The Hot Topic Returns

[DANGERMAN]

To go way back, Sonic for platformers, prior to that it had been a lot of basic stuff like Roland on the Ropes or whatever, then stuff ripping off Mario (very deliberate platformers, but smoother and with scrolling). Sonic still had moments like that, in the 1st game at least, but it started the trend for games being more about presentation and being about feel, that arguably the series took too far eventually

 

Staying way back in the past, it's not my favourite game, I always preferred Fatal Fury to it, but Street Fighter 2 was such a massive, massive leap over what fighting games were before.  That's a genre where I think I prefer slightly older games to the most recent. The 32-bit era up to Street Fighter 4 is what I like, manual combos and the like, I'm not a fan of the auto-combo trend, nor the work involved in the likes of Guilty Gear

 

RPGs, JRPGs especially, maybe they don't need to be 150 hours long?

[one-armed dwarf]

18 minutes ago, Sly Reflex said:

Snake overcoming them not because he is superhuman like them, but because he retains the grounding of what it is to be a man. He's not supernatural or a freak, he's a guy sent to do a job. An extraordinary guy, but a guy no less. A man that inherits the situation he finds himself in, but doesn't let it corrupt him in the same ways it has to Liquid, Ocelot, Wolf and Mantis.

A lot of people overlook this specific theme in Metal Gear, they even literarise it in the opening FMV for MGS2 where you see a snake break off from a DNA helix, indicating that Snake has surpassed his genetic legacy despite being the inferior twin. Which is the thing that Twin Snakes gets so wrong, cause that game puts him on the same level as the comic book villains that he's fighting, and makes a literal cyborg ninja seem on his level

 

I ain't with you in putting this in the a museum though, lol

[mfnick]

Mine are based on genres I hate but experienced games within them that I adore. 
 

Dead Cells - I hated Rogue lites, still do mostly. But I love this game so much I at least try them now. 
 

Midnight Suns - usually hate card based, deck style games. Here it doesn’t bother me at all. Basically just acted as an ability list I could swap around. Still hate card based games for the most part though. Once you give me more than 10 cards to swap between & want me to build load outs with them I lose interest. 

[Maryokutai]

Another one that came to mind, though I'm not sure if I'm under- or overvaluing its impact, are JRPGs without random encounters. I don't know exactly which one was the first to do it, as Chrono Trigger toyed with the idea but then some early Tales games had properly roaming enemies, but the first one I played that did it was Grandia II and that's one of those things that makes random encounters suddenly feel extremely archaic, even when bundled with a game that otherwise screams next-gen, like FFX did at the time.

 

I'm kind of okay with it again these days, because games that still have them often offer some QOL skills/items to reduce the frequency or auto-win against weak enemies, but that was one of those 'I don't want to go back' moments in the early 2000s for me.

[DANGERMAN]

Grandia 2 is a great game, I'd like to replay it at some point

[shinymcshine]

Maps !

 

In game maps were a great innovation - finally gone (mostly) was the need to keep a hand drawn grid paper reference (mostly for dungeon crawling RPGs) - but in recent years that useful tool to map your exploration sadly became cluttered with 'go here' icons, making the fun exploration into the unknown just a journey between markers (too often perhaps with fast travel points).

 

So what was once a useful map of where you'd been, has now been exploited, somewhat negatively, as a layout of where to go.

 

So it was great in something like BG and Daggerfall, not so great in AC and Horizon.

[one-armed dwarf]

Daggerfall maps are a nightmare, 3D spaghetti. 

 

Talked about it a lot but Ultima Underworld combines the manual and auto-tracking design of map interfaces, where the map fills in but you must write on it yourself and come up with your own system for remembering points of interest. 

Strange that it's not a more widely used mechanic. Edit, well BOTW uses it, come to think of it. Because that game is perfect

[shinymcshine]

Lols yep, you're  dead right on Daggerfall dungeon maps (but it was one of the first times I'd seen them at least attempt to map things in 3D).

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

 

What game mechanic felt annoying or confusing at first, but eventually became one of your favourite parts of the game?

 

For example I'm referencing stuff like:

 

The posture system in Sekiro
Social stuff in Persona
Weight limits in Death Stranding
The Nemesis system in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

 

 

Hit me with whatever you have. If it's obscure, explain what was so special about it.

[Maryokutai]

The Focus Attack from Street Fighter IV was weird. Initially everyone was just charging it to full when the opponent was waking up to try to get a crumple, until they realised that basically every reversal breaks them. Then for the longest time it was used to cancel said reversals to make them safe (or even positive) on block, which was arguably a horrible design decision. But by the time the final versions of the game came around and I was paying it at a more advanced level, I started to see the idea behind it and was slowly starting to use it for proper combo extensions. I still feel like it's a bit clumsily implemented and it's weird how certain characters can get a lot of mileage out of it while others might never use it at all, but out of they key mechanics from every mainline SF game I like it the most. I added a mechanical layer that allowed for some stuff previous games couldn't do, but it wasn't as overbearing as the system's of its sequels have become. 

[DANGERMAN]

you can chain attacks together in the Etrian Odyssey games. I couldn't explain it to you now, I didn't understand it before, but when I was playing a couple of them it was actually a really cool system you could get quite involved with

[Sly Reflex]

I think for me it was rearranging Jokers in Balatro. The running order deeply effects the efficiency of scoring high and understanding that and making sure that you are playing to the Jokers you have strengths really helps, but it's not one of those things that's immediately apparent when you play because so much is pinging and flashing that it's hard to follow when you start out.

