the world. (Fun fact. I played Lilith in the first game.)

A broad style doesn't appeal t a wide audience it appeals to no audience. You really need to give people something to chew on. People look for different things in a game and knowing your audience is important. You want to know what they want to know about and then give them that. Not everything. (My school teachers use to say everyone is not an audience )

Skipping over the guns though. That is an horrible misrepresentation of the game. BL is a loot game. It's a game where you collect loot. (see diablo and diablo clones) The big difference is how BL handles their loot. In a game like diablo, New loot means bigger numbers, but finding a cool new sword doesn't really change how you play the game. (The game changing stuff is left in skills.) BL is a almost inversion of this. Each gun you find changes how you play. You move in close when using an masher, but try to keep your distance when using a bulldog. (Your skills are more the number buffers, but some of them are game changers in themselves.)


Alrighty after a little bit of a thinking and brainstorming. I can come down to this. I mostly based it on game pleasures and what I found in the game.

To me the guns weren't the appealing part to you it might be the guns but to me I found the narrative and the sensation it brought me more compelling than the guns.

The guns were varied and did change gameplay but not to the degree that I was originally promised. And I didn't find it compelling enough. I found it more of an issue that it did change gameplay. It was too radical and sometimes too drastic of a change.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/20 15:48:01


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


Episode 3 of Life Is Strange came out out yesterday, have you played it? That ending...


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/24 05:17:58


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Episode 3 of Life Is Strange came out out yesterday, have you played it? That ending...


Just got back!

Yes I played it and I enjoyed the helk out of it. Loved it and I gasped, I cried and Really wanted to play the next episode. Ugh episodic games are becoming problem currently. But man Chloe...... That story has become quite interesting and I have talked to alot of people about it. And many have agreed it has become quite surprising I might need to revisit my review at some point to update it.

but one thing.....


Spoiler:
I want my punk rock Chloe back

GIVE ME BACK CHLOE NOT WHEELCHAIR CHLOE!



Also... I have been playing Witcher 3 Wild Hunt....

And well.... I am going to break a rule I am going to review a game and break it apart. And I am going to be focusing on open world immersion.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/24 11:00:11


Post by: Shadow Captain Edithae


I think the game will end with Max learning the truth about Rachel and the Vortex club, but all the timeline breaking changes she's made will still destroy Arcadia Bay. Max will have no choice but to go back to the original bathroom scene with Chloe and Nathan where She'll have a choice.

Spoiler:
Let Chloe go?
Or sacrifice herself to save Chloe by intervening directly?

Either way, Nathan is arrested for murder, and his associates in the Vortex club and possibly some of the Blackwell teachers, are investigated and the truth will come out. Rachel is found, and people believe Kate.

If it's Max, she's hailed as a hero for saving Chloe. Chloe enters one of Max's selfies in the Everyday Hero contest, and Max wins. Posthumously.

Sacrificing herself in the bathroom is Max's loophole, her way to change the future and save Chloe without breaking the timeline. Everything else she's tried has failed, and just contributes to Arcadias destruction.


And I make no claims to have come up with all that on my own, I watch Geek Remix. She has some great Theory videos.

https://m.youtube.com/#/user/GeekRemix


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/05/24 16:07:31


Post by: Asherian Command


 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I think the game will end with Max learning the truth about Rachel and the Vortex club, but all the timeline breaking changes she's made will still destroy Arcadia Bay. Max will have no choice but to go back to the original bathroom scene with Chloe and Nathan where She'll have a choice.

Spoiler:
Let Chloe go?
Or sacrifice herself to save Chloe by intervening directly?

Either way, Nathan is arrested for murder, and his associates in the Vortex club and possibly some of the Blackwell teachers, are investigated and the truth will come out. Rachel is found, and people believe Kate.

If it's Max, she's hailed as a hero for saving Chloe. Chloe enters one of Max's selfies in the Everyday Hero contest, and Max wins. Posthumously.

Sacrificing herself in the bathroom is Max's loophole, her way to change the future and save Chloe without breaking the timeline. Everything else she's tried has failed, and just contributes to Arcadias destruction.


And I make no claims to have come up with all that on my own, I watch Geek Remix. She has some great Theory videos.

https://m.youtube.com/#/user/GeekRemix


Yeah I have had that same discussion with people and we all believe it is heading down that direction. (And good thing too)

Its been abounding rumours about Rachael

Spoiler:
Having the same powers as max and being stuck in time and she is unable to control her power. Maxs powers are clearly the reason arcadia bay is becoming like it is. She's intervened too much in so many affairs



Spoiler:
Anyone with that type of power would get corrupted, as much as everyone wants a Max and Chloe Ship, I don't see this game ending without another death.

I think the best ending would be for max to die to stop chloe from dying as well. Or the perfect ending where nathan shoots himself instead.


Game Design Club: All good things come to an end @ 2015/07/18 02:17:49


Post by: Asherian Command


So a bit of an update. Started playing Talos Principle here are my thoughts on the game as a whole and its philosophies it brought up.

Talos Principle so far has been a delight, asking me questions I do not know the answer to. Often times the best answer is saying I don't Know.

Spoiler:
We as humans like to think we know everything, that everything can be solved by science, rationality, and logic. We seek truth and believe we know truth, when all we truly know is nothing.

We see science though we do not mean to as some sort of solver of all things, that it can help us solve all of life's mysteries and aid us whether to answer the question of whether god is real or not. But can we truly prove what we cannot see. Faith is a peculiar thing, but anyway that is entirely different subject...

If mankind were to dissipate in a year by some catastrophe, and we knew were going to die on this date, and at this time. What would we leave behind? Obviously we would try to do something to preserve our knowledge and hopefully build a sustainable library and some sort of preserver for this knowledge. Though many of us would not do that, many of us would yell out and scream that you only live once. True, but is it not our responsibility to ensure that Earth is livable? It is incredibly short sighted to think that you are only doing a job for yourself, instead of others and for mankind. When it is all said and done, man is just a speck, just a speck. For man is not infinite, one day we will be gone; every man, woman and child.What we leave behind will say much about us and our generations and even our ancestors. WE are specks in the sea, the waters may toss and throw, but our knowledge... Our knowledge will continue. For our generations even if they may not be our own, are forever blessed with the knowledge we possess.

It would be selfish for us to leave nothing behind. For when that day of rapture comes, man must leave something behind. For the earth will continue even without us. Our pets, our animals, it will be here, and stay here. Though they need caretakers, maybe one day will create an Artificial intelligence that can replicate like us. For we are the creators of machines, if were to give a machine a personality, maybe even a soul, and an ability to think. The possibilities are endless really, as machines are the future of human kind. They will continue the legacy of human kind, and pass it on through their generations. Just as we do now.
Though many would revolt at the idea of an intelligence similar to our own. That is only a natural reaction of something alien and new. A machine can outlive a man, if this AI was taught to think it was a person, and that we were its creators, wouldn't it not see us as its family? Wouldn't any good and logical being want to preserve the knowledge of its creators? As a person is define as something that thinks rationally and logically, anything including a machine can be a person. Though would it be a citizen of humanity? No, maybe, I don't know. Though I know most people here don't read philosophies of Immanuel Kant or various writings of other famous philosophers.

Obviously, this is something I enjoy. When this topic was brought up by the game, I paused. I thought. What would life be like. If machines are our future. It asked me many more questions I could not answer, for I am not a machine. It is a scary thought, in fact thinking about the end of the human race isn't very much a cheerful thought.


Now lets talk about the game!

Hurray!

Talos Principle is a puzzle solving game that feels similar to portal but isn't in anyway. Talos is basically a very dark look at life after humanities destruction. This game delivers lots of messages and very strong opinions on life, mortality, living, death, and philosophies in general.

It is no wonder that someone like me, who enjoys the philosophers of Kant, John Donne and several others to enjoy a game like this that makes references to these philosophers. The game mechanics in it themselves are enjoyable and fun, and interesting. So far I have beaten the game but I took my time, it took me roughly 12 hours to beat it. And I bought it the beginning of last weekend. I just played it for an hour or maybe two, but I haven't played it excessively. This game is incredible in that it asks you to be in a certain frame of mind, you have to think about the puzzles that you are doing. It continues and builds on what was previous. The game gets incredibly difficult in terms of puzzle solving but then again it is using mechanics you already know. It is just combining them interesting ways.

The visuals and story of this game are the heart of it. It asks so many questions that many would find hard to answer. Many of which I would share with people and ask them questions about life and death.

Though this game also brings to the table two very interesting characters, Eli ohm, and Milton. Elohim is a god like character in this world. As you delve into the story and into the game further, you will learn more and more about it and these characters and why all this is happening.

You will find throughout the game letters and voice logs. In combination that sounded interesting and also very peculiar. As the game progress, you start to learn more and more about the world you are in. You are asked questions you are tricked into thinking about things and you learn more about philosophies and ideologies of the world. And what happened to the human race.

This game asks difficult questions and is probably the greatest example of a truly dark game.

Now this game be forewarned is all about reading, understanding, listening, patience, and problem solving. This game is not for those who want to play a game because it has action. This is not like portal, but it does have its similarities and several secrets that hint a greater relationship to portal....

Though I think I have talked enough about it and I recommend this game to anyone that needs a good puzzle game or for people that just want to sit down and read philosophies.