[DANGERMAN]

Yeah that's a good shout. There's loads of bits in Balatro that make no sense at first that you learn how to use really effectively 

 

Another recent one is Expedition 33, I'm sure everyone developed their own techniques with the combo system in that by the end of the game 

[one-armed dwarf]

It's a bit hard to think of examples

 

Maybe the whole nature of dodging in Alan Wake 2 and how it interacts with other combat mechanics, where initially I was a bit baffled by how inscrutable combat was in that game. Lots of smokey weird things trying to kill you and this very heavy feeling, sort of delayed dodge you had to do to get away from it. Until I learned that the game rubber bands flash grenades, flares and all sorts of things and that the combat isn't really about dodging at all, but crowd control with light-emitting weapons that you use with abandon. Before falling back on ballistic weapons and, only as a last resort, the dodge, finally.

 

Basically, it's supposed to be played like RE4, not like RE1. In that you use all your stuff up as you know you'll be getting it back when you run out. In the inverse direction, supply boxes are often empty if you try and hoard supplies, so you're just setting yourself up for failure if you do it like that.

 

Could probably bring up FFXII as a game that really felt alienating at first. In a very literal way, like I felt alienated from the process of playing the game cause it seemed to play itself (penny arcade described the game as masturbating). But then you learn that the game is about scripting systems and trying to find a way to design a party that's flexible to all combat situations and knows how to delegate responsibilities to different team members rather than duplicate needlessly the same tasks amongst them all. It's a game for programmers, or people who like the idea of attacking RPG combat in a sort of high-level architectural kind of way, identifying inefficiencies and scope for improvements. Maybe it's a game for middle managers? The only issue is the game was too easy to really reward any of that type of thinking, but the re-release version of XII adds a lot of difficulty layers and limitations that force you to think of streamlining processes between team members, and it's sort of unfortunate that Square hasn't really revisited this system outside of one very difficult minigame in FFVII Rebirth, which was cool in its own way, what a rich game that was.

[radiofloyd]

I guess doing things like alternate strumming in Guitar Hero which feels kind of unnatural at first but then it’s impossible to go back to all down strumming once you get used to it.

[Maryokutai]

That post about Etrian Odyssey reminded me of a few JRPGs that would fit the topic...

 

Eternal Sonata. I don't remember the details, but that game had some kind of combo-link feature, which allowed you to switch off a character into the next as long as your Super bar (?) wasn't drained, and depending on the combo you did it would refill when you tagged a new character. Don't remember the specifics, but for the majority of the game it feels very gimmicky – until your arrive at the end game, where suddenly it's possible to almost infinitely loop through your characters if you happen to find the right rhythm and moves to use. Really satisfying.

 

Baten Kaitos. Its card-based combat mechanics starts off really slow, and the defense phase for the most part feels like it just lures you into wasting cards. But there's a point after roughly the first third of the game where it clicks, as the game starts handing out multi-layered cards (you pick them by flicking the stick in a direction, as every corner and side of a card has a different number), which allow for longer streaks, but also more complex successions (full house instead of just straights, for example). It's a really fun system IMO, I really need to get back to that remaster and finally play the second one.

 

FFXII is a weird one. I never disliked the gambits after actually playing the game, but I do remember being very negative and critical when it was first shown and, at face value, looked like an offline MMO. Didn't pick the game up on release for that reason and only grabbed it for cheap a year or two later. To think it would end up being an all-time favourite.

[mfnick]

Struggling to think of my own examples for this even though there must be some obvious ones I’m forgetting.

 

Balatro is a great shout. I’d put many many hours into that before realising how the multi’s and X ones worked together and how important he joker order was. 
 

Expedition 33 is another good shout. For me it took way too long to figure out the picto’s also altered your stats not just abilities. Really obvious when you actually read them properly. Heard a couple of people on podcasts and on playthroughs not realise that until a few hours in either so don’t feel too bad about it. 

[Sly Reflex]

I think the beauty of Balatro is that you look at something and initially think it's useless, and then when you are away from the game thinking about nothing that hook gets into you and it will be like "You can try this with it?" and it usually works. 

 

Generally I feel like all Balatro's finer points are things that are never explained all that well, but the way the game plays forces you to learn what they do my playing into bad runs and making you accept anything. There's times where I have taken jokers I would have never normally taken because it's the first one out of a pack and that disappointment of not getting something I was looking for turning to intrigue as I work out how the card I did get can work with other cards further down the run.

 

That's the fun part about Balatro, once you get over the gong banging as it racks up scores and you start paying attention to what it's actually doing, it can be a real learning experience, especially when you start looking at how certain jokers interact with each other and how those interact with seals and shiny cards. Trying to front load those hands so you get maximum score and watching the fire burn up when you get it right is so satisfying.

 

I honestly don't think we'll get a game like that for a few years. I believe it turned a lot of design stuff on its head as to how things can work and also how and what people will put up with. I don't think there's a person I've shown Balatro to that hasn't immediately got it, and then immediately scratched their head when the game starts breaking with all the skills. Seeing them have the cogs in their mind turn as they realise how the game works on a surface level is really satisfying.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think the big trick to balatro is learning when a mid or crap joker is actually more valuable than a high tier joker. Cause of things like scaling but also things like how to make the early antes as risk free and opportunistic for you as possible. On the higher stake black deck in particular, it's a really difficult thing to negotiate. You want to get your economy online as soon as possible and then give yourself enough latitude to develop a 'real' build, which is hard on black deck cause of fewer turns therefore less money returned from saved turns, less interest etc

 

It badly needs an update with new jokers though, I think compared with games like StS there's not quite as much depth to it as I'd like. I'd love to see them come up with a weird external narrative as well, something like Inscryption. 

[Sly Reflex]

Quote

What was the first game that made you think, “Wait! Games can do that?”

I'm interested to see how you lot answer this.