Update




Anyway this is an update. Sorry I haven't been to write something up and talking about these two games. I know people actually read what I write. And in all honesty I am glad I have some people reading them.

So I just completed the Talos Principle again. And I would like to talk about it! AGAIN!

Yeah.... So I was playing the game I thought in order to capture what is going on in this world here is a brief taste of the audio logs. You can tell alot about a game by the use of its audio and its story conveying it does. Either Indirectly through audio logs and/or the written stories we read throughout the game. I found all of them after many trials (These audio logs and written logs). And I started to cry. Yeah. I am admitting that to everyone. I cried, I realized something and it shook me to the core. I hope you guys really did take my recommendation to heart as there is a spoiler ahead. If you would not like to hear these audio logs. Then don't listen to it. And just play the game. Find them, they are pretty easy to find, and one of the best voice overs I have ever heard.

This game specializes in something call indirect story telling or nonlinear story telling meaning, the story telling is optional. You have a choice to read through it. It is all choice. If you do you can play it like a normal puzzle game.

This is where I begin to say. That I have never read a more put together storyline than this. I cried, and i wept, I read through things that were so absurd that it stopped me, and caused me to have a crisis of idealism and where my place is in the world. It sucked me in and turned me into the person I am now. It is a journey of you, if you let it. A journey to let you learn about the world and philisophies. If you let it. Talos is a teacher, you are the student, you may think you know everything but in reality, you know nothing. Other than you are a small insignificant other.




But I will reveal something else.

The main point of talos principle. Ready?

Spoiler:
Our lives are finite,
So too is what we can accomplish,
Sometimes devoting to one thing is an error,
But to maintain balance in the world is to be what we could enlightened,
To follow that path you make sacrifices for your greater good,
To follow the path of knowledge,
The Path of righteousness
The path of oneness
Either with your god, or gods, or your what ever you assign to,
This is both damning, enticing, and transcending,

We humans are frail, we die after a few years,
What will we leave behind?
if you say nothing,
then your life was not worth living,
To live a life worth living,
You give back and make something,
men are creators; builders,
They make things with their body and mind,
To fulfill a purpose to the world,
But what will they leave behind?
Cities will crumble
Civilizations will fade from memory,
People will turn to dust,
What will we leave behind?
If not the people we left?
Mortality is the struggle,
The struggle of dying,
Living and dying, at the same time,

If there are still people in the streets,
Living in that ruin of ours,
That is what we leave behind,
Knowledge, our ideas, our customs, and our culture,
For what we leave behind,
We fulfill our duty,

This is the talos principle,
What we leave behind be they machine or our knowledge,
They are children of men,
They are People,
What we leave behind,
Is worth more than you could ever dream,
For our generations will learn of our deeds,
Our failures,
But they will strive to be;
Better,
And that is something.
Worth everything,

That is the lesson.


Give it a try. And if you don't thats up to you. I can't keep talking about this game enough, but it is one of my most favorite games to come out in the past decade. I hope you guys enjoy this game. And this is asherian's last time writing about Game Design for a bit. I have other projects and a book I have to get to. And my regret in all this is that I can't devote to both here, my blog, and my book. But my book comes first, that, school work, getting a job, and my family. It is sad but I have to devote time to what I need to do.

So I promised I would talk about Wolfenstien the new order and Witcher 3.

Here is my summary of those two:

They are fantastic. I don't need to tell you what they did right in terms of game design, because it is evident by how great the material is and how interesting; thought provoking those games are. Either it be with Ciri or Geralt's father and daughter relationship. Or just the way it protrays women in a positive way. I don't know what I could say that would improve on that.

Wolfenstien on the other hand, solid first person shooter. one of the best I have played in a long time. It reminds me of Fear 1. In terms of pacing, and characters. There is a singular villian and your back up, the choices menial to the main storyline. I played it on the hardest difficulty and enjoyed it. These two games really reminded me of what I wanted to do as a designer, which is design games and have people enjoy the worlds I make. I don't think I should reveal why I wish to make games, but lets just say its very personal. Something I don't tell anyone, unless you happen to be a girl I am trying to impress.


If I have disappointed anyone by 'wussing' out by sorta quitting just know, I would love to talk about games, but these things take quite a while to think about, to write, and to think of a subject matter. I think I have covered enough in here to fill a short novel. And I believe I should stop talking about games and start making them. And start making the stories I wish to tell.

Lets just say playing this game (Talos) revealed to me my own sense of mortality. How finite my life is, how I can't devote the resources I have to be able to see the things I want done through. There has to be cuts somewhere. Especially after a discovery I made a few weeks ago. Anyway I hope someone can take my mantle until I get back, hopefully improve what I started. Going about by writing about games and showing the love we all have for them. If someone volunteers that would be great, as someone like me it would be interesting to see a new prospective from someone else.